When speaking about the race of Men, the focus is put on the main three members of the Fellowship, namely Aragorn, also known as Strider, Boromir and his younger brother Faramir. All three of them represent different types of masculinity. Aragorn is the one who plays the dominant role as a male who feels responsible for and protects the rest, as well as who behaves like a leader and imposes his leadership on others. Boromir and Faramir, on the other hand, play more subordinate roles, however, they very often compete with each other, as Faramir lacks many attributes that his brother has, such as for example his weaponry skills and responsible leadership. Even though Faramir was considered by his father as the weakest member of the family, he …show more content…
It is possible to find an analogy to the way the social system worked in Victorian times, when “men and women searched for an ideal relationship based on the expectations of a demanding society. If a man or woman did not possess the qualities desired by the Victorian society, the opposite sex may have dismissed the person as an unsuitable mate” (Appell). In this, quite similar case, Faramir also feels that he needs to prove to others that he is worth something in order to be accepted by the demanding society he belongs to, and as he represents the more feminine, weaker character, his desire to be accepted is even stronger. On the example of Faramir, it is noticeable that he is presented as the man who does not belong to either of the two patriarchal models. He is not the man of power, as his gender requires him to be, nor is he separated from and fully subordinated to others. He represents something in between these two, a person who wants to have the power, but one whose power is suppressed by the society he lives in only because of his status in the patriarchal model that the society …show more content…
This case is also very important in the face of how limited some genders were in the times Tolkien wrote the trilogy. The fact that Men are allowed to demonstrate full range of emotions, even those strictly related to women, without being punished shows how much freedom they have and that the restrictions apply only to women. What is more, some critics compare the relations between Frodo and Sam as close to homosexual. This only shows that males are allowed to behave in whatever manner they want and that such behavior, when concerns male gender, can still be approved and