FWIW, I never interpreted Shelob as a manifestation of Tolkien's gender issues. Just his spider phobia.

Me too.

So the analysis is that this is his wife or his mother and not his attempt to describe a horror of the ancient world, channelled through his singular scholarship of the norse sagas? Ick. And no thanks.

No, it's just a feminized threat, using feminine signifiers. Which, of course, you see at least in the Irish sagas as well, IIRC, though it's been years since I've had to read them. (They have a lot of sex in them, though, and I've found that Connor the character maps fairly well to some of the main men.)

An actual garden spider blown up would remain stink-free and not squishy in the midsection. The rear of a spider, and my skin is crawling just typing this, so I hope you appreciate that my fear of spiders is about to send me into hysterics from picturing one in my mind, is firm, and larger rather than bloated, because bloated has different connotations.

Well, it's more than blown up -- it's horrorized. But I don't see the horror as being tied to its gender, and I'm curious to see where you do.

(and yes, sometimes a spider is just a spider. ) (Which almost scans if you change the emphasis to the final syllable.)

Ple, you know critters better than I do. I would have said bloated was just the right word, if it were a critter 8 feet in length. Also, true, to my knowledge spiders do not stink, but then, this is an Evil spider. And thus far in Tolkien, everything Evil has been stinky. Note how he never actually describes Strider as stinky, only hard-worn and liable to sleep in a hedge.

If Tolkien had described it as a spider that smelled kind of fishy, or something I could directly attribute to something feminine; and if she had been, I don't know, extremely moody or protecting her spawn or something stereotypically feminine, rather than just bloated, I think I would be moe willing to go with the monstrous-feminine approach.

Sometimes a [whitefont] is just a [whitefont]

You know we were all thinking it, and I still spewed coffee when I read it.

The adjectives used to describe the horror bring to mind images of horrific, specifically female threats in various texts from Greek myth to the Tain. I'm not sure I could describe it any further without getting frustrated, because I'd have to dig up a lot of other books, and I'm already feeling twitchy, because it's frustrating to *not* be able to remember specific passages I can throw out in my defense.

However, it's something that bothers me about the passage, and always sort of has, even taking into account the biological need for the creature to be female.

You know we were all thinking it, and I still spewed coffee when I read it.

Happy to be of service. Coffee is always best as a projectile.

Kate, thanks so much for the link to the Anya parody summary of RoTK. Really really funny.

I think I love "Paraphrase Boy" bestest.

Where is Anya, anyway? Will she Anya RotK? And do we have Nillys for the first two?

I do get where you're coming from, Plei, but I'm not sure I have the twitch about it that you're expressing. Let me go look at Encyclopedia of Arda because I haven't looked at the Silmarillion in detail in awhile, but I don't think he is exclusionary about making his monsters male elsewhere in the mythology. I'm remembering one of the great dragons as female. At the risk of sounding more supportive of your argument than I instinctively think I am, I have to point out that the greatest Anglo-saxonist of his time (and likely all time) would hardly be able to write about a female monster antagonist without being influenced in some way by Grendel's mother.

Okay, off to Arda. And maybe late late tonight at home, I'll pour through some of the Silmaril stuff as I am off to RotK again at 8pm.

ETA: no easy female dragon ref at Arda, so maybe I'm wrong about remembering one, I might have to dig into the books. But there was an interesting reference to "dragon-reek" and the effect, which I thought was interesting in the context of Nutty's remarks about stink and that the dragons referred to (in that cite) were male. [Ancalagon the Black, Scatha, Smaug]