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CMackintosh
Rivendell
Oct 9 2023, 10:52am
Post #1 of 7
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JRR Tolkien and Edith Bratt
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I was just watching The Return of the King, Extended Edition, with the little detail of Faramir meeting Eowyn in the Houses of Healing, and suddenly recognized this little detail which I notice no one has yet mentioned in relation to their relationship: both Faramir (by now, after Denethor's suicide and his mother's early death) and Eowyn (long orphaned by her father's and mother's deaths, now bereft of the uncle who had raised her and her brother as his own children) are both orphans. JRR Tolkien by the early death of his father in Bloemfontein, South Africa, and the later death of his mother in Burmingham from diabetes, was an orphan; Edith Bratt, his wife, was born out of wedlock and thus was raised without a father, and then orphaned as an adolescent by her mother's death.
This is hardly a coincidence. This is a parallel he managed to avoid with Beren and Luthien - Luthien's mother and father were both alive when she met Beren, and only Beren was bereft of both parents. He didn't manage to avoid it with Aragorn and Arwen Undomiel, as Aragorn's father died in battle with orcs when he was very small, and his mother died when he reached manhood; Arwen's mother Celebrian was wounded and tortured by orcs, and needed to recuperate in the Undying Lands, so she was raised half by her grandmother Galadriel and half by her father Elrond.
I'm sure we can find similar parallels in the lives of the other great lovers in Middle Earth. Elrond and Elros, with their parents torn from them by Earendil's quest and Elwing's escape from the ravaging forces of the Feanoreans. Frodo with his parents drownded. Sam's father widowed. Any more I've missed?
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Otaku-sempai
Immortal
Oct 9 2023, 2:09pm
Post #2 of 7
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Very interesting! Though the parallels break down a bit with Arwen Umdomiel. Arwen did effectively lose her mother when Celebrian sailed into the West, though she could hope to one day be reunited with her up until the time when she forsook her immortality to remain with Aragorn. However, she was not orphaned by her father as Elrond remained in Middle-earth until after she was wedded to Aragorn and only took ship to the Undying Lands along with Galadriel and the other Ring-bearers.
“Hell hath no fury like that of the uninvolved.” - Tony Isabella
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elentari3018
Rohan
Oct 10 2023, 1:37am
Post #3 of 7
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Yes, it's common that we do not hear about main characters' parents both being alive.
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And to some extent seems like Tolkien is projecting a bit his own early loss of parents.
Would like to add that we do not hear about Legolas' mother either? and you've already mentioned the hobbits and Aragorn.
"By Elbereth and Luthien the fair, you shall have neither the Ring nor me!" ~Frodo
"And then Gandalf arose and bid all men rise, and they rose, and he said: 'Here is a last hail ere the feast endeth. Last but not least. For I name now those who shall not be forgotten and without whose valour nought else that was done would have availed; and I name before you all Frodo of the Shire and Samwise his servant. And the bards and the minstrels should give them new names: Bronwe athan Harthad and Harthad Uluithiad , Endurance beyond Hope and Hope Unquenchable.." ~Gandalf, The End of the Third Age , from The History of Middle Earth series
"He knew now why Beregond spoke his name with love. He was a captain that men would follow, that he would follow, even under the shadow of the black wings."- Siege of Gondor, RotK
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Silvered-glass
Rohan
Oct 13 2023, 6:02pm
Post #4 of 7
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Mothers in general are very much missing in LotR. Outside of LotR there are some mothers in Tolkien, but many are prone to early deaths and, even without dying, dropping out of the story. Morwen's relative prominence can be explained with that particular story being influenced by The Kalevala, where mothers are important.
I noticed that in all of LotR there is not a single example of a (male) character who is both a real character who is around and alive and whose mother is also a real character who is around and alive. In female characters you can have the likes of Rosie and Elanor that might just barely count, but with male characters the closest thing to a mother-son pair is Lotho and his mother Lobelia, and Lotho does his things off-screen and is already dead when he becomes relevant to the story.
As for the Fellowship:
Frodo: dead mother
Sam: dead(?) mother
Merry: ?
Pippin: ?
Gandalf: no mother
Aragorn: dead mother
Boromir: dead mother
Legolas: ? (but probably not around)
Gimli: ?
The names of Merry and Pippin's mothers are known but not much else about them is.
There aren't even many wives in the story. Théoden, Denethor, Elrond, Círdan, Thranduil, Saruman, Sauron, Treebeard, and even Barliman Butterbur all appear to be widowed/separated/single as far as the reader knows. Galadriel is the notable exception among the world leaders, but she's the person in charge and like the male leaders has no wife. Outside of the Shire there is only Goldberry who is a wife (or cohabiting), and later on Arwen and Éowyn end up getting married.
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squire
Half-elven
Oct 13 2023, 10:22pm
Post #5 of 7
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This question has intrigued me for a long time
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I remember that one of my first posts on TORn, back in March 2004 on the Old Boards now lost beneath the sea, was about this question.
Or more accurately, it was about the inverse of this question: not, why are there so many orphaned characters, but why are there so few 'mother' or 'older women/wives' characters? Whether as mothers of the younger main characters or as wives of the older main characters, they are simply not present in the story.
As it happens, I learned early on to write any long-format posts on TORn as text files before posting them, because of the flightiness of the web software. Looking around just now, I found the file for this post. Here is what I wrote, way back when:
Recently someone posted a question along the lines of: what other character would you like to have seen in Lord of the Rings? I felt around inside, and I missed no one. In truth, I found it very hard to imagine LoTR as anything other than the superb literary masterpiece it is.
Then I was following the debate about the quality of discourse here, and saw the suggestion that we should work to post new, thoughtful subjects that will drive old, thoughtless subjects down and off the boards.
It suddenly hit me: Why are there no wives/mothers in the story? Galadriel is the only one who could remotely qualify, and I'm sure I don't want to start speculating on who exactly wears the bifurcated garments in that relationship. (There's also Goldberry, I suppose; but I wasn't really thinking of her -- hear me out.) Aside from her, we have Eowyn, a classic daughter/little sister; and Arwen, who although centuries old is essentially a daughter character. Both of these fine ladies do get married when the story is over, since that's what daughters do when they grow up in stories.
But to name some obvious candidates, Elrond, Theoden and Denethor, the father figures, are widowers. Bilbo, another father figure, is a bachelor uncle; and Frodo, the hero of the story, is a bachelor. (The entire Ent race are widower/bachelors, just for good measure, but let that pass!) The "younger" men, Boromir, Faramir, Eomer, and the younger hobbits, are all bachelors also. Aragorn of course is engaged.
Leaving our various dwarves and elves and wizards aside, I began to wonder why there was no strong mature, married female character in Rohan or Gondor or The Shire. And I'm not trying to suggest how having one would have improved or lessened the story. I've never missed this person before now, believe me. I just don't think it's plausible to argue that there COULDN'T be one.
My gut feeling was that it came down to JRR Tolkien himself. I've heard both sides about the quality of his own marriage, and the type of College common-room companionship he preferred; and how that might relate to the much-commented upon, mostly male relationships that he wrote about. I began to wonder if he was in some inarticulate way uncomfortable with writing that kind of person in his fiction: so uncomfortable that it possibly never even occurred to him.
Finally, and not to be offensive, I think I thought of this partly after reading the fascinating thread on Main recently about the large proportion of female fans on this site. Many noted how they loved the story for the adventure and romance of a great epic. Others remarked, lightly, on the plethora of excellent male characters in the movie (and that simply echoes the book). Do our lady posters miss or enjoy the lack of married, mature women?
Tolkien has often been criticized for his lack of female characters; the "tom-boy" Eowyn and the "absent" Arwen and the "Faerie-Queen" Galadriel. I always left it at that, thinking the critics were missing a more fleshed out romantic love story or two, such as the one the filmmakers made of the Aragorn/Arwen story. But now I wonder if something in Tolkien's personal emotional make-up did in fact prevent him from including marriage and motherhood in his writing.
P.S. I just remembered the Unfinished Tale "The Mariner's Wife." Not an encouraging memory on this topic.
If I remember, this did lead to a pretty interesting discussion, but of course there's no record of it now.
squire online:
RR Discussions: The Valaquenta, A Shortcut to Mushrooms, and Of Herbs and Stewed Rabbit
Lights! Action! Discuss on the Movie board!: 'A Journey in the Dark'. and 'Designing The Two Towers'.
Archive: All the TORn Reading Room Book Discussions (including the 1st BotR Discussion!) and Footerama: "Tolkien would have LOVED it!"
Dr. Squire introduces the J.R.R. Tolkien Encyclopedia: A Reader's Diary
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SirDennisC
Half-elven
Oct 14 2023, 1:49am
Post #6 of 7
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Though a tertiary character (a word I learned from you I think) Ioreth is there, perhaps an exception proving a rule. In her role, she is no less memorable than any of our heroes. She would have broad shoulders indeed if she was meant to be a stand in for all the women absent in Tolkien’s tale (and life, it seems). I wonder about her and if she was an analogue to anyone in Tolkien’s life.
When I think of Ioreth I think of a passage from Galatians that speaks to the capacity for nurturing others that nurses like Ioreth would have: “… more are the children of the childless woman than of her who has a husband.”
(Also, great post from almost 20 years ago!)
(This post was edited by SirDennisC on Oct 14 2023, 2:02am)
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Ethel Duath
Half-elven
Oct 14 2023, 4:29pm
Post #7 of 7
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I always thought that his mother's sufferings and early death and his father's early death was the main reason for most of this: the orphans and the lack of living mothers. That sort of trauma had to inform how he felt and wrote.
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