Female characters are scant but strong in Tolkien trilogy

NEW YORK - In The Lord of the Rings, Aragorn - the man who would be king - battles horde upon horde of the minions of evil while Gandalf the wizard gallops hither and yon, rallying the troops. Legolas the elf unleashes torrents of arrows on the invaders. Gimli the dwarf bloods his battle-ax, and Sam and Frodo, the hobbits, suffer and struggle and persevere.

It's a man's world, this Middle-earth of J. R. R. Tolkien. "Tolkien created an entire world of medieval warriors and feudalistic practices in which women are not only lacking in positions of power but missing altogether," writes Raj Shoan in The Tolkien Archives. "Other than a few notable females, this is a story by a man about men for men." The wizards don't date. The Urk Hai and other evil goblin soldiers are not of woman born, but built by wizards. And when the decision is made to march off to destroy the "one ring," it is carried out by a fellowship - emphasis on fellow.

Rings author Tolkien was a medieval and Old English literature scholar. The works of the eras he studied don't feature many proactive or assertive women. He also grew up and lived in a much more patriarchal time. Thus, The Lord of the Rings seriously shortchanges the ladies.

The elf queen Galadriel, the elf Arwen and the heroic Eowyn are the only females of note in the whole trilogy. With Arwen and Eowyn, an elf and a human who compete for the affections of Aragorn, Tolkien didn't even put much effort into distinguishing their names.

The films of The Lord of the Rings are not products of the Middle Ages, or even the mid-1940s. As sensibilities have changed, so the creators of last year's The Fellowship of the Ring and the recently opened The Two Towers hunted deep into the trilogy of novels to find justifications for giving the story of good and evil and a bloody quest more of a feminine presence.

Cate Blanchett, playing the all powerful Galadriel, makes a startling impression in just a handful of moments in the first two films. Liv Tyler stars as a more heroic Arwen in Fellowship.

And for a guy not known for writing interesting women characters, or any sort of female character, Tolkien "wrote a damned good one in Eowyn," says Miranda Otto, the Australian actress who plays her in The Two Towers. "The few women that he did write are pretty significant."

Indeed. Shoan maintains that Tolkien gave a small but telling portion of The Lord of the Rings to women to signify "the twilight of the old guard." And if the writer was looking ahead to a world in which women were about to play a much greater role, the filmmakers - working 50 years after Rings was published - were willing to run with it. "We wanted to pay particular care to the women, to give the story a more balanced feel," says co screenwriter Philippa Boyens. "The women in the books are more passive, sure. But you go deep into the books, into the appendices, and you find much more about them, their history." "They put as much into the women as they could justify," says Otto. "I know that when I saw the first film, I was so glad to see the scenes with Liv given such prominence. That is part of what [the men are] fighting for - love and relationships." "I think highlighting the women is very much in keeping with the spirit of the books," says producer Barrie Osborne.

In the films, Arwen is not the passive love interest of Aragorn that she is in the novels, but a beautiful enchantress of an elf who knows her way around a spell, a sword and a horse. A rescue scene performed by the elf Glorfindel in The Fellowship of the Ring was given - thrillingly - to Arwen for the film of Fellowship, and Liv Tyler made the most of it.

Tyler was "very worried, at first, at what the fans would think about the changes the writers wrote into her character," Otto says. "I wasn't expecting flak," Tyler says, laughing, "I was getting it. We heard loud and clear from the fans what they thought of these changes we were making, pretty much at every step along the way. So many people have read the novels, and they all have a stake in what we do with them."

Arwen may seem more passive in the books, but giving her a more active role is in keeping with who she is "because that's just the nature of the elves," Tyler says. "They just can do anything, so why wouldn't she have a sword?

"We were taking chances with Arwen, "Tyler says." She was quite different from the book. But we all decided that we weren't bringing across the energy that we wanted her to have."

On Web sites and in Ring-nut circles, the news that Arwen was to wield a sword and rescue Frodo in The Fellowship of the Ring was hotly debated for months.

"Liv argued quite a lot, actually, to make her character more like the Arwen of the book, "says Otto." She's not a warrior princess. She's not Eowyn."

But the writers, the director and Tyler found the means to justify the change.

"We went straight back to the bible for these films - Tolkien's books, "Tyler says." Arwen is a rebel. She's willing to give up her immortality for the love of a human. She is true to herself and never gives up the hope that they can be together. She's quite selfless."

So rescuing Frodo might be the sort of thing that Arwen might do. And exactly the sort of thing that Eowyn would do.

"Eowyn is a wonderful character, very present in the book, "says Tyler with a tinge of jealousy." They didn't have to build her up at all, because she's there."

What is there is" Middle-earth's first feminist, "Shoan says, a warrior princess" chafing at the chains of the patriarchal society in which she lives."

And how. Eowyn," the White Lady of Rohan, "is a shield-maiden, a woman who can ride a horse and swing a sword. In the second book and the second film, this warrior princess is introduced. But she's hardly a warrior, at least in The Two Towers.

"For this film of the trilogy, I felt as Eowyn felt - sort of held back all the time, "says Otto." I loved the swordplay. Unfortunately, there isn't that much of that in this film, it's all in the third one. I'd be edging up to Peter, 'Couldn't I fight a little bit here, or get on the horse or do something?' And he was always 'No, no, no. Let's save that for later.'

As Tolkien did.

Otto, like everyone else on the film's set, carried a script and a copy of the books with her at all times. She highlighted every line, every reference to her character in the trilogy. And with the script serving as a framework, she went to battle for Eowyn, protecting the character she came to feel she owned. "You could go to the book and if a line was really great that your character said, you could go to Peter and ask him if you could put it back," Otto says. "I pushed hard to get my lines where Eowyn talks about a cage, and how she fears a cage more than death. I felt that was very much the essence of who her character was, and I am so happy that was worked back in."

Like many women, Otto grew up under the impression that The Lord of the Rings was "strictly a boy's book, you know, for the guys into computers and Dungeons & Dragons." She discovered otherwise on the set. It seems that most every woman on the film shoot was a Rings fan, and every female fan most identified with Eowyn. "That's not a lot of extra pressure, is it?" Otto says, laughing. "So I fought for her. If something didn't strike me as right, I'd argue, 'That's not the way she is in the book!' They wanted to make her warmer. You can't play Eowyn with your heart on your sleeve."

And you can't unleash Eowyn on horseback, on the battlefield until The Return of the King, the final film in the trilogy, coming one year from now. Fans of the books know how it all ends. So does Otto. And the thought of it makes her grin and blush, just a little. Does the White Lady of Rohan kick Nazgul and take names? "Just you wait."

source: http://maidenfair.net/miranda/sentinel.html