An April post! I'm so excited! I was getting so worried! Now I just need to clean up the mess I left behind last month and then I can write all about what I learned about Ronald Tolkien! :)
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Okay, so maybe I can't clean up March as efficiently as I thought I could, so I better write about what's fresh in my mind while it is. I haven't finished a biography since I was in grade school, and I was under the impression that I found the genre rather dry over all. I have a biography of George Washington on CD in my car, but I just couldn't get through it. The long drives to North Carolina and fro necessitate books that catch my interest entirely or else the voices of the actors just lull me into a generally sleepy state. So, I listen to Harry Potter usually. I LOVE Harry Potter, but I digress. I didn't find Tolkien's biography boring at all, and it might be because it's not godawful long. Humphrey Carpenter kept it together well, only giving us the basic sense rather than the full picture of each day, month, or year. At only 260 pages, it was really quite manageable. I even felt myself completely pulled into the latter sections, feeling deep anxiety over his publication woes and his concerns over his ability to finish his great work The Silmarillion.
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The deal with Tolkien is that, as a man, he reminds me very much of men that I respect but could never be. He reminds me of my grandfather and especially of one of my professors at Appalachian: one Captain McGowan. Tolkien was born in South Africa (a fact I knew not at all when I wrote my thesis about LOTR last year), and he was orphaned by age thirteen. His father (Arthur Reuel Tolkien) died in South Africa while his mother (Mabel Suffield) and the two brothers (Ronald and Hilary) were visiting England. Tolkien was five. The small family stayed with his mother's family until she decided to get lodgings of her own. She also made the decision to severely displease her Anglican family by converting to the Catholic faith. A widow, with not much income, she risked a great deal by following her heart and allowing her family to disown her. Rather than feel resentful of the position of she had put him and his brother in, Tolkien always idolized her for this choice. Tolkien's devotion to Catholicism was part religious fervor but also a large part respect for his dead mother. She died only a few years later, but Tolkien's ties to the Catholic Church were strong by this time.
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A priest, Father Francis, took responsibility for their guardianship so that the Suffield's would not keep the children from going to mass. He moved them around to various lodgings, but while in one of them Tolkien met Edith Bratt, a woman three years his senior who was also orphaned and living in an other's home. They were very close, and at the young age of nineteen, Tolkien had already decided he was going to marry this woman. Father Francis, when he heard about the blossoming romance, moved Tolkien and forbade him from seeing Edith until he turned twenty-one. Tolkien obeyed, but he kept his love for her alive in journals for three years - the same first three years he was at Oxford. When the separation was concluded, he found her and proposed. Edith, though engaged to someone else, accepted. Unfortunately Edith was Anglican too, and Tolkien insisted that she convert even though she too would be without support until their marriage. Honestly, I thought this was rather cruel of him. She did it. They were married during the war, where Tolkien contracted trench fever. He didn't serve for long, but he served as an officer and a signal specialist, losing several of his closest friends in the process.
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I'm being too feminine here though. Many other things happened in Tolkien's life as well. He became an expert in Philology. He invented a number of languages from remaining fragments in Finnish, Welsh, and others. He was an expert in Anglo Saxon, Middle English, and Icelandic. He formed a few societies with male friends. His homo social relationships were extremely important to him, and as the war took many of his friends from his first society, the second group of men were increasingly important in his life. He was dear friends with C.S. Lewis (Jack) and Charles Williams, but their relationships were not without conflict. While he was a successful professor and often an administrator of various sorts at Oxford, his life's work was in creating a mythology for England, which was to remain unfinished at his death (The Silmarillion).
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He wrote stories for his children as a lark, and The Hobbit was penned in the same vein. It was accidental success for Tolkien. He spent a good deal of time trying to figure out what the sequel would be at the demands of his publishers. Thus The Lord of the Rings was born. He started out trying to write another hobbit story but ended up with some mix of his original children's tale (The Hobbit) and his great mythology. It took him sixteen years to write, and the resulting fame never settled with him well. He and Edith had four children, only one of whom followed in Tolkien's footsteps. Christopher Tolkien, who many Tolkien fans know of as he has control of the rights for all his work, entered Oxford as his father was getting ready to retire. One of his other sons was a priest; the other a teacher. His daughter studied as well but not with the enthusiasm of Christopher. His legacy was left in Christopher's hands.
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While I deeply appreciated the knowledge that Tolkien's perfectionism got in the way of his work and his works to a long time to gestate (both facts which bring me hope at the ripe age of twenty-seven that I may still create something of lasting value), the real object lesson in this biography was Tolkien's wife Edith. I almost cried when I read the lines:
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"'What were the women doing meanwhile? How should I know? I am a man and never spied on the mysteries of the Bona Dea.' So writes C.S. Lewis in The Four Loves while speculating on the history of male friendship. This is the inevitable corollary of a life that centres on the company of men, and on groups such as the Inklings: women got left out of it." (156)
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As a woman, a mother, and an intellectual, the thought that doors are closed in these societies simply because I am such makes it difficult to breath and my heart hurt. I have to continually remind myself that this is a different time, and I have support that these other women didn't have. But the real problem for Edith was that she didn't finish her education. She knew little of her husband's work, and though she was the inspiration for one of his more romantic poems, she couldn't discuss the minutia of philology with him, nor could she help him prepare his lectures or discuss anything other than family matters with him. God I hope this never happens to me. Of course, I always want to be studying my own work, creating my own lectures, engaging others in discussion myself, but I always want to be able to keep up with those around me at the very least. I don't want to be left out, sitting in the play room with the children while the men discuss the hottest topics of the night. The thought is downright painful.
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Not that I don't want to spend time with my children too. Maybe I'll get lucky, and my girls will be intellectuals too. :) That would be awesome!
What an amazing book! Written by Canadian Charles Taylor, this book changed the way I look at modernism, individualism, economics, and politics. Taylor is truly an advocate of a Buddha-like middle ground where we acknowledge the struggles that go on around us without feeling elation at the loss of power on one side or despair at our own idealogical losses. Brilliant! I'm back to longer posts now, so please excuse the tome, but I have to remember this for class.
