bailesu: kazaera: dawnfelagund: [Full post “What the Valar Reveal about Gender Roles in Tolkie
bailesu:kazaera:dawnfelagund:[Full post “What the Valar Reveal about Gender Roles in Tolkien’s Legendarium” on The Heretic Loremaster.]A few weeks ago, I was talking about sexism in Tolkien’s world with another SWG member, and he pointed out something I’d noticed before but never thought much about: The Valar are pretty evenly split as far as biological sex. On the surface, this seems like a rare bright point in a legendarium often criticized for its sexism. At least, it shows that women and men have equal interest in “subcreation” because equal numbers of women and men chose to descend into Arda. So the potential for equality at least exists.I didn’t have to dig much deeper to find, however, that it is not that simple. I discuss this more full on The Heretic Loremaster, but the graph above shows the number of times each of the Valar is mentioned in The Silmarillion. A few observations:Even the woman with the most mentions in The Silmarillion (Yavanna, with 58 mentions) has fewer than the average for the men (59.6 mentions).Varda’s stats strike me as particularly egregious. She is identified as being held “most in reverence and love” by the Elves in the Valaquenta, yet she is only mentioned 34 times, fewer times than all of the male Aratar. Manwë, her husband, receives four times as many mentions.Yavanna achieved perhaps the greatest act of subcreation in The Silmarillion when she sang the Two Trees into existence. (Tolkien considers Varda’s stars the greatest [see below], but surely the Two Trees are a close–a very close–second.) She is the only female Vala who can hang with the male Aratar on my graph, and she still cannot touch Manwë and Ulmo in terms of attention in the text and is mentioned only one time more than her husband Aulë, who while accomplished, is hardly achieving at Yavanna’s level. Tolkien lists Yavanna before Aulë in the list of the Aratar, but the attention he pays her in the texts does not accord with her status.But impressive acts of subcreation aren’t a guarantee of actually getting page-time in the book. I come back to Varda again here: Tolkien calls her creation of the stars the “greatest of all the works of the Valar since their coming into Arda” (The Silmarillion, “Of the Coming of the Elves”). Yet she is neglected compared to all of the male Aratar.The only male Vala whose mentions are in the single digits is Irmo. Interestingly, Irmo’s specialty (healing) is typically a woman’s role.Should we even discuss the poor Valier who are not among the Aratar? These four women put together cannot come close to even Tulkas, who chases things around and punches them. But we barely even know what these four women do. Their few mentions in the text assign them perfunctory roles or discuss who they are married to. Something surely motivated them to descend into Arda and get their hands dirty, but we never really learn what that is.Thoughts? I’d love to hear them here or on my blog.That is an excellent graph. I’d noticed the disparity in mentions before, but it is nice to have actual data. Infuriating data.Re: Varda, something that comes to mind here is that it’s possible her relative lack of mentions is in part because she wasn’t always so strongly associated with creating the stars… or at least not the greatest of them. I present, one of the most infuriating things I’ve read in Book of Lost Tales:Some have said that the Seven Stars were set at that time by Varda to commemorate the coming of the Eldar, and that Morwinyon who blazes above the world’s edge in the west was dropped by her as she fared in great haste back to Valinor. Now this is indeed the true beginning of Morwinyon and his beauty, yet the Seven Stars were not set by Varda, being indeed the sparks from Aulë’s forge whose brightness in the ancient heavens urged Varda to make their rivals; yet this she did never achieve.(BoLT Volume 1, The Coming Of The Elves)Yavanna - or Palúrien here - on the other hand seems to be firmly in charge of Operation Grow Laurelin And Telperion from the start - it’s more of a joint operation here (with Vána, Ulmo, Ossë, Varda and Irmo all playing roles) but Yavanna is clearly the one playing the most important role. Which may be why she does eclipse Varda in mentions.(Disclaimer: I’ve just skimmed BoLT, it’s possible my impression isn’t accurate. Although I’d argue that quote speaks for itself.)On this topic, I urge people to read Arda Reconstructed by Douglas Kane. It’s a study of how Christopher Tolkien built the Silmarillion out of Tolkien’s reams of unpublished Legendarium work. He makes the point that Christopher Tolkien’s editing of the material tended to remove a lot of information about women from the original texts (which were still tilted towards the men, mind you.) In the Annals of Aman, Osse and Uinen both teach sea lore to the Teleri, in the published Silmarillion, it’s just Osse. In the Later Quenta, Galadriel is the most valiant of the House of Finwe, in the published Silmarillion, she’s just the most beautiful. Most of Miriel’s story from Laws and Customs of the Eldar goes onto the fire and she becomes a very minor character. Etc, etc.One last note: The Lord of the Rings, ironically, is where Varda is most prominent, as she’s invoked frequently under her name Elbereth, and I think is the only named Valar. -- source link
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