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I'm a lucky woman
My husband Jeremy has a lengthy review of the LOTR movie trilogy. You can read the whole thing here. But this is the part that I really appreciated:

The second thing about this that bothered me was that Arwen was never portrayed as a warrior [in the books]. This was purely a 21st century imposition onto Tolkien's worldview, an attempt to create what Jackson saw as stronger women. (I will later discuss how he did the same thing with Eowyn.) In my view, this involves a false sense of what it is to be a strong woman. The only way a woman can be strong, as Jackson apparently sees it, is for her to be just like a man. (I discuss this issue in more detail here.) Therefore, if Arwen doesn't go out and fight, she's not a strong woman. If the only time she appears is in diplomatic, childrearing, romantic, and public political settings, then she must not be a strong woman. So Jackson has to force her into a masculine role, in effect denying the significance of real femininity, as if what women have traditionally done and been very good at, e.g. raising children, something crucial to the development and continuing of society, is not as valuable as what men have traditionally done.


Well said! Society pays lots of lip service to motherhood (it's the most important thing a woman can do yah dah yah dah) but when the rubber hits the road it is always the thing that gets pushed to the back burner or sacrificed for other more "important" things. I'm glad I'm married to a man who can appreciate true womanhood.

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