104-569: The Water may refer to: The Water (Middle-earth) , a river in J. R. R. Tolkien's legendarium The Water (Colin MacIntyre album) , a 2008 album by Colin McIntyre The Water (San Cisco album) , a 2017 album by San Cisco "The Water" (Feist song) , a song by Canadian singer Feist "The Water" (Hands Like Houses song) , 2020 song by Hands Like Houses The Water (2009 film) ,
208-570: A 365-day year. The two Yuledays signify the turn of the year, so each year begins on 2 Yule. The Lithedays are the three non-month days at midsummer, 1 Lithe, Mid-year's Day, and 2 Lithe. In leap years (every fourth year except centennial years) an Overlithe day is added after Mid-year's Day. There are seven days in the Shire week. The first day of the week is Sterday and the last is Highday . The Mid-year's Day and, when present, Overlithe have no weekday assignments. This causes every day to have
312-541: A body of myth, legend, and stories supposed to be about the distant past of the real world. Tolkien has presented the story of The War of the Ring from the point of view of the Hobbits. Now, back in the city, the Ring destroyed, and Sauron defeated, readers hear Ioreth, "no longer a towering Old Testament prophetess but an amusing goodwife full of words", explaining everything to her country relative. Sam has become "an esquire";
416-650: A farm near Matamata in New Zealand, which became a tourist destination . Tolkien took considerable trouble over the exact details of the Shire. Little of his carefully crafted fictional geography, history, calendar, and constitution appeared in The Hobbit or The Lord of the Rings , though additional details were given in the Appendices of later editions. The Tolkien scholar Tom Shippey comments that all
520-514: A feminine figure is that she shares domestic duties with her husband, and appears equal to him in status. Commentators such as Megan N. Fontenot, Fleming Rutledge the theologian and Episcopal priest , and indeed Tolkien, have stated that the ordinary women, such as Rosie and the prattling woman of Gondor, Ioreth, have the vital role of mediating between the world of epic fantasy and ordinary life. Rosie's warm relationship with Sam allows readers to connect to Sam's heroic adventures, and in turn to
624-511: A letter that "the simple 'rustic' love of Sam and his Rosie (nowhere elaborated) is absolutely essential [his italics] to the study of his (the chief hero's) character, and to the theme of the relation of ordinary life (breathing, eating, working, begetting) and quests, sacrifice, causes, and the 'longing for Elves', and sheer beauty." Megan N. Fontenot, writing in Tor.com , considered Rosie important as an emotional anchor for her would-be husband, and
728-476: A level in the evil campaign where the player invades in control of a goblin army, and as a map in the game's multiplayer skirmish mode. In the 2007 MMORPG The Lord of the Rings Online , the Shire appears almost in its entirety as one of the major regions of the game. The Shire is inhabited by hundreds of non-player characters , and the player can get involved in hundreds of quests. The only portions of
832-523: A man do this, so it is "a gendered moment". She gives each of the nine members of the Fellowship of the Ring a personal gift, chosen to assist them with the quest to destroy the One Ring, and with their personal journeys, as with her gift to Sam the gardener of a box of earth to restore the fertility of his garden, the Shire. Mac Fenwick compares Galadriel and what he sees as her monstrous opposite,
936-417: A medieval romance heroine, a "woman clad in white", standing silent and obedient behind King Théoden 's throne. But soon it becomes clear that she is no meek subordinate, as "she looked on the king with cool pity in her eyes": she thinks for herself. Further, she appears conventionally beautiful as a romance lady: "Very fair was her face, and her long hair was like a river of gold." But, Thum writes, this too
1040-681: A real world anchor for readers. Echoing Tolkien's remarks, she wrote that their relatable relationship helped to make Aragorn and Arwen's idealised romance believable, and set it in context. Tolkien wrote about Rosie and Sam's eldest daughter, Elanor, within the book's Appendices, describing her uncommon Elf-like beauty and how she became a maid of honour to Queen Arwen. Elanor inherits the Red Book of Westmarch , an in-universe framing device , from Sam when he sails to Valinor after his wife's death. Amy Sturgis describes in Mythlore how Rosie
1144-420: A respect for another, deeper kind of power". She argued that Faramir's brother Boromir , who fits the picture of the powerful male warrior hero, is in fact "weaker morally and spiritually" than those who exercise the deeper kind of power, and noted that Boromir falls while the "less typically heroic characters", including all the women (and the apparently unheroic Hobbits) survive. She specifically denied that
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#17327975476301248-454: A romantic medieval heroine in a garden, gives suitably medieval gifts, is admired from afar. But far from being imprisoned in her garden, she rules her realm and all who enter it "feel the power of the Lady". At the end of the book, the reader discovers that she is the bearer of Nenya , the Ring of Adamant, one of the three Elven-Rings, explaining her power to conceal and protect Lothlórien from
1352-509: A short film directed by Kevin Drew The Water (2022 film) , a drama film directed by Elena López Riera The Waters (stylized: " The Water[s] "), 2014 mixtape by Mick Jenkins See also [ edit ] [REDACTED] Search for "the water" on Misplaced Pages. All pages with titles beginning with The Water All pages with titles containing The Water Water (disambiguation) Topics referred to by
1456-620: A story about men for boys. Meanwhile, other commentators have noted the empowerment of the three major women characters, Galadriel , Éowyn , and Arwen , and provided in-depth analysis of their roles within the narrative of The Lord of the Rings . Weronika Łaszkiewicz has written that "Tolkien's heroines have been both praised and severely criticized", and that his fictional women have an ambiguous image , of "both passivity and empowerment". J. R. R. Tolkien spent much of his life in an all-male environment, and had conservative views about women, prompting discussion of possible sexism . Much of
1560-519: A three-dimensional, complex heroine at center stage". Sturgis comments that the "explosion" in Rosie's fan fiction surely depended both on the Internet and on Peter Jackson 's Lord of the Rings film trilogy , where Rosie was played by Sarah McLeod . While Tolkien wrote to Allen and Unwin that Lobelia Sackville-Baggins was modelled on an elderly lady he knew, commentators have suggested that she
1664-411: Is "compatible with that of contemporary feminists". Weronika Łaszkiewicz noted that "Tolkien's heroines have been both praised and severely criticized", stating that his fictional women have an ambiguous image , of "both passivity and empowerment". She suggested that this could be a result of his personal experience. Firstly, women in early 20th century England normally stayed at home and looked after
1768-491: Is an unfavourable caricature of Vita Sackville-West , an aristocratic novelist and gardening columnist in Tolkien's time. The journalist Matthew Dennison called Lobelia a memorable comic relief character whose name resembled Sackville-West's, while her frustrated attempts to secure Bag End mirrored Sackville-West's unsatisfied longing to inherit her family home, Knole House . The Tolkien scholar Tom Shippey observes that
1872-472: Is called "January" and Sterday is called "Saturday". Shippey writes that not only is the Shire reminiscent of England : Tolkien carefully constructed the Shire as an element-by-element calque upon England. There are other connections; Tolkien equated the latitude of Hobbiton with that of Oxford (i.e., around 52° N). The Shire corresponds roughly to the West Midlands region of England in
1976-403: Is capricious, enjoying male admiration, Galadriel is serious, testing the members of the Fellowship for loyalty. Schroeder notes that Galadriel is self-aware, knowing that "she is as fallible as they are", and as much in need of testing: and indeed accepts Frodo's testing. Thum states that Éowyn wears in turn two masks, the first unconventional, the second conventional. She appears initially as
2080-683: Is depicted as extremely beautiful; she is in Hatcher's view "a symbol of the unattainable, a perfect match for the unattainable Aragorn in Éowyn's eyes." Leibiger wrote that Arwen's lack of involvement follows the general Elvish pattern of retreating to safe havens already established in The Silmarillion and continued in The Lord of the Rings . Enright wrote that Arwen, like Christ , is an immortal who voluntarily chooses mortality out of love , in her case for Aragorn. She granted that Arwen
2184-526: Is different from Wikidata All article disambiguation pages All disambiguation pages The Water (Middle-earth) The Shire is a region of J. R. R. Tolkien 's fictional Middle-earth , described in The Lord of the Rings and other works. The Shire is an inland area settled exclusively by hobbits , the Shire-folk , largely sheltered from the goings-on in the rest of Middle-earth. It
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#17327975476302288-703: Is in the northwest of the continent, in the region of Eriador and the Kingdom of Arnor. The Shire is the scene of action at the beginning and end of Tolkien's The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings . Five of the protagonists in these stories have their homeland in the Shire: Bilbo Baggins (the title character of The Hobbit ), and four members of the Fellowship of the Ring : Frodo Baggins , Samwise Gamgee , Merry Brandybuck , and Pippin Took . At
2392-462: Is made even more tender because of its origins. It, like the tale of Beren and Luthien, was written to be a reflection of Tolkien's own relationship with his wife, Edith. They were prevented from a relationship for a time, but when the time came they were reunited. He longed for her for years, and she gave up an engagement and her church to be with him, much like Aragorn had to wait to marry Arwen, and she gave up her immortality for him. Tolkien wrote in
2496-429: Is not a conspicuous character, and unlike Éowyn does not ride into battle, but stated that her inner power is "subtly conveyed" and present throughout the novel. The Tolkien scholar Verlyn Flieger wrote that the love of Arwen and Aragorn gives the hero his most definite romance characteristics. The relationship fits into the medieval romance tradition where the knight has "to endure hardships and perform great deeds for
2600-610: Is razed by the forces of Mordor . Games Workshop produced a supplement in 2004 for The Lord of the Rings Strategy Battle Game entitled The Scouring of the Shire . This supplement contained rules for a large number of miniatures that depicted the Shire after the War of the Ring had concluded. Lobelia Sackville-Baggins The roles of women in The Lord of the Rings have often been assessed as insignificant, or important only in relation to male characters in
2704-425: Is reimagined by female fans , somehow keeping up with the "daunting" competition "from the regal Galadriel and courageous Eowyn to the exotic Arwen and commanding Melian ", in response to the character's "incomplete literary portrait" by Tolkien. She becomes in their fan fiction variously "the paragon of the hearth, the iconoclast of the bedroom, or the agent of the supernatural", reflecting "contemporary taste for
2808-527: Is swiftly gainsaid: "Slender and tall she was ... but strong she seemed and stern as steel, a daughter of kings." Éowyn's second mask is the appearance of a male Rider of Rohan , "Dernhelm", as, against orders, she rides to battle. In Old English dern means "secret, concealed", while helm is "helmet", a covering for the head. Thum comments that this unconventional mask conveys Éowyn's rebellious nature far more powerfully than would any overt account of her thinking. Jessica Yates wrote that Éowyn meets all
2912-478: The Chicago Tribune , stated that all the races from Hobbits to Elves , Dwarves to Wizards , get their due in the novel, but "Women, on the other hand, do not." In their view, "Tolkien didn't think much about the female sex. Yes, he was happily married, and yes, he did have a daughter. But his wife, Edith Mary, and daughter, Priscilla, seemed to have practically no influence on his writing." They quoted
3016-449: The J.R.R. Tolkien Encyclopedia , Katherine Hasser observed a lack of role-separation between male and female Shire-folk, as several men perform domestic duties such as cooking, cleaning, arranging parties, purchasing and wrapping gifts; Bilbo in particular adopts and nurtures the young Frodo by himself. Leslie A. Donovan writes that because there are rather few women in the book, feminist commentators such as Lisa Hopkins have argued that
3120-463: The Arthurian Lady of Shalott . Both scholars note however that whereas Ayesha overreaches her power and perishes on re-entering the immortal flame, Galadriel understands that she cannot wield the One Ring, though Frodo offers it to her freely; she helps the quest to destroy it, and accepts the diminution of her power and the fading of her realm that result. Schroeder observes that where Ayesha
3224-735: The Edain who did not reach Beleriand in the First Age, remaining east of the mountains in Eriador ; or they came from the same stock as the Dunlendings . The name Bree means "hill"; Tolkien justified the name by arranging the village and the surrounding Bree-land around a large hill, named Bree-hill. The name of the village Brill , in Buckinghamshire , a place that Tolkien often visited, and which inspired him to create Bree, has
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3328-612: The Phial of Galadriel , which by her power contains the captured light of Eärendil 's star that shines in the darkness and is capable of blinding and warding off the threat of Shelob, an embodiment of darkness who is forever opposed to the light of the Elves. Galadriel's gifts, too, are Homeric, including cloaks, food, and wisdom as well as light, just like those of Circe and Calypso. The scholar of English literature Maureen Thum describes Galadriel's masked power. She appears conventionally as
3432-710: The numinous intensity which radiates from the adored, benevolent, intimately present or achingly distant, feminine figures of his work", naming Galadriel, Arwen, Goldberry and the remote Varda/ Elbereth . He adds that the differing interests of Tolkien and his wife Edith may be "dimly discernible" in the estrangement of the Ents and the Entwives, while their long-delayed romance is evident in Elrond (as Father Francis Xavier, Tolkien's guardian), who forbids Aragorn to marry Arwen unless he becomes king of Gondor and Arnor. He notes that
3536-409: The socially-aspiring Sackville-Bagginses have attempted to "Frenchify" their family name, Sac[k]-ville meaning "Bag Town", as a mark of their bourgeois status. Fontenot drew attention to Lobelia's substantial character development in spite of her minor importance: she contrasted her initially unsympathetic characterisation to her courageous defiance against Sharkey 's thugs during The Scouring of
3640-658: The Dark Lord's gaze. Wayne G. Hammond and Christina Scull observe that "Adamant" means both a type of hard stone, and "stubbornly resolute", a description that well suits the quality of Galadriel's resistance to Sauron . Scholars including Marjorie Burns and Sharin Schroeder have compared and contrasted Galadriel with Ayesha, the powerful and beautiful eponymous heroine of Rider Haggard 's 1887 lost world adventure fantasy She: A History of Adventure . Burns points out numerous similarities between Galadriel, Ayesha, and
3744-591: The Dwarves. To resolve this linguistic puzzle, he created the fiction that the languages of parts of Middle-earth were "translated" into different European languages, inventing the language of the Riders of Rohan , Rohirric , to be "translated" again as the Mercian dialect of Old English which he knew well. This set up a relationship something like ancestry between Rohan and the Shire. The Shire had little in
3848-649: The English countryside . The Shire was fully inland; most hobbits feared the Sea . The Shire measured 40 leagues (193 km, 120 miles) east to west and 50 leagues (241 km, 150 miles) from north to south, with an area of some 18,000 square miles (47,000 km ): roughly that of the English Midlands . The main and oldest part of the Shire was bordered to the east by the Brandywine River, on
3952-824: The Eye of Sauron when Frodo puts on the Ring. In Ralph Bakshi 's animated 1978 adaptation of The Lord of the Rings , Alan Tilvern voiced Bakshi's Butterbur (as "Innkeeper"); David Weatherley played Butterbur in Jackson's epic, while James Grout played him in BBC Radio 's 1981 serialization of The Lord of the Rings . In the 1991 low-budget Russian adaptation of The Fellowship of the Ring , Khraniteli , Butterbur appears as "Lavr Narkiss", played by Nikolay Burov. In Yle's 1993 television miniseries Hobitit , Butterbur ("Viljami Voivalvatti" in Finnish, meaning "William Butter")
4056-524: The Fell Winter of S.R. 1311–12, white wolves from Forodwaith invaded the Shire across the frozen Brandywine river. The protagonists of The Hobbit and Lord of the Rings , Bilbo and Frodo Baggins, lived at Bag End , a luxurious smial or hobbit-burrow, dug into The Hill on the north side of the town of Hobbiton in the Westfarthing. It was the most comfortable hobbit-dwelling in
4160-698: The Inklings . Among Tolkien's influences , he stated that he enjoyed reading boys' adventure stories , such as those by H. Rider Haggard and John Buchan . Tolkien stated in an interview that Haggard's novel She was his favourite. The scholar of English literature Dale Nelson notes that Tolkien "was evidently spontaneously moved by mythopoeic and straightforward adventure romance" as in Haggard's books. On Buchan's influence, Nelson writes that Greenmantle tells "of desperate chances and plentiful good luck, of cross-country pursuit and massive battles ... [and]
4264-541: The Kings' Reckoning, but maintained their old names of the months. In the "King's Reckoning", the year began on the winter solstice . After migrating further to the Shire, the hobbits created the "Shire Reckoning", in which Year 1 corresponded to the foundation of the Shire in the year 1601 of the Third Age by Marcho and Blanco. The Shire's calendar year has 12 months, each of 30 days. Five non-month days are added to create
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4368-578: The Rings , J. R. R. Tolkien , was orphaned as a boy, his father dying in South Africa and his mother in England a few years later. He was brought up by his guardian, a Catholic priest , Father Francis Xavier Morgan , and educated at boys' grammar schools and then Exeter College, Oxford , which at that time had only male students. He joined the British Army 's Lancashire Fusiliers and saw
4472-579: The Shire armed with only an umbrella, and her generosity in helping displaced Shire-folk. Fontenot stated that Lobelia was "a compelling character in her own right", an "unexpected hero" whose story serves as a reminder that even the most irritable or contemptuous individuals may have redeeming qualities. Ioreth is a talkative wise-woman who works as a healer at the Houses of Healing in Minas Tirith . The Wizard Gandalf learns from her that "the hands of
4576-437: The Shire is based partly on Tolkien's childhood at Sarehole , partly on English village life in general with, in Tolkien's words, "gardens, trees, and unmechanized farmland". The Shire's capital, Michel Delving, embodies a philological pun : the name sounds much like that of an English country town , but means "Much Digging" of hobbit-holes, from Old English micel , "great" and delfan , "to dig". The industrialization of
4680-467: The Shire was based on Tolkien's childhood experience of the blighting of the Worcestershire countryside by the spread of heavy industry as the city of Birmingham grew. " The Scouring of the Shire ", involving a rebellion of the hobbits and the restoration of the pre-industrial Shire, can be read as containing an element of wish-fulfilment on his part, complete with Merry's magic horn to rouse
4784-511: The Shire was taken over by Saruman through his underling Lotho Sackville-Baggins. They ran the Shire in a parody of a modern state, complete with armed ruffians, destruction of trees and handsome old buildings, and ugly industrialisation. The Shire was liberated with the help of Frodo and his companions on their return at the Battle of Bywater (the final battle of the War of the Ring ). The trees of
4888-618: The Shire were restored with soil from Galadriel 's garden in Lothlórien (a gift to Sam). The year S.R. 1420 was considered by the inhabitants of the Shire to be the most productive and prosperous year in their history. The hobbits of the Shire spoke Middle-earth's Westron or Common Speech . Tolkien however rendered their language as modern English in The Hobbit and in Lord of the Rings , just as he had used Old Norse names for
4992-531: The Shire." It was bounded to the east by the Old Forest , separated by a tall thick hedge called the High Hay. It included Crickhollow, which serves as one of Frodo's five Homely Houses . The Westmarch or West Marches was given to the Shire by King Elessar after the War of the Ring. To the east of the Shire was the isolated village of Bree , unique in having hobbits and men living side-by-side. It
5096-474: The absence of women in battle, Éowyn excepted, and among the nine members of the Fellowship of the Ring , meant that female power and presence are not important in the novel. On the contrary, she wrote, the women embody Tolkien's critique of the conventional view of power, and illustrate his Christian view that selfless love is stronger than selfish pride and any attempt to dominate by force. Liebiger noted that Tolkien's attitude towards destructive masculine power
5200-566: The action in The Lord of the Rings is by male characters, and the nine-person Fellowship of the Ring is entirely male. On the other hand, commentators have noted that the Elf -queen Galadriel is powerful and wise; Éowyn, noblewoman of Rohan , is extraordinarily courageous, killing the leader of the Nazgûl ; the Elf Arwen, who chooses mortality to be with Aragorn , the man she loves, is central to
5304-496: The ancestral Took dwelling of Great Smials, the village of Tuckborough, and the area of The Tookland . He held the largely ceremonial office of Thain of the Shire. Tolkien devised the "Shire calendar" or "Shire Reckoning" supposedly used by the Shire's hobbits on Bede 's medieval calendar. In his fiction, it was created in Rhovanion hundreds of years before the Shire was founded. When hobbits migrated into Eriador, they took up
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#17327975476305408-452: The area was returned to its natural state, but even without the set from the movie the area became a prime tourist location . Because of bad weather, 18 of 37 hobbit-holes could not immediately be bulldozed; before work could restart, they were attracting over 12,000 tourists per year to Ian Alexander's farm, where Hobbiton and Bag End had been situated. Jackson's Bree is constantly unpleasant and threatening, complete with special effects and
5512-467: The book's theme of death and immortality ; and that other female figures like the monstrous spider Shelob and the wise-woman of Gondor, Ioreth, play important roles in the narrative. Tolkien stated that the Hobbit woman Rosie Cotton is "absolutely essential" to understanding the hero Sam 's character, and the relation of ordinary life to heroism. The author of the bestselling fantasy novel The Lord of
5616-667: The borders and kept out intruders. Generally the only strangers entering the Shire were Dwarves travelling on the Great Road from their mines in the Blue Mountains , and occasional Elves on their way to the Grey Havens. In S.R. 1147 the hobbits defeated an invasion of Orcs at the Battle of Greenfields. In S.R. 1158–60, thousands of hobbits perished in the Long Winter and the famine that followed. In
5720-513: The children, she noted, and Tolkien expected as much of his wife Edith, even though she was a skilful pianist. Secondly, his environment was overwhelmingly male, and other Inklings, especially Lewis, believed that "full intimacy with another man was impossible unless women were totally excluded" from their intellectual and artistic discussions; Łaszkiewicz notes that Edith resented the Inklings meetings. The scholar of humanities Brian Rosebury wrote that Tolkien gave his mother's memory "something of
5824-502: The delayed marriage of the servant-hobbit Samwise "Sam" Gamgee and Rosie Cotton is a homelier echo of the theme. The female hobbit characters in The Lord of the Rings all have limited roles. They include Rosie Cotton, Sam's fiancé; Rosie's mother Mrs Cotton; Mrs Maggot, the wife of Farmer Maggot who assisted Frodo's departure from The Shire ; and Lobelia Sackville-Baggins, the wife of Bilbo Baggins 's cousin, who covets his Bag End residence and his collection of silver spoons. In
5928-516: The distant past changes into the present-day Earth. The Elf-queen Galadriel, Lady of Lothlórien , is the most powerful female character in Middle-earth during the Third Age. Tolkien portrays her as all-seeing, able to read people's thoughts. She uses this power to test the loyalty of each of the Fellowship in turn; David Craig, writing in Mallorn , comments that Tolkien would not have had
6032-411: The end of The Hobbit , Bilbo returns to the Shire, only to find out that he has been declared "missing and presumed dead" and that his hobbit-hole and all its contents are up for auction. (He reclaims them, much to the spite of his cousins Otho and Lobelia Sackville-Baggins .) The main action in The Lord of the Rings returns to the Shire near the end of the book, in " The Scouring of the Shire ", when
6136-447: The few prominent women in the narrative are in fact extremely powerful in their own right. The theologian Ralph Wood replied that Galadriel , Éowyn, and Arwen are far from being "plaster figures": Galadriel is powerful, wise and "terrible in her beauty"; Éowyn has "extraordinary courage and valor"; and Arwen gives up her Elvish immortality to marry Aragorn. Further, Wood argued, Tolkien insisted that everyone, man and woman alike, faces
6240-464: The film uses material on Arwen from Appendix 5, while for Éowyn, Shippey states, some of Gandalf's dialogue is given to Grima Wormtongue so that Éowyn can appear directly. The Tolkien scholar Janet Brennan Croft writes that in the book, Arwen is "never a temptress" or obstacle, she is "an inspiration and a source of strength", while when Éowyn presents a temptation, "his unquestioned commitment to and faith in his relationship with Arwen helps him pass
6344-577: The giant and evil spider Shelob , with the struggle between the good and the monstrous female characters in Homer 's Odyssey . Like Galadriel, Circe and Calypso are rulers of their own secluded magical realms, and both offer help and advice to the protagonist. They help Odysseus to avoid destruction by the female monsters, the Sirens who would lure his ship on to the rocks, and Scylla and Charybdis who would smash or drown his ship; Galadriel gives Frodo
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#17327975476306448-460: The heroism of a handful of men". In On Fairy Stories , Tolkien wrote that " Treasure Island left me cool. Red Indians were better: there were bows and arrows ..., and strange languages, and glimpses of an archaic way of life, and, above all, forests in such stories. But the land of Merlin and Arthur was better than these, and best of all the nameless North of Sigurd and the Volsungs, and
6552-534: The home leads her to fulfil the prophecy about the leader of the Ringwraiths, the Witch-King of Angmar, that "not by the hand of man will [he] fall". Melissa Hatcher wrote in Mythlore that The Lord of the Rings has as a central theme the way that "the littlest person, a hobbit, overcom[es] the tides of war": that the real power is that of healing, protecting, and preserving. She noted that Éowyn tries
6656-455: The homebound hobbits find the area under the control of Saruman 's ruffians, and set things to rights. Tolkien based the Shire's landscapes, climate, flora, fauna, and placenames on Worcestershire , a rural county in England where he lived. In Peter Jackson 's films of both The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings , the Shire was represented by countryside and constructed hobbit-holes on
6760-457: The horror of trench warfare , with life as an officer made more bearable by the support of a male batman or servant. After the war he became a professor of English Language at the University of Leeds , and then at the University of Oxford , where he taught at Pembroke College . At Oxford, he created an all-male literary group with another Oxford professor of English, C. S. Lewis , called
6864-411: The impression of a love triangle . He commented that to do that, "pretty drastic" changes were required, not least because Tolkien has Éowyn only speak 42 words, of which just 5 are to Aragorn; whereas in the film, Éowyn appears in 14 out of 62 scenes. Similarly, he notes, Arwen does not speak at all in Tolkien's The Two Towers , whereas she features "prominently" in 3 scenes in the film. To achieve this,
6968-451: The infant Aragorn safe. Elgarain is mortally wounded fighting off the orcs from Gilraen's hut. Shippey comments that the leading women may have seemed insufficiently prominent to some of those responsible for marketing Peter Jackson 's The Lord of the Rings film trilogy . He noted that a publicity shot for The Two Towers depicted Viggo Mortensen as Aragorn with upheld sword in the centre, with Arwen and Éowyn on either side to give
7072-556: The infant Jesus; Naaman 's Israelite slave girl, who tells her mistress that the prophet Elisha can heal; and the Samaritan woman at the well , who says "Can this be the Christ?" Rutledge ascribes a second role to Ioreth when the war is over: she shows, through her amusingly depicted ordinariness, how current events turn first into lore, stories that get repeated and shared, and eventually into epic, part of Tolkien's construction of
7176-457: The inhabitants to action. The Shire makes an appearance in both the 1977 The Hobbit and the 1978 The Lord of the Rings animated films. In Peter Jackson 's The Lord of the Rings motion picture trilogy , the Shire appeared in both The Fellowship of the Ring and The Return of the King . The Shire scenes were shot at a location near Matamata, New Zealand . Following the shooting,
7280-633: The king are the hands of a healer", which inspires him to persuade Aragorn to tend to the wounded survivors of the Battle of the Pelennor Fields , in the process defining Aragorn's power and publicly proving his birthright as the rightful claimant to the kingdom's vacant throne. Rutledge compared Ioreth's announcing role to three Biblical women: Anna the Prophetess who is "looking for the redemption of Jerusalem", and who lets Jerusalem know about
7384-511: The love of a lady". She noted that Tolkien "buries [this] ... in his appendixes" for the reader to find "if he looks". Other than that, she wrote, there are just "a few scattered references in the story proper" to show that they are romantic lovers, but even those mostly do not so much as mention Arwen's name. For example, when Galadriel gives gifts to each of the Fellowship as they leave Lothlórien, she asks Aragorn what he would like. He replies "Lady, you know all my desire, and long held in keeping
7488-415: The noble characters such as Aragorn that Sam encounters. Ioreth's transformation of the heroic events of the War of the Ring into stories she can tell to her country relative shows how actual events turn first into shared stories and then into epic. This allows the reader to see the narrative in The Lord of the Rings as the result of the inevitable changes wrought by the passage of time as Middle-earth in
7592-703: The north by uplands rising to the Hills of Evendim , on the west by the Far Downs, and on the south by marshland. It expanded to the east into Buckland between the Brandywine and the Old Forest , and (much later) to the west into the Westmarch between the Far Downs and the Tower Hills. The Shire was subdivided into four Farthings ("fourth-ings", "quarterings"), as Iceland once was ; similarly, Yorkshire
7696-502: The only treasure [Arwen, Galadriel's granddaughter] that I seek. Yet it is not yours to give me, even if you would...." The fantasy and science fiction author Marion Zimmer Bradley wrote that the Hobbit Merry sees why Éowyn is part of the story while Arwen is not, "for Éowyn, too, achieves the passing of the 'Heroic Age ' " when girls rebel against being women and "dream of male deeds". The relationship between Aragorn and Arwen
7800-660: The original map by Christopher Tolkien that are missing from the game are some parts of the West Farthing and the majority of the South Farthing. A portion of the North Farthing also falls within the in-game region of Evendim for game play purposes. In the 2009 action game The Lord of the Rings: Conquest , the Shire appears as one of the game's battlegrounds during the evil campaign, where it
7904-457: The other Hobbits are in Ioreth's words "princes of great fame"; Frodo is already a legend, though his personal reality is very different. The reader is back at the level of ordinary folk, and Ioreth is part of a narrative that illuminates how stories develop. Gilraen , Aragorn's mother, is briefly mentioned by Tolkien, speaking a sad linnod of her loss of hope for herself, though she has given
8008-451: The path of the warrior and then becomes a healer, and that some academics have interpreted her choice as weak submission. Hatcher stated that instead, Éowyn is following Tolkien's "highest ideal: a fierce commitment to peace", embodying the "full-blooded subjectivity" that Tolkien believed necessary for peace. She described Éowyn as "a complete individual who fulfills Tolkien's theme of peace, preservation, and cultural memory." Hatcher cited
8112-499: The philosopher Gregory Bassham's list of the six essential ingredients of happiness in Middle-earth, namely "delight in simple things, making light of one's troubles, getting personal, cultivating good character, cherishing and creating beauty, and rediscovering wonder", and stated that these are all seen in Éowyn and the Hobbit Sam, the gardener who inherits Frodo's Bag End and restores the Shire , "but in very few others". Arwen
8216-705: The place where three counties once met. Pippin was born in Whitwell in the Tookland. Within the Farthings there are unofficial clan homelands: the Tooks nearly all live in or near Tuckborough in Tookland's Green Hill Country. Buckland, also known as the "East Marches", was just to the east of the Shire across the Brandywine River. Named for the Brandybuck family, it was settled "long ago" as "a sort of colony of
8320-423: The prince of all dragons. Such lands were pre-eminently desirable." As seen in a letter to his son Michael Tolkien , he held conservative views about women, stating that men were active in their professions while women were inclined to domestic life. While defending the role of women in The Lord of the Rings , the scholar of children's literature Melissa Hatcher wrote that "Tolkien himself, in reality, probably
8424-591: The remote past, extending to Worcestershire (where Tolkien grew up), forming in Shippey's words a "cultural unit with deep roots in history". The name of the Northamptonshire village of Farthinghoe triggered the idea of dividing the Shire into Farthings. Tolkien said that pipe-weed "flourishes only in warm sheltered places like Longbottom;" in the seventeenth century, the Evesham area of Worcestershire
8528-459: The requirements for a classic woman warrior : a strong identity; skill in fighting; weapons and armour; a horse; special powers, seen when she turns the Ringwraith's prophecy of doom back onto him; and being modest and chaste. Leibiger added that Éowyn is the only strong human female in The Lord of the Rings (Galadriel and Arwen being Elves), noting that her rejection of the woman's place in
8632-444: The same kinds of temptation, hope, and desire. The scholar of English literature Nancy Enright stated that the few female characters in The Lord of the Rings are extremely important in defining power, which she suggests is a central theme of the novel. She commented that even the apparently heroic male figures such as Aragorn and Faramir "use traditional masculine power in a manner tempered with an awareness of its limitations and
8736-535: The same meaning: Brill is a modern contraction of Breʒ-hyll . Both syllables are words for "hill" – the first is Celtic and the second Old English . The Shire was first settled by hobbits in the year 1601 of the Third Age (Year 1 in Shire Reckoning); they were led by the brothers Marcho and Blanco. The hobbits from the vale of Anduin had migrated west over the perilous Misty Mountains , living in
8840-415: The same term [REDACTED] This disambiguation page lists articles associated with the title The Water . If an internal link led you here, you may wish to change the link to point directly to the intended article. Retrieved from " https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=The_Water&oldid=1253856860 " Category : Disambiguation pages Hidden categories: Short description
8944-472: The same weekday designation from year to year, instead of changing as in the Gregorian calendar . For the names of the months, Tolkien reconstructed Anglo-Saxon names , his take on what the English would be if it had not adopted Latin names for the months such as January and March. In The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings , the names of months and week-days are given in modern equivalents, so Afteryule
9048-421: The same, they provided the " depth ", the feeling in the reader's mind that this was a real and complex place, a quality that Tolkien believed essential to a successful fantasy. In Tolkien's fiction, the Shire is described as a small but beautiful, idyllic and fruitful land, beloved by its hobbit inhabitants. They had agriculture but were not industrialized. The landscape included downland and woods like
9152-587: The scarce women are strong, authoritative, and disproportionately important to the narrative. Donovan calls this "the Valkyrie reflex", and argues against it, not least with the hobbit women. Lobelia "may be valkyrie-like, but her greediness and covetousness early in the texts are not common valkyrie traits", while "Rosie Cotton's teasing of Sam" is at best "vaguely reminiscent" of a valkyrie inciter, but "her wholesome ordinariness has no relationship to Odin's battle goddesses". Ann Basso wrote in Mythlore that all
9256-421: The scholar of medieval and Old English literature , Linda Voigts, as defending Tolkien, pointing out that, brought up in a male world and living among male scholars at a time when "Oxford was a boys' club", he could not have been expected to be a modern feminist. Butler and Eberhard wrote that the women in the novel see little action, giving the example of Arwen . In their opinion, a strong-willed woman, Éowyn ,
9360-454: The story's three powerful women, their visual importance matching their "unusually high significance in a novel ... dominated ... by men". Thum writes that Jackson "stresses what Tolkien implies" by portraying Éowyn's feelings for Aragorn and her skill in battle. She finds the invented scenes for Arwen appropriate in reflecting Arwen's significance. She considers that Jackson has not changed Tolkien's portrait of Galadriel, other than to emphasise
9464-489: The test". In contrast, she writes, Jackson's Aragorn "reacts to both women ... as at least distractions if not outright temptresses". She notes that in the film, Aragorn tries to reject Arwen's pendant, though she says it is hers to give, and he is "even rather harsh towards Éowyn's infatuation", where Tolkien has him speaking "with great delicacy of care for her feelings". The scholar of literature Maureen Thum comments more positively that Jackson presents "a vivid picture" of
9568-488: The time of The Lord of the Rings , there were many more Bounders than usual, one of the few signs for the hobbits of that troubled time. The heads of major families exerted authority over their own areas. The Master of Buckland, hereditary head of the Brandybuck clan, ruled Buckland and had some authority over the Marish, just across the Brandywine River. Similarly, the head of the Took clan, often called "The Took", ruled
9672-463: The town; there were smaller burrows further down The Hill. In S.R. 1341 Bilbo Baggins left the Shire on the quest recounted in The Hobbit . He returned the following year, secretly bearing a magic ring. This turned out to be the One Ring . The Shire was invaded by four Ringwraiths in search of the Ring. While Frodo , Sam , Merry , and Pippin were away on the quest to destroy the Ring,
9776-516: The way of government. The Mayor of the Shire's capital, Michel Delving, was the chief official and was treated in practice as the Mayor of the Shire. There was a Message Service for post, and the 12 " Shirriffs " (three for each Farthing) of the Watch for police; their chief duties were rounding up stray livestock. These were supplemented by a varying number of "Bounders", an unofficial border force. At
9880-628: The wilds of Eriador before moving to the Shire. After the fall of Arnor, the Shire remained a self-governing realm; the Shire-folk chose a Thain to hold the king's powers. The first Thains were the heads of the Oldbuck clan. When the Oldbucks settled Buckland, the position of Thain was peacefully transferred to the Took clan. The Shire was covertly protected by Rangers of the North , who watched
9984-834: The women altogether, writes that Hobbit women like Rosie Cotton and Lobelia Sackville-Baggins serve "only as housewives or shrews", Dwarf women are hardly feminine, the Entwives are lost, and Goldberry "is a mystical washer-woman". The Tolkien scholars Carol Leibiger, in the J.R.R. Tolkien Encyclopedia , and separately Maureen Thum, replied that Stimpson's charge was definitely disproven by Tolkien's vigorous characterisation of Éowyn (and in The Silmarillion by numerous strong female characters such as Lúthien ). Liebiger stated that while Tolkien's female characters appear like "chaste medieval ladies of courtly romance ", doing little but encouraging their menfolk to be heroic,
10088-512: The women in The Lord of the Rings are either noble or ethereal like Éowyn and Galadriel, or simple rustics like Rosie, with one exception: Goldberry , the River-woman's daughter, wife of Tom Bombadil , who appears as a biblical Eve figure to Galadriel's Mary . In her view, the "roster of women" are "rich and diverse [characters], well drawn, and worthy of respect". Hasser considered the most significant point about Goldberry's depiction as
10192-448: The world her son Aragorn, who is also named Estel , "Hope". Kate Madison 's 2009 fan film Born of Hope grows from this small hint. The film imagines a time in the life of Aragorn's parents, Gilraen and Arathorn. Madison plays a non-canonical character, Elgarain, who has a passion for her friend-in-arms Arathorn, which she keeps hidden as he is already with Gilraen. Orcs attack the village as Arathorn and Gilraen are deciding how to keep
10296-407: Was created when the teenaged Priscilla asked her father for a female character. The critics Candice Fredrick and Sam McBride, referencing the all-male Inklings group, wrote that "Middle-earth is very Inkling-like, in that while women exist in the world, they need not be given significant attention and can, if one is lucky, simply be avoided altogether." Melissa McCrory Hatcher, while not discounting
10400-605: Was historically divided into three " ridings ". The Three-Farthing Stone marked the approximate centre of the Shire. It was inspired by the Four Shire Stone near Moreton-in-Marsh , where once four counties met, but since 1931 only three do. There are several Three Shire Stones in England, such as in the Lake District , and formerly some Three Shires Oaks, such as at Whitwell in Derbyshire , each marking
10504-598: Was played by Mikko Kivinen. Bree and Bree-land can be explored in the PC game The Lord of the Rings Online . Jackson revisited the Shire for his films The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey and The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies . The Shire scenes were shot at the same location. In the 2006 real-time strategy game The Lord of the Rings: The Battle for Middle Earth II , the Shire appears as both
10608-467: Was served by an inn named The Prancing Pony , noted for its fine beer which was sampled by hobbits, men, and the wizard Gandalf . Many inhabitants of Bree, including the inn's landlord Barliman Butterbur, had surnames taken from plants. Tolkien described the butterbur as "a fat thick plant", evidently chosen as appropriate for a fat man. Tolkien suggested two different origins for the people of Bree: either it had been founded and populated by men of
10712-511: Was the stodgy sexist Oxford professor that feminist scholars paint him out to be". The Lord of the Rings has repeatedly been discussed as being a story about men for boys, with no significant women characters; there are 11 women in the work, some of them mentioned only briefly. Catherine Stimpson , a scholar of English and feminism, wrote that Tolkien's women were "hackneyed ... stereotypes ... either beautiful and distant, simply distant, or simply simple". Robert Butler and John Eberhard, in
10816-630: Was well known for its tobacco. Tolkien made the Shire feel homely and English in a variety of ways, from names such as Bagshot Row and the Mill to country pubs with familiar names such as "The Green Dragon" in Bywater, "The Ivy Bush" near Hobbiton on the Bywater Road, and "The Golden Perch" in Stock , famous for its fine beer. Michael Stanton comments in the J.R.R. Tolkien Encyclopedia that
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