Document Type
Essay
Award Designation
First place
Publication Date
2009
Abstract
In a 1999 interview, Philip Pullman, author of His Dark Materials, replied to a question about gender, saying, "Eve is the equal of Adam and shares in whatever it is that happens" (Pullman, Parsons par. 30). J.R.R Tolkien, author of The Lord of the Rings expressed a different attitude toward male and female. In a letter to his son in 1941, Tolkien wrote, "A man has a lifework, a career ... A young woman, even one 'economically independent' as they say now ... begins to dream of a home, almost at once" (Letters 50). Tolkien's notion of the sexes does not attribute to them equality, and his trilogy reflects this. As two Tolkien scholars have already noted, "Women were considered intellectually inferior ... on the interest scale ... they were not even considered ... Tolkien incorporated [this view] into his mythic structures" (Fredrick and McBride 7).
Disciplines
Feminist, Gender, and Sexuality Studies | Women's Studies
eCommons Citation
Howson, Emily Elizabeth, "Medieval Romance and British Romanticism: Gender Constructions in Pullman’s "His Dark Materials" and Tolkien’s "The Lord of the Rings"" (2009). Joyce Durham Essay Contest in Women's and Gender Studies. 3.
https://ecommons.udayton.edu/wgs_essay/3
Comments
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