The Tolkien in Bilbo Baggins

ESSAY The Tolkien in Bilbo Baggins DAVID LAFONTAINE R.R. TOLKIEN’S CLASSIC WORK of fan- increasingly enamored of the term. In 1939, two years after The tasy literature The Hobbit has been enjoyed by Hobbit was published, he gave a lecture titled “On Fairy-Sto- millions of readers as a definitive story of es- ries” at St. Andrews University in Scotland. Given that he was cape. The book is equally cherished for the in- a brilliant philologist attuned to the historical and cultural rich- troduction of hobbits, an endearing variation ness of names, places, and individual words, one can only con- on humanity. But the novel is much more psy- clude that Tolkien derived considerable satisfaction from the J.chologically profound and redolent with sexual symbolism than dual meaning of fairy-stories. has been acknowledged by reviewers and Tolkien’s biogra- phers. The distinctly homoerotic yearnings of Bilbo Baggins BILBO:APORTRAIT OF A HOMOSEXUAL MAN AS A HOBBIT and the psychosexual pathology of Gollum were not discussed One of the 20th century’s most beloved fictional characters, by reviewers in 1937 when the book was first published and Bilbo Baggins represents a radical departure from the classic hailed as a children’s classic on both sides of the Atlantic. But warrior hero, beginning with his short stature and dislike of in the 21st century, Tolkien’s monumental fan base has elevated fighting. Tolkien emphasizes his status as a confirmed bachelor: his works to legendary status, with every character and plot never is Bilbo linked romantically with a female hobbit. The strand dissected with the utmost seriousness. Homosexuality, bright, vivid colors of his clothing and his long, curly hair fly in however, remains the final frontier in the journey toward full the face of sartorial traditions for English men of Tolkien’s era. appreciation of Tolkien’s vividly original characters. His home, Bag End, is a luxurious, lovely environment, illus- The origin of The Hobbit was bedtime stories invented by trating the hobbit’s artistic sensibility. Tolkien for the entertainment of his four children in the late This portrait of Bilbo reflects the way many homosexual 1920s. Tolkien began writing the manuscript version of The men of a certain education and economic status lived their lives Hobbit in his spare time as professor of Anglo-Saxon at Oxford in Tolkien’s era. These men were rarely identified openly as ho- in around 1930. The story of Bilbo Baggins, the hobbit who mosexual but were thought of as confirmed bachelors. Cerebral joins thirteen dwarves on their quest to reclaim a hoard of treas- settings like Oxford and Cambridge with their nearly all-male ure from the dragon Smaug, gradually assumed a grander and populations provided such men with cloistered nooks, and more complex form as his writing progressed and the story bonding with male colleagues may have sublimated their re- gripped his imagination. The final version, while retaining some of the children’s story elements, is rich with erotic imagery and existential dark- ness. Bilbo Baggins and the creature Gollum are autobiographical, representing opposite corners of the author’s psyche. In crafting The Hobbit, the genre Tolkien was aiming for was not so much children’s literature as what he termed “fairy-stories.” Beginning when he was an undergraduate and an aspiring poet at Oxford, Tolkien developed an attachment to the term “fairy,” or “faerie,” which he defined roughly as literature about magical happenings. He came up with the title The Trumpets of Faerie for a volume of his poems completed by 1915. Bilbo and Thorin have a hug in The Hobbit Although warned against using the word by his former teacher pressed sexual urges. Lesbians in this era were generally iso- R. W. Reynolds, the young writer continued to do so. lated, like Bilbo, and viewed disparagingly as lonely spinsters, The use of the term fairy to denote male homosexuals dates but some women formed female partnerships and became active back to the 1890s. By the 1920s, the word was fairly common, in women’s suffrage. Their sexuality was the subject for private often employed in a derogatory sense, as shown in Evelyn speculation. Waugh’s Brideshead Revisited (1945) when Charles and Se- Although married with four children when he wrote The bastian are taunted. With the passage of time, Tolkien became Hobbit, Tolkien’s attitude toward Bilbo’s unconventional lifestyle is one of admiration almost to the point of envy. One David LaFontaine is a professor in the English Department at Mas- of the hobbit’s most distinctive traits is that he has a feminine sasoit Community College. side, inherited from his mother Belladonna Took, which repre- 24 The Gay & Lesbian Review / WORLDWIDE.

Load more