In the Shadow of the Status Quo--Fantasy literature and conservativism

[C.T. Phipps]

30 minutes ago, Ser Scot A Ellison said:

Sologdin,

Is the socialist problem with LOTR its reliance upon a heroic bourgeoisie?

Bilbo and Frodo are rich but Sam is the ultimate hero.

Also, in a society where royalty and aristocracy exist, it's weird to take umbrage with the fact untrained gentry are the heads. A major part of the Hobbit's "joke" is the fact Bilbo as landed Gentry is going on a quest more appropriate to his knightly ancestors (which as a Hobbit he only vaguely has).

[The Marquis de Leech]

1 hour ago, Ser Scot A Ellison said:

Sologdin,

Is the socialist problem with LOTR its reliance upon a heroic bourgeoisie?

Socialists celebrate the bourgeoisie over aristocrats. 1688/1789 is a necessary precondition for further social change.

In any case, William Morris was a major influence on Tolkien, despite their very different political leanings.

[The Marquis de Leech]

36 minutes ago, C.T. Phipps said:

Bilbo and Frodo are rich but Sam is the ultimate hero.

Also, in a society where royalty and aristocracy exist, it's weird to take umbrage with the fact untrained gentry are the heads. A major part of the Hobbit's "joke" is the fact Bilbo as landed Gentry is going on a quest more appropriate to his knightly ancestors (which as a Hobbit he only vaguely has).

Nitpick:

Bilbo and Frodo are comfortable middle-class, not landed gentry (they get their wealth from Bilbo's Took mother). All that talk of respectability is British code for "smug, comfortable bourgeoisie." Same with the Sackville-Bagginses, who could slot into an episode of Keeping Up Appearances (in an early draft, Otho Sackville-Baggins is explicitly a lawyer).

Merry and Pippin are the actual landed gentry - which is why the Tooks and Brandybucks have a reputation for being eccentric - the upper classes never worry about what other people think of them. Pippin is thus basically the Bertie Wooster of Middle-earth.

Sam is working class, of course. And winds up winning the mayoralty time after time.

[Andorion]

Given the nature of the Shire - a near-Utopian rural idyll with little to no government, I think a good case can be made tracing inspiration back to the more Utopic socialist modes of British political thought in the early 19th Century. 

[SeanF]

5 hours ago, Roose Boltons Pet Leech said:

Nitpick:

Bilbo and Frodo are comfortable middle-class, not landed gentry (they get their wealth from Bilbo's Took mother). All that talk of respectability is British code for "smug, comfortable bourgeoisie." Same with the Sackville-Bagginses, who could slot into an episode of Keeping Up Appearances (in an early draft, Otho Sackville-Baggins is explicitly a lawyer).

Merry and Pippin are the actual landed gentry - which is why the Tooks and Brandybucks have a reputation for being eccentric - the upper classes never worry about what other people think of them. Pippin is thus basically the Bertie Wooster of Middle-earth.

Sam is working class, of course. And winds up winning the mayoralty time after time.

 

6 hours ago, C.T. Phipps said:

Bilbo and Frodo are rich but Sam is the ultimate hero.

Also, in a society where royalty and aristocracy exist, it's weird to take umbrage with the fact untrained gentry are the heads. A major part of the Hobbit's "joke" is the fact Bilbo as landed Gentry is going on a quest more appropriate to his knightly ancestors (which as a Hobbit he only vaguely has).

I'd say Bilbo is right at the top of the middle class, on the fringe of the upper class (his mother is a Took) but not quite part of it.  Someone like David Cameron's father would be the equivalent, or Charles Ryder's family, from Brideshead Revisited.  He's well-off enough not to have to work for a living.

[SeanF]

15 hours ago, Werthead said:

 

The vitriol directed against Catelyn (and Egwene in WoT, for that matter) can be spectacular and when people try to justify it, the lengths they go to to avoid saying "I'm just a raging misogynsit asshat" can be spectacularly - or despair-inducingly - entertaining.

I don't think Catelyn is a character that it's very easy to warm to.  I don't think I could ever imagine myself going out for  drink, or sharing a joke with her.  But, I do think that in large measure that's due to her life going from bad to disastrous during the course of the series.  Without doubt, she's one of the most decent and compassionate POV characters.

One thing that came up during the discussions on this site is that some people who have had bad relations with step-parents see her as the archetypal evil step-mother, due to her difficult relationship with Jon.

[Ser Scot A Ellison]

I never liked the way Catelyn treated Jon but I've never thought that made her "evil".

[TrackerNeil]

2 hours ago, SeanF said:

I'd say Bilbo is right at the top of the middle class, on the fringe of the upper class (his mother is a Took) but not quite part of it.  Someone like David Cameron's father would be the equivalent, or Charles Ryder's family, from Brideshead Revisited.  He's well-off enough not to have to work for a living.

I agree, and in fact I'd argue that anyone who employs a full-time gardener is upper class. Bilbo inherited a great deal of money from his mother and supplemented that with a share of Smaug's hoard. That's wealthy by any but the nitpickiest standard.

[Ser Scot A Ellison]

12 minutes ago, TrackerNeil said:

I agree, and in fact I'd argue that anyone who employs a full-time gardener is upper class. Bilbo inherited a great deal of money from his mother and supplemented that with a share of Smaug's hoard. That's wealthy by any but the nitpickiest standard.

I don't believe merely "being wealthy" makes someone "upper class/aristocratic" in the UK.

[SeanF]

17 minutes ago, Ser Scot A Ellison said:

I don't believe merely "being wealthy" makes someone "upper class/aristocratic" in the UK.

Yes, it's one of those strange nuances of the British class system. 

29 minutes ago, TrackerNeil said:

I agree, and in fact I'd argue that anyone who employs a full-time gardener is upper class. Bilbo inherited a great deal of money from his mother and supplemented that with a share of Smaug's hoard. That's wealthy by any but the nitpickiest standard.

Being upper class in the UK (especially if we view the Shire as late 19th century rural Warwickshire) would be linked to the ownership of a substantial landholding which had been in the family for several generations.

[The Marquis de Leech]

8 minutes ago, SeanF said:

Being upper class in the UK (especially if we view the Shire as late 19th century rural Warwickshire) would be linked to the ownership of a substantial landholding which had been in the family for several generations.

Yep. Plus there's often a title involved. Being the Baggins of Bag End isn't quite the same as being the Master of Buckland or the Thain of the Shire.

(Also note that all the extra money from pipeweed exports and deals with Saruman didn't make Lotho Sackville-Baggins anything more than New Money).

[SeanF]

1 hour ago, Roose Boltons Pet Leech said:

Yep. Plus there's often a title involved. Being the Baggins of Bag End isn't quite the same as being the Master of Buckland or the Thain of the Shire.

(Also note that all the extra money from pipeweed exports and deals with Saruman didn't make Lotho Sackville-Baggins anything more than New Money).

Though Bilbo's mother is a Took, she is the Ninth daughter of the Old Took, well out of the line of succession.  Bilbo's father acquired status by marrying her, while she (and maybe her family) acquired money.

[The Marquis de Leech]

Well, Bungo Baggins built Bag End with his wife's money, and the Tooks were "not as respectable as the Bagginses, but undoubtedly richer". I think the marriage was based off love - Belladonna Took was definitely marrying below her station.

(The same applies to Frodo's parents. Drogo Baggins used to hang around his Brandybuck in-laws for the free food).  

[SeanF]

13 minutes ago, Roose Boltons Pet Leech said:

Well, Bungo Baggins built Bag End with his wife's money, and the Tooks were "not as respectable as the Bagginses, but undoubtedly richer". I think the marriage was based off love - Belladonna Took was definitely marrying below her station.

(The same applies to Frodo's parents. Drogo Baggins used to hang around his Brandybuck in-laws for the free food).  

Oh well, the Tooks must have been enormously wealthy (as well as blue-blooded) if their ninth child was rich.

[C.T. Phipps]

3 minutes ago, SeanF said:

Oh well, the Tooks must have been enormously wealthy (as well as blue-blooded) if their ninth child was rich.

Random aside, not necessarily if they married their cousins. It's how the Old Families kept their fortunes.

Albeit, Tolkien had a real hatred of that in his fiction.

In the Silmarillion, it's always a sign of twisted moral and mental degeneracy.

[SeanF]

12 minutes ago, C.T. Phipps said:

12 minutes ago, C.T. Phipps said:

Random aside, not necessarily if they married their cousins. It's how the Old Families kept their fortunes.

Albeit, Tolkien had a real hatred of that in his fiction.

In the Silmarillion, it's always a sign of twisted moral and mental degeneracy.

 

He wouldn't have liked the Targaryens, then.  Marrying a cousin is like marrying out for them.

[C.T. Phipps]

5 minutes ago, SeanF said:

He wouldn't have liked the Targaryens, then.  Marrying a cousin is like marrying out for them.

I get unsettled by fans who are like, "Well, it's okay for them."

[SeanF]

1 minute ago, C.T. Phipps said:

I get unsettled by fans who are like, "Well, it's okay for them."

That's quite typical though, of how many people have viewed royalty (eg the Hapsburgs).  In fact, I'm sure if the Tooks had practised incestuous marriage, most hobbits would have viewed it as just another aristocratic eccentricity.

[sologdin]

11 hours ago, Ser Scot A Ellison said:

Sologdin,

Is the socialist problem with LOTR its reliance upon a heroic bourgeoisie?

scot, i think some of the other responses answer you. there is a place in old marxist doctrine for bourgeois agency as against the old aristocracy, both as a matter of history and in art.  the first movement of the manifesto is a catalog of cheers for capitalism.

i'd note that as a lefty i don't get twerked off by tolkien or his writings.  

[Ser Scot A Ellison]

Sologdin,

I'm teasing. 

That said Sam is a pretty proletatian character.