Tolkien and Women - a word

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The word is 'unspoiled'.

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I am immensely grateful for the two volume JRR Tolkien Companion and Guide by Scull and Hammond - however, unsurprisingly perhaps, the authors prefer to judge Tolkien by current standards of political correctness rather than the opposite.

(In this they follow the lead of Humphrey Carpenter in his official biography of 1977; whenever Tolkien's views differ from Carpenter's - Carpenter as representative of modern liberal opinion - the un-argued assumption is that Tolkien is wrong.)

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For instance, from Tolkien's letter to his son Michael of 6-8 March 1941, Scull and Hammond quote the section: "Before the young woman knows where she is... she may actually fall in love. Which, for her, an unspoiled natural young woman, means that she wants to become the mother of the young man's children, even if that desire is by no means clear to her or explicit..."

Scull and Hammond then comment: "Today (in the West) few would suggest that all young women desire motherhood and cannot be happy otherwise..."

They refer to 'all' young women and miss-out the word 'unspoiled'.

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It is perfectly obvious that Tolkien (along with almost everyone who lived up until 1965, and still at least 80 percent of people alive today) would have regarded the majority of modern young women today as 'spoiled'. And therefore Tolkien is perfectly accurate in his generalization.

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Later in the letter Tolkien says: "you may meet in life (as in literature) women who are flighty, or even plain wanton ... women who are too silly to take even love seriously, or are actually so depraved as to enjoy 'conquests', or even enjoy the giving of pain - but these are abnormalities, even though false teaching, bad upbringing, and corrupt fashions may encourage them. Much though modern conditions have changed feminine circumstances, and the detail of what is called propriety, they have not changed natural instinct."

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Tolkien is often regarded as being obviously mistaken in his view of women on the evidence that most modern women are unlike the women Tolkien describe.

But Tolkien was not mistaken.

Tolkien simply regarded most modern women as having been spoiled by false teaching, bad upbringing and corrupt fashions.

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