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Somehow the other thread got fixed on the quantity of women characters, and it struck me as funny that The Book of Mormon (which Joseph Smith asserted that he translated) shares that with LOTR. This has been used to criticize The Book of Mormon but here is the first place I've seen people complain about it in LOTR. True, The Book of Mormon has even fewer women, but it is also shorter.
As one who believes The Book of Mormonwas a translation, I guess the "fault" lies with Mormon, the main editor of the record. But I think women and their concerns are discussed more, while individual women are named less.
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The rest of the Christian sects aren't any better. Not many women get named in the entire Bible. While we can see from the Psalms that women were given many responsibilities, they did it all in their husband's name. They would purchase land, hire laborers, and decide what to plant, but the land and all the profit from the harvest belonged to the husband. Kind of a strange system.
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The publically acknowledged power of women on a global basis is a very, very recent thing. The usual writings were concerning the strength of men and the support of women. It would have been very hard to gain acceptance of ideas, beliefs and guidelines if they were not written from the perspective of a man.
The power of women seems to be rising in democracies, and I hope it continues.
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Women are still generally known by either their husband or their father's surname. Though I did know two women who really didn't like the last name fate had alloted them (they were sisteers) so they made up a new one. Though it was a name that denoted "man". So, in the end, still the name of a man.
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OSC's book "A storyteller in Zion" has a remarkable section dedicated to the Book of Mormon. Very interesting read. Considering that one is Scripture and one is a Fantasy Adventure... I can see how easy it is to confuse the two. Abenidai getting burned at the stake by Kin Noah... Tolkien totally ripped that off for his Balrog/Gandald scene.
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So very funny - I think you can trust that any rip off that Tolkien had was from the subconcious collection of knowledge. I think you can say the same about Card.
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Actually Henry that is a very standard ancient economic pattern. It is similar to the patterns in ancient Europe and feudal Japan as well.
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posted January 03, 2004 11:19 PM -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Actually Henry that is a very standard ancient economic pattern. It is similar to the patterns in ancient Europe and feudal Japan as well. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Posts: 456 | Registered: Aug 2003 | IP: Logged
Yep - maybe I would have been better of to say that any novel would have a difficult time being interesting if it did not meet some semblance of 'real'. To do that you must play off historical patterns, which to some may appear as 'ripping off'.
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