Transcript
Speaker: Hello, everyone. Welcome to Queer Lodgings, the queer-led podcast about everything Tolkien. I'm Grace, and I'm here with my usual co-hosts, Alicia Leigh. Hello. Hi.
Speaker: Thank you for joining us today after what's been a long period of radio silence from us. Life has been lifing, we know that it's been doing that for many of you, our listeners as well.
Speaker: So thank you for joining us. We hope to be back in your feeds more regularly, and we're delighted to be with you today. So grab a refreshing beverage, enjoy the flowers blooming in the spring gardens, spoilers, and settle in with us despite these difficult times to discuss one of Tolkien's most difficult women, Lobelia Sackville Baggins.
Speaker: Yes. So, Alicia, you recently presented at the 2026 National PCA, that is the Pop Culture Association Conference, on Lobelia in a paper titled Petty Thief to Folk Hero, the Redemption of Lobelia Saxville Baggins and the Monstrous Feminine.
Speaker: We would love to hear the director's cut slash extended edition of this talk because Lobelia deserves way more time than i think she has ever given in Tolkien scholarship.
Speaker: Yeah, 100% agree with you because when I was doing the research for this, i realized there's only one actual paper Lobelia. Criminal.
Speaker: Criminal. Yeah, and this paper, it's ah Revising Lobelia by Amit-Radeeg, and it's in Tolkien and Alterity, which was co-edited by previous guest on the pod, Chris Vaccaro.
Speaker: This is the only paper, and like it's mentioned in this paper that Lobelia is often just in like footnotes and now liner notes as Oh, yeah. And there's also this other female character because there's been so much research done on Galadriel, Eowyn, Shelob, even Rosie. There's been more work done on Rosie than there is in Lobelia.
Speaker: Wild. And I think that that's like a shame because like other than Eowyn, Lobelia has the most character growth of any woman in The Lord of the Rings.
Speaker: Totally agreed. Yeah. Yeah, so when I originally pro proposed this paper, I've been on this whole, Labilia is actually like one of the biggest heroes in The Lord of the Rings like for a while now.
Speaker: And i had not read revising of Lobelia yet because I was not aware of its existence because I had not read Tolkien and Alterity because I'm not a medievalist. And I finally read this paper and I was like, oh, wow, she's almost making the point that I am, but not quite.
Speaker: Because like what the point that's being made here is that Lobelia is based on the old like Norse sagas and that kind of like medieval Northern European like woman that you see in Beowulf and other writings at the time where the women are, they're there, but not like super there. And they're, they're there as like,
Speaker: a stabilizing force to kind of hold the society together. And they're in a supportive role, but not in the same kind of way like a modern woman would be considered to be in a supportive role. And the way that they're written is still hearkening back to the same kind of quote unquote masculine traits that we would consider like heroic traits, like the the courage, the honor, the loyalty, the resolve and all of that.
Speaker: Yeah. And I don't think that that is untrue at all. But it's positioned in this paper as Lobelia has a a character growth and turn moment.
Speaker: after the Lockholes incident. Well, during, after Lockholes incident, and that's what made her rise up against the ruffians. And I don't i don't believe that.
Speaker: m I don't think that Labilia had a character change between where we begin with her in The Hobbit and where we... end with her when she comes out of the lock holes. I think that like the last bits of her life is debatable whether she actually had a character change there. I would say probably not, but I feel like you can argue that, but I don't feel like the lobelia who tries to take Bag End and steals Bilbo's spoons is in any way different than the lobelia who beats the ruffian over the head with her umbrella and gets imprisoned.
Speaker: evenmen Yeah, yeah, yeah. And I was trying to figure out why I had such a different reading. And I came down as um our friend Megan Abramson would probably be very happy about this is I came down on its authorial bias is why I read Lobelia as being consistent. And maybe this other person does not read her that way. Because when I think of the conceit of the Red Book of Westmarch being a found document, because of that, it has to have an end universe writer. And who were those writers? We know it was Bilbo and Frodo. And who had the biggest problem with Lobelia? It was Bilbo and Frodo. So obviously their feelings about Lobelia are going to sift through the text.
Speaker: Yes, I agree. And I think it was when Lobelia directs her Lobelia energy towards someone that Frodo doesn't like at that point is when Frodo's view of Lobelia shifts because she's not targeting him anymore. She's targeting a mutual enemy. And that's why you get this recharacterization of her as this good hobbit who's grown and seen the error of her ways.
Speaker: Yeah, it's not her character that's changing. It's actually there the writers, the narrator's kind of viewpoint of her changing. feel like in a lot of ways, that's very human too.
Speaker: I think there's an element as members of the queer community that we can identify with moments where someone defends us to outside forces and we are relieved by that.
Speaker: But we're not thrilled when they target us as a ah queer community or members of the queer community instead. And that view of who somebody is can shift through our own personal bias for sure.
Speaker: And people contain multitudes, both as people and as people that we perceive. Yeah. Well, can you kind of guide us through here a little bit from kind of the beginning of where Lobelia comes into the story of the Baggins boys, specifically Bilbo is where we first meet her.
Speaker: Yeah. Oh, man. um If you do not mind, i will just read as part of my paper. Go ahead. because i did a little thought experiment about the events of The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings from Lobelia's kind of point of view.
Speaker: Yes. hu I'd love to think about what was she, what was she thinking while Bilbo was away? And what was she thinking when he came back from the dead?
Speaker: Right. So like to understand where Lobelia is coming from, you have to first understand like where she fits into this family. And she's the mother of Lotho and the wife of Otho Sackville Baggins.
Speaker: Otho at this point is Bilbo's legal heir. and is positioned to take the headship of the Baggins of Hobbiton family and to inherit Bag End, which is like a very desirable property. Everyone wants Bag End. It's bougie as fuck. We all know this.
Speaker: So Otho and Bilbo are like pretty distantly related, and they're also not very close emotionally. Bilbo is like the family eccentric, He's never properly settled down and he sees the Sackville Bagginses as, quote, rather offensive, as a said in The Lord of the Rings. And the distance between them widens over the course of The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings.
Speaker: So during The Hobbit, when Bilbo just fucks off, disappears for 13 months, he's presumed dead. And the Sackville Bagginses are deep in the process of claiming their inheritance when Bilbo suddenly reappears and derails the entire legal process. Like, they are already taking possession of Bagand.
Speaker: They are auctioning off his shit they don't want anymore. You're holding an estate sale. Yeah. Yeah. So, Lobelia... who likely feels at this point that her rightful place in society and the home that she's wanted for so long has been stolen from her, accuses Bilbo of being an imposter, which I don't necessarily think is wrong.
Speaker: and don't think i don't think that that's, I feel like that's a fair, like a fair response. Yeah. Especially like you get the way this is depicted in the movies where she's like, you're an imposter. And like Bilbo's like, you know who I am. But like, does she really? Because they're, they're distant. They they don't like hang out or whatever. hmm.
Speaker: Yeah, I expect that they're like they might see each other like at a family reunion kind of like once in a blue moon, maybe even less frequently than that. Like maybe they've seen each other ah a handful of times over like the past decade or something.
Speaker: Well, and I think from her perspective, you have to consider that this is extremely. extremely sus timing. This is extremely convenient timing. The middle of these events happening, like this this period of taking over Bag End, is not a long period of time. And suddenly someone conveniently just shows up and claims to be the heir.
Speaker: i think it's fair to ask questions and not characterize that as a sort of very online, just asking questions to be problematic. I think they're a genuine question she gets asked there.
Speaker: Yeah, especially when you take into consideration like how outside the norm of Hobbit society someone going off on an adventure is. Yeah. Yeah. like I think it's it's a reasonable stance for her to have taken.
Speaker: Yeah. And when it's proven incorrect and that this is Bilbo, she understandably, i think, gets angry and steals some spoons and storms off because she's like, well, fuck this. I'm going to get something out of all of this trouble that I've i've undertaken. Right. Like I'm not defending that as like it was the right action to take. I'm just saying I understand that.
Speaker: Alicia condones larceny to everyone. I'm sorry. She gave in. She left. She didn't tie him up in probate court for the next 30 years.
Speaker: And she took some spoons. Right. you've written We simply do not know if they were taking possession of back end. Had they already sold their home because they were expecting to move in here? We have no idea. That's a great point.
Speaker: I'm not going to say it's right, but I'm also not going to say that. she was completely out of pocket and stealing the spoons. Hot take, everybody. take.
Speaker: And listen, without her stealing the spoons, what opportunity is there for pettiness later on? Right. Right. And I do want to point out something that I came across in a letter that Bilbo's reappearance was so shocking that no one ever dared to presume him dead ever again. oh yeah Which prevented anyone from being able to claim his title of head of the family until decades later, when Sam becomes mayor and passes a law that anyone sailing West relinquishes their titles and lands.
Speaker: Oh, my God. Yeah. So Bilbo remains head of that family until Sam becomes mayor. Wow.
Speaker: And like by that time, Lobelia's family's dead. Everybody's dead. Yeah. Yeah. So like she has been effectively locked out of ever getting the inheritance that like by all legal right, her family is owed.
Speaker: Yeah. Yeah. And thenre like to further like twist this knife that they're not going to get their inheritance, Bilbo then adopts an even more distant cousin as his legal heir, locking them out of it.
Speaker: So there's just no way that they're ever going to get what Lobelia and her family feel are due to them. Ever. oh I think about this. and So the hobbits, there are a lot of Victorian influences on hobbit society and and all of that. But I think about this in terms of like our English literature and history of the novel going back a little bit further to say Jane Austen era.
Speaker: And I'm thinking about how when women are centered in the story, the concerns about inheritance and stability of fe familial inheritance are positioned as, if not heroic, at least understandable and and important and things that are utmost in people's minds and rightly so. It's it's central like essential to your future and to your existence yes as a woman.
Speaker: And i think it's just very interesting that the perspective on inheritance feels a little bit different when we're focusing Mostly on men than mostly on women because of how society has structured how folks get to think about that, especially in earlier times.
Speaker: Yeah. Yeah. I'd love to go into a little bit more into Hurtle kind of inherits Bilbo's attitude to the Sackville Bagginses too, along along with Bag End.
Speaker: He was pretty much a child still, basically, I think. It's kind of interesting to think about like how much interaction has he actually had with them in person versus how much he has heard from Bilbo.
Speaker: How much of their relationship is kind of built on like each of the cousins that you always kind of talk about, kind of the the weirdos at the edge of the family that you don't really talk about and where a lot of your perspective of them is kind of built out of maybe a dash of truth, but a lot of gossip. Mm-hmm, mm-hmm.
Speaker: Yeah, and I do get the feeling that Bilbo talks a lot of shit about the Sackville Bagginses because when Frodo sells to them later, everyone else on Bagshot Row is angry that they're going to get them as neighbors, right?
Speaker: How much contact do those people actually have with the Sackville Bagginses before that happens? Because they live in another town. They don't socialize with Bilbo so it's not like they're coming over to back end regularly or whatever for those people to form their own independent opinions they just have this reputation for being sour ass petty people and where did that reputation most likely come from yeah our beloved sour ass petty gentleman that adore your back end and
Speaker: Our petty queen Bilbo. And thinking about like, Horto moves from Buckland to Bag End, which is probably even a further distance, I think, than the Sackville Bagginsies are from Hobbiton. Is that right?
Speaker: Yeah, I'm wanting to say they're over hill, aren't they? I think so. Because they're still like considered like the Baggins of Hobbiton family. So they're still like kind of in that area. So if they're actually like geographically closer.
Speaker: Yeah. So like, yeah, to them, like Bilbo is really like fucking pulling someone from out of state over to become his heir. Exactly. Exactly.
Speaker: And I think that that ah it's just like, oh, oh no, is Bilbo the problem here? Is Bilbo the linchpin here? ah Influencing all these relationship dynamics before anybody even has a chance to talk to each other.
Speaker: But I do think that like when we do see those glimpses of of Frodo interacting with Lobelia when he sells baggage to them. Tell us a little bit more about how Lobelia is acting when she finally gets in her own view, in her own perspective, she finally gets what she's been owed for so many years.
Speaker: Yeah, um... To be fair, she's pretty quiet. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Like, Lobelia herself, after she actually gets back in, she's cool. It's her son that becomes a huge problem.
Speaker: Mm-hmm. Yeah, but, like, the process through which Lobelia actually gets back in is, like, So fucking problematic. I do not think we have dwelt enough on what a petty bitch Bilbo and Frodo were to her and her family yet. Okay.
Speaker: So, Bilbo literally uses the one ring to avoid ever seeing them. That is how... the conspirators find out that the One Ring is a thing because one of them sees him disappear when, like, Labilia and family are walking down the road and realize, oh hey, there's something going on here. And they end up putting two and two together to realize that Frodo has this ring and they have to like run off. Right. So like, that is the pettiest use of a nuclear weapon. What the fuck? felt
Speaker: And like, just the birthday party in its entirety, like, Bilbo invites them in their views solely to reach a specific number. That number is one gross, which is very vulgar.
Speaker: And then Bilbo gives this speech at his party, which is like roasting people in such a way they don't even register it's a roast at first. Like he they they are invited to this party to celebrate the air that Bilbo chose coming into his own in front of them. So like, that's a fuck you get insulted by Bilbo on his way out, which is a double fuck you. Like, I can't.
Speaker: Queen bitch Bilbo. Yeah. And then after he's fucking gone. They come up because they realize that all of these people are carting a bunch of shit away from Bilbo's house. So, like, they come up to see if there was anything left for them or if they they can buy things because it looks like all of Bilbo's shit's being auctioned off. They know all about this. They've already tried to do this before. And then they get the most passive-aggressive fucking gift of spoons.
Speaker: So, like... I understand why Lebelia was mad. A big part of me is like, fuck yes, Bilbo. I'm like, yeah yes, bitch.
Speaker: And like, I don't, I don't blame her again. If he's going to be petty enough to give me fucking spoons, I don't blame her for stealing additional things. Yeah, i don't and I don't blame her for also being serving just as much ah back as she got from him. and so Right.
Speaker: And like she was a bitch to Frodo, too, because she says during all of this, why didn't you go too? You don't belong here. And I feel like that works on multiple levels. Yeah.
Speaker: literally doesn't belong there because he got shipped in from Buckland or whatever. he doesn't belong there because she belongs there. Her family belongs there. Because like Frodo's k not quote unquote a real heir. He's not a natural son. he is an adopted heir. And it's an affront to her feelings about the natural order of society.
Speaker: Like her family belongs there. And then Frodo, when he finally does sell Fagin to L'Abelia, he has all his friends over, they drink all of the good wine, and then they leave all the fucking dirty dishes for her to clean up, which is misogynistic as fuck, Frodo. Yeah. I'm totally on board with Not wrong. petty of spoons.
Speaker: Serving. Fantastic. Sweeting the dishes. Sweeting the dishes. You're incorrect. Just no. That's a big move, man. That's a big move.
Speaker: also her husband has died by this time she has been waiting to take possession of this place so long her husband has died and now like in her view her son is the rightful heir so she ends up moving in into back end with her son and then her son just like fucking wreaks havoc all over Hobbiton and yeah the Shire in general Yeah.
Speaker: Let's put a pin in that because I do want to touch on just just for a second, just because I do want to think about like thinking about the relationship between Lobelia and Lotho, the mother and her son. Like there's really a strong case to be made of like this is Lobelia thinking about her duty to her family and thinking about what kind of a legacy she is going to leave for her son. And like all of these actions, all of this like, quote unquote, grasping, trying to get her claws, quote unquote, into Bag End.
Speaker: It could be said that in a particular way, it's not really doing it for her herself, but really for her family. I feel like that's something that that might be able to kind of shift a little bit of people's perspective on her as a particularly greedy and grasping sort of character when you kind of think about, like, why exactly is she doing this? And thinking about, like, what Grace said about the kind of like the Victorian sort of...
Speaker: centrality of inheritance and also the legacy of the family like that's so central to ah so many women that we think about and particularly of a particular class that lobelia would have belonged to not quite the same class as bilbo but there's like a ah little bit of mobility kind of expected because of that inheritance sort of positionality So that's what i I like to think about. Like thinking about Lobelia as like as a mom can be kind of an interesting way to sort of shift, shift how we look at her and thinking about like what kind of motives she has.
Speaker: Yeah, I do think it's important to note that Lobelia is one of two characters in The Lord of the Rings shown as a mother. It's Lobelia and Shelob.
Speaker: Those are the only two actual mothers doing any mothering that we are ever shown in The Lord of the Rings. Yeah. Which is a hell of a juxtaposition, honestly.
Speaker: i think Tolkien might have had some mommy issues. Just a couple? Just a handful. I think it's really interesting, too.
Speaker: that There's this issue of perspective and how we view Lobelia, right? And so i think it's really interesting to consider that we so rarely see her as a mother.
Speaker: Even in most of the times where we see her as a mother, it's through the lens of the narrator's aunt who happens to be a mother. her Her identity as a mother is secondary to that of an aunt.
Speaker: And as we were looking through some of our our research in this episode and everything, I saw a quote from Liz Fielding, who is ah a romance author that i know absolutely nothing about, but I thought that this was a really interesting perspective on ants, especially in the context of of history and writing and authorship, where she said, ants may be kindly, selfless, controlling, or perfectly foul,
Speaker: But as quasi mothers, they are a gift to writers who need a catalyst to disrupt the lives of their unsuspecting characters. I think that idea of ants being quasi mothers, that the author can shape and problematize things around in order to be obstacles for their characters without necessarily giving them the support or challenges that a mother character would have.
Speaker: o who That's such a great point because there's so much particular baggage that comes with a mother sort of dynamic that it just isn't quite present with an aunt. There's still definitely like the disruption and the connection is still sort of enough to be, to add tension and to add stakes.
Speaker: Yes. But it's not quite as fraught as children with their with their parents. Yes. And then the ants can also be, you know, they can be the cool ant, but they can also be the monstrous character. And I do feel like that's where we end up with Lobelia how Lobelia is presented certainly early on in The Hobbit. Mm-hmm.
Speaker: Yeah, we've talked about it amongst ourselves. i don't know if we've talked about it on the actual podcast, but we've thinking about Lobelia as an aunt to Frodo, but as a mother to Lotho and how that might shape, you know, sort of how Frodo depicts her in the the Red Book, I guess. Yes.
Speaker: There is something something that a little bit to be gleaned there or a little a little bit to explore there about how Tolkien talks about about mothers and about older women and about older women who have a proximity to our characters but aren't like their mothers necessarily.
Speaker: Basically, we don't see a whole lot of older women in Tolkien's works like as such. Lobelia is one of the big ones. And having her be positioned as an aunt, and definitely not as a mother figure to Frodo.
Speaker: And there is kind of a missing perspective. What was the relationship like between Lotho and his mother? What kind of contributed to, what we eventually know what happens with Lotho in the Shire while Frodo is gone, you know?
Speaker: You know, what sort of influence and what sort of what sort of power, I guess, did Lobelia have over Lotho? And did she try to prevent what eventually happened? Because we know she comes up very, very squarely against sort of the actions of her son and in a very decisive way.
Speaker: we should probably delve into... Just to remind our listeners what the actions of her son are because they are not good. Yes. Yeah. He set up an authoritarian, industrialized state in the Shire. Yeah.
Speaker: i'm a A fascist, authoritarian, industrialized state. That's exactly Lotho did. madam Then he militarizes it.
Speaker: yeah yeah Yeah, and then he militarizes it with a foreign force of people like full-grown men. He exports all of the goods that the industrialized shire produces until there are shortages and people are starving. There's civil unrest. The militia he has formed are sent out to quell the uprisings. He ends up using that militia to steal government from the mayor.
Speaker: ah Sets himself up as like a little petty tyrant until Saruman shows up.
Speaker: doing it like a colonization, more micro colonization of ah the Shire. i think it's fascinating the way that when we think of hobbits, we often think of the coziness and the the second breakfast and and all of those lovely sort of pastoral things.
Speaker: And yet no one seems to talk about the Hobbit uprisings against fascism near enough as we should. and certainly that's not something that I see the tech giants in the world who who like to cite Tolkien as their reason for needing to protect the hobbits, ever really noting that the hobbits were like, no, no, no fascism, thank you.
Speaker: Just Absolutely. Absolutely. Well, what happens to Lotho once Saruman gets there? that That's so fucking murky, guys. Yeah.
Speaker: So, I'm sure the order and timing of everything that happens, but Saruman arrives He becomes known as Sharky. He quietly kind of takes control of the ruffian militia that Lotho had formed.
Speaker: Lotho is murdered and quite possibly eaten by Wormtongue. I'm never going to let that one go. it is heavily insinuated that Wormtongue ate Lotho.
Speaker: Jeez.
Speaker: Lobelia, who is quite old at this point, ends up being imprisoned for attacking a leader of the ruffians as they are coming to take over back end. So we're not sure whether that happens before or after Saruman comes and her kid gets eaten unsure.
Speaker: ah But she attacks this ruffian with her umbrella, which I think is amazing because her umbrella has been at the center of all of the petty theft she was previously doing. And I love having the umbrella be the weapon in both cases here.
Speaker: yeah yeah and ah because of that she is imprisoned in the lock holes and that is where we find her when all of the hobbits come back from the fellowship this is such an important moment for her i would love to know what's going through her brain at that moment like when she decides to attack the leader of the ruffians with with her fucking umbrella like this is my house. Why the fuck are you in my house? fuck Are you in my house? And also like, if this is after her son was murdered and possibly eaten, like what else does she have? And what else is she like? What's, what's she fighting for here?
Speaker: it shows such a consistent through line in her character she, Bag End represents the thing that she cares about. It's the symbol of all of the other things that she cares about tied up in the existence of Bag End.
Speaker: And those things that she cares about clearly shift over her life because by the end of her life, her son... who did the dictatorship bad is no longer with us.
Speaker: And i think one of the things that I think is the most interesting about Lobelia and the thing that I remember the least because it's talked about the least to my recollection or in my experience is how Lobelia acts after she's imprisoned and released from the lock holes and how she interacts with her society after those events where, Alicia, you talk about in your paper that her last act is to bequeath what's left of her money and worldly goods to Frodo so that he can help those left homeless or who are otherwise hurt by her son. And you talk about how Tolkien states that that explicitly ends the feud between the two families.
Speaker: Mm-hmm. Because one of the families doesn't fucking exist anymore, Tolkien. Well, yes.
Speaker: Kind of a default, both yeah but The feud ended by attrition as well. But there's something to me in Lobelia creating this fund and recognizing the harm that her son did and standing up against the the fascist bodies that her son helped create, the militarized bodies that her son helped create, and then recognizing that he did harm, their family did harm.
Speaker: And she should do something to acknowledge, repent, and repair that. And Lobelia as a mom, a lot of times we would expect or justify a mother just always defending her son no matter what he's done. He's her baby still.
Speaker: And it's really notable to me that there's a point for Lobelia where she says, no He was wrong. yeah I have to do something to make it better even though I can't fix it.
Speaker: And that's what like makes me come down on the side that Lotho did not turn out the way he did necessarily because of Lobelia. Because sometimes you can be a decent parent and you just get a shit pull of the draw with your kid and your kid ends up being a shitty person right sometimes the parent makes the the kid shitty and sometimes the kid is just shitty like despite the parent and i don't necessarily think that lobelia was the best mother given what we know about her and like her really steadfast
Speaker: Yeah. how society should work and all of that so she was probably kind of a hard mother to live under because i'm assuming she was instilling those same values in lotto as much as she could yeah But the fact that she does not stand for what ends up happening and tries to repair what her son did, i think does speak to the fact that she probably wasn't one of those terrible Karen moms that you hear about.
Speaker: I super agree. Like, I see this through line of her her commitment to both both status, hierarchical status, class status, is hand-in-hand with her commitment to dignity and inherent dignity.
Speaker: And I think that that means quite a lot for where her, like, very, very deep down, kind of underneath... sort of her reliance on some like external sort of structural, I guess, expressions of status and dignity, which could be seen in holding Bag End, basically.
Speaker: But I also think that that commitment to dignity speaks to something much, much deeper and speaks to ah kind of respect for but her fellow man, for her fellow hobbits and the inherent dignity that each of them holds.
Speaker: Because being committed so hard to... legacy of your of the family to her trying to set up her son for for that legacy and then have have that all kind of crumble away in his hands you know by his actions I mean to think of all the challenges that she takes on as a mother and the sacrifices that she likely makes mm-hmm And then to have your child betray you and all of the, all of your people. All your neighbors.
Speaker: Like that. And to put such a stain on your family name. That's yeah that's the thing. I think like like that's that's what I was like trying to trying to reach for. So thank you.
Speaker: That matters so much because if we we look at this sort of like Victorian era, the token is raised in. He's born in the eighteen ninety s There's this huge, and this carries through in a lot of places, in a lot of cultures within the Lord of the Rings and within Middle-earth, but this huge emphasis placed on how women hold the reputation of their family and are responsible for upholding it. That men may behave poorly, but women can't.
Speaker: ah That women... have to do things in order to make the men in their families look better, be better, be more secure, all of that. And we certainly see that in a lot of cultures ah around the world, too. Like, this is something that is not unique to Hobbit culture, for sure.
Speaker: But then to have the men in your family do such a disservice to the family name that you have been held responsible for,
Speaker: pretty unfairly by society your entire life, is mindfuck, for sure. It's bananas to me. And this happens in Tolkien spaces with some of the other figures that we have kind of called between ourselves bad mom the bad moms, where...
Speaker: yeah Everybody, a lot of people, a lot of people blame moms for their grown ass son's actions. And I feel like Lobelia definitely takes, takes her rightful place in the, in that quote unquote bad moms.
Speaker: Yeah. Bracket. Boom. We're definitely going to talk about it in a future episode. Cause I, there's a lot of, we, we have a lot of feelings about a lot of these, these women and their grown ass sons. So yeah.
Speaker: I think there's this strong possibility that Lobelia is a bad mom by some definition and a shitty aunt and a difficult woman.
Speaker: But actually a pretty good person, a pretty good hobbit. Yeah. In the end. i think so. And I think one of the things that I think is important in analyzing motherhood and bad moms and all of that is whether a mom continues enabling her son to do harm.
Speaker: Hmm. And there's a point certainly for Lobelia where she doesn't, we don't have a clear sense of exactly what the timing was of all of that. Like you said, Alicia, we get the perspective through characters who are returning to the Shire, not who were there living through all of it. And so their understanding of the sequence of events, I think is a bit muddy as well.
Speaker: And certainly we don't get much information about that in the, ah the endings of the Peter Jackson films, much as I adore them. Yeah. And in fairness, I didn't want to sit in the movie theater every time I saw it for five more parts of the ending. So like i get the adaptational needs here, but there's a lot of story that got left out and a lot of things that if you frequently revisit through the films, we don't hear that much about Lobelia, especially the end of her story.
Speaker: think it matters. There is this image where she is emerging from the lock holes and she's leaning on Frodo's arm, but insisting on hobbling out on her own two feet, still clutching her umbrella. And that is so evocative.
Speaker: book yeah and everybody's applauding her yeah that's so that's what really gets me is like she's everybody's applauding her and she is and she's never felt that before yeah she's so moved by it because she's never she's never felt like so so liked and so yeah and so appreciated and I'm like oh man what probably because Bilbo's been talking shit about her for literal decades yeah
Speaker: well What a queen. the decades piece is something really interesting to me because Lobelia one of the characters that comes through from the Hobbit and carries through to The Lord of the Rings. We don't have a ton of those. The focus shifts a lot between those two works.
Speaker: There's something that stands out to me at least, which is that The Hobbit is written much earlier in Tolkien's life when he's a much younger man than he is when he is writing The Lord of the Rings.
Speaker: And then even later writing some of his letters that clarify things in Lord of the Rings and and all of that. And so I think we can see progressions in his thinking as an author throughout that time.
Speaker: And also we are sometimes more rash in our 20s than we are in our 40s or 70s or whatever, and more judgmental in different ways. And we also have less life experience to draw on.
Speaker: So I think it's really interesting. There's a lot. I've been going back through Carpenter's J.R.R. Tolkien biography, and there was a line that stood out to me. and I was immediately like putting this in the group chat. Like, I have a thing I want to talk about. Yeah.
Speaker: This is a really interesting perspective that Carpenter presents. Yeah. in his narrative fashion in this biography of the experience of the two Tolkien boys right after their mother Mabel passes.
Speaker: And he's already gone through a bit of like what family there is and everything like that. And then Mabel names father Francis from her Catholic parish as the boy's guardian.
Speaker: he's, Carpenter says, immediately after their mother's death, he had to find somewhere for them to live. A tricky problem, for while ideally they should be housed by their own relatives, there is a danger that the Suffield and Tolkien aunts and uncles might try to snatch them from the grasp of the Catholic Church. Already there had been some talk of contesting Mabel's will and of sending the boys to a Protestant boarding school.
Speaker: And I was immediately struck by how the language that Carpenter uses is so evocative of the language that Tolkien uses to talk about Obelia from Bilbo and Frodo's perspective.
Speaker: Snatching and grabbing. Contesting the will. Contesting the will and everything. And it was very interesting to me, both that language and then also how blithely lightly sketched that is.
Speaker: In our group chat, I said to you guys that I've been listening to a lot of podcasts actually about medical child abuse and Munchausen by proxy. And so in there, there's been a lot of discussion about what best practices are today in the foster care system and trying to place children with familial placements when they don't have a way to be with their parents or what have you.
Speaker: And it really, really struck me that in Carpenter's own statements in this biography, he talks about the Tolkien's aunts and uncles and grandparents and the Suffield aunts and uncles and grandparents being people who were in these children's lives, who loved them, who Mabel was still in contact with, even though they weren't providing significant financial support because they were not fond of her conversion to Catholicism.
Speaker: And that these boys had lived with some of these relatives before for years with their mother after their father died. And it really, really struck me how strong this language was about keeping them away from the sort of evil aunts and uncles that are very grasping and and they might do da-da-da-da-da. Yeah.
Speaker: And so I thought that was a really interesting thing then to consider in light of Tolkien writing Bilbo and the Hobbit. and his interactions with Lobelia so many decades earlier in his life than he wrote about Lobelia in the lock holes and how Lobelia and Frodo ended things at the end of their own lives.
Speaker: Oh yeah, that's a great thing to to think about. Did you want to talk a little bit more about, i guess, kind of continuing from some of the, I guess, the more biographical kind of Tolkien stuff, maybe how Tolkien didn't really have a great...
Speaker: understanding about what a woman's role is as the matriarch of the family and particularly, i guess, as like an older woman's role as like ah the matriarch of the family.
Speaker: Because we don't see enough older women Tolkien except Yorath, who is really kind of more there for a comic relief slash kind of there to support a point by Aragorn, really. so She's treated as so unserious. Yeah. Despite being the most accurate person in the room. yeah Despite her actually knowing what is needed. Yeah. It's hilarious that like, you know, we're talking about how Tolkien may not have like understood this stuff. And yet he understands that experience enough to represent it. Being the woman in the the meeting who has the idea and no one listens to it until a man repeats it.
Speaker: Which parts was Edith providing commentary on as she typed? Which parts get revised? Yes.
Speaker: We've often talked between ourselves about about Edith's role as the matriarch of of the family and kind of how much did Tolkien actually understand some of that. Yeah, i it's hard to tell, obviously, like how much Tolkien actually would understand of that sort of thing. And I think that the Carpenter biography in particular does a really big disservice to Tolkien in this particular instance because of the way Carpenter sets up Jert and Edith's relationship as like inherently antagonistic and like Edith is keeping him away from his writing like friends and all of that
Speaker: So I think that we get a view of Tolkien that is more isolated from family life and femininity than it it actually was. Ratliff has a lovely chapter in Perilous and Fair. Mm-hmm.
Speaker: About the women in Tolkien's life where he goes into all of these aunts that Tolkien was living with with his mother and how like influential they were to him and all of that. And like some of those aunts are like childless women who are like working. So he does have teachers and like, you know, scientists and yeah.
Speaker: Some of those ants then are a Carpenter dismisses as almost sort of like boring and so not a good fit for the boys to be there. And in terms of, you know, terrible sins and child rearing, i it that's not the worst one.
Speaker: Right. Yeah. Being a stable home for for two boys who've lost their parents. How dare. How dare. Yeah. Like what ah what a crime. We are teasing a little bit that we are all kind of going back through the Carpenter biography, that that's going to become information that's forthcoming in a future episode, because we're not doing that as as a little you know stroll through the park with a daiquiri sort of thing, but like really looking at some of the the challenging aspects of this biography of Tolkien and how it influences what we know and how we receive the works themselves.
Speaker: Yeah. Like, I do think that Tolkien has familiarity with women in general and that they exist outside of their relationships directly with him. But I do think that there's just things about being a woman that a man's never going to know. Right. yeah Like, I do think that there are blind spots that you can see here. And I think one of them is what does it mean to be the matriarch of a family and what kind of responsibilities does that really like thrust upon someone? And like, also, what does it mean to age as a woman? And that's such an interesting point, because all of Tolkien's oldest women don't look elderly.
Speaker: Yeah, they're all immortal. Yeah. Whereas you get some of the the handful of women who look their age and their their age within their their lifespan and they're treated very differently than characters who are, you don't know, 4,000 years their senior. so Yeah. And like especially thinking about this in the context of Edith and her aging process because she was chronically ill.
Speaker: Like you get bits and pieces of it in the Carpenter biography, but this, this poor woman had migraines her entire life. Mm-hmm. So like she's she's a chronically ill woman who pre-deceases Tolkien. So like yes he has watched this aging process happen, but from the outside. And I don't think anyone who was socialized as a man can truly understand what aging means to someone who was socialized as a woman.
Speaker: yeah Being socialized to place your your value, understand very, very deeply that your value is only based on your appearance and some of other some other physical attributes and physical capacities, like childbearing, childrearing, continuing the family line.
Speaker: protecting the family line and like that's not to dismiss the pressure that that men would feel as and the quote-unquote natural heirs to the family line and what they inherit but really more like again kind of going back to what we're talking about where where men in this big kind of victorian gender role sort of framework women are sort of meant to be the center of Yeah.
Speaker: and men they have a degree of responsibility that isn't as bound i guess as a woman's role is and has a little bit more flexibility And has a little bit more ability to to to fuck up and a little bit more ability to little more malleable and also change, like, the status of the family home. Whereas, i should say, the status of the family themselves. Whereas a woman has to preserve that rather than expand or, like, contract it, really. Mm-hmm.
Speaker: Women are also tied to men in this period in a way that men are not tied to women. And I think that that is very important to take into consideration because women couldn't own property.
Speaker: Tolkien's literally living in a time period where the gulf between the sexes is the widest in the Victorian period than it ever had been and ever has been since. right So that Victorian-Edwardian period is kind of the peak of the differentiation of the sexes and also the peak at which women had very little autonomy.
Speaker: Because yeah you know you you can't own property, you can't have bank accounts. Yeah. So there are additional pressures there just because of that, that are completely invisible to men during that time period. Yeah. I think it's interesting then to consider Lobelia as a character who is the central character in trying to acquire and possess this property, which is the inheritance of her family and everything.
Speaker: And we we arrive at the tensions that always exist with Tolkien of like there are moments where he's perhaps doing a little better than some of his contemporaries and also not entirely getting it all the time. Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah. We just live with those tensions. Yep. Because he's a human. That's what humans do. We contain multitudes. multitudes.
Speaker: I think it's interesting too, Alicia, in your paper, you made a reference to... Lobelia being perceived as shrewish. And I know that Tolkien was not always the fondest of Shakespeare, I do think it's really interesting to consider like come evolving modern perceptions of the character of Kate in The Taming of the Shrew and like whose side of things were kind of on in 10 Things I Hate About You and everything, like who we're here for, who we sympathize with, and how
Speaker: the characterization of a character as being a shrew is far more interrogated now And there's more curiosity about what drives that and that perception instead of it just being a truth of who they are.
Speaker: Yeah. And so it's time for Lobelia to get that too. Amen. There's not really a good place for me to shoehorn this in. So I'm shoehorning it in right now. Yeah, do it. Go for Lobelia is based on an actual person.
Speaker: Yes. And I think that that's very important because it is an actual person. It's mentioned in letter 176. who Tolkien is making a joke about how she would set about, like, she would beat somebody with her umbrella if they were within range. But, like, the words that he uses to describe it sound like kind of respectful like in terms of this woman will beat you with her umbrella and I respect that yeah respectfully with her umbrella complimentary yeah complimentary admiring indeed yes indeed and I I think that is one hilarious because
Speaker: I'm also on board. Sometimes someone needs to be beaten with an umbrella. yeah i i get you. Sometimes you just need someone needs to get beaten with an umbrella. And I also think it's interesting because the only other character we know of that was based on an actual person is Luthien.
Speaker: no Yeah. Do we know who Tolkien was basing that person basing Lobelia on who that person was? Yeah.
Speaker: Not specifically. It's mentioned that it was like a woman who like lived near him that he saw walking around a lot which okay with an umbrella. which the The umbrella thing really stands out to me, obviously, because like there's such an emphasis on Lobelia's umbrella. And do I recall that... The person he thought she might set upon with the umbrella WH Auden.
Speaker: You are correct. Yeah. Who had just incredibly peddly...
Speaker: insulted Edith's interior decorating skills. specifically Yes. I do think that we probably can't shy away from the fact that we do often read the Bagginses of Bag End queer bachelors and the Possibly the list of people who deserve a bit of a a going about with an umbrella should not simply be limited to gay men.
Speaker: ah And that we should find more solidarity between us all. But... yeah We're all on the same side, you guys. I still think that Lobelia is nowhere near as problematic as the narrative makes her out to be. And i think that misogyny is a really powerful force that we need to drink in less of.
Speaker: society T.L.D.R. The villain is the patriarchy. The villain is always society. It's funny how that continues to go through. Once again, surprise, surprise.
Speaker: It turns out the villain wants the patriarchy all along. Like a Scooby-Doo, like a Scooby-Doo character, you pull off the mask. was thinking of the Scooby-Doo thing as well. pull the mask and you're like, the patriarchy?
Speaker: The patriarchy the whole time. Yeah. ah Well, yeah. Did you have anything else that you want to touch on, Alicia? ah Not anything that can't wait for our Fuck Humphrey Carpenter episode. Yeah. Derogatory. Derogatory.
Speaker: our Carpenter episode. Yeah. Well, I think that I kind of touched on everything that I was thinking about when I was reading this presentation. And I'm got i'm glad that we got to talk with you, Alicia, going through it. Because this is a subject that deserves lots of time, not just 15 minutes at PCA.
Speaker: Yeah, it was nice to dig into more of the like biographical and like kind of cultural and sociological things around this because my PCA presentation was very authorial bias, but bla blah, blah, blah, blah.
Speaker: And there's so much more to it than that. like The reason why i am so angry at Carpenter now is because i went on this like rabbit hole surrounding and how...
Speaker: and like and how Lobelia compares to Rosie in terms of like a good and bad mother and that led me to oh my god Luthien Edith and how how much does Tolkien know about women let me go back to the Carpenter biography and then I was like oh my god this is like so misogynistic how much does Carpenter know about women yeah yeah so I ended up on this like rabbit hole about like
Speaker: the authorial bias in Carpenter. And I just like all this stuff about like Edith and Luthien and all all of that. And I just, I couldn't work any of that into a 15 minute long paper.
Speaker: But we can do it in a podcast. Yes, we can. or Or two, because all that Luthien stuff is yeah in a different ghost document. yeah Or five, as it were. Yeah. yeah I think it's interesting to note that Luthien is a character that we haven't really delved into on the podcast but we have now in a conference paper and presentation yes and a most chapter book chapter exciting things that are coming with that uh so we have a lot that we would want to delve into on luthien eventually and and we'll see her kind of come up in more of our analysis going forward and i think it was really important to get this chance to talk about lobelia now so that we we sort of
Speaker: get more and more of our women in Tolkien to be able to analyze some of these different things going forward. We do still also have to talk about Shelob and Angolian. Yep.
Speaker: More bad moms. So the way PCA works is that you give your short paper alongside like three to four other people and one of the other people who was presenting in my little panel was presenting the monstrous feminine and she-law and we had this whole like whispered conversation where I was like she was like I had never thought about the fact that it's only Lobelia and Shelob who were ever described as mothers in Lord of the Rings. And we were like whispering back and forth. Nice. It's fascinating.
Speaker: Yeah. Well, he is to be continued and in the future. Well, do you think we are about right to wrap things up? think so. I think so. Well, thank you everyone for coming to, to listen to us chat about Lobelia Sackville-Baggins and her role as a difficult woman in Tolkien's Legendarium. And ah with stay tuned for our upcoming episodes where we'll delve into these topics a little bit more and bring some new things as well.
Speaker: Thanks so much for hanging out with us. Thanks, guys. Thanks for listening. Thank you for coming out and listening with us today. Please ah leave us a rating or review wherever you listen to podcasts. You can find us basically everywhere. apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, blah, blah, blah. Like, share, and subscribe and all of that good stuff.
Speaker: You can also ah listen to us directly on Zencaster, which is Zencaster.com slash Queer Lodgings with Tolkien Podcast with hyphens in between all of those words. You can also listen to us on our website, which is queer lodgings.com, where we post our show notes, the resources, transcripts as they come. That takes a long time. And we also have a merch store there if you want to pick up a sticker whatever and support us that way.
Speaker: If you would like, you can follow us on social. We're on Facebook at Queer Lodgings. We're on Twitter, kind of. We only post updates there, which is Queer Underscore Lodgings. We are on Blue Sky, which is Queer Lodgings. And also on YouTube podcasts as Queer Lodgings 6911. Nice. Or you can just search the Queer Lodgings podcast if you would like to give us feedback or have ideas about future episodes you can reach out to us on any of those social platforms or email us directly at queer lodgings podcast at gmail.com thank you oh do we want to do discord oh fuck yeah we also have a discord guys
Speaker: i feel like you should leave that in just as that happened
Speaker: You can also join us on Discord. There is a link to our Discord on our website. Probably should have mentioned that when I was talking about the website, huh?
Speaker: We're not rescue at all. Fuck my life. The West coming off the wheels. All right. Please, Tim, I'm sorry. Beautiful.
Speaker: Yay! We did it! We did it, and Tim will fix it. Now Tim will fix it.
Speaker: Yeah, that would have been tragic. Imagine trying to stitch together an episode from our backups. Well, we got everything. We really are quite rusty. aren It's okay.
Speaker: everything Everything's fine. Everything's cool. all right Yeah, okay. yeah Whenever you're ready. Do you look good for this? Turn my mic. Good to go.
Speaker: hearing then nope alicia's frozen oh wait am i you were like a little frozen before you're a little bit glitchy we're gonna give it a few seconds oh wait now i have no where did tim died tim lost connection him's back it's still recording here yes it is but alicia's frozen now look yeah yeah I'm apparently frozen now, but I can still hear and see them. who No, Alicia. Wow. but It is down to you and it is down to me.
Speaker: something Something's trying to shut this whole production down before we even get started. They can't because we're muted. Yeah, sorry. or Yeah, we seem to be good now. Except now I can't hear either of them.
Speaker: all right i'm gonna stop the recording okay and i'm gonna restart our network was like totally fine while we chit-chatting i know when we were chatting they're like food hot say dicky like that lady does the tiktoks and although i only see them as instagram reels of uh I don't want to do the work today. i don't want to do the work today.
Speaker: it That's the only way I see anything on TikTok. I think our Wi-Fi is fucked, so I'm about to restart our network.
Speaker: Let me do all the creaking and squeaking to get there. I promise most of that was the chair and not my knees. was going to say, what the fuck is going on over there?
Speaker: I moved my chair two inches. but I have an antique wood roller chair that like like probably needs some WD-40. I was going to say, you're like the tin man over there? like he Squeaking?
Speaker: Yeah, mine's an old, like, it's a green vinyl and, like, fucking steel chair. Nice. Hello, everyone.
Speaker: yeah
Speaker: oh fuck we're amateurs what is this at some point we'll remember how to do this amateur hour over here oh so like i think
Speaker: you're
Speaker: Tolkien has some familiarity with it. Sorry. We know how to podcast. No, we don't. It's been too fucking long.
Speaker: Alicia, you want to take us out? That is kind of my job. It has become your job. you ever want to make that one of our jobs, you should take the transcript part of what you say so that it's a script for the two of us and then we could try doing it.
Speaker: We've also like been talking about just like recording it and so we don't to do it every time. Tagging on the end of it. yeah Oh yeah, because we could always tag something on the end of like... Yeah. and and Yeah. Yep, yep.
Speaker: We really shook yeah we should do that. wait Have we already said goodbye and thanked them for... Not yet. no that Let's do that and then I'll go into the outro. Great.
Speaker: Grace, you're the Thank you, everyone. for two. Great. Going in great. Coming out great. two for two great
Speaker: so it going in great coming out great
Speaker: laughing so hard i'm crying now okay here we go i have forgotten what i used to say for the outro this is ungood um it's right if you just do this figure at the end of this it is all of our of we definitely had a podcast and and we definitely forget forgot how to do this exactly me All right. You can find us on all of a Jesus fucking Christ, Felicia. Get your shit together.
Speaker: right.
