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Chapter Three
The Marginalized Voices
3.1 Introduction
In this chapter, we will discuss the marginalized voices represented by natural
creatures and women in The Lord of the Rings. Anthropocentric ideologies such as Descartes’s “animal-machine” theory establish the dichotomy between human and
nonhuman, and this binarism not only separates human from their environment but also objectifies and marginalizes the nonhumans. In LotR, women are marginalized and objectified in the same way natural creatures are treated by human. Moreover, natural creatures and women become the Other in the dualistic ideologies. In this sense, androcentrism and anthropocentrism are similar in their dominant ideologies and binary construction of the Self and Other, and these two ideologies are often interrelated. This chapter will investigate the correlation between anthropocentrism and androcentrism and analyze how the force of marginalization works in LotR.
3.2 Sense of Separation from Nature
While individualism signifies freedom and autonomy of the individual, radical individualism is the excessive individual desire that ignores the communal
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responsibility. In Chapter Two, we learned that radical individualism not only
separates friends from each other but also causes the separation of the whole eco-community. In “On Fairy-Stories”, Tolkien discusses the modern sense of separation
of ourselves from nature as:
a sense that it was a severance: a strange fate and a guilt lies on us. Other
creatures are like other realms with which Man has broken off relations, and sees
now only from the outside at a distance, being at war with them, or on the terms of an uneasy armistice. (Tolkien, “On Fairy-Stories” 152)
This sense of separation, the concept of nature as an existence that is separate from us,
exemplifies the dualistic ideology in our modern thinking: everything that is not human is seen as “not us” or the “Other”.
Numerous critics have pointed out the social construction of nature’s otherness
and its effect on our understanding of the world. For instance, Cheryll Glotfelty points out that the symbolic construction of species in literature reflects “the dualisms
prevalent in Western thought, dualisms that separate meaning from matter, sever mind from body, divide men from women, and wrench humanity from nature” (Glotfelty
xxiv). Axel Goodbody and Kate Rigby also observe that we find a philosophical aesthetic in Keats and Wordsworth’s poetry because there is a “fusion of yearning for immersion in the natural world with awareness of its unreachable otherness”
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(Goodbody et al. 4). Similar to Tolkien’s claim about fantasy as a way to satisfy “the primordial human desire of holding communion with other living things” (Tolkien,
“On Fairy Stories” 117), Axel Goodbody and Kate Rigby posit that the natural beauty
we find in Keats and Wordsworth’s poetry is “a projection of our desire of
reconciliation onto nature and a utopian gesture toward a world in which humanity would enjoy a harmonious egalitarian existence” (Goodbody et al. 4-5).
Apart from the influence of modern dualistic thinking, this sense of separation of humans from nature is also a result of the fear of the Other and the human
obsession with domination. The sense of separation from nature is repeatedly
portrayed in LotR. The hobbits, for example, perceived that they are the “outsiders” in
the Old Forest. When Tom Bombadil, the natural spirit, tells them the tales of the Old Forest, “they began to understand the lives of the Forest, apart from themselves,
indeed to feel themselves as the strangers where all other things were at home”
(Tolkien, The Fellowship of the Ring 130). Although the hobbits have a sincere appreciation of nature and live an agrarian lifestyle which is at the margins of nature and cultivated, they prefer domestic nature over wild nature. Therefore, the Old Forest has always been considered dangerous by them though they know very little about the place. This distrust of the wild nature causes the Old Forest to become something
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unknown to the hobbits, and their sense of separation from it is also rooted in the fear of the unknown Other.
While nature can offer comfort, food, and resources, it can also become a threat and a site of fear. These two aspects of nature are particularly visible in the
contrasting depictions of the domestic and wild nature in LotR. The Shire represents the idealized agricultural society where people live harmoniously with nature. The natural environment in the Shire is a domestic one. When the hobbits are first
introduced to the reader, they are described as a species that shares a deep connection with the domestic nature as they “love peace and quiet and good tilled earth: a
well-ordered and well-farmed countryside was their favorite hunt” (Tolkien, The
Fellowship of the Ring 5). The landscape of the Shire is mainly composed of farms
and gardens, and many hobbits are farmers who enjoy the crops and pipe-weeds that they harvested from their lands. The hobbits find delight in familiar things and can be
very distrustful about things that are unfamiliar to them. Even with books they would prefer “books filled with things that they already knew, set out fair and square with no contractions” (Tolkien, The Fellowship of the Ring 7). Unlike other wild landscapes in
LotR, the Shire represents a well-organized domestic nature that provides a sense of
familiarity and security. Moreover, the Shire is also an idealized countryside which offers comfort and shelter from the outside world.
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On the other hand, the hobbits have deep distrust with the unknown wild land beyond the Shire. Wild nature in LotR is often portrayed as threatening and characters
are often suspicious and anxious when they enter a wild space. According to Cecil C.
Konijnendijk, “[m]yths were – and sometimes are still – often used to ‘rationalise’
some of the workings of nature that could not be explained and therefore evoked feelings of fear” (Konijnendijk 36). In LotR, wild landscapes can often be described
as unfriendly and hostile to strangers and the birds and animals in the wild are often
being suspected as the spies of the enemies. For instance, mountain Caradhras is called “the cruel” by the dwarves and the storm that the Ring company encountered is interpreted as “the ill will of Caradhras” as Gimli thinks that “he [mountain
Caradhras] does not love Elves and Dwarves, and that drift was laid to cut off our escape”(Tolkien, The Fellowship of the Ring 292). Similarly, when Aragon and the
hobbits were hiding from the Ringwraiths in the wild lands to Weathertop Hill, they felt “the marshes were bewildering and treacherous” and Aragon even told the hobbits
that the birds and the beasts cannot be trusted as they might be the spies of the Ringwraiths (Tolkien, The Fellowship of the Ring 183).
Among the wild landscapes in LotR, the forests are the common sites that evoke the greatest fear and distrust. In many ancient myths and folklores, forests are often connected with danger and the unknown. Cecil C. Konijnendijk takes The Little Red
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Riding Hood as an example to argue that the fairy tales by the Grimm Brothers
“include a warning against wandering off (alone) into the dark and dangerous forest”
(Konijnendijk 36). In LotR, the passages of Fangorn and the Old Forest vividly portray the hobbits’ fear of the unexplainable things in forests. In both forests, the
trees are said to be murmuring to each other, and the voices in the forests seem to imply an unknown presence which evokes a sense of fear. Moreover, in both forests, the hobbits are anxious about getting lost in the woods while feeling that the forest seems to be leading them actively and making them get lost intentionally.
Among the forests of the Middle-earth, Lothlórien is perhaps the only one that does not evoke the same sense of fear and anxiety as other forests. The reason behind the different portrayals between Lothlórien and other forests might be that Lothlórien is, in some way, a semi-domesticated nature. The forest of Lothlórien is somewhat domesticated by the Elves since they built their city within the forest and the whole
forest is sheltered from the outside world through the power of Galadriel. Moreover, Galadriel’s power enables the forest of Lothlórien to escape from death and decay,
and the fact that the leaves of the mallorn trees in Lothlórien never fall and the season is always spring is also a sign of artificial alteration and domestication of nature.
However, even a forest that is always spring is often suspected and feared by human
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and dwarves as there are old tales that describe Lothlórien as a sorceress’s net that
traps the travelers.