Constructions of gender and sexualities in J.R.R. Tolkien's 'The Silmarillion' and 'The Lord of the Rings'

John Ronald Reuel (J. R. R.) Tolkien, an author, an academic, and a philologist, is best known to the general public as the creator of The Hobbit (1937) and The Lord of the Rings (1954--55). His lesser known work, The Silmarillion, is a collection of myths and histories of his created world, Middle-earth, and was published posthumously by his son Christopher in 1977. Tolkien has been popularly identified as the "father of modern fantasy literature" by critics and fans alike. The majority of scholarship on Tolkien's work analyzes medieval literary influences on heroic male characters. Scholarship on Tolkien's female characters has also tended to emphasize interpretations based on medieval literary influences. The few feminist publications focus on traditional gender ideas and ignore the social constructedness of gender and sexuality. My analysis draws on second generation queer theories in order to expand the scope of earlier scholarship.;My focus in this project is on four female characters: Varda and Ungoliant from The Silmarillion, Galadriel from The Silmarillion and The Lord of the Rings, and Shelob from The Lord of the Rings. Varda is a planetary spirit sent by the One God to oversee Middle-earth; Galadriel is a powerful Elf; Ungoliant and Shelob are spirits of evil in spider form, related by descent. Like many of Tolkien's characters, they are "minor" images, in this case of good and evil powers in the world. I analyze gender and sexuality from three perspectives: first, how the four selected characters show Tolkien's adaptation of medieval literary gender roles. Second, I discuss the characters in the context of the changing gender roles in Britain after World War I. Finally, I do a resistant reading of Tolkien's works that argues masculinity in Middle-earth is constructed in part by these female characters.