(no subject)

[aliseadae]

Here's a story. Actually, two stories. They relate to tithenai's post on memory that I linked to last entry. You may or may not have heard them before.

When I was growing up, I read the Hobbit. When I read the Hobbit, I assumed that some of the Dwarves were female. I guess I just couldn't conceive of this large group of adventurers just not having any girls. It didn't make sense. I still like fifth grade me's version better - it gives me a part of the story. I'm not sure why it was The Hobbit in particular that I pictured differently. I most likely read other books with male protagonists, but I suppose they involved someone else that I could identify with or some other visible female character. For me, Ori, Nori, Dori, Fili, and Kili were the women in The Hobbit.

tithenai's post discusses loss of memory. I've always had a fear of losing my identity. I'm not entirely sure if this is rooted in the concept of memory loss. It seems to have always been rooted in the idea of losing the particularities of me. Losing track of who I am and focusing on something else. I never want to forget about stories and reading, the things that truly give me joy, in favor of something else false.

Comments

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

Out of curiosity, are you more likely to identify with female characters in works that do have both? And was it like that when you were small? Because for me identifying with a character seems to be less important than it is for a lot of people, so I always want to see how it works. (I want both male and female characters in most books--intersexed or non-binary-sexed characters also welcome--but identification is not why.)

[aliseadae]

I'm really not entirely sure why my brain did that to the Hobbit. Identification was a reason I could think of but I'm not entirely certain that it is accurate. I don't think I actually identify fully with one character in the book. I do know that fifth grade me apparently had to have female dwarves there. I think it may have been that I couldn't conceive of a group that large without women in it. I do remember enjoying Rose Rita and Ms. Zimmerman's characters in the John Bellairs books but I don't know if I focused on them more than Lewis and Jonathan or not.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

For me there is a quality of unreality in books substantially lacking one sex or another, and it doesn't matter if it's the one I belong to. I love In This House of Brede, but part of the point of it was that it was set aside from the reality the rest of us live in (it's set in a convent). Submarines during WWII: also set aside from the rest of reality. So when there's a book that's supposed to be set in its world's ordinary reality, and it's lacking in men or in women, that gives it that kind of remove unintentionally for me.

I don't write strong women characters because I want girls and women to be able to identify, and I don't write them because I have taken a philosophical position that there ought to be more. I write them because that is how the world is, as I observe it: it has both men and women in it, and both sexes have strong and admirable people who do a variety of things. And trying to make the world not be like that just doesn't work--it's a step less vivid, less vital, for me.

[aliseadae]

Hmm. That makes sense. I think I assumed that it was because I needed to identify with someone but now I am not entirely sure that that is true. I don't know exactly why I decided that some of the dwarves were female. I know that I found it easier to read that way but now I'd like to think more on why that was.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

And I want to make it clear here that I am not by any means denigrating people who have a strong need or desire to identify with characters in fiction. That's how some people work, and it's a fine way to work. It's just not how I work, and sometimes I think it's worth poking at whether it's always a useful shorthand.

[aliseadae]

Mm. I know you weren't. I remain uncertain whether I'm one of the people who does need to identify with characters or whether I may have thought of them as female for some other reason.

[ilaifire.livejournal.com]

But in the Hobbit, the places where you would expect to run into women the do exist. Most likely. The story does take place in a isolated "location". They spend most of the time visiting one specific person (Bilbo, Elrond, Beorn) who either lives alone or it doesn't matter who lives with them becasuse the characters are visiting that person, not who that person lives with, or traveling through the middle of nowhere. In the mountains they interact with the goblins, but I don't think it matters to anyone inside or outside the story whether the goblins are male or female. In Mirkwood they mostly interact with their guards, which of course will be all male, and in Bree the only character I remember is Bard. On returning there is Lobelia Sackville-Baggins.

[aliseadae]

That wasn't exactly what my mind was on when I read The Hobbit in fifth grade.

[ilaifire.livejournal.com]

Well, it was mostly a reply to "quality of unreality in books substantially lacking one sex or another" and saying that in The Hobbit it makes perfect sense not to see women that often.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

A family that large all traveling together, all happening to be male, is not statistical coincidence.

Everyone they visit individually all happening to be male looks pretty unlikely to be statistical coincidence, too.

I'm not sure where you're getting the "of course" on the guards, as that's a world-building choice the author made. He may not have made it consciously, considering when he was writing the book, but he did make it. I have a friend from college who is very much female who worked several years as a prison guard in a men's prison. It's not a universal assumption.

And for Lobelia Sackville-Baggins to be the example of what you get when you finally do run into a female...well, that's looking like a choice to me as well.

Don't get me wrong, I still enjoy The Hobbit. But it is not an organic outgrowth, it's the result of a series of authorial choices. If some of the dwarves and some of the goblins happened to be female and Tolkien used the male pronouns for them, that's still a choice he made.

[ilaifire.livejournal.com]

But the dwarves are not immediate family. The largest group of immediate family are Dori, Nori and Ori. Otherwise they're all distant kin or friends. Besides, they aren't traveling together at first. The warves of the misty mountain are in exile, some living here others there. They use Bilbo's smail as a meeting point from which to start the journey.
Everyone they go to see being all male is statistically likely. In the year 500 or 1600 or something, if you are a group of fairly noble birth (which all the members save Bilbo are, and he really isn't simply because the hobbits don't have royalty, but he is a gentlehobbit, so not working class) traveling and needs help, who would they go see? Some local lords, or clergy (all of whom would be male). The men would have been the ones who went to university, who had the soldiers and who were involved in politics, so whether he aid needed was lore, military or information it would be the men who would be able to help.
What I mean by "of course" for all male guards, is that the book was published in 1937, so written before that. If women served in the military at this time it was as nurses or cooks, a few secretaries for higher ranked officers who got secretaries. Your friend from college didn't grow up in the 1920s. It wasn't until 1949 (according to wikipedia) that women were officially recognised and allowed into the British military. Up until then, the only way women would be with the military is as "camp followers", cooking, cleaning and nursing the wounded. During the middle ages even that would be extremely rare or non-existent*.
Also, as you said there is a feeling of unreality for you when there is only one sex present where you expect two see two, wouldn't the opposite be true to? Wouldn't there be a sense of unreality to see both sexes present where you expect only one?
As to Lobelia, well I can't say anything about her. Well, she's nice enough at the end of Lord of the Rings, but that is a good 78 years after the end of the book.

*I mean as official parts of the military. There may be women traveling with armies, but they would probably not have been officially hired/conscripted.

[asakiyume.livejournal.com]

What a great idea about the dwarves in the Hobbit! The thing I remember was how they all had different hood colors... You know, I think I'm going to start imagining some of them female from now on. And your name picks wll be the ones I imagine that way.

[aliseadae]

Oh, neat! That makes me smile to think that they will be female for you now too.

[mlt23.livejournal.com]

I have done something similar. When I was nine or ten, my mom gave away the ending for Thelma and Louise because I accidentally saw the end of the movie. Later I accidentally conflated it with Bonnie and Clyde and remembered the plot of the movie, but not the title, and to make sense of it, thinking that Bonnie and Clyde were women, I thought that it was an extremely progressive movie with lesbian protagonists.

I was quite disappointed when I found out it the truth. (which was only last year.)

This was before I knew I was bi and even before I had knowingly met anyone that wasn't straight. I'm not sure if part of it was that I unconsciously knew I wasn't straight or just that was the only way I could make sense of it.

[tithenai.livejournal.com]

For me, Ori, Nori, Dori, Fili, and Kili were the women in The Hobbit.

This is such a beautiful thing, truly.

I remember so distinctly never feeling the lack of women while reading the book, never feeling that there was something preventing me from participating in those adventures -- and man, did I ever let myself loose in Tolkien's world. I used to daydream rather complex scenarios in which I was on that quest too, or living in Mirkwood, or friends with Beorn, and so on.

It was only about ten years ago that I realised it was a book with almost entirely no women in it -- and the only woman I could remember, Lobelia, was odious. As I thought about this, I wondered if I didn't feel that lack because there were no women, because these women-less men wept openly and sang beautiful songs together and pledged love to each other, seemed to be emotionally whole and complete, and altogether a very different model of masculinity than what's frequently touted as the norm.

Or maybe it was only because I was little, and learning, and everything written in books was sacrosanct to me and could have no flaws. I don't know. We forgive so much in our first books, don't we?

[aliseadae]

I read The Lord of the Rings right after I read The Hobbit. I didn't notice the small numbers of women there, though. Probably for similar reasons of forgiving things of our first books, though there are more women in it than The Hobbit. I'm not sure what it was about The Hobbit that caused me to do that, especially as it happened very subconsciously and automatically. I'm not entirely sure that I consciously noticed the lack of women in the Hobbit because I'd put some in there.

[mapache]

Hmmm...it's been rather a while since I read the hobbit and I don't recall exact details that would support any particular interpretation, but given that:

It was said by Gimli that there are few dwarf-women, probably no more than a third of the whole people. They seldom walk abroad except at great need. They are in voice and appearance, and in garb if they must go on a journey, so like to the dwarf-men that the eyes and ears of other peoples cannot tell them apart.

And that the Hobbit is ostensibly chronicled by Bilbo, it does seem entirely possible that some of them could have been women and he just didn't know.

In either case, though I can't find any appropriate depictions of the expedition to Erebor, I shall leave you with an alternate-universe Fellowship of the Ring, and you may pick and choose between it and the original to arrive at whatever composition you wish:

[ilaifire.livejournal.com]

Well, not necessarily. Many of the dwarves were related, and in the opening chapter said that "I/he is so-and-so's brother". There is only one who I recall doesn't have any siblings there, Thorin, and he is styled "King" which would imply male.

[mapache]

Could be that Bilbo's dwarvish isn't so good. Or that, with less sexual dimorphishm, dwarves only have a word for sibling, as opposed to brother and sister, and there were some translation issues. :)# (Dwarven smiley, as indicated by the beard.)

[ilaifire.livejournal.com]

Since Gimli states that Dwarves will under no means share their language with outsiders, Bilbo knows no Dwarvish (except for Khazad-dum, which is the only word the Dwarves with letting others know). The argument of dwarvish having no bother/sister or he/she would explain things though. I doubt that these dwarves who have been living around other people for so long would have never learned the distinction, but the possibility still exists.

[plunderpuss.livejournal.com]

I imagined female dwarves too. I even imagined them just as hairy, I just figured the hair would be soft, like a rabbit's!

[aliseadae]

My female dwarves looked pretty similar to the male dwarves, I think. I have no idea what the texture of their hair was like.

(hi! I found you through lex_of_green and saw that you were friends with various people and seemed pretty neat.)

[plunderpuss.livejournal.com]

You're sadly incorrect. I am atrocious! But also flattered.