Feminism and Psychoanalysis in

The Lord of the Rings trilogy

The Lord of the Rings is formed by three volumes which are made up of six books written by

J.R.R. Tolkien.The novel contains and presents to the reader a world of fiction which is filled

with fantasy characters (dwarves, orcs, elfs etc.). The action of the trilogy is generally set on the

main character, Frodo Baggins, which has embarked on a quest to destroy the One Ring to save

the world. As we can see there will be a continuous fight between good and evil forcesfrom the

beginning to the end of the story. As well this war between Good and Evil is one of the major

themes in the novel, which is followed by the Lust for Power. Throughout his book Tolkien is

showing us instances of the corrupting and devastating influence that the Ring has. The

Ring more precisely is the symbol of the power which ruins everyone who possesses this power.

Comparing to the real life humans are easily corrupted when they have the power and they try by

any methods to keep that power or obtain it. One of Tolkien’s characters who illustrate this idea

of “corrupted by power” is Gollum. He had the power that ruined his life and lead to his death

when he tried to take it back by any means. But not everyone can be corrupted by the power.

Many characters of the novel have altruism and responsibility in their actions or in their words.

There is always a hope and Tolkien characters always manage to fulfill their duty even with the

cost of their own life or their friends. Another important theme regarding the differences between

characters is the Racial Harmony. There are different races in Tolkien’s imaginary universe and

there are a lot of conflicts between each other’s which in the end of the novel those conflicts will
disappear as they had to face the same enemy and proved that peace and racial harmony can

exist.

The Feminism in Tolkien’s novel is shown in all three volumes and movies. Starting with the

first volume at the middle of the story, the author presents a love between a man and a woman

which are from different races. Because of the racial differences they have to hide their love from

the others and stay separated. Her father decided for her that she must leave this land and keep

her love for the man in her soul for the eternity but she doesn’t want to accept that fate and

comes back to him ignoring her father wish. More precisely the surroundings of the novel and

the movies are from Medieval Age and as we know that age is more dominated by mans and

there were no equal rights between them. Returning back to our story we can see that some

female characters are denying this fact and disobey their father/uncle order to stay and fight side

by side with mans. When the war start in the second movie and continues in the third we can see

Eowyn going at war without her uncle, the king of Rohan, noticing her presence on the battle

field till she saves him from the enemy general and reveals herself that she is not a man. As well

in the second book when everybody was leaving the city of Edoras and went to Helm’s Deep

,Eowyn is set to be in charge and lead the people to the citadel even if she tried to stay and fight

with alongside mans.

In my opinion The Lord of the Rings is a trilogy which can be analyzed from more points of

view that these two that I have selected. The characters and the action, even the story itself,

present features of Tolkien’s society. More precisely the lust for power which corrupts the week

peoples and leads them to their end (in a pitch of fire), the racial differences which are present

even in our days and the female struggle in a society ruled by man.
Bibliography: www.wikipedia.org

One more thing  as I discussed with you last Thursday and I couldn’t present anything about

my final paper …. You asked me to add here a short summary regarding my final paper.

The theme that I have chosen is “Mythology in Native-American literature” but most probably I

will have to change it to Afro-Americans and hope that I will find some books with a fictional

universe that presents the myths. And regarding the bibliography and the biggest challenge that I

had faced was to find books  because as far as I researched I discovered that the Native

American’s stories aren’t written down ….. There are a lot of different tribes with different

versions of the same myths so this is the main reason that I think I must change my theme.

Teacher’s name is OANA COGEANU.

P.S. I am sorry for this poor essay but I was out of ideas about what to write and it was more

challenging than I thought.