(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]

See, reading that passage just makes me think how much less gendered and misogynistic and fearful of female sexuality it is than Spenser's Duessa, which is what I'd use as a model for personal horror inflecting cultural distaste. Was it Duessa? Serpents beneath, all seething aggressive female sexuality and horror of the vagina?

I'm a lot more irritated by the extent to which Tolkien was a product of his time than Nutty is, but I'm with her in not seeing a particularly personal take on this.

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.

As I said, the female monster brings to mind other female monsters. In fairness to Tolkien, I'm more intellectually disturbed by the women-as-other (and it bugs me in Wodehouse, too) stuff. This one just gets me on a visceral level. (And again, in fairness to Tolkien, I'm as viscerally disturbed by the Grendel's mother stuff, the Fall of Man being Eve's fault, and pretty much all the historical blame shifting to we the womanfolk. It's a thing. Damn it.)

I think, if I were going to mark out female villains of Tolkien, Ungoliant from The Silmarillion would be the one I'd look at cock-eyed. We get a lot more psychology of that character, and it comes across to me as a lot more self-serving and less plot-serving, and there's the spawn issue. Not to say there's not a relationship with the item Ple doesn't like, but Ungoliant comes after, in completion/publishing terms, and is like a magnification of its publishing predecessor.

(Blah blah disclaimer about J.R.R. being dead for parts of the organization/writing of The Silmarillion. )

Given the context of Tolkien writing from a traditional viewpoint of women, it's interesting to me that most of the women are so memorable. When Middle-earthians pray, they pray to Elbereth; Luthien is arguably more famous than Beren; Galadriel cuts a far more memorable portrait than Elrond. I can be sort of affectionate towards Tolkien's antiquarian views, I think, because although he finds women confounding and confusing, he also finds them fascinating.