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Battling the woman warrior: females and combat in Tolkien and Lewis

2007; Mythopoeic Society; Volume: 25; Issue: 3 Linguagem: Inglês

0146-9339

Candice Fredrick, Sam McBride,

Violence, Religion, and Philosophy

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. But, as a sentence written by Lewis, the statement Battles are ugly when women fight is somewhat disingenuous. Lewis, along with Tolkien, learned through both literature and first-hand experiences in the First World War that battles are ugly, period, even if only men are involved. Though neither author was a pacifist, neither desired war for war's sake (a viewpoint that placed them at odds with many intellectuals and politicians of modern Europe). Though battle is central to many of their novels, it is a necessary evil, never glorified for its own sake. Furthermore, history and literature record examples of women in combat, with which Lewis and Tolkien must have been at least somewhat familiar. The Amazons are the most obvious example of an entire culture both female and war-like. Greek and Roman history record specific female warriors and military leaders--Artemisia I, Arachidamia, and Triaria, for example--as well as female gladiators and chariot fighters. Similar female warrior figures can be found in ancient African, Asian, and Middle-Eastern histories. Celtic and Anglo-Saxon civilizations produced Queen Boudicca and Aethelflaed, the eldest daughter of Alfred the Great, who died in battle. During the last few centuries of English history women occasionally took combat positions within the British military. While many women warriors disguised themselves as men in order to participate in battle, others went to war openly as women. In addition, while some men's reactions to these women in combat has often paralleled Father Christmas's view, other men have shown respect and admiration for women warriors and even willingly served under their commands. History is not uniform in finding women in combat particularly repugnant. What, then, does Father Christmas mean by such a statement? Is he unaware of the true nature of battle? Does he hold different views on battle than Lewis? Why does Lewis, a few novels later, briefly position Lucy as an archer in combat, rather than in self-defense, which is the only type of fighting Father Christmas condones for females? Women's entrance into combat is contradictory, confusing, and itself a site of conflict within both Lewis's and Tolkien's fantasy fiction. The conjunction of women, battles and ugliness in their work is worth exploring. Survey of Literature Little has been written on this matter. Thirty years ago in an article titled Brave New World: The Status of Women According to Tolkien, Lewis, and Williams, Doris Myers noted with disappointment that Tolkien and Lewis created men's worlds in their fiction, an unsurprising situation given the masculine orientation of the authors' scholarly and friendship communities. …