BEGIN:VCALENDAR VERSION:2.0 PRODID:-//InvisionCommunity Events 4.7.23//EN METHOD:PUBLISH CALSCALE:GREGORIAN REFRESH-INTERVAL:PT15M X-PUBLISHED-TTL:PT15M X-WR-CALNAME:RMCommunityCalendar NAME:RMCommunityCalendar BEGIN:VTIMEZONE TZID:Europe/London TZURL:http://tzurl.org/zoneinfo/Europe/London X-LIC-LOCATION:Europe/London BEGIN:DAYLIGHT TZOFFSETFROM:+0000 TZOFFSETTO:+0100 TZNAME:BST DTSTART:20260329T020000Z RRULE:FREQ=YEARLY;BYMONTH=3;BYDAY=-1SU END:DAYLIGHT BEGIN:STANDARD TZOFFSETFROM:+0100 TZOFFSETTO:+0000 TZNAME:GMT DTSTART:20261025T020000Z RRULE:FREQ=YEARLY;BYMONTH=10;BYDAY=-1SU END:STANDARD END:VTIMEZONE BEGIN:VEVENT SUMMARY:motherhood in middle earth from jess of the shire DTSTAMP:20260210T003739Z SEQUENCE:0 UID:648-7-c3fe8195a3dde498d013e477e2142422@aalbc.com ORGANIZER;CN="richardmurray":troy@aalbc.com DESCRIPTION:\n https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ztsLeuMLMXI\n\n\n\n \n\n\ n\n  \n\n\n\n 0:00It has long since been noted that Tolken's works are ve ry maledominated.\n0:055 secondsThere is a minuscule number of female char acters in these stories and there is an even more minuscule number of\n0:1 313 secondsmothers. The maternal mortality rates in Middle Earth are sky h igh. Out of the nine members of the fellowship\, three of\n0:2121 secondst heir mothers are dead. One of them doesn't even technically have a mother\ ,\n0:2525 secondsand the rest of their mothers are never mentioned or brou ght up in the story.\n0:3030 secondsAnd this absence seems even more obvio us because there are a lot of fatherly relationships in Middle Earth\, be that\n0:3737 secondsfrom birth fathers or foster father figures. But mothe rs\, who\, you know\, I think we would all agree\, tend to have a\n0:4444 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\n0:5353 secondshave a very similar and frankly very limited i mpact on these stories that they're a part of. So why is it that\n1:011 mi nute\, 1 secondTolken\, who explored so many different forms and shapes of relationship with such depth and passion\, why did he skirt\n1:101 minute \, 10 secondsaround motherhood? Who are the mothers that we meet in Middle Earth? What patterns do these characters tend to\n1:171 minute\, 17 secon dsfollow? And why is it so important that we recognize and possibly change these patterns? If we're to start with\n1:251 minute\, 25 secondsTolken's most popular works\, things are not looking great in terms of maternal re presentation. The Hobbit explores\n1:331 minute\, 33 secondsplenty of diff erent kinds of familial relationships\, uncles\, brothers\,\n1:371 minute\ , 37 secondsnephews\, even fathers\, but there are no mothers\, much less any female characters at all. The Lord of the Rings does\n1:451 minute\, 4 5 secondsslightly better. There are about half a dozen important female ch aracters in this story and some of them are even\n1:531 minute\, 53 second stechnically mothers and this includes Galadriel. Depending on what lore y ou're looking at\, Galadriel either had one or\n2:012 minutes\, 1 secondtw o children with her husband and her daughter Kellbrien would marry Eland a nd give birth to Arwin before she was\n2:092 minutes\, 9 secondsessentiall y killed. So\, Galadriel is by all accounts a mother\, but I wouldn't say that it is her role in the story to\n2:172 minutes\, 17 secondsbe a very m otherly character. The only reason that we find out about Kellbrien's exis tence at all is not because she's present in the story\n2:252 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 h er own\n2:342 minutes\, 34 secondsdaughter\, who would have been Aragorn's mother-in-law through Arwin. Galadriel gave birth to Kellbrien some like 6\,000\n2:412 minutes\, 41 secondsyears ago. And while no one ever stops b eing a mother\, no matter how old they or their child are\, the role that she's\n2:492 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. An d while Galadriel isn't a crone character\,\n2:592 minutes\, 59 secondsshe 's kind of gone even a step beyond that. She has become this spiritual gui de. She is an angel more than a\n3:073 minutes\, 7 secondsmother. At the v ery least\, she is not a manifestation of what people consider to be mothe rly traits. What somebody\n3:143 minutes\, 14 secondsconsiders to be mothe rly qualities is going to change a lot from person to person. And it is ve ry difficult to\n3:213 minutes\, 21 secondsfigure out exactly what Tolken thought to be motherly qualities because of just how few mothers there are in his\n3:283 minutes\, 28 secondsstories. But I do think we can kind of reverse engineer these ideas by looking at what Tolken deemed to be bad\n3 :383 minutes\, 38 secondsmotherhood in the form of the giant spider Sheilo b. Sheilob is fascinating to me because in the relatively sterile\n3:463 m inutes\, 46 secondsworld of Middle Earth\, she is one of the only characte rs that is depicted in terms of her reproductive qualities. Not\n3:543 min utes\, 54 secondsonly does she have her own children\, her little broods o f spider babies\, but she is also contextualized in her being a\n4:034 min utes\, 3 secondsdaughter to an even more prolific mother\, Unolant\, the g iant spider monster depicted in the Sylmerelion.\n4:114 minutes\, 11 secon dsSheilob and Unolant are both depicted as these primal forms of evil. The re is nothing left in them except for the\n4:194 minutes\, 19 secondsbasis t instincts of hunger and reproduction. Tolken describes Sheilob.\n4:264 m inutes\, 26 secondsShe served none but herself\, drinking the blood of elv es and men\, bloated and grown fat with endless brooding on her\n4:354 min utes\, 35 secondsfeasts\, weaving webs of shadow. For all living things we re her food and her vomit darkness. Far and wide her lesser broods\, basta rds of the miserable mates\,\n4:474 minutes\, 47 secondsher own offspring that she slew\, spread from Glenn to Glenn\, from Ethel Duath to the easte rn hills to Dol Guldur and the\n4:574 minutes\, 57 secondsvastness of Murk wood. But none could rival her. Sheilob the Great\, the last child of Unol ant to trouble the unhappy\n5:065 minutes\, 6 secondsworld. The language t hat Tolken uses to describe Sheilob is very specifically chosen. She is co ntextualized as the\n5:145 minutes\, 14 secondschild to a mother\, a matri nal line in which no male intervention is needed.\n5:215 minutes\, 21 seco ndsHer broods spread her evil across all of Middle Earth\, sinking and fes tering into\n5:295 minutes\, 29 secondsthe cracks left behind where goodne ss fades away. And the terms used to describe her physically\, bloated and \n5:375 minutes\, 37 secondsswaying and fat and swelling\, are some of the most explicitly corpulent and\n5:445 minutes\, 44 secondsbodily terms tha t Tolken uses in all of his writing. Women in Tolken's works on the whole are described with very particular terms. Fair\, graceful\,\n5:555 minutes \, 55 secondsbeautiful. These ethereal terms that don't linger in the phys icality of these women. It is only Sheilob who is\n6:036 minutes\, 3 secon dsdepicted in such real and tangible terms. Her swaying and sagging figure a cruel perversion of the feminine form.\n6:136 minutes\, 13 secondsSheil ob is only a mother in the most clinical of terms. And it is through her p erversion of motherhood that we can\n6:206 minutes\, 20 secondsstart to ge t closer to what Tolken thought of as good motherhood. In contrast to Shei lob's undying hunger\, a\n6:286 minutes\, 28 secondsmother ought to be sel fless and generous\, giving more than she takes. Rather than acting as a b rood mare\,\n6:376 minutes\, 37 secondsthoughtlessly spilling out her offs pring across the world\, a mother ought to be involved in her child's affa irs. She\n6:456 minutes\, 45 secondsought to raise them\, to shape them\, and to help guide them throughout their lives. And although this idea woul dn't exactly be accepted by the modern\n6:536 minutes\, 53 secondsperspect ive\, I do think that Tolken thought of perfection as a kind of\n7:007 min utesdeified holy pure remoteness. I think he thought of that as one of the traits that a mother must have. The visceral\,\n7:097 minutes\, 9 seconds ugly\, and real qualities of an aberant mother like Sheilob imply that the \n7:167 minutes\, 16 secondsinverse\, this kind of remote idealistic perfe ction\, is Tolken's ideal of good\n7:237 minutes\, 23 secondsmotherhood. B y Tolken's parameters\, then I think that Galadriel would classify as a pr etty good mother. She is fairly\n7:317 minutes\, 31 secondsselfless. She p rovided a guiding hand for her child and she is as distant and serene as t hey come. But the problem\n7:397 minutes\, 39 secondswith acting like she is great maternal representation in the story is that there's no child aro und for her to focus\n7:467 minutes\, 46 secondsthese energies on. She pro vides a guiding hand to the fellowship\, but I wouldn't say it's a particu larly maternal one. There are other female\n7:557 minutes\, 55 secondschar acters like Aayowayen and Arwin who become mothers later on in the story\, \n7:597 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 ac tual text of the Lord of the Rings\,\n8:078 minutes\, 7 secondsthese are n ot described as particularly maternal characters. Arwin is depicted as mor e a piece of art than a realized\n8:158 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\,\n8:258 minute s\, 25 secondsmother and crone triad\, she is much more the maiden\, and s he is too far absorbed in her maidenly affairs to be any kind\n8:338 minut es\, 33 secondsof a motherly character. Just listen to the tone with which Tolken describes her. Grave and thoughtful was her glance\n8:418 minutes\ , 41 secondsas she looked on the king with cool pity in her eyes. Very fai r was her face\, and her long hair was like a river of gold.\n8:508 minute s\, 50 secondsSlender and tall she was in her white robe girth with silver \, but strong she seemed and stern as steel\, a daughter of\n8:588 minutes \, 58 secondskings. Thus Aragorn for the first time in the full light of d ay beheld Aayowin\,\n9:059 minutes\, 5 secondslady of Rohan\, and thought her fair\,\n9:089 minutes\, 8 secondsfair and cold\, like a morning of pal e spring that has not yet come to womanhood. She is described as a\n9:169 minutes\, 16 secondsdaughter of kings\, not a mother to a future generatio n. She is cold\, cool\, stern\, not yet come to womanhood.\n9:259 minutes\ , 25 secondsAlthough she's not an aberrant anti-mother figure such as Shei lob\, Awen quite obviously is meant to fill a different role in the story than being a\n9:349 minutes\, 34 secondsmotherly character\, at least duri ng the events of the Lord of the Rings. Rosie Cotton\, the future wife of Sam Wise Gamji\, is certainly not a maiden. not by\n9:439 minutes\, 43 sec ondsthe end of the story at least. But she's also just not a very relevant character.\n9:499 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.\n9:579 minutes\, 57 seconds And while I do like her character a lot\,\n10:0010 minutesshe really just is not present enough in the bulk of the story for me to think of her as r eally good representation. To\n10:0810 minutes\, 8 secondsthe best of my e stimation\, her name appears about 16 times in the Lord of the Rings\, whi ch for context is the same\n10:1510 minutes\, 15 secondsnumber of times th at the name of appears. You know\, the random old healing woman in Gondor. So\, while I\n10:2310 minutes\, 23 secondslove Rosie Cotton\, I do think it's a bit of an exaggeration to call her representative of good motherhoo d in Middle Earth. She's just not in the\n10:3010 minutes\, 30 secondsstor y enough for that. Besides\, once she has Sam's children\, Sam's role as a father is spoken about much more than\n10:3810 minutes\, 38 secondsher ro le as a mother. We see all of this through the lens of Sam's character. An d this is fair. Sam is a much more main\n10:4610 minutes\, 46 secondschara cter in the story\, but it means that although she is a mother\, Rosie doe sn't really get to have any impact on\n10:5310 minutes\, 53 secondsthe sto ry as a mother. I will say that Tom Bombadil's wife\, Goldberry\, does dem onstrate some classically maternal\n11:0111 minutes\, 1 secondtraits. She' s very warm and welcoming and domestic. She cares for them in the way that a mother might. However\, she\n11:0911 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\n11:1611 minutes\, 16 secondsa number of deceased mothers in this story that come up. One of my favorites is Gil R ayan\, who is Aragorn's mother\,\n11:2411 minutes\, 24 secondswho sacrific ed 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\n11:33 11 minutes\, 33 secondsimpact outside of propelling Aragorn onto his path. The loss of Phamir and Boramir's mother has an intense impact\n11:4111 mi nutes\, 41 secondson their relationships with each other and their relatio nship with their father. And the death of Frodo's mother is what puts him in the care of Bilbo\n11:5011 minutes\, 50 secondsand thus what makes him cross paths with the ring. And I do appreciate that these mothers play suc h a significant role in the way that they affected the people\n11:5911 min utes\, 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\n12:0712 min utes\, 7 secondsthemselves. And this wouldn't stand out so much if it were n't for how many examples there are in the Lord of the Rings of strong fat herly characters. The\n12:1712 minutes\, 17 secondsrelationship of Denitho r Phamir and Boramir is one of the most poignant stories in the book. Fost er fathers like\n12:2512 minutes\, 25 secondsTheodin and Eland have an int ense effect on their charges. There are so many different examples and dif ferent kinds\n12:3412 minutes\, 34 secondsof fatherly guidance and strengt h in this story\, but there's just not really much for the mothers. Now\, this is not\n12:4312 minutes\, 43 secondsthe case for the Sylmerelion\, wh ere there are just overall far more characters\, but specifically far more \n12:5012 minutes\, 50 secondsfemale characters. But I will say that the p roportion of dead mothers to living mothers is roughly the same as it is i n\n12:5812 minutes\, 58 secondsthe Lord of the Rings. It is bad news if yo u are a mother in Middle Earth that wants to um live a full and happy life .\n13:0613 minutes\, 6 secondsAlmost all of the Sylmerelion's greatest her oes have mothers that are no longer with them. Baron of Baron and Lucian\n 13:1413 minutes\, 14 secondsfame was raised by his father after the destru ction of his family's house. Tuor\,\n13:1913 minutes\, 19 secondsthe hero of the fall of Gondolind\, lost both of his parents and was adopted by a m an. And Feyenor's mother was long gone\n13:2713 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\n13 :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 he r loss all the more agonizing.\n13:4813 minutes\, 48 secondsAs the story d escribes\, in the bearing of her son\, Mielle was consumed in spirit and b ody. And after his birth\,\n13:5713 minutes\, 57 secondsshe yearned for th e release from the labor of living. And when she had named him\, she said to Finway\, \"Never again\n14:0514 minutes\, 5 secondsshall I bear child\, for strength that would have nourished the life of many has gone forth in to Feyenor.\" Muriel didn't just die. She burned herself out\,\n14:1814 mi nutes\, 18 secondspouring her entire spirit into her son so that he might live even as she dies.\n14:2514 minutes\, 25 secondsAnd in this degree of radical self-sacrifice\,\n14:2914 minutes\, 29 secondsMuriel has thrown of f the balance of motherhood completely. Yes\, she fulfilled the first of t he parameters\,\n14:3514 minutes\, 35 secondsselflessness\, but the second parameter is that she remain around to guide and to help her son. And wit hout her guiding\n14:4414 minutes\, 44 secondspresence in his life\, Feyen or goes off the deep end. He remembers her as perfect and pure and deified . But\n14:5314 minutes\, 53 secondswithout his mother actually around to g uide him\, Feyenor commits some of Middle Earth's worst atrocities. Feyeno r\n15:0015 minuteshangs on to the memory of his mother and her spirit to h is detriment. And in the end\, the spirit that his mother gave him\n15:091 5 minutes\, 9 secondsflares out of control\, and he too is consumed. But e ven mothers who survive the gauntlet of birth are not safe from\n15:1715 m inutes\, 17 secondsthe judgments of good motherhood versus bad motherhood because there are a number of mothers in the Sylmerelion who are just abse nt. The main ones that come\n15:2615 minutes\, 26 secondsto mind are also actually in the story of Feyenor\, namely Nardanel\, the wife of Feyenor\, and Indis\, his stepmother\, his\n15:3515 minutes\, 35 secondsfather's se cond wife. Both of these women gave birth to powerful sons in powerful fam ilies. But after the birth\,\n15:4415 minutes\, 44 secondsthey simply fade into the background.\n15:4615 minutes\, 46 secondsThe fathers of these ch ildren are enormously influential. Finway is an elf king. The vow that Fey enor imposes upon\n15:5515 minutes\, 55 secondshis son shapes the events o f the rest of the Sylmerelion. But the mothers have almost no impact on th eir children's\n16:0316 minutes\, 3 secondslives. They have leaned fully i nto the third aspect of motherhood. This remote distance from their child' s life\, but without having done self-sacrificing\,\n16:1416 minutes\, 14 secondswithout having put their children on the rightful path\, they fade into irrelevancy. Without self-sacrifice\,\n16:2216 minutes\, 22 secondstr agedy or death to lend these women's lives profoundity\, they cease to mat ter whatsoever. But not all of Tolken's\n16:3116 minutes\, 31 secondsmothe rs fail so completely. And I think that Idril is an example of really grea t motherhood. Idril was a princess who\n16:4016 minutes\, 40 secondsmarrie d Tor during the events of the fall of Gondolind. And it was her wisdom an d her ferocity that allowed so many\n16:4816 minutes\, 48 secondslives to be saved during this tragic event. Adril implores her husband to dig a sec ret escape route\, knowing that\n16:5616 minutes\, 56 secondstrouble is co ming. And when that trouble does arise\, she takes arms to save her people and their beloved son\, Arendil.\n17:0417 minutes\, 4 secondsShe goes out onto the streets as the city sacked\, saving survivors and guiding them t o her escape tunnel. When she and her son are taken and nearly\n17:1317 mi nutes\, 13 secondsthrown off the battlements in a revenge ploy\, she fight s\, as Tolken describes\,\n17:1917 minutes\, 19 secondslike a tigress\, to oth and claw\, to preserve the life of herself and her son. Itil plays an essential role in\n17:2817 minutes\, 28 secondsguiding her family and her people to safety. Even if she must make the sacrifice of watching her fath er die to\n17:3717 minutes\, 37 secondsensure that the rest of them can ma ke it out alive. She is wise. She is fearsome.\n17:4217 minutes\, 42 secon dsShe is self-sacrificial. She is hugely influential in the life of her so n Aarendiel. But this cannot last forever.\n17:5017 minutes\, 50 secondsHe r story concludes in those days T felt old age creep upon him and ever a l onging for the deeps of the sea grew\n17:5917 minutes\, 59 secondsstronger in his heart. Therefore he built a great ship and he named it Aram which is sea wing and withil Kellindal\n18:0818 minutes\, 8 secondshe set sail i nto the sunset and the west and came no more into any tale or song.\n18:15 18 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\n18:24 18 minutes\, 24 secondsthis does have a wounding effect on her child. Alth ough Aarendil goes on to be a storied and successful hero\, there is\n18:3 218 minutes\, 32 secondsalways a part of him that is searching for his mot her and father wherever they have sailed across the seas. I hesitate\n18:4 018 minutes\, 40 secondsto call Idril's choice to leave Middle Earth selfi sh because she did so much good in her life. But perhaps in the\n18:4718 m inutes\, 47 secondsnarrow parameters that Tolken has laid out for positive motherhood\, this is a kind of failing or at the very least a\n18:5518 mi nutes\, 55 secondswound. This failure is made the central focus of the sto ry of Morwin. Morwin is\n19:0219 minutes\, 2 secondsthe mother of the ours ed boy Turin left behind to defend their home after Hurin is imprisoned by Morgoth. There are Easterlings attacking them constantly.\n19:1219 minute s\, 12 secondsAnd although Morwin is repelling them by her powers of sorce ry and fear\, she sends Turin away to safety. She sends\n19:2019 minutes\, 20 secondshim off to the distant kingdom of Doryath to be raised by the e lf king Thingal. This is very technically a wise\n19:2719 minutes\, 27 sec ondschoice. It is a choice that ensures Turin's physical safety\, but it d isregards his emotional security. Time\n19:3519 minutes\, 35 secondsand ti me again\, Turin begs his mother to join him in the safety of Thingal's pa lace\, but fear holds her back. She\n19:4319 minutes\, 43 secondsgives bir th to another child\, a daughter. But once again\, fear rather than wisdom guides her ways. She refuses\n19:5219 minutes\, 52 secondsto leave their home until the last possible moment. And by the time she leaves to chase a fter Turin\, it is too late. He's already gone to face his\n20:0120 minute s\, 1 seconddestiny. And although it would be wrong to say that this is Mo rowyn's fault in any serious way\, Turin was cursed by\n20:0820 minutes\, 8 secondsbasically the devil himself\, undoubtedly her fear-based actions put Turin on the\n20:1620 minutes\, 16 secondspath towards tragedy. Morowa n spends the rest of the story trying to make up for this sin\, but fate h as made its mind up.\n20:2520 minutes\, 25 secondsBoth of her children spi ral deeper and deeper into despair. They end up taking their own lives\, a nd Morowan is left to\n20:3320 minutes\, 33 secondsdie\, ignorant of their final fate. But I think that one of the most poignantly tragic stories of motherhood in Middle\n20:4220 minutes\, 42 secondsEarth comes from the ch aracter of Adidel. Adidel was the sister of Turugon\, the lord of Gondolin d\, and she\n20:5120 minutes\, 51 secondslived a charmed\, safe\, and comf ortable life in the city. But this comfort eventually began to chafe. She wearied of the guarded city of Gondolan\,\n21:0221 minutes\, 2 secondsdesi ring ever the longer\, the more to ride again in the wide lands\, and to w alk in the forests\, as had been her\n21:1021 minutes\, 10 secondswant in Valinor. And when 200 years had passed since Gondolin was full wrought\,\n 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 yie lded\, saying\, \"Go then\, if you will\,\n21:2821 minutes\, 28 secondstho ugh it is against my wisdom\, and I forbodeed that ill will come of it\, b oth to you and to me.\" Despite her brother's\n21:3621 minutes\, 36 second smisgivings\, Adele departs Gondolind. And at first\, she revels in the fr eedom that she finds. She finds friends to stay\n21:4521 minutes\, 45 seco ndswith. She lives whatever life she wants to live. But still\, this is no t enough. She rides out alone day after day\,\n21:5321 minutes\, 53 second sfurther and further beyond the bounds of safety until she is found by the dark elf Aol who lusts after her\, imprisons\n22:0322 minutes\, 3 seconds her 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 impri sonment.\n22:1522 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 t han be\n22:2322 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\n22:3222 minutes\, 32 secondsher. And she dies. Her son is deep ly traumatized by her sacrifice and goes on\n22:3922 minutes\, 39 secondst o do wicked deeds. He is the Judas that orchestrates Gondolin's fall. I do n't think that it's fair to say that\n22:4622 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\,\ n22:5522 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 \n23:0323 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 aroun d her provided. Her choice to\n23:1223 minutes\, 12 secondsleave Gondolind was not wrong. Perhaps misguided\, but misguided in a way that a lot of u s are. This isn't a simple black\n23:2123 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\n23:2923 minutes\, 29 secondswas self-sacri ficial. She guided her son as best she could. But because of these very hu man failings\, perhaps her son was\n23:3723 minutes\, 37 secondsnot able t o put her on the kind of pedestal that he would have needed to in order fo r him to achieve greatness\, or at least to avoid the call of evil.\n23:46 23 minutes\, 46 secondsAdele and her missteps are often thought of as the inciting incident of Gondolan's terrible fall. And it is a\n23:5423 minute s\, 54 secondstruly frightening thing that all of this grief could stem fr om the simple sin of being human. Fortunately\, not all of\n24:0324 minute s\, 3 secondsMiddleear's mothers are human\, and that means that some of t hem are able to get a little bit closer to perfection. And I think that th e best example of this is\n24:1224 minutes\, 12 secondsMeon. Meon is a may ar spirit just one power step below the almighty valor\n24:1924 minutes\, 19 secondsspirits and she came down to Middle Earth and fell in love with the elf king Thingal. Together they ruled the kingdom\n24:2624 minutes\, 2 6 secondsof Doryath and they gave birth to their beloved daughter Lucian. Meon is by all\n24:3324 minutes\, 33 secondsmeasures a good mother. Lucenn e is a welladjusted child. Meon uses her divine powers to cradle their lan ds in safety.\n24:4224 minutes\, 42 secondsAnd her divine foresight allows her and Thingal to keep their people safe for centuries. When Lucian brin gs home her\n24:5024 minutes\, 50 secondsnew human boyfriend\, Bon\, Thing al is quick to react like a classic dad would.\n24:5624 minutes\, 56 secon dsAn overprotective dad\, trying to get Baron to go away. But it is Meon w ho pulls him back from that ledge and urges\n25:0425 minutes\, 4 secondshi m to take his daughter's feelings into account. Meon helps Lucian discover what has become of Baron when he leaves on\n25:1125 minutes\, 11 secondsh is dangerous quest. And although she sits by and watches as Thingal impris ons Luthian in a tower to keep her from\n25:1825 minutes\, 18 secondschasi ng after Baron\, she generally acts as a positive guiding force in the sto ry. In other people's tales\, Meon\n25:2725 minutes\, 27 secondsdemonstrat es how these motherly qualities aren't just reserved for her own child. Sh e sends Lemba's bread off to Turin to help him in his troubles\,\n25:3725 minutes\, 37 secondsand she heals Hurin of his grief induced madness. Even tually\, Meon does depart Middle Earth\, but I would say that by\n25:4525 minutes\, 45 secondsall accounts\, she fulfills Tolken's criteria of a pos itive motherly figure.\n25:5025 minutes\, 50 secondsShe gives more than sh e takes. She is warm and engaged in her child's affairs and by nature of b eing essentially an\n25:5925 minutes\, 59 secondsangel. She holds up very well to the process of deification. One might extrapolate from this that t he only way\n26:0626 minutes\, 6 secondsto be a perfect Tolkenian mother i s to be in some way fundamentally angelic to\n26:1426 minutes\, 14 seconds be inhuman. So that means that we have one all-around solid mom amongst a huge sample size of mothers that are either\n26:2226 minutes\, 22 secondsa bsent\, failed\, or dead. And when a pattern like this is this prevalent i n a story\, and when that story has gone on to influence so much of today' s fiction\,\n26:3426 minutes\, 34 secondsit's worth examining why that pat tern may have been created in the first place. In his writing\, Tolken dre w heavy inspiration from historical literature.\n26:4326 minutes\, 43 seco ndsAnd within historical literature\, dead or absent mothers were certainl y quite common. And this was for a couple of\n26:5026 minutes\, 50 seconds reasons. First off\, maternal mortality used to be a much more likely outc ome of childbirth. In the 17th and into the\n26:5926 minutes\, 59 seconds1 8th century\, maternal mortality rates were around 1.7%.\n27:0527 minutes\ , 5 secondsThese days\, that number is just around 03. And that's consider ably lower. So that means that when many of today's\n27:1227 minutes\, 12 secondsclassics were being penned\, it was just much more likely that the person writing or reading the story would not have a\n27:2027 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\n27:2727 minutes\, 27 se condsdefinitely a part of the absence of mothers in fiction because for a very long time\, women on the whole did not\n27:3427 minutes\, 34 secondsh ave a particularly large role in the world of storytelling\, especially th e kind of storytelling that Tolken was fond of. A mother might be mentione d for\n27:4327 minutes\, 43 secondsthe context of one's birth\, but once h earth and home were left behind in these quests\, battles\, and adventures \,\n27:5027 minutes\, 50 secondswomen and especially mothers had no place. Sure\, there might be a lovely maiden waiting for the night at home\,\n27 :5827 minutes\, 58 secondsbut the stories tend to fade to happily ever aft er long before that woman undergoes the process of going from being maiden to mother and thus being\n28:0728 minutes\, 7 secondsrendered undesirable by the eyes of the story. And beyond just societal norms\,\n28:1228 minut es\, 12 secondsit was a very useful trope for a character to not have a mo ther. Mothers\,\n28:1828 minutes\, 18 secondstraditionally speaking\, were meant to be kind of nagging. They would want the hero to stay home\, to k eep themselves\n28:2528 minutes\, 25 secondsfrom harm's way. A father woul d have the wherewithal to know that a son must go off and do this dangerou s thing in order\n28:3228 minutes\, 32 secondsto make his name. But a moth er will only hold the hero back. A living and active mother complicates th ings unnecessarily.\n28:4228 minutes\, 42 secondsShe's just going to get i n 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.\n28:5328 minutes\, 53 secondsAnd for a very long time\, especially from the 18th century enli ghtenment and onwards\, perfection was expected from\n29:0129 minutes\, 1 secondmothers\, living or dead. A mother should be wise\, serene. She shou ldn't have problems of her own and she should be\n29:1029 minutes\, 10 sec ondsabsolutely completely stable so that her peace could counterweight the chaotic lives of her sons and husbands. As\n29:1829 minutes\, 18 secondsJ uliet Bger explains in her essay on dead mothers in fiction\, a mother's p ower was through her influence on the\n29:2629 minutes\, 26 secondsmen aro und her who in turn would take her influence with them into the public sph ere. But this stability of character\,\n29:3329 minutes\, 33 secondssomeon e 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\,\n29:4429 minutes\, 44 secondsand she cannot be this unchanging for ce who acts only for the sake of others.\n29:4929 minutes\, 49 secondsOnly in death can she be eternal and thus romanticized. She becomes a symbol w ithout her own wants and needs that\n29:5829 minutes\, 58 secondsmight con flict with the people she is supposed to support. Therefore\, by killing o ff a mother\, an author provides a moral compass to guide the characters\, \n30:0830 minutes\, 8 secondsyet one who cannot interfere and thus complic ate the narrative. For a very long time\, the standards for mothers was\n3 0:1730 minutes\, 17 secondsexcruciating perfection\, and it was seen as a disappointment when the real human could not live up to those standards.\n 30:2530 minutes\, 25 secondsBut through the romanticization of fiction\, w e had a chance for the perfect mother. All we had to do was take this real human character and mummify them\,\n30:3730 minutes\, 37 secondspurify th em down to their simplest essence\, remove all of those complicated\, roug h edges\, and you end up\n30:4430 minutes\, 44 secondswith this character that isn't human anymore\, but acts as a very good propellant for the comp lex human and\n30:5430 minutes\, 54 secondstypically male protagonist. And while I do think that Tolken was in a lot of ways deriving from this trop e and this kind of problematic deification process\n31:0331 minutes\, 3 se condsfor his writing\, it is a bit more complicated than that. Because in many of the cases of Tolken's characters\, the\n31:1031 minutes\, 10 secon dsdeath of the character's mother does not drive them forward into success \, but rather predicates their fall. Feyenor is\n31:1831 minutes\, 18 seco ndsnot so much inspired by his mother's loss as devastated. Adidel's son f alls down a terribly dark path after\n31:2731 minutes\, 27 secondswitnessi ng her traumatic sacrifice. And Morwin's intentional choice to remove hers elf from her son's life doesn't\n31:3431 minutes\, 34 secondsresult in her being deified\, but it does result in her son being lost forever.\n31:403 1 minutes\, 40 secondsThere's enough complication added to these situation s to make me think that Tolken wasn't just blindly trotting out these trop es\, however much they may have\n31:4831 minutes\, 48 secondsshaped his pe rception and the way that he wrote. And yet\, I can't deny that Tolken's m otherly characters are\n31:5531 minutes\, 55 secondsfrustrating to me as a woman and as someone who knows a lot of mothers and cares about them deep ly because these\n32:0332 minutes\, 3 secondscharacters never have the sam e kind of agency or presence that their male counterparts do. However\, I do think\n32:1132 minutes\, 11 secondsthat we can find a probable cause fo r this isolation and alienation of mother characters in Tolken's personal life.\n32:2032 minutes\, 20 secondsTolken's father died when he was very y oung. And so his primary parent growing up was his mother\, Mabel. Mabel T olken\n32:2832 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\n32:3632 minutes\, 36 secondsread\, and that began to teach him lan guages. They were as well off as could be expected. But this would all\n32 :4332 minutes\, 43 secondschange when Mabel converted to Catholicism\, som ething that her Unitarian family strongly disagreed\n32:5032 minutes\, 50 secondswith. They cut her off financially and emotionally and personally. But in all of this turmoil\, as their family was cut\n32:5832 minutes\, 58 secondsa drift\, Tolken only came to admire his mother more and more. Mab el's workload increased\, her health declined\, but she\n33:0833 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\n33:1533 minutes\, 15 se conds12year-old Tolken\, she began to take on a near saintly glow. Mabel T olken died on the 14th of November 1904\, and Tolken\n33:2533 minutes\, 25 secondsfirmly believed that she had done so as a martyr\, that she had di ed for her faith. Tolken and his brother were taken\n33:3333 minutes\, 33 secondsin by a family friend\, a priest named Father Francis. And Tolken t ook shelter in the church. He came to see his\n33:4033 minutes\, 40 second sCatholic faith as the final and most profound gift that his mother had ev er given him. And he clung to his faith with all of a lonely child's longi ng.\n33:5133 minutes\, 51 secondsBut a faith awakening would not be the on ly result of Mabel's death. As Tolken's biographer Humphrey Carpenter\n33: 5833 minutes\, 58 secondsdescribes\, his mother's death made him into two people. He was by nature a cheerful\, almost irrepressible person\n34:0634 minutes\, 6 secondswith a great zeal for life. He loved good talk and phy sical activity. He had a deep sense of humor and a great\n34:1334 minutes\ , 13 secondscapacity for making friends. But from now onwards there was to be a second side\, more private\, but predominant in\n34:2134 minutes\, 2 1 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\,\n34:3134 minutes\, 31 secondswhen he was in this mood\, he had a deep sense of impending loss. Nothing was safe. Nothing would last. No b attle\n34:4034 minutes\, 40 secondswould be won forever. Her death made hi m a pessimist. Or rather\, it made him capable of violent shifts of emotio n.\n34:4834 minutes\, 48 secondsOnce he had lost her\, there was no securi ty\, and his natural optimism was balanced by deep uncertainty. In the\n34 :5634 minutes\, 56 secondswake of his mother's death\, Tolken portrayed al l the hallmark signs of a traumatized child. Modern psychology\n35:0335 mi nutes\, 3 secondsrecognizes that children who have been traumatized\, espe cially by the loss of a loved one\, tend to exhibit traits such\n35:0935 m inutes\, 9 secondsas depression\, a change of behavior or attitude\, and a loss of hope or confidence in the future. And even\n35:1835 minutes\, 18 secondsthough Humphrey Carpenter was writing before these criteria had bee n laid out\,\n35:2235 minutes\, 22 secondsit seems like he outlines these exact traits in Tolken. This sudden tilt into\n35:2835 minutes\, 28 second spessimism\, this unbreakable lack of confidence in what will become of hi m and the world that he loved. Children\n35:3735 minutes\, 37 secondswho h ave been traumatized by loss also tend to find themselves falling into par anormal or supernatural thinking.\n35:4435 minutes\, 44 secondsThey see si gns and omens everywhere.\n35:4835 minutes\, 48 secondsThey see another la yer to the world. And through Tolken\, this may have manifested in both hi s sudden leaning towards\n35:5635 minutes\, 56 secondsCatholic faith\, but also in the very spiritual lens through which he saw the entire world. Fo r Tolken\, there was\n36:0436 minutes\, 4 secondsmeaning to everything\, t o words\, to trees. Well into his adult life\, he was known to speak to tr ees. But either way\,\n36:1136 minutes\, 11 secondswith all of these sympt oms looked at together\, I think it's fair to say that Tolken was profound ly traumatized by his\n36:1836 minutes\, 18 secondsmother's loss in some w ays that probably he didn't even understand. And undoubtedly\, these feeli ngs continued to\n36:2636 minutes\, 26 secondsimpact him forever. When spe aking about his relationship with his wife\, who was also a young orphan\, Tolken recalls\,\n36:3436 minutes\, 34 seconds\"The dreadful sufferings o f our childhoods from which we rescued one another\, but could not wholly heal the\n36:4136 minutes\, 41 secondswounds that later often proved disab ling. Now\, I am well aware of the fact that the Lord of the Rings is not\ n36:4836 minutes\, 48 secondsallegorical. We should not look at the Lord o f the Rings as if it is an autobiography of Tolken's personal life\,\n36:5 636 minutes\, 56 secondsbut his experiences had a profound and undeniable impact on every part of this\n37:0337 minutes\, 3 secondsstory. Yes\, he i s describing and depicting these experiences that are ancient and universa l and shared by us\n37:1137 minutes\, 11 secondsall. But these experiences were in their conception first bounced off of the mirror of Tolken's mind . And I think\n37:1937 minutes\, 19 secondsthis fact becomes vividly clear when it comes to his rather strange portrayal of mothers. Tolken's mother shaped what he\n37:2737 minutes\, 27 secondssaw as good maternity. She wa s selfless right up until the very end\, always putting her sons before he rself. She was\n37:3437 minutes\, 34 secondsa massively influential and gu iding force in Tolken's life\, putting his feet on the path that would tak e him to so much success and joy and fulfillment.\n37:4437 minutes\, 44 se condsAnd she was gone and thus rendered untouchably perfect. Any and all f laws\n37:5237 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 de scribe a good living mother.\n38:0338 minutes\, 3 secondsHis mother was pe rfect and she was dead.\n38:0638 minutes\, 6 secondsTherefore\, if any mot her was to be perfect\, death was an inevitability.\n38:1238 minutes\, 12 secondsThere is something heartbreakingly beautiful in the fact that mothe rhood was the one topic that Tolken seemed\n38:2038 minutes\, 20 secondsun willing to fully broach. There are so many deeply personal and deeply trau matizing things that Tolken explores\n38:2738 minutes\, 27 secondsin his w orks with so much depth and passion and curiosity. He fully explores the l oss of home and self that comes\n38:3638 minutes\, 36 secondsabout with th e passage of time and the overtaking of industry. He doesn't shy away from the challenges and sorrows\n38:4338 minutes\, 43 secondsthat can be found with young love. Even the atrocities of war are faced headon\,\n38:5038 m inutes\, 50 secondsnot shying away from the things that Tolken found truly troubling. And yet\,\n38:5438 minutes\, 54 secondsmotherhood in all of it s reality and depth and fear and complexity is left out. Now\, I want to b e crystal clear\n39:0239 minutes\, 2 secondshere that I am not pointing ou t the shallowess of Tolken's mother characters as a kind of condemnation o r cancellation. I think it is evidently\n39:1139 minutes\, 11 secondsclear that Tolken just had a lot of stuff going on when it came to his experien ce and his perspectives on\n39:1939 minutes\, 19 secondsmothers. He was hu man and thus beautifully imperfect. And in the same way that it would be u nfair to demand\n39:2739 minutes\, 27 secondsabsolute flawlessness from a mother\, so it is wrong for us to look back at Tolken and expect him to be anything\n39:3539 minutes\, 35 secondsother than complicated and messy an d human. We shouldn't be putting him up on this pedestal and deifying him and\n39:4439 minutes\, 44 secondstrying to crystallize his works as the pe rfect paragon of fiction writing because that does a disservice to the\n39 :5239 minutes\, 52 secondsreal person that he was. Instead\, we can read h is works. We can appreciate them for all of the good things that they\n39: 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\n4 0:0740 minutes\, 7 secondsnecessarily constructive in the modern day. And we can try and do better. They say that you should write what you know.\n4 0:1440 minutes\, 14 secondsAnd I think that Tolken did that. He writes abo ut mothers with a near godly reverence\, almost a fear and an\n40:2340 min utes\, 23 secondsunstoppable instinct to keep them at arms length. But I t hink that for all of us going forward\, we also have the\n40:3040 minutes\ , 30 secondsresponsibility to write and to tell stories based on what we k now. And I think that most of us would say that we\n40:3740 minutes\, 37 s econdshave a very different experience of what motherhood is and what it c an be than Tolken did. On her deathbed\, Aragorn's\n40:4540 minutes\, 45 s econdssaintly mother says\, \"I gave hope to the Dunadine. I have kept no hope for myself.\" Although this is a poignant\n40:5440 minutes\, 54 secon dssentiment and one that undoubtedly would have meant a lot to Tolken hims elf\, I hope that most of us can see the fact that in order to give other people hope\,\n41:0341 minutes\, 3 secondsyou don't need to leave yourself scoured out and empty. You don't need to blow out your own candle in orde r to light\n41:1141 minutes\, 11 secondssomeone else's. The sacrifice of a mother is a beautiful thing. But my hope\n41:1741 minutes\, 17 secondsis that the life of a mother\, the real messy\, complicated human life of a\n 41:2541 minutes\, 25 secondsmother\, has even more potential. In the comme nts\, let me know who your favorite Middle Earth mother is. I admittedly\n 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 \n41:4041 minutes\, 40 secondsleave\, she waits until her son is fully gro wn\, which I feel like is kind of the best option out of all of the ones t hat I've been presented today. You see\, I\n41:4941 minutes\, 49 secondswa s going to tell you to send this video to your mom\, but um I do talk abou t dead mothers a lot in this one. So\, maybe that's not the best bet\, but you should\n41:5841 minutes\, 58 secondsgo and find a mom somewhere\, pre ferably one that you know\, and tell them that you're glad they're alive a nd that you love them because they could probably\n42:0642 minutes\, 6 sec ondsuse that. Give this video a like if you enjoyed it\, and do consider s ubscribing if you want to tune in every other week to hear me talk about T he Lord of the\n42:1442 minutes\, 14 secondsRings\, the art of storytellin g\, and the other stuff that I like to talk about.\n\nTimeless\nLauren Dus ki • Perfect Universe\n42:1742 minutes\, 17 secondsThank you so much for joining me this week and every week. And I hope that you have a very happ y hobby day.\n\n\n\n\n  \n\n\n\n my comment\n\n great point on rosie cott on for representation. good argument of why the absence of motherly charac ters is highlighted by so many fatherly characters. Great point on Miriel\ , and Feanor does go off. It is interesting that Tolkien never finished th e Silmarillion. I wonder the edition tolkien would had made\, and I wonder if Christopher as editor\, influenced the presence of women more. 26:41 h mm 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 ev en in his fiction. and yes\, i dont think tolkien will accept the idoltry many give him today.\n\n DTSTART;VALUE=DATE:20260209 RRULE:FREQ=YEARLY;INTERVAL=1 END:VEVENT END:VCALENDAR