Do Lord of the Rings or The Silmarillion pass the Bechdel test?

Question

Motivation

Let's face it, Tolkien wasn't much of a promoter of women's equality (to say the least). Thus there are no female characters in the Hobbit. the Lord of the Rings certainly has several (Eowyn, Galadriel, Arwen, Goldberry...) but that is within a multitude of male characters.

Now, there's a commonly used test for a film being disregarding of women's lives and place in society, called the Bechdel Test. A film passes the test if:

1. It has to have at least two [named] women in it,
2. Who talk to each other
3. About something besides a man

Seems like a pretty lenient criterion, right? Well, not really. It so happens that innumerable films fail it quite. It is somewhat less fitting for prose, since an author can write in the voice of a female character, describing her inner world, thoughts and feelings, even if she doesn't meet other women or talk to them. Still,

Question

The Lord of the Rings movies all fail the test. Does the book trilogy also fail it? And what about the Silmarillion?

Answer 1

Silmarillion, Chapter 15:

And on a time Melian said: "There is some woe that lies upon you and your kin. That I can see in you, but all else is hidden from me; for by no vision or thought can I perceive anything that passed or passes in the West: a shadow lies over all the land of Aman, and reaches far out over the sea. Why will you not tell me more?"

"For that woe is past," said Galadriel; "and I would take what joy is here left, untroubled by memory. And maybe there is woe enough yet to come, though still hope may seem bright."

Funny because they talk about Aman, not "a man", but pass nonetheless.

Off the top of my head, LotR (book) fails.

Answer 2

All in all, the Lord of the Rings novels have even fewer scenes featuring women than the movies do, and the few that do show up (Arwen, Eowyn, Galadriel, Goldberry and Lobelia Sackville-Baggins, and I can't think of any others that actually have any lines) don't actually share any scenes, so the Bechdel test goes right out the window. If there's no scene with more than one woman, the test fails automatically.

I do, however, feel the need to stress that the Bechdel test isn't some foolproof test to detect sexism or feminism in a work of art. It's a very specific test looking for very specific things, and is useful as a tool when evaluating Hollywood's overall approach to the roles of women in film (and can also be applied to literature, as we just did). It wasn't meant to imply any form of moral judgement, that a movie is bad or wrong if it fails the test. It just means it fails the test. I'm not saying you implied otherwise, but I know that discussions around the Bechdel Test often devolve into arguments that misrepresent the test, so it's best to get that out of the way.

Answer 3

I don't have a copy of the movie, or the book, so I can't verify it, but according to the comments on this page, it appears that "The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers" does pass the Bechdel test:

Red disagreed with the rating and said:

Are children considered in this? If so, the character of Freda (little girl who rides with her brother from the Westfold to Edoras to sound the alarm) and Eowyn do technically talk, and it's not about a man either. They talk about where the little girl's mother is.

Truan disagreed with the rating and said:

in addition to the above statement, the same girl talks to her mom about whether or not her brother is big enough to ride the horse.

Erik disagreed with the rating and said:

but they are reunited in Helms Deep, and talking to echother [each other]! Freda "Mama!" Eowyn: "freda!".

So this movie should get 3 of 3...