>Yvonne Rowse wrote:
>
>> I love the shire, i love the hobbits, particularly Sam, although I
>> wish he were less subserviant ( was *he* gay do you think?), I like
>> Faramir but the battles and high glory leave me bored to tears.
>
>Excuse me, but Samwise was not gay...he does have a family back in the Shire
>(only hobbit I can think of who's married). And I wouldn't go so far to call
>him subservient...yes, he had a great loyalty to both Bilbo and Frodo, but
>that's because they let him work at what he loved: the garden.
>
>- Geoffrey
>------------------------------
Actually Sam isn't yet married when he leaves home to go on the quest. He
does leave behind a serious girlfriend, Rose Cotton. After the hobbits get
home a year later, Sam talks to Rosie about tying the knot. I have to
paraphrase this from memory since my copy of LOTR have long gone missing --
and I don't want to look, because I know that were I to try to reread it now
(as a 39-year-old feminist woman), my remembered youthful pleasure in LOTR
would probably evaporate. No, sometimes you can't go home again.
Anyway, Sam brings up the topic of marriage, and Rosie makes a comment to
the effect that it's about time, because "after all you've gone off and
wasted a whole year already." "Wasted? I wouldn't call it that", says Sam
indignantly. Recalling that little scene now, I have quite a different
reaction to Rosie's irreverent comment than I originally did -- and it's
surely not the reaction Tolkien intended. :-)
Since we're already off-topic and on-Tolkien: Any LOTR fans out there should
definitely get hold of a copy of the BBC's 13-hour dramatization of LOTR,
produced ca. 1981. It's very nearly all that one could (but dared not)
hope for in a radio dramatization. The talents of Ian Holm as Frodo are
especially moving and memorable.
-- Susan A.
Susan Armstrong * Vancouver, Canada * anariska@mortimer.com
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Thu May 25 2000 - 19:06:53 PDT