Gems of Erebor: The Case for Dwarf Women In Tolkien-Based Fanfiction

Since seeing The Hobbit a few days ago with my sister, I’ve had dwarves on the brain.

Yeah, I know, you’re all rolling your eyes and sighing, Oh, dear, Mercury joined the Thorin Oakenshield bandwagon, and it’s true. I admit it freely and gladly. Before seeing the Hobbit, I wouldn’t have given the occupants of the Iron Hills a second chance. Now, I’m reconsidering that position. I re-read The Hobbit, twice, and I’m working my way through Lord of The Rings again, and I’m reading a lot of fanfiction.

Oh, dear. Fanfiction.

Now, as the fanfiction around the Hobbit has picked up steam, we’ve started to see the same trends that long-time readers of LOTR fanfiction have seen– the movement towards writing Original Characters in a (mostly) highly unbelievable style, the trope known in fanfiction as the Mary Sue. What’s interesting to me is that many of these Sues, like those in the LOTR canon before them, are all elves, Men, and Hobbits. There are very few dwarf women written about in fanfiction.

This doesn’t make a lot of sense for a lot of reasons, chief among which is that elves and dwarves don’t get along. At all. Ever. The Battle of the Five Armies was pushing it. No matter how well written your character, the fact that she’s an elf, or a half-elf half human, or an elf who was raised with dwarves, it will not make sense inside Tolkien’s canon, movie or otherwise. (Not until the late Third Age and the friendship of Gimli and Legolas. But that is noted as being extremely out of character for the both of their races.)

Ladies, hear me out here. I know that your OCs are wish-fulfillment. We’ve all been conditioned to think that the way the elves look and the way the women of the Dunedain look is ‘normal’ and ‘beautiful’. I get that. Most of my favorite LOTR characters are females of Numenorean descent. I’ve got a whole story filled with females of Numenorean descent, and I love them all dearly. We’ve also been conditioned to think that Dwarf females are different. Like, waaay different. Like, the punchline of jokes different. And that scares us, because it makes us and our OCs vulnerable.

Yeah, like that. Laugh it up, Gimli.

And the more I thought about it, and read about it, and researched about it, the more I started asking  myself, what’s wrong with being a female dwarf? In fact, who wouldn’t want their character to be a female dwarf? Because female dwarves have some really awesome stuff going for them.

1) Dwarf beauty, male and female, runs on a totally different level.  

Writing about the beauty of dwarves can be a new challenge for a writer, and an exciting one at that --  they’re not a race that Tolkien spends a lot of time on, and so their standards of dress and beauty can be something totally outside of what we consider ‘normal’. This can be very liberating – you can make up whatever you want to! Several fan artists have explored this concept with dwarf beards (or lack thereof) and female facial/body hair.  Now, some people will argue with me that most of the other races of middle earth would consider dwarves ugly, and the idea of being mistaken for a dwarf man is not an appealing one. Fair point – not all dwarf men can look like Thorin Sexyshield. But – and this is a big but – what if the reason that dwarf women are seldom seen in the rest of the world, and when they are they’re mistaken for dwarf men, is because they are so terrifyingly beautiful they have to disguise themselves out among the other peoples?  Also, if dwarf beauty is different, then dwarves will find different things beautiful. Not a problem at all.

2) The dwarves have a love of craft, and practice is open to both genders.

Since the beginning of time, when they were fashioned by Aule, the heavenly smith, they have loved to build and make beautiful things out of the precious stones in the earth, and they admire those who can do this well. In fact, they believe that at the End of Days it will be the task of the Dwarves to help re-build Arda. If women among them are few, and those few women can easily pass as men in the world outside the dwarf cities, it seems to me that both men and women can gain great skill in their chosen craft, be it smithing or carving, and be appreciated and well-noted for it. Not only do they carve stone and shape metal with great skill, but they are also tremendous singers and writers of songs, as well as makers of instruments – when Thorin and Company show up on Bilbo’s doorstep, they also bring with three flutes, two fiddles, a drum, two clarinets, two bass viols, and Thorin’s great golden harp ( Hobbit 26). (Recall also when they finally do come to the Mountain, they find that harps left silent for centuries are still in tune. (Hobbit 228))

3) There is very little emphasis in dwarf culture on family life. 

Now, I am not saying here that there are no happy families among the Dwarves – I think that is very untrue. If what we see of the familial groups in the Company of Thorin is any indication, dwarves form very strong ties with their families – another attribute in their favor. My point here is that it is not the be-all and the end-all for dwarf women to marry. As previously discussed, it is perfectly acceptable among the dwarves to devote your life single-mindedly to the pursuit of your craft – one of the reasons the dwarf population doesn’t grow very quickly. Several authors, as well as Appendix A of the Lord of the Rings, allude to the fact that only a third of the dwarf population were women, and that part of the population didn’t feel the need to marry all the time. (Thorin, for instance, is noted not to have a wife.) Many of them found fulfillment in the perfection  and recognition of their chosen art.

4)    Dwarf love runs deep.  

Tolkien always writes of them as a single minded kind of people; for instance, in the Silmarillion, when speaking of the creation of the dwarves, he writes “…Aule made the Dwarves strong to endure. Therefore they are stone-hard, stubborn, fast in friendship and in enmity, and they suffer hunger and hurt of body more hardily that all other speaking peoples…” (Silmarillion 44) It is because of this stubbornness that love and admiration among the dwarves can be a difficult thing – “Dwarves only take one husband or wife in their lifetime, and are jealous, as in all matters of their rights. The number of Dwarf-men that marry is actually less than a third, and not all the Dwarf-women take husbands either; some desire none, some want one they cannot have, and will have no other one. There are also many Dwarf-men that don't want a wife, because they are obsessed with their crafts.” (Tolkien Gateway). While this sounds a bit dire, it sounds a bit dire for both genders. If you fall in love with someone you can’t have – tough luck on both sides. Unlike the women of the races of Men, who tend to be stuck if they marry someone they don’t like or are barred from marrying someone they do, Dwarf women have the possibility of  spurning romantic entanglements in favor of craft, or of finding solace in their work. On the reverse, if you do end up finding someone who loves you back, heaven help the rest of the world if they want to keep you apart.

5) They already don’t get written about often.

 By my count, there are seven women of some importance in the Lord of the Rings. Three of them (Arwen, Eowyn, and Galadriel) have appearances in the book and made it to the movies, two of them (Goldberry and Ioreth) make appearances in the books but not the movies and two more (Gilraen, Aragorn’s mother, and Finduilas, Boromir’s mother) only get name-dropped but are still pretty crucial to the story. The Women of Middle Earth, in my opinion, need all the help they can get. But the dwarves have it even worse:  only one dwarf woman is mentioned in all four books – Thorin’s sister, Dis. We don’t know anything about her except that she had two sons, and her status as the daughter of a king is enough to get her named in a genealogy table. But in my mind, that’s wonderful. We have no idea what dwarf women do or do not do! They can be warriors or smiths, songstresses or great miners. The sky (or perhaps the roof of the cavern) is the limit!

So, if you’re considering investing some time and effort in creating one of the beauties of Erebor, take a moment to read about the dwarves of Norse mythology, who are pretty closely tied to Tolkien’s dwarves. Find a really awesome Norse name for your leading lady and outfit her however you want to, with hospitable table and harp, or battle-horn and axe, and get out there and represent!

(And hey, if you're going to link to this somewhere else, or you've got a story to share, post it in the comments below.)

Prayer from Someone Failing At Her Job Search

Prayer from Someone Failing at her Job Search.

Aloud I cry to you, Lord God of the Universe,

Loud I cry, and listen for your voice.

For you will not abandon me, you will not desert me,

You and you alone will beside me in every hour of my need.

Oh, that I were Elisha in the temple, that I might hear you!

That I were a prophet of old, that I might know your way for me!

I have sat in your temple and listened, and heard nothing –

I have sought you in the woods, and in the mountains, and you have kept hidden from me.

I have lost the path, I have stumbled. There are rocks in my way and I cannot move them.

You have sent wise council to speak to me – in their voices I hear the beating wings of angels,

And in the echoes the temptations of the false prophets, and of pride.

To them I cannot speak of my distress! You alone know it – you alone will do right by me.

Would that the way were straightened, God, and the road smooth, and easy to make out.

Would that I did not travel by night, and the Sun of your goodness could guide me.

I am beset with evils – desperation sits at one shoulder, and on the other is despair.

How am I to use the gifts you gave me, God? Who will hear your handiwork in my words and in my deeds?

Aloud I cry to you, Lord God of the Universe,

Loud I cry, and listen for your voice.

--

So I was passed over --twice -- for another job today. I'm not sure what to make of this. I don't know whether to even continue trying to apply for jobs as an educator, despite everything everyone tells me about how well I teach or interact with visitors or anything else. Everything in  my life right now seems to be saying that if I ever want to get anywhere in life  (as in, out of my parents' house) I should just pack it in and get a real person job in Visitor Services or something.

I decided to take the experience and try and make something good from it, so I sat in my car for a good five minutes when I got home and prayed, and this is what came of it. The act of writing a prayer, as I think I've remarked before, is simply the act of praying the prayer, over and over, until it resonates the right way. 

I was trying to figure out if I should tell my mother I didn't get the job a second time. 

I'm still not sure.

Ships at Sea -- A Blog Post for the HMS Acasta

Over the past year, I've been fortunate enough to have not one, but two jobs doing what I love -- working in and around museums. And not just employed , but employed with a little bit of free time on the side to use for fun projects (Centennial Dress!), to develop and research my love of museums and living history and hopefully grow my practice as an educator.

I've started following a lot of really wonderful blogs this year -- blogs about costuming, about museum practice, and quite a few about living history. But there's one blog that absolutely blows my mind away every time they post something new. 

The lovely gentlemen (well-deserved the word!) of The HMS Acasta take both living history and blogging to a new high. They make me want to live up to the appellation 'living historian.'  It seems like every week they have well-thought out, beautifully executed content that not only advocates for their group and their work, but is also incredibly instructive and interesting. (They had me doing geometry several weeks ago. For fun. FOR REAL.)

Well, friends  I am not much for naval math, although I did try and teach myself advanced geometry for a math project in college to understand navigation on a globe, which should give you some idea of how much I love reading about the Navy. I am also (unfortunately, in this case) not a male, which, geographic issues aside, rules me out from joining their reenactment group. But several weeks ago they announced a new project -- The Mail Packet. It is supposed to be a series of letters from their followers to various members of the crew.

Well, a male mathematician I may not be, but I can CERTAINLY be a letter-writer. I read several books on women and the Navy, lost myself in Persuasion for a day, contemplated my bookshelf of Hornblower novels and what Lady Barbara would do, and finally sat down to write.

So, without much further ado, my early 19th century self has written these fine gentlemen a letter. I leave it here.

Captain Freymann –

 Your letters home have enjoyed a great deal of circulation around the neighborhood, and the general society hereabouts is quite in raptures at the skill of yourself and your crew in the varied arts of letter-writing. Your exercise with the flag-hoists was thought very clever -- such small perfect pictures! --even for those of us without a Popham’s close to hand, and the basic geometrics of navigation were enough to put even the most devoted of shore-bound mathematicians through their  paces. One wonders how you gentlemen ever make it home with such instruments at your disposal! I suppose, like all other pursuits, it is one that requires a great deal of practice to perfect.

 You must think me very forward to write this, being that I am of no particular relation to you. Suffice it to say that I am an admirer of general writing practice, and a firm supporter of the advancement of the art of naval warfare, and in both of these matters you and your crew have garnered my unstinting praise. Your own letters have been both instructive and entertaining, and I mean only to repay the compliment. 

I imagine, in this season of the year in which so many family gatherings are the usual practice, that you and your crew must, feel a little longing to be at home. I cannot claim to have any especial knowledge of how the New Year is rung in at sea (though several estimable naval gentlemen of my acquaintance, Captains Wentworth and Aubrey, are attempting to rectify the matter) but I am sure that you must have some hint of merriment aboard.  

There was some suggestion in this neighborhood of first-footing, but as fair-faced dark haired young men are thin on the ground in this part of the country at present, we have kept the old tradition here of waiting up for the first chime of the clock at midnight to let the old year out and the new year in, and that shall have to suffice. The chimes of our clock seem long indeed when the door is open – I fully wished the new year would hurry up and get inside before Papa and all the rest caught a chill! After we had waited out all twelve chimes, the door was shut tightly, all our luck for the new year locked in, and Mama’s punch liberally distributed to one and all for a toast. I imagine there was a little laughter and a good deal of singing that dreadful Scotch air after that, but I went to bed shortly after the punch. Did any of your young gentlemen stay up to bring the New Year in? I cannot see ships having front doors, but you must have a custom of some kind.

Today being rather cold, the cutting and fitting of a new dress will keep me inside – though I must endeavor to be quiet about it. It is near past ten, and most of the rest of the household has not yet risen – too much punch at last nights’ festivities, I should think. I shall not trouble you with the rest of the day's plans, as they are not likely to be of much interest to you, and my letter grows long without them. How I should hate to have you squinting over a crossed-over page for them! Let me then close. All the best of luck to you and your crew this season, or fair weather and plenty of prizes, however you should reckon it.

I am,
your humble neighbor,

Mariah Gray 

For more about the tradition of firstfooting, traditional English New Year's Eve revels,  the tradition of singing "that dreadful Scotch air", or the crossed-over letter, click through the links!