It's quality, not quantity, that counts.

One of the strongest criticisms of the books of J. R. R. Tolkien -- apart from the fact that critics fail to realize that they are romances, not novels, and should be judged by the standards of medieval romance, not modern novels -- is that they don't contain many women. The purpose of this book is to argue that, although women are rare, they are vital to the work of Tolkien.

I can't say that this point is indisputable, since it's disputed, but I think the evidence for this view is strong. It's not unusual to see women be rare in romance -- taking a not-so-random example, the greatest English-language romance of all, Chaucer's Franklin's Tale (which gave Tolkien one of his personal mottos) has four major characters. Only one of them, Dorigen, is female. But without Dorigen, there would have been no Tale.

Of course, Dorigen is rather a weak reed of a character. But is anyone going to claim that Lúthien, or Galadriel, or Éowyn, is a weak reed? Beautiful, yes, and judged by beauty-contest standards -- but that's the stuff of romance. As one author pointed out, of Tolkien's guardian powers, several (notably Varda) are "female." And, as John Rateliffe notes, in real life a disproportionate share of Tolkien's advanced students were women -- at a time when sexism was still so strong that one of them, Simone d'Ardenne, felt the need to publish as S. R. O. d'Ardenne to hide her sex. Furthermore, this was at a time when Tolkien's friend C. S. Lewis was still giving his female characters orders to submit to their husband's orders in marriage! Tolkien was not a feminist, but this book makes clear that he respected women and considered them fully intellectually equal to men. (And, for someone like Tolkien, that's the attribute that counts!) Were they part of his armies? No. But neither were they part of the armies that fought the World Wars; he followed the convention of the time.

Not every essay in this book is good. Melissa A. Smith's article on War Brides would have benefitted from having a lot less on one particular war bride (Ruth Fuller) and a lot more on the whole folklore phenomenon of wives who fought alongside their husbands. ("The Soldier Maid." "Jackie Monroe." "The Female Rambling Sailor." "William Taylor." Some of these have the women end up high officers, and on merit!) And as for Leslie A. Donovan's piece on valkyries -- well, if anything you don't find in your back yard is a valkyrie, which seems to be her definition, then yes, Tolkien is full of valkyries. But to look to valkyries as a characterization of a woman giving gifts (Galadriel, or Éowyn again) is just perverse. This is Tolkien we're talking about; think Wealhþeow in Beowulf, Dr. Donovan! I eventually stopped reading that particular essay, which surely managed to get in only because it's by the book's editor (and a high power in the publishing house, too).

But these are exceptions. Most of the essays are scholarly, and highly relevant, and prove their point: Tolkien wasn't neglecting women. He honored women. They simply were part of another realm. ( )

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The relative invisibility of women in Tolkien's works is perhaps the most jarring aspect of them to a twenty-first century reader. As Una McCormack points out in the last of these essays, quoting an unnamed conference participant, there are more named horses than named women in The Lord of the Rings. These essays prove that you can write thought-provoking stuff about the flaws in the work you love. Though the case for Tolkien's defence can be made robustly, and John Rateliffe recounts his career of being considerably more active and enthusiastic about educating women (including Mary Renault) than was the norm for his day, C.S. Lewis being a sad counter example. There are a number of other very interesting essays, of which I particularly enjoyed Una McCormack's closing piece on fan fiction and Cami Agan's thoughts on Lúthien and bodily desire. I'm afraid there are a couple of silly pieces as well, one about Valkyries and the other about Éowyn, Twelfth Night and Carnival, but the majority of these are very interesting. (And the last footnote to Robin Reid's introductory bibliographic essay is heart-breaking.) ( )