[Download] "Battling the Woman Warrior: Females and Combat in Tolkien and Lewis (J.R.R Tolkien and C.S. Lewis) (Critical Essay)" by Mythlore " Book PDF Kindle ePub Free
eBook details
- Title: Battling the Woman Warrior: Females and Combat in Tolkien and Lewis (J.R.R Tolkien and C.S. Lewis) (Critical Essay)
- Author : Mythlore
- Release Date : January 22, 2007
- Genre: Language Arts & Disciplines,Books,Professional & Technical,Education,
- Pages : * pages
- Size : 212 KB
Description
"BATTLES are ugly when women fight" (Lewis, Lion 105). With this statement Father Christmas makes a clear gender distinction for Narnian characters: while men's natures make them suited to combat, women's natures do not. Since Father Christmas is a Narnian character borrowed from this world, his assertion seems equally relevant to life on earth. While one should not confuse a fictional character's statements with the beliefs of that character's author, other evidence suggests C.S. Lewis's hierarchical understanding of gender, grounded in a medieval worldview, identifies war as a man's realm. Yet women are often central to men's battles, even when those women are conspicuously absent. Remember Helen, ostensibly the motivating object of the Trojan War, which is the subject of Lewis's last incomplete fictional work, "After Ten Years." The connection between women and warfare is equally apparent in medieval chivalry at moments when a knight fights to defend a lady's honor; Lewis exemplified medieval chivalry when he pitted Ransom against Weston in Perelandra, as did J.R.R. Tolkien when he made Gimli the Dwarf belligerent against anyone questioning the primacy of Galadriel's beauty. While not all fighting is over women, much of it is; to be more precise, fighting over women is specifically fighting over exceedingly beautiful women.