37 replies to this topic

[MattTheLegoman]

NO!

 

At least from what I have found.

 

Here is my essay on the subject, feel free to discuss on the topic. I am looking for ideas. Note that this essay is not directed against anybody here, it has surfaced at a different location not connected to The Third Age forums or EA's The Battle for Middle-earth series. And you should be able to tell it reflects my more serious side, given that I tend towards using eloquent and then sometimes blunt language. (A quirk that is not useful at my job.)

 

 

ESSAY

Quotes from Letter 43

This is a fallen world, the dislocation of sex-instinct is one of the chief symptoms of the Fall. The world has been 'going to the bad' all down the ages.

Tolkien acknowledges to his son, that pornography is part of a "fallen world". In Middle-earth the people of Rohan are not under the shadow, they live in the broken world, but they are part of the Free Peoples.

 

Letter 43 continued.

The devil is endlessly ingenious, and sex is his favourite subject. He. is as good every bit at catching you through generous romantic or tender motives, or through baser or more animal ones.

This view of Tolkien is possibly why he refrained from including sex in his stories and worlds. He had a motive to not write about it, MCME should not make references to it.

 

Tolkien on love in the epics that he based his stories on. Letter 43 continued.

(Tradition) idealises 'love' - and as far as it goes can be very good, since it takes in far more than physical pleasure, and enjoins if not purity, at least fidelity, and so self-denial, 'service', courtesy, honour, and courage.

 

 

 

 

Quote from Letter 244, Carpenter on marriage in The Lord of the Rings

This tale does not deal with a period of 'Courtly Love' and its pretences; but with a culture more primitive (sc. less corrupt) and nobler.

Look at the love-stories of Arwen and Aragorn, Luthien and Beren, Eowyn and Faramir, they are almost a model of perfect engagement and then marriage. However, in The Fall of Arthur, there is the love-story of Guinevere and Arthur, a 'love-quadrilateral', but it ends in disaster. The Legend of Sigurd and Gudrun is also another example of how disastrous for mortals, love can be if it is misused. Lust is evil. The good examples of love, who are all part of the Free Peoples, have engagement without lust. There engagement was something beautiful, without rigmarole it's Christian (Tolkien's view of the religion) and pure.

 

 

 

Don't let Tolkien tell you how to live your life, however his intentions are clear on the subject of whether or not there should be pornography or references to pornography in Middle-earth.

[Radspakr Wolfbane]

Yes there is and it's called the Lay of Luthien.

[MattTheLegoman]

Wait, what? Why?

[OmegaBolt]

I'm not into LOTR, Tolkien or what-not so I'm probably missing some big things but some of those quotes read the opposite to me.

This is a fallen world, the dislocation of sex-instinct is one of the chief symptoms of the Fall. The world has been 'going to the bad' all down the ages.

Surely the 'dislocation of sex-instinct' means NOT to accept and embrace sex leads to 'the fall'. By becoming civilized and supressing instinct we infact make it more potently dangerous.

This tale does not deal with a period of 'Courtly Love' and its pretences; but with a culture more primitive (sc. less corrupt) and nobler.

Again, a culture more primitive is also nobler. Courtly love is a 'civilized' activity whereas baser cultures or creatures (and nobler) just get on with it without the romance.

It seems to me brothels would be a perfect cure for the ailments of civilized sexuality in LOTR, based on your quotes.

[MattTheLegoman]

Surely the 'dislocation of sex-instinct' means NOT to accept and embrace sex leads to 'the fall'. By becoming civilized and supressing instinct we infact make it more potently dangerous.

Tolkien means that civilisation was becoming more corrupt in their sexual acts. He would have believed that sex was only part of marriage. Sex outside of marriage would have been the dislocation. Of course you personally may not agree with that, but Tolkien means that the location for sex is marriage. (His views on this is in the letter to his son, who I think was ~20 at the time of writing.)
 

Again, a culture more primitive is also nobler. Courtly love is a 'civilized' activity whereas baser cultures or creatures (and nobler) just get on with it without the romance.

It seems to me brothels would be a perfect cure for the ailments of civilized sexuality in LOTR, based on your quotes.

Tolkien meant primitive as "less bad" because as he saw it, society was getting worse because it was becoming more sexually deviant, especially in what he saw in the 50s. (What on earth would Tolkien have thought of Sir Ian McKellan!)

My knowledge of whether or not prostitution is good for civilisation is rather limited. I would say that they are not good and that they destroy women. In war time, women are usually forcefully taken by soldiers and kept in makeshift brothels and raped. In society, prostitution is seen as a last resort (see Les Miserables) as the female is poor without anything to turn to.




Thanks for helping me consider what could be taken the opposite way, based on the conflicting ideas that people have.

P.S. Rad I finally get your joke. ha ha

Edited by MattTheLegoman, 29 January 2014 - 02:14 PM.

[Irenë Hawnetyne]

First off, what is the relevance of this? If you're going to write an essay on the existence of brothels in Edoras, it is somewhat paramount to the success of the essay that both 'brothels' and 'Edoras' appear therein. By that nature and the fact that there is no particular analysis, argument or lines by which you are directing your case, and I don't really get why this is of importance. Pretty much what I'm asking is this: by posting this, what do you hope to achieve?

[MattTheLegoman]

The purpose of this topic is to get some ideas and criticism for myself and provide some debate and chatter for Revora. So I thank you for picking up the misleading title.

The website that I am preparing this against has made multiple 'brothels' scattered around Middle-earth, not just Edoras. The reason why there should not be references to pornography in Middle-earth is really what my essay is about.

[Irenë Hawnetyne]

Let's be honest. Where there is wealth, not too far away is prostitution, and where there is poverty, odds are there's going to be rapes. I don't mean that in a rude way, but it happens to be the case frequently.

[Bashkuga]

Tolkien never described Middle-Earth as an ideal world, prostitution in Middle-Earth is as common as in our reality.

[MattTheLegoman]

Yet it is something Tolkien avoided and did not intend for the societies of Middle-earth not under the influence of Morgoth or Sauron. I am basing my idea on Tolkien's intentions. Hence there are none in Rohan, Gondor, the Shire and especially the elves. (See The peoples of Middle-earth for the customs of the elves.)

[Mathijs]

http://www.ansereg.c...BedsareGood.pdf

 

This might be of interest to you.

[Pasidon]

 

Here is my essay on the subject

EEhhhhhh.... there are probably better things to write an essay on.  But alright.  You went there and done that.

[MattTheLegoman]

Yes, thank you. I will have to include more about the Numenorean story in Tolkien's examples of why lust is evil. It is interesting, however, that in the text the writer places sex as a prerequisite of marriage instead of the other way round. They do have quite a bit of information about the elves that I have not completed studying.

I wonder when readers will erroneously believe that Tolkien meant for Frodo and Sam to be homosexual?

[Irenë Hawnetyne]

Frodo and Sam to be homosexual

 

It is a fandom. They have been shipped. This is a fact of life.

[OmegaBolt]

Since brothels wouldn't particularly effect the story of the LOTRs they may not have been mentioned, but does that really mean they were intentionally obliterated? Surely the scope of a fiction is that it is either mentioned explicitly or left to your own imagination, meaning no definite answer. This is like theology, rather uselessly arguing for all history about something which can never be proved or disproved because you're basing the argument on finite source material with no additional research possible.

[Pasidon]

Look... it's all made-up nonsense.  Fiction, as some call it.  Say whatever you want about this stuff.  That's pretty blasphemous to role-players and folks who are nuts about this stuff (90% of the people here), but in the end... doesn't have any significance to anything.  It's not like discovering if ancient Mongolia had brothels, or something actually significant to people's history.  It's just a piece of fiction.  If you read the books, and there's no mention to brothels, or pizza snakes, or rat pants... then those subjects themselves had no significance to the story being told and were left unmentioned. 

 

That being said... the book is an important World War II inspired novel and certain aspects can be important, being a popular cultural work.  But that's a different field than going into in-depth research for brothels.  No sir.

[Mathijs]

Don't forget, Tolkien wrote LotR and some of his other works as a supposed translation/interpretation of the Red Book of Westmarch, which is a second-hand account written by various authors (Bilbo, Frodo, etc). Within the canon, this account is by no means exhaustive (a surprisingly post-modern construction). LotR as it is written being a translation/interpretation of a fictional account from an era long forgotten, it is fair to assume that Tolkien's personal view of sex, prostitution etc informed his interpretation. One could go as far as to say that even if the fictional proto-text contained these subjects, Tolkien might have left them out. 

 

What I'm getting at is that Tolkien's preferred metanarrative regarding LotR sort of contradicts your argument, MtL. We do not know everything about Middle-earth, and the things we do know cannot be taken as 100% fact (according to the author). So we really don't know if Edoras had a whorehouse.

[Pasidon]

No, we don't know everything.  There might not even be procreation in Middle Earth.  Maybe people just turned into gelatinous ooze and divided into another human being.  No one knows.

[Mathijs]

No, we know that people procreated. Frodo, son of Drogo.

 

Also, Pas, I really don't care for your 'it's fiction so it's dumb to discuss it because it's not real' argument. Get over yourself.

[Bofur]

I always took Celebrian's "torment" by orcs to mean rape... If that's in any way connected to this stuff...