I need to apologise to you. I promised you thirty days of countdown to the release of The Hobbit and I have not been very good at keeping my promise. You know how it goes: real life gets in the way: work, important life-changing decisions, busy times, family, etc. So I hope you're still with me and I promise I will make up for the lost time: I will publish all of the thirty blogposts before 12 December when The Hobbit - An Unexpected Journey is released in Belgium. Today, on International Men's Day (19 November, by the time I publish this that will be yesterday), I thought I would talk about the women in Tolkien's story, and the Dwarf-women in particular.
With the
exception of the Galadriel (who does not appear in the original story), the story
of The Hobbit is quite a ‘boys club’, don’t you think? 13 male dwarves, a wizard, a hobbit, Bard the Bowman, The Master of Laketown, Beorn etc. So much so that Peter
Jackson, Philippa Boyens and Fran Walsh had to invent characters to inject some
female energy into their films. They decided against creating more Dwarves, but
went for Elves instead. That’s how the character Tauriel (played by Evangeline
Lily) was born.
I guess it
was a wise decision not to create female dwarves for the films: they are so
elusive that their existence is even questioned. On page 411 of The Lord of the
Rings - The Return Of the King, Tolkien speaks about female dwarves:
“It was
said by Gimli that there are few dwarf-women, probably no more than a third of
the whole people. They seldom walk abroad except at great need. They are in
voice and appearance, and in garb if they must go on a journey, so like to the
dwarf-men that the eyes and ears of other people cannot tell them apart. This
has given rise to the foolish opinion among Men that there are no dwarf-women,
and that the Dwarves grow out of Stone.”
I don’t
know if she will even be mentioned in the films (she’s only a reference in the
book), but there is one important Dwarf woman – the company of dwarves would
not have been complete without her - she is the One Woman.
The
youngest members of Thorin’s company of dwarves are Fili and Kili, his nephews.
They are the sons of Thorin’s only sister, Dís. In fact, Dís is the only female
dwarf that J.R.R. Tolkien ever mentioned by name.
 |
| The last Heirs of Durin's Folk: Fili (Left - Dean O'Gorman), Kili (Right - Aiden Turner) and their uncle Thorin Oakenshield (Middle - Richard Armitage) |
Dís (born
Third Age 2760) was the daughter of King Thráin II and sister of Thorin and
Frerin. Like her brothers she was born in the Lonely Mountain and was driven into
exile in T.A. 2770 when the dragon Smaug took control of the kingdom.
The name Dís
was probably derived from Old Norse -dís ("sister of") which is found
in many Nordic names. So Dís is simply named as the sister of her brothers –
not very gender-friendly, Professor Tolkien!
On the other hand, although it is
often believed that the name Frerin came from either the Old Norse Dwarf-name
Frár ("Swift") in the Völuspá, or from the Old Norse word frérinn
("frozen"), to me, it simply sounds like “frère”, the French word for
“brother”. That would mean that both Dís and Frerin were named as the siblings
of the heir of Durin’s Folk, Thorin.
OK, Tolkien, listen up: your stories need more women!! Thank you. That's all.
