Tolkien on Marriage and the Family

The Heroic Mission of the Laity

In this post, which concludes our series previously covering Tolkien’s views on the masculinity and femininity of the sexes (not “genders”), I would like to explore Tolkien’s understanding, living out and fictional portrayal of marriage and family.

While the modern world denies the truth, goodness and beauty of men and women as masculine and feminine, it hates nothing more than children. Not only does it mutilate them with so-called “gender-affirming care” surgeries and brainwash them with modernistic lies in public school, it also murders them by the thousands every day through abortion, then celebrates this satanic holocaust as a passport to health, wealth and fame. This hatred of children follows from feminism’s historic destruction of marriage itself, through the legalization and/or cultural permission of promiscuity, cohabitation, adultery, divorce, contraception, pornography and so many other evils that have destroyed the priority of the family in the world today.

Tolkien stands as a hero of the family against this tide of darkness.

In many ways, Tolkien is an excellent example of the married lay saint beloved by Pope St. John Paul II, such as Sts. Louis and Zélie Martin, parents of St. Thérèse of Lisieux, the saint who lives “in” the world but is not of it, whose heroic virtue is quiet and simple but no less Christlike than the many ordained and religious saints in the Church Triumphant. Indeed, saints who live in the midst of the world are afflicted with arguably even greater spiritual challenges, especially those whose neighbors are predominantly non-Catholic, like Tolkien, who faced persecution both from his Protestant relations and from his professional colleagues, friends and others throughout his life. Nevertheless, the Sacrament of Matrimony, like all the Holy Sacraments, has the power to sanctify and divinize the soul and to draw others to Christ – if its challenge is accepted.

Tolkien is one who joyously accepted this challenge. As described in the preceding article on femininity, Tolkien loved his wife Edith and remained faithful to her all his life. Even so, as he told his son Michael in a letter in which he gave detailed marriage advice, he also understood that marriage, as a sacrament, is sacrificial. It requires a love that is truly selfless, not only a fondness or affection that depends on temporary feelings or convenience. As he explains,

[T]he essence of a fallen world is that the best cannot be attained by free enjoyment, or by what is called ‘self-realization’ (usually a nice name for self-indulgence, wholly inimical to the realization of other selves); but by denial, by suffering. Faithfulness in Christian marriage entails that: great mortification.[1]

Tolkien recognized the spiritual foundations for this necessary “great mortification” in Christian marriage:

This is a fallen world. The dislocation of sex-instinct is one of the chief symptoms of the Fall… the ‘hard spirit of concupiscence’ has walked down every street, and sat leering in every house, since Adam fell… The devil is endlessly ingenious, and sex is his favourite subject. He is as good every bit at catching you through generous romantic or tender motives, as through baser or more animal ones… It is a fallen world, and there is no consonance between our bodies, minds, and souls.[2]

Like Pope St. John Paul II, Tolkien saw concupiscence as one of the chief effects of the Fall, causing a disharmony between the soul, mind and body and between individuals, most of all men and women who forget their God-given dignity and turn one another into mere objects of use instead of persons made for loving communion.

Marriage is a gift from God, originally given to consecrate this relationship into an image of God’s love for Creation, which Christ would then transform into a “great sacrament” (Eph 5:32 DRA) of loving union with His Bride the Church. Now, however, because of concupiscence, marriage is also corrective – it teaches man and woman how to love one another with a chaste, self-giving and self-sacrificing love and to discipline their lustful urges through virtue. Tolkien describes it this way:

Christian marriage – monogamous, permanent, rigidly ‘faithful’ – is in fact the truth about sexual behaviour for all humanity: this is the only road of total health (including sex in its proper place) for all men and women. That it is dissonant with men’s present sex-psychology does not disprove this.[3]

Tolkien wrote this as a response to C.S. Lewis, who once proposed splitting marriage into two distinct types: permanent and sacramental Christian marriage in the Church, and temporary contract marriages by the State. Tolkien objected vehemently to this, stating quite clearly, “No item of compulsory Christian morals is valid only for Christians.” He observed that this separation would treat Christian marriage as essentially unnatural or purely legal, akin to abstinences from eating meat in some monastic orders. For this reason, Tolkien denounced the common practice today which requires a civil marriage license for the State to recognize a marriage in the Church, as though a Christian marriage is only legitimate if certified by the State, and divorce, which he describes as “a human abuse” that is wrong for all people and thus should not be tolerated (if understood, as it almost always is, as a dissolution of marriage, not merely a legal separation).

Tolkien also notes that this mentality of moral dualism, like Galileo’s separation of religious and scientific truth, only leads to worse errors and ultimately harms all of society:

And wrong behaviour (if it is really wrong on universal principles) is progressive, always: it never stops at being ‘not very good’, ‘second best’ – it either reforms, or goes on to third-rate, bad, abominable. In no department is that truer than in sex… It is a slippery slope – leading quickly to Reno, and beyond: in fact already to a promiscuity barely restrained by legalities: for a pair can now divorce one another, have an interlude with new partners, and then ‘re-marry’. A situation is being, has been, produced in which ordinary unphilosophical and irreligious folk are not only not restrained by law from inconstancy, but are actually by law and social custom encouraged to inconstancy. I need hardly add that a situation is thus being produced in which it is intolerably hard to bring up Christian youth in Christian sexual morals (which are ex hypothesi correct morals for all, and which will be lost but which depend upon Christian youth for their maintenance).[4]

In the previous article in this series on masculinity, we looked at C.S. Lewis’s views on chivalry. While Tolkien would agree with most of what Lewis said there, Tolkien also had some important criticisms of chivalry in its original sense of courtly romance, one which, he says, has had a detrimental effect on marriage even to this day. Rather than seeing a woman realistically as “another fallen human-being with a soul in peril,” it instead treats her in an idolatrous way, as “the Lady… a kind of guiding star or divinity”. This “make-believe” is not only misleading, ignoring as it does the fallen nature of man and woman and the sacrificial character of matrimonial love – it also leads directly to the hedonistic and sentimental view of marriage prevalent today, for which the feeling of “love” is paramount and any difficulty or responsibility is a signal to flee:

It inculcates exaggerated notions of ‘true love’, as a fire from without, a permanent exaltation, unrelated to age, childbearing, and plain life, and unrelated to will and purpose. (One result of that is to make young folk look for a ‘love’ that will keep them always nice and warm in a cold world, without any effort of theirs; and the incurably romantic go on looking even in the squalor of the divorce courts).[5]

Ultimately, the problem with this courtly-romance, emotive approach to marriage is that “[i]t is not wholly true, and it is not perfectly ‘theocentric’. It takes, or at any rate has in the past taken, the young man’s eye off women as they are, as companions in shipwreck not guiding stars.” This is contrary to marriage, but even more fundamentally, it is contrary to men and women in their natural masculinity and femininity. It is, in a word, unnatural, and therefore miserable, hence the state of most marriages and relationships today. This is why Tolkien famously said, “But the ‘real soul-mate’ is the one you are actually married to.” He also wrote,

You may meet in life (as in literature) women who are flighty, or even plain wanton – I don’t refer to mere flirtatiousness, the sparring practice for the real combat, but to women who are too silly to take even love seriously, or are actually so depraved as to enjoy ‘conquests’, or even enjoy the giving of pain – but these are abnormalities, even though false teaching, bad upbringing, and corrupt fashions may encourage them… A man has a life-work, a career, (and male friends), all of which could (and do where he has any guts) survive the shipwreck of ‘love’. A young woman, even one ‘economically independent’, as they say now (it usually really means economic subservience to male commercial employers instead of to a father or a family), begins to think of the ‘bottom drawer’ and dream of a home, almost at once… Anyway women are in general much less romantic and more practical.[6]

These “abnormalities”, for both men and women, are the result of many precedents – courtly romance, feminism, the Enlightenment, modern psychology, the Sexual Revolution – but are ultimately derived from the Fall and based in concupiscence and the temptations of Satan. They cannot lead to true happiness, either for individuals or for families.

As a Catholic and a loving father, Tolkien did not see the union of spouses in marriage as its only or primary end. Rather, in accordance with the Sacred Tradition of the Church, he saw children as the supreme gift of God in marriage, its greatest contribution to the world. For Tolkien, having children is a divine mission to add the names of ever more saints to the Book of Life – hence why he prayed for and blessed his children regularly, raised them in the Church with a good Catholic education at the same Oratory school he once attended, answered their questions faithfully and reasonably, and mourned whenever they departed from the Faith. His greatest hope, as it should be for any good parent, was to be with his family forever in Heaven. He thus wrote these beautiful words to his son Michael during WWII,

Still you are my flesh and blood, and carry on the name. It is something to be the father of a good young soldier. Can’t you see why I care so much about you, and why all that you do concerns me so closely? Still, let us both take heart of hope and faith. The link between father and son is not only of the perishable flesh: it must have something of aeternitas about it. There is a place called ‘heaven’ where the good here unfinished is completed; and where the stories unwritten, and the hopes unfulfilled, are continued. We may laugh together yet…[7]

Indeed, Tolkien’s views would probably be called “patriarchal” today, not only for his beliefs about the sexes and marriage but also for family and children. As he himself wrote to Michael, “I shall remember you in communion (as always but specially) and wish that I had all my family beside me in the ancient patriarchal way!”[8]

To explore this further, I would like to examine the role of marriage and family in Tolkien’s legendarium. At first glance, it could seem to be rather unimportant, since many of the main characters in The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings do not appear to be married, at least for most of the story. This is, however, misleading. On the contrary, it can be said that family is the “end” of the whole story, in the classical sense of the term as both the beginning and the end of the action, its causal motivation and its eucatastrophic culmination.

While Bilbo and Frodo, due to their priestly vocations as bearers of the One Ring, remained celibate, Bilbo still adopted Frodo and raised him as his own son. This theme is shared with others in the Fellowship: Gimli is the son of Glóin and Legolas is the son of Thranduil, both important characters in The Hobbit. Likewise, Aragorn is characterized by his lineage: as a Dúnadan, he descends from the Númenóreans, more specifically from the royal line of Elendil through Isildur, the last High King of Arnor and Gondor and thus heir to the throne. Boromir’s representation of his father Denethor, Steward of Gondor, guides everything he does and finally contributes to his fall and heroic death.

But what about the other three hobbits, Sam, Merry and Pippin? The familial lineages of each are central to their respective identities, as Sam quotes his father the Gaffer as an authority on hobbit traditional wisdom,[9] while Merry’s adventurous and world-wise nature befits his Brandybuck heritage. Like Merry, Pippin comes from an aristocratic background and is similarly reckless in his Tookishness, but unfortunately lacks Merry’s common sense, at least until he is thrown into the fire as a servant of the Steward of Gondor and rescuer of Faramir.

More profoundly, however, these three hobbits share Aragorn’s eucatastrophic end, most of all Sam, who is more akin to Aragorn than is often admitted. Both come from relatively humble backgrounds – although Aragorn is kingly and was raised by Elrond in Rivendell, his life as a Ranger had “brought him down to earth,” so to speak, enabling him to mingle with the commoners of Bree. Both leave their homelands with the goal of someday returning to marry the woman they love – Arwen for Aragorn and Rosy Cotton for Sam – and their heroic journeys conclude only when this is accomplished. Indeed, Aragorn did not consider himself worthy of Arwen until he freed the world from Sauron, while Sam did not marry Rosy until he foiled Sharkey’s attempted Scouring of the Shire. In the end, both men were awarded with authority in their communities and respect throughout Middle-earth, but their greatest reward was a loving wife and large family. As Tolkien wrote,

I think the simple ‘rustic’ love of Sam and his Rosie (nowhere elaborated) is absolutely essential to the study of his (the chief hero’s) character, and to the theme of the relation of ordinary life (breathing, eating, working, begetting) and quests, sacrifice, causes, and the ‘longing for Elves’, and sheer beauty.[10]

This is the clearest evidence of Tolkien’s true valuation of marriage and children. For him, marriage is a sacramental vocation, just like the Holy Orders of a priest, a calling from God for a special mission, that of giving oneself wholly to one’s spouse and children for their salvation and your own. With this in mind, men and women can sacrifice themselves with great heroism, as did Aragorn and Sam, as well as Beren and Luthien in The Silmarillion, and many other characters in the history of Middle-earth. One special example, though without children, is the marriage of Tom Bombadil and Goldberry, whose married life is essentially ideal and Edenic, with proper hierarchy, profound and self-giving love, the warm hospitality of a true home and the generosity which personifies the love of the spouses, as the Holy Ghost personifies the love between the Father and Son in the Trinity.

Even so, as Tolkien acknowledged above, marriage and family are constituted by fallen human beings and thus are not perfect. In fact, they can cause, indirectly and against their God-given natural goodness, great harm, as they have for many. This can be seen in Middle-earth, including the curse laid upon his descendants by Fëanor, but perhaps nowhere more clearly than in the relationship between Denethor and his sons, Boromir and Faramir. Why Denethor preferred the former to the latter is arguable – most likely, it is he lacked the martial prowess (though less than his father imagined) of Boromir which Denethor himself lacked but saw as the only way to save Gondor.

But in the end, Boromir succumbed to the Ring and perished, Denethor fell to despair, sent Faramir on a suicide mission to retake Osgiliath, then attempted to kill him in a pagan ritual of murder-suicide, and Faramir thus lost both his closest loved ones. This is a clear rebuttal to those who claim Tolkien’s stories lack “moral complexity,” by which they mean moral ambiguity and tragedy, the first of which Tolkien showed in the fallenness of his character and the second in the consequences of their sins.

Sadly, Tolkien experienced some of this dysfunction in his own family. Though he remained with Edith till death, she drifted from the Church late in life, as did his sons Christopher and Michael, despite his constant counsel and prayers for them all. Tolkien especially the falling away of his sons as personal wounds, as betrayals of the martyrdom of his mother Mabel in bringing him to the Faith, and as dangerous to their very souls. But Tolkien could still be comforted by his son John, who became a Catholic priest, and his daughter Priscilla, who seems to have remained in the Church. In the mercy of God, may we pray, as Tolkien did, that he is now united with all his family in Heaven, and may we also pray the same for our own families.

(Cover image source: By Miriam Ellis: https://tolkiengateway.net/wiki/Category:Images_of_Rose_Cotton#/media/File:Miriam_Ellis_-_Well,_I'm_back.jpg)

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[1] J.R.R. Tolkien; Humphrey Carpenter and Christopher Tolkien (eds), The Letters of J.R.R. Tolkien (London: HarperCollins, 2012), letter 43. Kindle.

[2] Tolkien, Letters, letter 43.

[3] Tolkien, Letters, letter 49.

[4] Tolkien, Letters, letter 49.

[5] Tolkien, Letters, letter 43.

[6] Tolkien, Letters, letter 43.

[7] Tolkien, Letters, letter 45.

[8] Tolkien, Letters, letter 243.

[9] David Rowe, The Proverbs of Middle-earth (2017), chapter one.

[10] Tolkien, Letters,letter 131.