motherhood in middle earth from jess of the shire

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ztsLeuMLMXI

0:00It has long since been noted that Tolken's works are very maledominated. 0:055 secondsThere is a minuscule number of female characters in these stories and there is an even more minuscule number of 0:1313 secondsmothers. The maternal mortality rates in Middle Earth are sky high. Out of the nine members of the fellowship, three of 0:2121 secondstheir mothers are dead. One of them doesn't even technically have a mother, 0:2525 secondsand the rest of their mothers are never mentioned or brought up in the story. 0:3030 secondsAnd this absence seems even more obvious because there are a lot of fatherly relationships in Middle Earth, be that 0:3737 secondsfrom birth fathers or foster father figures. But mothers, who, you know, I think we would all agree, tend to have a 0:4444 secondspretty serious impact on us, are conspicuously missing. There are some characters who are mothers when you dig a bit deeper into the lore, but they all 0:5353 secondshave a very similar and frankly very limited impact on these stories that they're a part of. So why is it that 1:011 minute, 1 secondTolken, who explored so many different forms and shapes of relationship with such depth and passion, why did he skirt 1:101 minute, 10 secondsaround motherhood? Who are the mothers that we meet in Middle Earth? What patterns do these characters tend to 1:171 minute, 17 secondsfollow? And why is it so important that we recognize and possibly change these patterns? If we're to start with 1:251 minute, 25 secondsTolken's most popular works, things are not looking great in terms of maternal representation. The Hobbit explores 1:331 minute, 33 secondsplenty of different kinds of familial relationships, uncles, brothers, 1:371 minute, 37 secondsnephews, even fathers, but there are no mothers, much less any female characters at all. The Lord of the Rings does 1:451 minute, 45 secondsslightly better. There are about half a dozen important female characters in this story and some of them are even 1:531 minute, 53 secondstechnically mothers and this includes Galadriel. Depending on what lore you're looking at, Galadriel either had one or 2:012 minutes, 1 secondtwo children with her husband and her daughter Kellbrien would marry Eland and give birth to Arwin before she was 2:092 minutes, 9 secondsessentially killed. So, Galadriel is by all accounts a mother, but I wouldn't say that it is her role in the story to 2:172 minutes, 17 secondsbe a very motherly character. The only reason that we find out about Kellbrien's existence at all is not because she's present in the story 2:252 minutes, 25 secondsbecause she's long dead, but because Galadriel steps into a sort of grandmotherly role, giving Aragorn a gift that should have been from her own 2:342 minutes, 34 secondsdaughter, who would have been Aragorn's mother-in-law through Arwin. Galadriel gave birth to Kellbrien some like 6,000 2:412 minutes, 41 secondsyears ago. And while no one ever stops being a mother, no matter how old they or their child are, the role that she's 2:492 minutes, 49 secondsplaying in the story is not of the maiden or the mother if we're to look at this in terms of the feminine triad. And while Galadriel isn't a crone character, 2:592 minutes, 59 secondsshe's kind of gone even a step beyond that. She has become this spiritual guide. She is an angel more than a 3:073 minutes, 7 secondsmother. At the very least, she is not a manifestation of what people consider to be motherly traits. What somebody 3:143 minutes, 14 secondsconsiders to be motherly qualities is going to change a lot from person to person. And it is very difficult to 3:213 minutes, 21 secondsfigure out exactly what Tolken thought to be motherly qualities because of just how few mothers there are in his 3:283 minutes, 28 secondsstories. But I do think we can kind of reverse engineer these ideas by looking at what Tolken deemed to be bad 3:383 minutes, 38 secondsmotherhood in the form of the giant spider Sheilob. Sheilob is fascinating to me because in the relatively sterile 3:463 minutes, 46 secondsworld of Middle Earth, she is one of the only characters that is depicted in terms of her reproductive qualities. Not 3:543 minutes, 54 secondsonly does she have her own children, her little broods of spider babies, but she is also contextualized in her being a 4:034 minutes, 3 secondsdaughter to an even more prolific mother, Unolant, the giant spider monster depicted in the Sylmerelion. 4:114 minutes, 11 secondsSheilob and Unolant are both depicted as these primal forms of evil. There is nothing left in them except for the 4:194 minutes, 19 secondsbasist instincts of hunger and reproduction. Tolken describes Sheilob. 4:264 minutes, 26 secondsShe served none but herself, drinking the blood of elves and men, bloated and grown fat with endless brooding on her 4:354 minutes, 35 secondsfeasts, weaving webs of shadow. For all living things were her food and her vomit darkness. Far and wide her lesser broods, bastards of the miserable mates, 4:474 minutes, 47 secondsher own offspring that she slew, spread from Glenn to Glenn, from Ethel Duath to the eastern hills to Dol Guldur and the 4:574 minutes, 57 secondsvastness of Murkwood. But none could rival her. Sheilob the Great, the last child of Unolant to trouble the unhappy 5:065 minutes, 6 secondsworld. The language that Tolken uses to describe Sheilob is very specifically chosen. She is contextualized as the 5:145 minutes, 14 secondschild to a mother, a matrinal line in which no male intervention is needed. 5:215 minutes, 21 secondsHer broods spread her evil across all of Middle Earth, sinking and festering into 5:295 minutes, 29 secondsthe cracks left behind where goodness fades away. And the terms used to describe her physically, bloated and 5:375 minutes, 37 secondsswaying and fat and swelling, are some of the most explicitly corpulent and 5:445 minutes, 44 secondsbodily terms that Tolken uses in all of his writing. Women in Tolken's works on the whole are described with very particular terms. Fair, graceful, 5:555 minutes, 55 secondsbeautiful. These ethereal terms that don't linger in the physicality of these women. It is only Sheilob who is 6:036 minutes, 3 secondsdepicted in such real and tangible terms. Her swaying and sagging figure a cruel perversion of the feminine form. 6:136 minutes, 13 secondsSheilob is only a mother in the most clinical of terms. And it is through her perversion of motherhood that we can 6:206 minutes, 20 secondsstart to get closer to what Tolken thought of as good motherhood. In contrast to Sheilob's undying hunger, a 6:286 minutes, 28 secondsmother ought to be selfless and generous, giving more than she takes. Rather than acting as a brood mare, 6:376 minutes, 37 secondsthoughtlessly spilling out her offspring across the world, a mother ought to be involved in her child's affairs. She 6:456 minutes, 45 secondsought to raise them, to shape them, and to help guide them throughout their lives. And although this idea wouldn't exactly be accepted by the modern 6:536 minutes, 53 secondsperspective, I do think that Tolken thought of perfection as a kind of 7:007 minutesdeified holy pure remoteness. I think he thought of that as one of the traits that a mother must have. The visceral, 7:097 minutes, 9 secondsugly, and real qualities of an aberant mother like Sheilob imply that the 7:167 minutes, 16 secondsinverse, this kind of remote idealistic perfection, is Tolken's ideal of good 7:237 minutes, 23 secondsmotherhood. By Tolken's parameters, then I think that Galadriel would classify as a pretty good mother. She is fairly 7:317 minutes, 31 secondsselfless. She provided a guiding hand for her child and she is as distant and serene as they come. But the problem 7:397 minutes, 39 secondswith acting like she is great maternal representation in the story is that there's no child around for her to focus 7:467 minutes, 46 secondsthese energies on. She provides a guiding hand to the fellowship, but I wouldn't say it's a particularly maternal one. There are other female 7:557 minutes, 55 secondscharacters like Aayowayen and Arwin who become mothers later on in the story, 7:597 minutes, 59 secondsbut that's long after the events of the story have played out and it takes place mostly in the appendices. And in the actual text of the Lord of the Rings, 8:078 minutes, 7 secondsthese are not described as particularly maternal characters. Arwin is depicted as more a piece of art than a realized 8:158 minutes, 15 secondshuman. She is the embodiment of all things holy and queenly, but not motherly. Aayoin, meanwhile, if we're to put her in the lens of the maiden, 8:258 minutes, 25 secondsmother and crone triad, she is much more the maiden, and she is too far absorbed in her maidenly affairs to be any kind 8:338 minutes, 33 secondsof a motherly character. Just listen to the tone with which Tolken describes her. Grave and thoughtful was her glance 8:418 minutes, 41 secondsas she looked on the king with cool pity in her eyes. Very fair was her face, and her long hair was like a river of gold. 8:508 minutes, 50 secondsSlender and tall she was in her white robe girth with silver, but strong she seemed and stern as steel, a daughter of 8:588 minutes, 58 secondskings. Thus Aragorn for the first time in the full light of day beheld Aayowin, 9:059 minutes, 5 secondslady of Rohan, and thought her fair, 9:089 minutes, 8 secondsfair and cold, like a morning of pale spring that has not yet come to womanhood. She is described as a 9:169 minutes, 16 secondsdaughter of kings, not a mother to a future generation. She is cold, cool, stern, not yet come to womanhood. 9:259 minutes, 25 secondsAlthough she's not an aberrant anti-mother figure such as Sheilob, Awen quite obviously is meant to fill a different role in the story than being a 9:349 minutes, 34 secondsmotherly character, at least during the events of the Lord of the Rings. Rosie Cotton, the future wife of Sam Wise Gamji, is certainly not a maiden. not by 9:439 minutes, 43 secondsthe end of the story at least. But she's also just not a very relevant character. 9:499 minutes, 49 secondsAnd I know I'm going to catch some flak for that because Rosie is one of the examples often paraded around of good female representation in Tolken's works. 9:579 minutes, 57 secondsAnd while I do like her character a lot, 10:0010 minutesshe really just is not present enough in the bulk of the story for me to think of her as really good representation. To 10:0810 minutes, 8 secondsthe best of my estimation, her name appears about 16 times in the Lord of the Rings, which for context is the same 10:1510 minutes, 15 secondsnumber of times that the name of appears. You know, the random old healing woman in Gondor. So, while I 10:2310 minutes, 23 secondslove Rosie Cotton, I do think it's a bit of an exaggeration to call her representative of good motherhood in Middle Earth. She's just not in the 10:3010 minutes, 30 secondsstory enough for that. Besides, once she has Sam's children, Sam's role as a father is spoken about much more than 10:3810 minutes, 38 secondsher role as a mother. We see all of this through the lens of Sam's character. And this is fair. Sam is a much more main 10:4610 minutes, 46 secondscharacter in the story, but it means that although she is a mother, Rosie doesn't really get to have any impact on 10:5310 minutes, 53 secondsthe story as a mother. I will say that Tom Bombadil's wife, Goldberry, does demonstrate some classically maternal 11:0111 minutes, 1 secondtraits. She's very warm and welcoming and domestic. She cares for them in the way that a mother might. However, she 11:0911 minutes, 9 secondsand Tom did not have any children, so I don't think that she really counts as an example of a mother character. There are 11:1611 minutes, 16 secondsa number of deceased mothers in this story that come up. One of my favorites is Gil Rayan, who is Aragorn's mother, 11:2411 minutes, 24 secondswho sacrificed an awful lot to get her son to the place that he needed to be in, but her story is relegated to the appendices and doesn't have a serious 11:3311 minutes, 33 secondsimpact outside of propelling Aragorn onto his path. The loss of Phamir and Boramir's mother has an intense impact 11:4111 minutes, 41 secondson their relationships with each other and their relationship with their father. And the death of Frodo's mother is what puts him in the care of Bilbo 11:5011 minutes, 50 secondsand thus what makes him cross paths with the ring. And I do appreciate that these mothers play such a significant role in the way that they affected the people 11:5911 minutes, 59 secondsaround them. But I do find it kind of a shame that we don't get to see any of them living to actually impact the story 12:0712 minutes, 7 secondsthemselves. And this wouldn't stand out so much if it weren't for how many examples there are in the Lord of the Rings of strong fatherly characters. The 12:1712 minutes, 17 secondsrelationship of Denithor Phamir and Boramir is one of the most poignant stories in the book. Foster fathers like 12:2512 minutes, 25 secondsTheodin and Eland have an intense effect on their charges. There are so many different examples and different kinds 12:3412 minutes, 34 secondsof fatherly guidance and strength in this story, but there's just not really much for the mothers. Now, this is not 12:4312 minutes, 43 secondsthe case for the Sylmerelion, where there are just overall far more characters, but specifically far more 12:5012 minutes, 50 secondsfemale characters. But I will say that the proportion of dead mothers to living mothers is roughly the same as it is in 12:5812 minutes, 58 secondsthe Lord of the Rings. It is bad news if you are a mother in Middle Earth that wants to um live a full and happy life. 13:0613 minutes, 6 secondsAlmost all of the Sylmerelion's greatest heroes have mothers that are no longer with them. Baron of Baron and Lucian 13:1413 minutes, 14 secondsfame was raised by his father after the destruction of his family's house. Tuor, 13:1913 minutes, 19 secondsthe hero of the fall of Gondolind, lost both of his parents and was adopted by a man. And Feyenor's mother was long gone 13:2713 minutes, 27 secondsby the time he started getting up to trouble. And for Tu and Baron, this makes a certain sort of sense. They are both human and thus mortal, as were 13:3613 minutes, 36 secondstheir mothers. But in the case of Feyenor, his mother Muriel should have been immortal. She was an elf. And that makes her loss all the more agonizing. 13:4813 minutes, 48 secondsAs the story describes, in the bearing of her son, Mielle was consumed in spirit and body. And after his birth, 13:5713 minutes, 57 secondsshe yearned for the release from the labor of living. And when she had named him, she said to Finway, "Never again 14:0514 minutes, 5 secondsshall I bear child, for strength that would have nourished the life of many has gone forth into Feyenor." Muriel didn't just die. She burned herself out, 14:1814 minutes, 18 secondspouring her entire spirit into her son so that he might live even as she dies. 14:2514 minutes, 25 secondsAnd in this degree of radical self-sacrifice, 14:2914 minutes, 29 secondsMuriel has thrown off the balance of motherhood completely. Yes, she fulfilled the first of the parameters, 14:3514 minutes, 35 secondsselflessness, but the second parameter is that she remain around to guide and to help her son. And without her guiding 14:4414 minutes, 44 secondspresence in his life, Feyenor goes off the deep end. He remembers her as perfect and pure and deified. But 14:5314 minutes, 53 secondswithout his mother actually around to guide him, Feyenor commits some of Middle Earth's worst atrocities. Feyenor 15:0015 minuteshangs on to the memory of his mother and her spirit to his detriment. And in the end, the spirit that his mother gave him 15:0915 minutes, 9 secondsflares out of control, and he too is consumed. But even mothers who survive the gauntlet of birth are not safe from 15:1715 minutes, 17 secondsthe judgments of good motherhood versus bad motherhood because there are a number of mothers in the Sylmerelion who are just absent. The main ones that come 15:2615 minutes, 26 secondsto mind are also actually in the story of Feyenor, namely Nardanel, the wife of Feyenor, and Indis, his stepmother, his 15:3515 minutes, 35 secondsfather's second wife. Both of these women gave birth to powerful sons in powerful families. But after the birth, 15:4415 minutes, 44 secondsthey simply fade into the background. 15:4615 minutes, 46 secondsThe fathers of these children are enormously influential. Finway is an elf king. The vow that Feyenor imposes upon 15:5515 minutes, 55 secondshis son shapes the events of the rest of the Sylmerelion. But the mothers have almost no impact on their children's 16:0316 minutes, 3 secondslives. They have leaned fully into the third aspect of motherhood. This remote distance from their child's life, but without having done self-sacrificing, 16:1416 minutes, 14 secondswithout having put their children on the rightful path, they fade into irrelevancy. Without self-sacrifice, 16:2216 minutes, 22 secondstragedy or death to lend these women's lives profoundity, they cease to matter whatsoever. But not all of Tolken's 16:3116 minutes, 31 secondsmothers fail so completely. And I think that Idril is an example of really great motherhood. Idril was a princess who 16:4016 minutes, 40 secondsmarried Tor during the events of the fall of Gondolind. And it was her wisdom and her ferocity that allowed so many 16:4816 minutes, 48 secondslives to be saved during this tragic event. Adril implores her husband to dig a secret escape route, knowing that 16:5616 minutes, 56 secondstrouble is coming. And when that trouble does arise, she takes arms to save her people and their beloved son, Arendil. 17:0417 minutes, 4 secondsShe goes out onto the streets as the city sacked, saving survivors and guiding them to her escape tunnel. When she and her son are taken and nearly 17:1317 minutes, 13 secondsthrown off the battlements in a revenge ploy, she fights, as Tolken describes, 17:1917 minutes, 19 secondslike a tigress, tooth and claw, to preserve the life of herself and her son. Itil plays an essential role in 17:2817 minutes, 28 secondsguiding her family and her people to safety. Even if she must make the sacrifice of watching her father die to 17:3717 minutes, 37 secondsensure that the rest of them can make it out alive. She is wise. She is fearsome. 17:4217 minutes, 42 secondsShe is self-sacrificial. She is hugely influential in the life of her son Aarendiel. But this cannot last forever. 17:5017 minutes, 50 secondsHer story concludes in those days T felt old age creep upon him and ever a longing for the deeps of the sea grew 17:5917 minutes, 59 secondsstronger in his heart. Therefore he built a great ship and he named it Aram which is sea wing and withil Kellindal 18:0818 minutes, 8 secondshe set sail into the sunset and the west and came no more into any tale or song. 18:1518 minutes, 15 secondsIn the world that Tolken depicts no good things can last forever and this goes especially for the care of a mother and 18:2418 minutes, 24 secondsthis does have a wounding effect on her child. Although Aarendil goes on to be a storied and successful hero, there is 18:3218 minutes, 32 secondsalways a part of him that is searching for his mother and father wherever they have sailed across the seas. I hesitate 18:4018 minutes, 40 secondsto call Idril's choice to leave Middle Earth selfish because she did so much good in her life. But perhaps in the 18:4718 minutes, 47 secondsnarrow parameters that Tolken has laid out for positive motherhood, this is a kind of failing or at the very least a 18:5518 minutes, 55 secondswound. This failure is made the central focus of the story of Morwin. Morwin is 19:0219 minutes, 2 secondsthe mother of the oursed boy Turin left behind to defend their home after Hurin is imprisoned by Morgoth. There are Easterlings attacking them constantly. 19:1219 minutes, 12 secondsAnd although Morwin is repelling them by her powers of sorcery and fear, she sends Turin away to safety. She sends 19:2019 minutes, 20 secondshim off to the distant kingdom of Doryath to be raised by the elf king Thingal. This is very technically a wise 19:2719 minutes, 27 secondschoice. It is a choice that ensures Turin's physical safety, but it disregards his emotional security. Time 19:3519 minutes, 35 secondsand time again, Turin begs his mother to join him in the safety of Thingal's palace, but fear holds her back. She 19:4319 minutes, 43 secondsgives birth to another child, a daughter. But once again, fear rather than wisdom guides her ways. She refuses 19:5219 minutes, 52 secondsto leave their home until the last possible moment. And by the time she leaves to chase after Turin, it is too late. He's already gone to face his 20:0120 minutes, 1 seconddestiny. And although it would be wrong to say that this is Morowyn's fault in any serious way, Turin was cursed by 20:0820 minutes, 8 secondsbasically the devil himself, undoubtedly her fear-based actions put Turin on the 20:1620 minutes, 16 secondspath towards tragedy. Morowan spends the rest of the story trying to make up for this sin, but fate has made its mind up. 20:2520 minutes, 25 secondsBoth of her children spiral deeper and deeper into despair. They end up taking their own lives, and Morowan is left to 20:3320 minutes, 33 secondsdie, ignorant of their final fate. But I think that one of the most poignantly tragic stories of motherhood in Middle 20:4220 minutes, 42 secondsEarth comes from the character of Adidel. Adidel was the sister of Turugon, the lord of Gondolind, and she 20:5120 minutes, 51 secondslived a charmed, safe, and comfortable life in the city. But this comfort eventually began to chafe. She wearied of the guarded city of Gondolan, 21:0221 minutes, 2 secondsdesiring ever the longer, the more to ride again in the wide lands, and to walk in the forests, as had been her 21:1021 minutes, 10 secondswant in Valinor. And when 200 years had passed since Gondolin was full wrought, 21:1621 minutes, 16 secondsshe spoke to Toggon and asked leave to depart. Toggon was loathed to grant this and long denied her, but at last he yielded, saying, "Go then, if you will, 21:2821 minutes, 28 secondsthough it is against my wisdom, and I forbodeed that ill will come of it, both to you and to me." Despite her brother's 21:3621 minutes, 36 secondsmisgivings, Adele departs Gondolind. And at first, she revels in the freedom that she finds. She finds friends to stay 21:4521 minutes, 45 secondswith. She lives whatever life she wants to live. But still, this is not enough. She rides out alone day after day, 21:5321 minutes, 53 secondsfurther and further beyond the bounds of safety until she is found by the dark elf Aol who lusts after her, imprisons 22:0322 minutes, 3 secondsher and forces her to marry him. Aol and Adel have a son together and once he's old enough, Adidel begins to plot with this son to escape A's imprisonment. 22:1522 minutes, 15 secondsThey make a break for Gondor, but A is hot on their heels. Ail decides that he would prefer his son be dead than be 22:2322 minutes, 23 secondswithout him. And so he throws a spear at his son. But Audel jumps in front of the point in time. It wounds her. It poisons 22:3222 minutes, 32 secondsher. And she dies. Her son is deeply traumatized by her sacrifice and goes on 22:3922 minutes, 39 secondsto do wicked deeds. He is the Judas that orchestrates Gondolin's fall. I don't think that it's fair to say that 22:4622 minutes, 46 secondsAdidel's sin was selfishness. Nor would I say that she didn't provide any guidance to her son except that she was taken away from him prematurely. Rather, 22:5522 minutes, 55 secondsI think that Adele's failing was that she was just too real. She was a flighty person, someone who made rash decisions 23:0323 minutes, 3 secondsand didn't want to live with the consequences. She was a caged bird who didn't recognize the safety that the cage around her provided. Her choice to 23:1223 minutes, 12 secondsleave Gondolind was not wrong. Perhaps misguided, but misguided in a way that a lot of us are. This isn't a simple black 23:2123 minutes, 21 secondsand white, right or wrong sort of situation. She's just somebody that made a mistake that got in over her head. She 23:2923 minutes, 29 secondswas self-sacrificial. She guided her son as best she could. But because of these very human failings, perhaps her son was 23:3723 minutes, 37 secondsnot able to put her on the kind of pedestal that he would have needed to in order for him to achieve greatness, or at least to avoid the call of evil. 23:4623 minutes, 46 secondsAdele and her missteps are often thought of as the inciting incident of Gondolan's terrible fall. And it is a 23:5423 minutes, 54 secondstruly frightening thing that all of this grief could stem from the simple sin of being human. Fortunately, not all of 24:0324 minutes, 3 secondsMiddleear's mothers are human, and that means that some of them are able to get a little bit closer to perfection. And I think that the best example of this is 24:1224 minutes, 12 secondsMeon. Meon is a mayar spirit just one power step below the almighty valor 24:1924 minutes, 19 secondsspirits and she came down to Middle Earth and fell in love with the elf king Thingal. Together they ruled the kingdom 24:2624 minutes, 26 secondsof Doryath and they gave birth to their beloved daughter Lucian. Meon is by all 24:3324 minutes, 33 secondsmeasures a good mother. Lucenne is a welladjusted child. Meon uses her divine powers to cradle their lands in safety. 24:4224 minutes, 42 secondsAnd her divine foresight allows her and Thingal to keep their people safe for centuries. When Lucian brings home her 24:5024 minutes, 50 secondsnew human boyfriend, Bon, Thingal is quick to react like a classic dad would. 24:5624 minutes, 56 secondsAn overprotective dad, trying to get Baron to go away. But it is Meon who pulls him back from that ledge and urges 25:0425 minutes, 4 secondshim to take his daughter's feelings into account. Meon helps Lucian discover what has become of Baron when he leaves on 25:1125 minutes, 11 secondshis dangerous quest. And although she sits by and watches as Thingal imprisons Luthian in a tower to keep her from 25:1825 minutes, 18 secondschasing after Baron, she generally acts as a positive guiding force in the story. In other people's tales, Meon 25:2725 minutes, 27 secondsdemonstrates how these motherly qualities aren't just reserved for her own child. She sends Lemba's bread off to Turin to help him in his troubles, 25:3725 minutes, 37 secondsand she heals Hurin of his grief induced madness. Eventually, Meon does depart Middle Earth, but I would say that by 25:4525 minutes, 45 secondsall accounts, she fulfills Tolken's criteria of a positive motherly figure. 25:5025 minutes, 50 secondsShe gives more than she takes. She is warm and engaged in her child's affairs and by nature of being essentially an 25:5925 minutes, 59 secondsangel. She holds up very well to the process of deification. One might extrapolate from this that the only way 26:0626 minutes, 6 secondsto be a perfect Tolkenian mother is to be in some way fundamentally angelic to 26:1426 minutes, 14 secondsbe inhuman. So that means that we have one all-around solid mom amongst a huge sample size of mothers that are either 26:2226 minutes, 22 secondsabsent, failed, or dead. And when a pattern like this is this prevalent in a story, and when that story has gone on to influence so much of today's fiction, 26:3426 minutes, 34 secondsit's worth examining why that pattern may have been created in the first place. In his writing, Tolken drew heavy inspiration from historical literature. 26:4326 minutes, 43 secondsAnd within historical literature, dead or absent mothers were certainly quite common. And this was for a couple of 26:5026 minutes, 50 secondsreasons. First off, maternal mortality used to be a much more likely outcome of childbirth. In the 17th and into the 26:5926 minutes, 59 seconds18th century, maternal mortality rates were around 1.7%. 27:0527 minutes, 5 secondsThese days, that number is just around 03. And that's considerably lower. So that means that when many of today's 27:1227 minutes, 12 secondsclassics were being penned, it was just much more likely that the person writing or reading the story would not have a 27:2027 minutes, 20 secondsmother figure and thus would put this into the story or would want to see it represented in a story. Sexism is also 27:2727 minutes, 27 secondsdefinitely a part of the absence of mothers in fiction because for a very long time, women on the whole did not 27:3427 minutes, 34 secondshave a particularly large role in the world of storytelling, especially the kind of storytelling that Tolken was fond of. A mother might be mentioned for 27:4327 minutes, 43 secondsthe context of one's birth, but once hearth and home were left behind in these quests, battles, and adventures, 27:5027 minutes, 50 secondswomen and especially mothers had no place. Sure, there might be a lovely maiden waiting for the night at home, 27:5827 minutes, 58 secondsbut the stories tend to fade to happily ever after long before that woman undergoes the process of going from being maiden to mother and thus being 28:0728 minutes, 7 secondsrendered undesirable by the eyes of the story. And beyond just societal norms, 28:1228 minutes, 12 secondsit was a very useful trope for a character to not have a mother. Mothers, 28:1828 minutes, 18 secondstraditionally speaking, were meant to be kind of nagging. They would want the hero to stay home, to keep themselves 28:2528 minutes, 25 secondsfrom harm's way. A father would have the wherewithal to know that a son must go off and do this dangerous thing in order 28:3228 minutes, 32 secondsto make his name. But a mother will only hold the hero back. A living and active mother complicates things unnecessarily. 28:4228 minutes, 42 secondsShe's just going to get in the way of true pure heroism. But a dead mother, a dead mother could be a potent tool because a dead mother could be perfect. 28:5328 minutes, 53 secondsAnd for a very long time, especially from the 18th century enlightenment and onwards, perfection was expected from 29:0129 minutes, 1 secondmothers, living or dead. A mother should be wise, serene. She shouldn't have problems of her own and she should be 29:1029 minutes, 10 secondsabsolutely completely stable so that her peace could counterweight the chaotic lives of her sons and husbands. As 29:1829 minutes, 18 secondsJuliet Bger explains in her essay on dead mothers in fiction, a mother's power was through her influence on the 29:2629 minutes, 26 secondsmen around her who in turn would take her influence with them into the public sphere. But this stability of character, 29:3329 minutes, 33 secondssomeone who never grapples with her own trials and tribulations and is in every regard flawless, is simply impossible. A mother is human just like anyone else, 29:4429 minutes, 44 secondsand she cannot be this unchanging force who acts only for the sake of others. 29:4929 minutes, 49 secondsOnly in death can she be eternal and thus romanticized. She becomes a symbol without her own wants and needs that 29:5829 minutes, 58 secondsmight conflict with the people she is supposed to support. Therefore, by killing off a mother, an author provides a moral compass to guide the characters, 30:0830 minutes, 8 secondsyet one who cannot interfere and thus complicate the narrative. For a very long time, the standards for mothers was 30:1730 minutes, 17 secondsexcruciating perfection, and it was seen as a disappointment when the real human could not live up to those standards. 30:2530 minutes, 25 secondsBut through the romanticization of fiction, we had a chance for the perfect mother. All we had to do was take this real human character and mummify them, 30:3730 minutes, 37 secondspurify them down to their simplest essence, remove all of those complicated, rough edges, and you end up 30:4430 minutes, 44 secondswith this character that isn't human anymore, but acts as a very good propellant for the complex human and 30:5430 minutes, 54 secondstypically male protagonist. And while I do think that Tolken was in a lot of ways deriving from this trope and this kind of problematic deification process 31:0331 minutes, 3 secondsfor his writing, it is a bit more complicated than that. Because in many of the cases of Tolken's characters, the 31:1031 minutes, 10 secondsdeath of the character's mother does not drive them forward into success, but rather predicates their fall. Feyenor is 31:1831 minutes, 18 secondsnot so much inspired by his mother's loss as devastated. Adidel's son falls down a terribly dark path after 31:2731 minutes, 27 secondswitnessing her traumatic sacrifice. And Morwin's intentional choice to remove herself from her son's life doesn't 31:3431 minutes, 34 secondsresult in her being deified, but it does result in her son being lost forever. 31:4031 minutes, 40 secondsThere's enough complication added to these situations to make me think that Tolken wasn't just blindly trotting out these tropes, however much they may have 31:4831 minutes, 48 secondsshaped his perception and the way that he wrote. And yet, I can't deny that Tolken's motherly characters are 31:5531 minutes, 55 secondsfrustrating to me as a woman and as someone who knows a lot of mothers and cares about them deeply because these 32:0332 minutes, 3 secondscharacters never have the same kind of agency or presence that their male counterparts do. However, I do think 32:1132 minutes, 11 secondsthat we can find a probable cause for this isolation and alienation of mother characters in Tolken's personal life. 32:2032 minutes, 20 secondsTolken's father died when he was very young. And so his primary parent growing up was his mother, Mabel. Mabel Tolken 32:2832 minutes, 28 secondswas his very first confidant, his very first teacher. She was the one that gave him books to read, that taught him to 32:3632 minutes, 36 secondsread, and that began to teach him languages. They were as well off as could be expected. But this would all 32:4332 minutes, 43 secondschange when Mabel converted to Catholicism, something that her Unitarian family strongly disagreed 32:5032 minutes, 50 secondswith. They cut her off financially and emotionally and personally. But in all of this turmoil, as their family was cut 32:5832 minutes, 58 secondsa drift, Tolken only came to admire his mother more and more. Mabel's workload increased, her health declined, but she 33:0833 minutes, 8 secondsalways did her best to stay true to her faith and to do what she could for her children. And in the eyes of 11 or 33:1533 minutes, 15 seconds12year-old Tolken, she began to take on a near saintly glow. Mabel Tolken died on the 14th of November 1904, and Tolken 33:2533 minutes, 25 secondsfirmly believed that she had done so as a martyr, that she had died for her faith. Tolken and his brother were taken 33:3333 minutes, 33 secondsin by a family friend, a priest named Father Francis. And Tolken took shelter in the church. He came to see his 33:4033 minutes, 40 secondsCatholic faith as the final and most profound gift that his mother had ever given him. And he clung to his faith with all of a lonely child's longing. 33:5133 minutes, 51 secondsBut a faith awakening would not be the only result of Mabel's death. As Tolken's biographer Humphrey Carpenter 33:5833 minutes, 58 secondsdescribes, his mother's death made him into two people. He was by nature a cheerful, almost irrepressible person 34:0634 minutes, 6 secondswith a great zeal for life. He loved good talk and physical activity. He had a deep sense of humor and a great 34:1334 minutes, 13 secondscapacity for making friends. But from now onwards there was to be a second side, more private, but predominant in 34:2134 minutes, 21 secondshis diaries and letters. This side of him was capable of bouts of profound despair. More precisely, and more closely related to his mother's death, 34:3134 minutes, 31 secondswhen he was in this mood, he had a deep sense of impending loss. Nothing was safe. Nothing would last. No battle 34:4034 minutes, 40 secondswould be won forever. Her death made him a pessimist. Or rather, it made him capable of violent shifts of emotion. 34:4834 minutes, 48 secondsOnce he had lost her, there was no security, and his natural optimism was balanced by deep uncertainty. In the 34:5634 minutes, 56 secondswake of his mother's death, Tolken portrayed all the hallmark signs of a traumatized child. Modern psychology 35:0335 minutes, 3 secondsrecognizes that children who have been traumatized, especially by the loss of a loved one, tend to exhibit traits such 35:0935 minutes, 9 secondsas depression, a change of behavior or attitude, and a loss of hope or confidence in the future. And even 35:1835 minutes, 18 secondsthough Humphrey Carpenter was writing before these criteria had been laid out, 35:2235 minutes, 22 secondsit seems like he outlines these exact traits in Tolken. This sudden tilt into 35:2835 minutes, 28 secondspessimism, this unbreakable lack of confidence in what will become of him and the world that he loved. Children 35:3735 minutes, 37 secondswho have been traumatized by loss also tend to find themselves falling into paranormal or supernatural thinking. 35:4435 minutes, 44 secondsThey see signs and omens everywhere. 35:4835 minutes, 48 secondsThey see another layer to the world. And through Tolken, this may have manifested in both his sudden leaning towards 35:5635 minutes, 56 secondsCatholic faith, but also in the very spiritual lens through which he saw the entire world. For Tolken, there was 36:0436 minutes, 4 secondsmeaning to everything, to words, to trees. Well into his adult life, he was known to speak to trees. But either way, 36:1136 minutes, 11 secondswith all of these symptoms looked at together, I think it's fair to say that Tolken was profoundly traumatized by his 36:1836 minutes, 18 secondsmother's loss in some ways that probably he didn't even understand. And undoubtedly, these feelings continued to 36:2636 minutes, 26 secondsimpact him forever. When speaking about his relationship with his wife, who was also a young orphan, Tolken recalls, 36:3436 minutes, 34 seconds"The dreadful sufferings of our childhoods from which we rescued one another, but could not wholly heal the 36:4136 minutes, 41 secondswounds that later often proved disabling. Now, I am well aware of the fact that the Lord of the Rings is not 36:4836 minutes, 48 secondsallegorical. We should not look at the Lord of the Rings as if it is an autobiography of Tolken's personal life, 36:5636 minutes, 56 secondsbut his experiences had a profound and undeniable impact on every part of this 37:0337 minutes, 3 secondsstory. Yes, he is describing and depicting these experiences that are ancient and universal and shared by us 37:1137 minutes, 11 secondsall. But these experiences were in their conception first bounced off of the mirror of Tolken's mind. And I think 37:1937 minutes, 19 secondsthis fact becomes vividly clear when it comes to his rather strange portrayal of mothers. Tolken's mother shaped what he 37:2737 minutes, 27 secondssaw as good maternity. She was selfless right up until the very end, always putting her sons before herself. She was 37:3437 minutes, 34 secondsa massively influential and guiding force in Tolken's life, putting his feet on the path that would take him to so much success and joy and fulfillment. 37:4437 minutes, 44 secondsAnd she was gone and thus rendered untouchably perfect. Any and all flaws 37:5237 minutes, 52 secondsbuffed away by the abrasion of nostalgia. It kind of leaves me wondering if Tolken was just at a loss on how to describe a good living mother. 38:0338 minutes, 3 secondsHis mother was perfect and she was dead. 38:0638 minutes, 6 secondsTherefore, if any mother was to be perfect, death was an inevitability. 38:1238 minutes, 12 secondsThere is something heartbreakingly beautiful in the fact that motherhood was the one topic that Tolken seemed 38:2038 minutes, 20 secondsunwilling to fully broach. There are so many deeply personal and deeply traumatizing things that Tolken explores 38:2738 minutes, 27 secondsin his works with so much depth and passion and curiosity. He fully explores the loss of home and self that comes 38:3638 minutes, 36 secondsabout with the passage of time and the overtaking of industry. He doesn't shy away from the challenges and sorrows 38:4338 minutes, 43 secondsthat can be found with young love. Even the atrocities of war are faced headon, 38:5038 minutes, 50 secondsnot shying away from the things that Tolken found truly troubling. And yet, 38:5438 minutes, 54 secondsmotherhood in all of its reality and depth and fear and complexity is left out. Now, I want to be crystal clear 39:0239 minutes, 2 secondshere that I am not pointing out the shallowess of Tolken's mother characters as a kind of condemnation or cancellation. I think it is evidently 39:1139 minutes, 11 secondsclear that Tolken just had a lot of stuff going on when it came to his experience and his perspectives on 39:1939 minutes, 19 secondsmothers. He was human and thus beautifully imperfect. And in the same way that it would be unfair to demand 39:2739 minutes, 27 secondsabsolute flawlessness from a mother, so it is wrong for us to look back at Tolken and expect him to be anything 39:3539 minutes, 35 secondsother than complicated and messy and human. We shouldn't be putting him up on this pedestal and deifying him and 39:4439 minutes, 44 secondstrying to crystallize his works as the perfect paragon of fiction writing because that does a disservice to the 39:5239 minutes, 52 secondsreal person that he was. Instead, we can read his works. We can appreciate them for all of the good things that they 39:5939 minutes, 59 secondscontain. And we can examine the ways in which his personal experiences may have colored his writings in ways that aren't 40:0740 minutes, 7 secondsnecessarily constructive in the modern day. And we can try and do better. They say that you should write what you know. 40:1440 minutes, 14 secondsAnd I think that Tolken did that. He writes about mothers with a near godly reverence, almost a fear and an 40:2340 minutes, 23 secondsunstoppable instinct to keep them at arms length. But I think that for all of us going forward, we also have the 40:3040 minutes, 30 secondsresponsibility to write and to tell stories based on what we know. And I think that most of us would say that we 40:3740 minutes, 37 secondshave a very different experience of what motherhood is and what it can be than Tolken did. On her deathbed, Aragorn's 40:4540 minutes, 45 secondssaintly mother says, "I gave hope to the Dunadine. I have kept no hope for myself." Although this is a poignant 40:5440 minutes, 54 secondssentiment and one that undoubtedly would have meant a lot to Tolken himself, I hope that most of us can see the fact that in order to give other people hope, 41:0341 minutes, 3 secondsyou don't need to leave yourself scoured out and empty. You don't need to blow out your own candle in order to light 41:1141 minutes, 11 secondssomeone else's. The sacrifice of a mother is a beautiful thing. But my hope 41:1741 minutes, 17 secondsis that the life of a mother, the real messy, complicated human life of a 41:2541 minutes, 25 secondsmother, has even more potential. In the comments, let me know who your favorite Middle Earth mother is. I admittedly 41:3341 minutes, 33 secondshave a huge soft spot for Idril, just because she's one of the most active and badass. And although she does eventually 41:4041 minutes, 40 secondsleave, she waits until her son is fully grown, which I feel like is kind of the best option out of all of the ones that I've been presented today. You see, I 41:4941 minutes, 49 secondswas going to tell you to send this video to your mom, but um I do talk about dead mothers a lot in this one. So, maybe that's not the best bet, but you should 41:5841 minutes, 58 secondsgo and find a mom somewhere, preferably one that you know, and tell them that you're glad they're alive and that you love them because they could probably 42:0642 minutes, 6 secondsuse that. Give this video a like if you enjoyed it, and do consider subscribing if you want to tune in every other week to hear me talk about The Lord of the 42:1442 minutes, 14 secondsRings, the art of storytelling, and the other stuff that I like to talk about. Timeless Lauren Duski • Perfect Universe 42:1742 minutes, 17 secondsThank you so much for joining me this week and every week. And I hope that you have a very happy hobby day.

my comment
great point on rosie cotton for representation. good argument of why the absence of motherly characters is highlighted by so many fatherly characters. Great point on Miriel, and Feanor does go off. It is interesting that Tolkien never finished the Silmarillion. I wonder the edition tolkien would had made, and I wonder if Christopher as editor, influenced the presence of women more. 26:41 hmm good point, the male writers used the idea of the perfect dead mother.This explains the heritage of audience discomfort when a mother is living or a warrior or more. .. I never knew about Tolkiens personal background. good video. Your argument that motherhood was too big a thing to tackle even in his fiction. and yes, i dont think tolkien will accept the idoltry many give him today.