The Monstrous Feminine: Ungoliant, Shelob, and Women in Tolkien’s Middle-Earth
Christopher Hansen
Saginaw Valley State UniversityMx. Christopher Hansen is an English Writing student at Saginaw Valley State University, where they focus on medieval literature and epic fantasy writing specifically. Hansen has published on biblical scholarship as well, being published in several academic journals on issues pertaining to the history of Jesus. Outside of academia, they are an activist for women’s rights, LGBTQ+ rights, and racial equality. Their interests include Old English literature, Feminist studies, and Tolkien scholarship.
https://orcid.org/0000-0002-3320-1365
Abstract
This article seeks to provide an analysis of Tolkien’s portrayal of feminine figures by emphasizing the roles of Ungoliant and Shelob, the monstrous spiders which Tolkien codes female, and finding how these sexual and procreative beings fit into Tolkien’s theological and gender essentialist views of women, and then how this reflects on other women within Tolkien’s legendarium, arguing that far from any of Tolkien’s women being empowered, they are instead always subservient to his essentialist understandings of women, that they are biologically and intellectually usually inferior to men and have specific gendered roles in Tolkien’s very Catholic gender binary, and so his literary women are in fact not empowered but fit into his restrictive sense of gender roles between men and women.
Keywords:
J.R.R. Tolkien; The Lord of the Rings; Middle-Earth; women; femininity; Ungoliant ShelobReferences
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Saginaw Valley State University
Mx. Christopher Hansen is an English Writing student at Saginaw Valley State University, where they focus on medieval literature and epic fantasy writing specifically. Hansen has published on biblical scholarship as well, being published in several academic journals on issues pertaining to the history of Jesus. Outside of academia, they are an activist for women’s rights, LGBTQ+ rights, and racial equality. Their interests include Old English literature, Feminist studies, and Tolkien scholarship.
https://orcid.org/0000-0002-3320-1365
