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Christine O'Donnell explains dating history using 'Lord of the Rings'
By Emi Kolawole
Christine O'Donnell's victory on Tuesday has many digging through archives to find footage of the Republican Senate nominee. This digging has produced a 2003 C-SPAN recording in which O'Donnell delivers her assessment of gender roles in the works of J.R.R. Tolkien

"You see Tolkien's wisdom applied to just about everything: Tolkien and communism, Tolkien and industrialization," said O'Donnell, while leading a December 2003 discussion at the Heritage Foundation as communications director for the Intercollegiate Studies Institute (ISI). "In researching this topic I even found a book with a chapter on Tolkien and sexual fetishes."

The discussion centered on Bradley Birzer's book "J.R.R. Tolkien's Sanctifying Myth," which was published by ISI in 2003.

"It's so surprising, then, especially in today's very hyper-sensitive, post-Gloria Steinem world, that there's such a lack of commentary on Tolkien and women. While we were researching this topic, the only writings that we could find on this subject were on those freebie high school essays, you know, budding feminists who were saying what a chauvinist Tolkien was," O'Donnell said. "Is it that people assume that women don't have an interest in Tolkien? ... Whatever the reason why this topic hasn't been explored, it's an excellent topic that when you do dive into it it can provide very fun insight and amusement into the creature that we call the woman."

O'Donnell, alongside her intern and niece, Jenna Murray, continued at length on Tolkien's treatment of women, taking on his individual female characters one by one. "To throw in a female just to appease the misguided demands of today's moviegoers would severely take away from the film's legitimacy," she said.

At one point in her remarks, O'Donnell attempted to determine which of Tolkien's characters she most resembled: "Look at the significance that he gives to Eowyn, the Lady of Rohan. She was a warrior spirit and, to me, that's who I love. I mean, I aspire to be soft and gentle like Arwen, but realistically, I'm a fighter, like Eowyn."

Later O'Donnell links Tolkien to her personal life, saying that, while Tolkien "strikes a very good balance between men and women and the extreme attitudes of femininity. On one hand, there's the attitude that's normally on the conservative side -- as a conservative woman, I feel I can say this -- that stifles women. There's almost the stereotypical attitude of, to be a true woman, you have to stay at home. And I've actually had people say to me, 'Why do you choose a career over marriage?' Honestly, I've had only a few significant relationships, and they've broken up with me. And one of the things I've been told is, 'If you weren't so strong, you'd be married by now.' So there's the one stereotypical attitude and then there's the extreme that says I don't need to be married. ... And what Tolkien shows, he strikes a very delicate balance between the two."

The video was first found by Politico.


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