The english language and gender

[tom]

As i am currently writing an essay on this subject for my A-level english language i thought id ask you guys ( and gals) to do my work for me...

nah but i would be interested to hear what people think. the question is

Have interactions between genders changed over time within the fantasy book genre?

im looking at two books The Fellowship of the ring by Tolkein
and Sabriel by Garth Nix

Originaly i assumed that characters in LOTR would exhibit more traditional gender attributes e.g manly men and girly girls but i now suspect that i may be wrong. particularly with regard to the men. Basicly due to the manner in which they communicate with each other.

Thoughts?

 

[Kuu]

well first off... there's a thing that needs to be cleared up for you to make a decent argument: over time needs to be reduced to a specific time frame, say, from 1900 till today, else it is too broad for a small essay.

Another thought is... how are you defining "traditional" gender attributes? Since different people and cultures and times seem to have a different opinion of what is "traditional"... Sometimes we mistake old-fashioned speech as effeminate or pedantic when it wouldn't have been considered such in its proper time.

 

[tom]

Good point. from when LOTR was first published till when sabreil was? i.e 1954 till 1995?
defining traditional attributes according to what we've learned from the syllabus: Robin Lakoff, and cooperation/competition.

 

[Decaf]

Plus there's the culture difference. Tolkien was English and Nix is Austrailian.

I haven't read Sabriel, so I can't contribute much thought to it, but it might prove beneficial to look at the attention given to male relationships in LOTR. There are female characters of significance, but they operate primarily as foils to the male characters. It reminds me of Greek gender roles in that men were much more important, but participated in all kinds of relationships with eachother. Women were mostly left out in the cold.

I don't know if that's the perspective Tolkien had (one literary work doesn't encompass someone's entire world view after all. He may have just been trying to explore life in the ways he was most familiar), but the fact that no one mentioned any critique about that until much later does suggest something culturally significant happened.