Elven chora : feminine space and power in Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings

Abstract

The Lord of the Rings has earned Tolkien high praise as well as a reputation for misogyny due to its scarce and marginal female characters. A rather neglected aspect of Tolkien's trilogy which challenges this notion is the femininity embedded within the story and its significance in the value system of the novel. Despite depicting fewer female human characters, Tolkien has created a race which is dominantly characterized by feminine attributes: the race of the Elves. Questioning the accusations of misogyny through a feminist psychoanalytic reading, this study uses Kristeva's chora to recognize the Elven lands as feminine space dominated by the semiotic rather than the symbolic, and Irigaray's notion of puissance to unearth the celebration of feminine power in the novels' depiction of the Elves. The careful consideration of the Elves, their society and their lands demonstrate the preference for the feminine which is in contrast with the phallic.