Welcome to "Female Characters in the Lord of the Rings' Book and Film," a blog about women in one of the most famous fantasy books of the last century. Though Tolkien is well-known for other works, including The Hobbit (1937) and The Silmarillion (1977), we will focus on the characters of The Lord of the Rings (1954-5). The aim of our blog is to emphasise the role of these important characters in the story, as well as to explore how they are depicted. In The Lord of the Rings, there is a clear predominance of male characters. According to this source, not only the number of women in Tolkien's work, but their depiction, has been criticised. However, we find three main female characters in Peter Jackson's The Lord of the Rings films: Galadriel, Arwen and Éowyn. In the book, these are only two, because Arwen has a marginal role. The objective of the following posts is to account for the depiction of these three women in The Lord of the Rings, as well as to explore their role in the story.
Main female characters: Arwen, Galadriel, and Éowyn.
Women usually have the role of mothers or wives, as is the case of small female roles, including Rosie Cotton, whom Sam Gamgee marries and with whom he forms a family; as well as Lobelia Sackville-Baggins, a female hobbit from Bag End. Aragorn marries Arwen, and this is what enables her to become queen of Arnor and Gondor. In the same way, Éowyn finally marries Faramir, and despite her bravery and heroic feats during the War, she leaves this role behind and dedicates herself to married life. As for Galadriel, she also has a husband (Celeborn). Consequently, all female characters are married or get married by the end of the story. In contrast, there are many examples of male characters who remain single, like Frodo, Gandalf, Legolas and Gimli. In fact, the only character of the Fellowship of the Ring who gets married is Aragorn, but his legendary fame dates back to when he was single.
Before immersing yourself in the amazing stories of these characters, we suggest you take a look at this questionnaire. In this way, you are going to obtain a preliminary idea of the role of women in the story and particularly of the three main female roles in the story: Arwen, Galadriel and Éowyn.
It is highly probable that many of the questions were difficult to answer. The reader will be able to learn many things about the characters in the following posts, which will be related to each of these women. For the moment, examine this infographic in which you can obtain a brief introduction to each of the characters we focus on in our blog.
Infographic. Women in The Lord of the Rings.
As you can see, the roles of these women are extensive and crucial for the events in the story. Two of them, Galadriel and Arwen, are elves, highly regarded creatures of vast knowledge, while the third one, Éowyn, is human. Nevertheless, the three of them have in common their depiction as admirable people.
