Everything you never wanted to know about Númenórean pregnancy

[anghraine]

An anon on Tumblr said:

First of all congrats on nearing the end of your PhD program!!! Woohoo!!!

Second of all, I’m muy late to the party here (been off tumblr for a bit) but WRT these tags ( https://www.tumblr.com/anghraine/749212904253947904/khazzman-tolkien-elendil-was-called-the ) what do you mean the pregnancies were strange lol how strange can they be…?

[The tags in question: #and that's just the tip of the iceberg in terms of how distinct and peculiar númenóreans are #fandom has slept on it for decades but they are reallyyyyyy unusual #they have weird pregnancies (and few of them) and horse telepathy and can rarely even get injured much less sick #there's this part where tolkien is trying to mathematically figure out elvish aging (hilarious tbh) and pencils in 'and númenóreans' #that's not even getting into the uncanny valley of númenórean kids...]

My reply:

As for the first point: Thank you! I'm really looking forwards to being done, lol.

As for the second point: anon, I delight in your innocence.

Okay, we've got to rewind a bit. When The Nature of Middle-earth came out a couple of years ago (I think. what is linear time), the fandom was up in arms over various things, many of which I think were already established or strongly indicated by other sources (like Númenórean height + the natural beardlessness of Elros, Denethor, Aragorn, Imrahil, Boromir, and Faramir—aka my personal trivial pet issues since 2003 :D). But some of the things explained in NOME were genuinely remarkable (BEARS & SQUIRRELS), and there were additionally some genuine peculiarities in the details Tolkien came up with about Elvish pregnancy.

Throughout the numerous Tolkien documents compiled in NOME, one essential idea about Elvish pregnancy that recurs is the concept that a certain amount of spiritual exhaustion for both parents is just part of how their reproduction¹ works, though it's harder on the mother. Elves typically have relatively small numbers of children because it's spiritually and physically draining to reproduce. This is most prominently seen with Míriel and her son Fëanor, and in an opposite way, with Fëanor himself and his wife Nerdanel—their seven children represent not just fertility, desire, interest, and so on, but a remarkable degree of spiritual fortitude in both parents as well, and NOME notes that this is the highest number of recorded children among all the Valinorean Elves (21).

Anyway, because of this aspect of Elvish nature, Elves traditionally set aside a period of time in their lives that's specifically dedicated to supporting the strain of reproduction on the parents. Tolkien has a few names for it including onnalúmë, most of which translate as "Time of the Children" or something similar. Elves avoid having children at other times, though not invariably. Tolkien adds:

"childbirth is not among the Eldar accompanied by pain. It is nonetheless not an easy or light matter, for it is achieved by a much greater expense of the vigour of hröa [body] and fëa [spirit] (of "youth" as the Eldar say) than is usual among Men; and is followed after the begetting by a time of quiescence and withdrawal [from ordinary activities of life]" (23).

In a later revision, Tolkien again says of Elves:

"the production of children expends a very great amount of physical and spiritual energy" (26).

The whole reason I'm talking about Elves is because Númenórean reproduction worked in basically the same way!

"in the begetting and still more in the bearing of a child far more of their [Númenórean] vigour both of mind and body was expended [than among other Men] (for the longevity of the later generations was, through a grace or gift, transmitted mediately by the parents). A rest both of body and will was, therefore, needed, especially by the women" (319).

Númenóreans also had their "Time of the Children" equivalent, and the draining quality of reproduction meant they, too, could rarely produce more than four children (if that many), something that seems to have held true for Third Age Númenóreans as well.

Elvish and Númenórean women would have to rest and recuperate during/after pregnancy, not in terms of normal, identifiable symptoms associated with pregnancy and childbirth, but a general sort of malaise that arose from the sheer effort it took to bring a being such as an Elf or Númenórean into the world. This recuperation could take quite a bit of time (to the point that some of the Edain did not even realize their Elvish lords had wives because those wives might go into total retirement to recuperate from childbirth, and this period of recuperation could take up most of an entire mortal lifespan).

On Númenor, Tolkien notes that, except in the households of the very powerful, Númenórean men often took over most other household labor during their wives' pregnancies due to the general ... exhaustingly eldritch nature of it (319). After this ordeal affirming spiritual experience, both parents tended to be fairly disinterested in sex, but especially the mother. Typically, both parents preferred to focus on other interests they'd had to neglect during this time, something which Númenóreans tended to be more preoccupied with anyway.

Despite the limited number of children they could produce, Númenórean women—especially of the Second Age²—were fertile for much longer than other mortal women, by the nature of their vastly expanded lifespans. That is, their period of fertility took up a similar proportion of their lifespans as among other mortal women, but what this actually meant in real years was fertility between the ages of 18 and 125 or so, sometimes a bit longer (see pg. 320). They would not literally have children at 18, however; 20 would be very young, and a woman's first marriage (usually the only one) was more likely to be at around age 40-45 for "normal" Númenórean women and still later for female descendants of Elros (an understated footnote on this on pg. 321 remarks that Tar-Ancalimë "was exceptional in many ways").

Also, Númenóreans of all kinds, including women, tended to be less preoccupied across their lives with sex, childbirth, and the upbringing of children than other humans (318). Like Elves, they considered these things natural and desirable parts of life, but generally during the specific period dedicated to them. Now, according to Tolkien, they remained steadfast romantic partners throughout their lives, generally, and divorce³ and anything other than extremely strict monogamy were largely forbidden and rarely desired (319, 321). But beyond the Time of the Children, this stuff interested them less than the irresistible lure of—

:･ﾟ✧:･ﾟ✧ ✿ ARTS AND CRAFTS ✿* :･ﾟ✧:･ﾟ✧

Númenórean pregnancy was more like other mortal women's in one respect that I could tell, though—duration.

Tolkien's ideas about exactly how long Elvish pregnancies last are all over the place, and there's extra confusion from his loose usage of the word "year." Basically, he tried to come up with a bunch of increasingly elaborate mathematical equations for the functional rather than literal ages of Elves, half-Elves, and Númenóreans, and sometimes uses "year" to mean a literal calendar year of the sun and sometimes a functional year. As a result, you get sentences about how, for instance, a generic male Elf "was not 19 years old till he had lived for 216 years"). Even when Tolkien is leaning towards shorter Elvish pregnancies, he reiterates that the duration is more variable than among humans, depending on the baby, and that poor Míriel was pregnant with Fëanor for a full year—even Tolkien feels this merits an exclamation point (26 fn. 15). A Númenórean pregnancy would be the normal length, though (317).

Tangentially: once the standard gestation period passed and a Númenórean child was born, that child would continue to physically mature at a human rather than Elvish rate until reaching young adulthood. That said, from about age 7 on, their mental development and acquisition of knowledge would be more similar to Elvish children than other human ones. Given Númenóreans' literal telepathic powers, this rapid development would probably be necessary, but the idea of uncanny valley Númenórean ten-year-old horse girls who are like, six feet tall is ... there's a lot going on.

Another thing, also mostly unrelated: Tolkien tries to wrangle half-Elves into shape in the course of all this, as well, and incidentally drops the absolute bombshell that the ostensibly unfair metaphysical treatment of Elros's children vs Elrond's actually didn't happen. I don't mean that Tolkien comes up with another rationale for why Elrond's children getting to choose between mortality and immortality while Elros's don't get that choice is metaphysically justified and good. In this version, that literally did not happen. Tolkien says Elros's son Vardamir (and presumably Vardamir's siblings Tindómiel, Manwendil, and Atanalcar) actually did get to choose which kindred to belong to, just like Arwen (and Elladan and Elrohir, though Tolkien doesn't mention them here, either). Then Tolkien simply never brings it up again, ever (78, 82).

I love him so much, lmao.

(Yes, I know a lot of this is incredibly wtf, and yet ... dropping that revelation and then breezing on to further math equations is a delightfully peak Tolkien move.)

---

Notes:

¹Tolkien generally uses "begetting" or some variant thereof to talk about sex in this section, and honestly, the more he talks about sex, the funnier I find his euphemisms.

²Arwen, at least, was also affected by this in the Third Age as well. It was not only her choice of a mortal life with Aragorn, but specifically her pregnancy with Eldarion that fully bound her to a mortal existence (Eldarion's sisters, like Vardamir's and Arwen's siblings, are not mentioned—though Tolkien does point out on pg. 22 that absence from these kinds of records does not indicate nonexistence). Tolkien says that it was after Eldarion's conception that Arwen's lifespan began to fully operate on Númenórean rather than half-Elvish (or ordinary mortal) terms (78).

Even Melian's relationship with materiality and gender was affected by getting pregnant with Lúthien. Tolkien says that "Melian, having in woman-form borne a child after the manner of the Incarnate, desired to do this no more ... To have borne more children would still further have chained her and trammeled her" (21). Her power as a Maia, especially her power of foresight, was limited by taking physical form in the first place, but then even more extensively by using that physical form to bring forth Lúthien. The implications of "in woman-form" and "still further have chained her" are ... um. A lot! This is a bit remote from the Númenórean question, but there is SO MUCH going on with pregnancy here.

³Tolkien specifically provides an example of a case where divorce would definitely not be allowed on Númenor: to provide an heir for a king. Given Tolkien's devout Catholicism and ... you know, English history, it's not exactly difficult to imagine why this specific scenario is the one that came to mind as an example of how Númenóreans are built different. But this was already strongly implied in "The Mariner's Wife," where it's made clear that the estrangement between Aldarion and his wife Erendis means he will never have another heir than their daughter Ancalimë. This leads Aldarion to the unprecedented move in Middle-earth history of making the royal line of succession absolutely gender-neutral. He didn't just make it possible for a daughter to inherit in the absence of a son (such as was Ancalimë's case), but established a norm and possibly a law that the eldest child would always inherit, regardless of gender. There actually is an example of this being applied on Númenor to give preference to an elder daughter over a younger son—Tar-Telperiën actually had a brother, but she was the firstborn.

Comments

[chestnut_pod]

FEMINIST NUMENOREAN SQUIRRELS, SAVE ME FROM THE HORRORS OF TOLKIEN'S THOUGHTS ABOUT PREGNANCY.

One of the greater sensations of relief in my life was hacking my way through that section (the formatting of which literally fritzed my e-reader, lol) and finally coming to the note, "What of Maeglin?" -- marking the moment when Jonald clearly threw the whole section and everything in it into the barrel from whose bottom Hostetter scraped it decades later. I don't think I could take it if any of these was any more canonical than Tinfang Warble! "Genuine peculiarities" is so right.

I might add, what of Morwen Steelsheen?! Morwen Steelsheen and her five children by Thengel, starting when she was about 26, and in the middle of whom she ups stakes, moves countries, assumes a queenship, and then has more children? Moreover, if one considers Edain to be proto-Numenorean in any way, which I think Tolkien does, we see some women (including the most proto-Numenorean of them all, Morwen Elfsheen) doing all kinds of things while pregnant and immediately post-natal that do not mesh with this idea of spiritual depletion and postpartum exhausted seclusion at all.

The whole section, honestly, left a really bad taste in my mouth. I found the stuff about postpartum seclusion in particular less "interesting new quasi-canon" and more, frankly, something of a pitiful kind of post hoc gymnastics to try to retroactively justify the absence of women from JRRT's narratives. Not to mention all the stuff trying to wank it around so that it makes toooootal sense why Elven, Peredhil, and Númenorean women would/should always marry older men, ugh. It just doesn't line up with what we see in LOTR or the published Silm, to my profound relief. Having it in NoME is more than enough! One must think of poor Edith, too… Wonder if she got a nice secluded rest after her kids' birth…

Very long and rambling answer, sorry!

[anghraine]

One of the greater sensations of relief in my life was hacking my way through that section (the formatting of which literally fritzed my e-reader, lol) and finally coming to the note, "What of Maeglin?" -- marking the moment when Jonald clearly threw the whole section and everything in it into the barrel from whose bottom Hostetter scraped it decades later. I don't think I could take it if any of these was any more canonical than Tinfang Warble! "Genuine peculiarities" is so right.

I'll admit that I don't fully agree with this. From what I can tell, these notes were carefully kept, revised multiple times (most of the details remaining the same or very similar in later revisions), neatly organized and preserved, etc. I did not at all get the impression that Tolkien had discarded all this, only that he was trying to reconcile his desire for more scientific and mathematical rigor with the structure of the narrative. And he doesn't just throw it all away when he remembers Maeglin, but brainstorms various changes to Maeglin's story to make the numbers work with these ideas rather than prioritizing Maeglin's story above the weird math shit.

I guess I think that it's important to distinguish between Tolkien ideas that it's appealing as fans to accept or reject, and what he himself adopted or rejected. It's kind of the opposite of "The Problem of Ros," which fandom loves and quotes all the time as canon, but which Tolkien himself almost entirely rejected (certainly he seems to gone back to his usual insistence that Sindarin replaced the Bëorians' vernacular language and this profoundly impacted regional politics in Númenor much later, which you would never know from how fandom uses "The Problem of Ros" to talk about Bëorian language).

I, personally, think two of Tolkien's impulses are basically at odds here. One is Tolkien's basic conservatism wrt gender that pervades everything he ever wrote about it and certainly pervades his thoughts on pregnancy here—like, the stuff about how "even" Númenórean women are less consumed by matters of marriage, children etc than most humans, but of course more preoccupied by it than Númenórean men and less inclined to be distracted by lore and artistry. That is 100% Tolkien gender shit. Everything about divorce on Númenor is just distilled Tolkien Catholicism with a side of "fuck Henry VIII", I think. He's obviously got hang-ups about pregnancy that are enormously influenced by gender as well, so even when he's coming up with the lore about how Elvish reproduction fundamentally requires a more comparable spiritual investment from both parents than IRL and is painless for the mother, of course it's still much harder on mothers. He repeatedly refers to Míriel and the significance of her year-long pregnancy and what it took from her (yet somehow, Fëanor's fiery spirit doesn't seem to have seriously impacted Finwë's vitality at all!).

...but I also think he's trying to distinguish Elvish and Númenórean pregnancy and general biological development from his ideas of what is normal. He's using this to underscore how strange and eldritch and unfamiliar these people are. It's supposed to be weird. So there are both ways in which it reflects how he thinks of gender and pregnancy and so on and also reflects his idea of what would be strange and abnormal. IDK, it seems like their height, in a way? His association of tallness with spiritual stature is a very conventional idea in itself but "Númenórean men were regularly seven feet tall, Elendil was at least that tall and possibly 7'11", and Númenórean women were close in size to the men" scales that idea to such an extreme that it seems obviously an attempt to distance them from what's normal and natural in Tolkien's view and emphasize how weird and unique they are. And with the pregnancy stuff, I guess it seems to me like the very Tolkien Yikes.gif gender politics of it all and the also very Tolkien handling of it as strange and uncanny rather than normative is not all that easily disentangled.

I do have a personal preference for leaning into weird eldritch aspects of the world building, esp with regard to Elves and Númenóreans, whose sheer strangeness gets watered down a lot in fandom IMO. So I am more inclined to see what I can make workable in stuff like this rather than throwing it out wholesale. I'm definitely not for accepting everything here, but it does seem more complex and interesting to me, I guess.

I might add, what of Morwen Steelsheen?! Morwen Steelsheen and her five children by Thengel, starting when she was about 26, and in the middle of whom she ups stakes, moves countries, assumes a queenship, and then has more children?

Hmm, I'd add some caveats here as well. Tolkien uses "Númenórean" as a term both for literal Númenóreans on Númenor and their descendants on Middle-earth, but some of this pretty clearly only applies to Númenóreans on Númenor, or at least while it was still around. The idea that 20 is a young age for a Númenórean woman to marry at is present in LOTR (specifically mentioned wrt Gilraen and I think implied by the emphasis on the youth of mid-20s Morwen and Finduilas when they married). However, the specific ages set down as "normal" in the Númenórean section seem to refer pretty specifically to the Númenórean lifespan of the Second Age, which had shrunk very considerably by Morwen's time. Her contemporary relatives, the Princes of Dol Amroth, seemed to have lifespans into the 90s-110s around her time, whereas say Erendis (whose entire story is shaped by her relatively short lifespan) lived over 200 years.

Five children doesn't seem a huge departure from the normal four children in Númenórean families, to me? But I suspect the real explanation is that Tolkien strongly (though not altogether consistently) prefers patrilineality and conceives of culture and nature in those terms. Théoden and King Eldacar of Gondor have basically exactly the same background of one Númenórean parent (Valacar/Morwen) and one from the Northmen of their era (Vidumavi/Thengel), but Tolkien is deeply insistent that Eldacar is Númenórean in every way that matters and Castamir etc are bigoted fools, while Théoden is pretty much wholly identified with Rohan apart from being born in Gondor (and explicitly is not considered part-Elvish by Tolkien whereas Théoden's cousins Imrahil and Finduilas are). In Tolkien's view Morwen is not really bringing forth Númenórean children (they're just tall Rohirrim) and thus none of the difficulties of doing so would apply to her, anyway.

(This is not good in any way, let me add! But I don't think it's much of a contradiction of what's set forth about Númenórean women in Númenórean families on Númenor.)

Moreover, if one considers Edain to be proto-Numenorean in any way, which I think Tolkien does, we see some women (including the most proto-Numenorean of them all, Morwen Elfsheen) doing all kinds of things while pregnant and immediately post-natal that do not mesh with this idea of spiritual depletion and postpartum exhausted seclusion at all

In all honesty, I do pretty strongly disagree that Tolkien suggests this also would include the Edain or that the general weirdness of Númenóreans is largely attributable to the Edain. I just don't see that in how he wrote about them. There are certainly cultural connections to the First Age Edain, but the element of the eldritch and uncanny and strange about the Númenóreans as a people—not in the way of witchy vibes but specific, widespread, very unusual qualities—is IMO very clearly attributed to Númenor itself and to the divine gifts given to the Edain who went there. These aren't individualized oddities but a transformation as a people over generations. As far as I'm aware, other Edain did not receive those gifts in this way. Númenóreans do have significant commonalities with their Edain ancestors, esp ones like Morwen and Túrin and Tuor, but when (say) Tolkien describes the changes to the early Númenóreans in terms of lifespans, supernatural abilities, size, cultural developments, even their powers of mystical craftsmanship (Merry's dagger was actively enchanted by a Númenórean to break the spells on the Witch-king, for instance), I think it's very clear he's not talking about the original Edain at all. They were profoundly changed by Númenor and the blessings of the Valar/Eru, and over the course of the Third Age, are becoming more "normal" (as in, like the Rohirrim, like the Edain) because of the slow but inexorable withdrawal of their gifts ever since Númenor's destruction.

There is a lot going on with that as well that I don't necessarily think should be uncritically supported, but I do think it's pretty unambiguously what Tolkien wrote.

(I personally think the changes the early Númenóreans underwent that made them so different, while framed extremely positively in terms of blessings, gifts, favor, or grace from the Valar, could be seen as an interesting mirror to the Orcs. The Edain who went to Númenor went there voluntarily and presumably thought its effects on them throughout those early generations were super awesome, so it's not to equate these processes, but I do think there's an intriguing parallel between the inability of all Valar to create fully incarnate beings but a willingness under special conditions to change people who already existed to the point of making those changes widespread and heritable.)

I found the stuff about postpartum seclusion in particular less "interesting new quasi-canon" and more, frankly, something of a pitiful kind of post hoc gymnastics to try to retroactively justify the absence of women from JRRT's narratives

Maybe with Elves, though I'm not sure that JRRT even cared about the issue enough to justify that choice. I think "oh, and that would also explain why..." would be more of an afterthought for an idea he was already interested in exploring. I mean, he put a lot of thought and math into it, this feels more to me like genuine interest on his part rather than an after the fact retcon (esp since, for Elves and Númenóreans, it wasn't after the fact; the pregnancy stuff doesn't explain much about LOTR at all, and of course the Silm was not published in JRRT's lifetime, women are rather more prominent in his personal drafts than the published Silm, and back then he could change anything in it if he felt like it, like he considered doing with Maeglin). I definitely don't think he was particularly concerned with explaining a lack of female presence in Númenórean narratives given that the only main narrative set on Númenor heavily involves women. I think it's more "hey, I think it would be cool if..." thinking that was unfortunately always profoundly inflected by his personal opinions about gender roles.

Not to mention all the stuff trying to wank it around so that it makes toooootal sense why Elven, Peredhil, and Númenorean women would/should always marry older men, ugh.

I don't fully get this, either? Like, with peredhil women, we have:

1) Lúthien, older than Beren
2) Elwing, the same age as Eärendil iirc
3) I guess maybe Tindómiel could be considered a peredhel woman, to go by the reference to Vardamir being one in NOME; we don't know if she married at all or to whom
4) Arwen marries a younger man
5) We don't know anything about Gilmith

I recall a few references to Elvish and Númenórean women usually marrying a bit younger than men, and he seems uncomfortable with the idea of Arwen being functionally (rather than literally) a bit older than Aragorn, but iirc he also concedes that it wouldn't be that much of a problem ... I guess it didn't seem that he was making a huge deal out of older women despite his clear preference for spouses being either the same age, both so old that it's hard to say, somewhat older man/younger woman, or extremely long-lived older woman/younger man. We know even Aragorn/Éowyn was too much of a gap for his peace of mind and of course the immortal man/young human woman is the one love story across the kindreds that doesn't work out and is the rarest kind. I guess it just seems less clear-cut to me.

Re: Very long and rambling answer, sorry!

[chestnut_pod]

Oh, thank you for this long discussion! It’s been a long time since I’ve been able to really get into the weeds with someone about Tolkien. I think there are a few places were we just disagree on matters of taste, so bow out whenever, but I really had fun thinking about your points and writing up my responses.

I'll admit that I don't fully agree with [my assertion that “What of Maeglin?” ended this flight of mathematics]. From what I can tell, these notes were carefully kept, revised multiple times…I did not at all get the impression that Tolkien had discarded all this… And he doesn't just throw it all away when he remembers Maeglin, but brainstorms various changes to Maeglin's story to make the numbers work with these ideas rather than prioritizing Maeglin's story above the weird math shit.

I don’t fully agree. “What of Maeglin?” is itself a non-contemporaneous addition to the calculations. It is a later emendation, in pencil, clearly showing second thoughts. The tabulations cut off, unfinished, before this note. He does go back and try to mush the story around so Maeglin fits better, but, crucially, he never seems to select one alternative that he favors over the others or returns to consistently, unlike other ideas which appear in NoME which did get continued scrutiny even in this late period, such as Arda’s overall timescale and physical composition. Each “solution” to “What of Maeglin?” also has its own problems with the narratives of Gondolin we see in TFoG and the published Silm. Given the amount of time and effort JRRT spent writing and rewriting the Fall of Gondolin over the course of decades, the timing and nature of Maeglin’s birth and early life actually seem really important. He had ample opportunity to hammer out alternative explanations for Maeglin and did not. He is simply too load-bearing to the Fall of Gondolin, which is of course load-bearing to everything else that comes after in the broader narrative of the Legendarium. If Maeglin’s story doesn’t work, a whole lot else doesn’t work either.

I guess I think that it's important to distinguish between Tolkien ideas that it's appealing as fans to accept or reject, and what he himself adopted or rejected.

I completely agree, and I think, though you may disagree, that both I and Tolkien saw “What of Maeglin?” as a sufficient structural problem that I may view these timelines as discarded on its basis alone. I would also add that the whole section seems like a post-hoc justification for what large families we see. I admit that I like that I can toss these things out because I find them distasteful, but I find LOTS of Tolkien distasteful and yet consider it canonical. I truly do believe that his second thoughts here indicate that this is at the very least problematic, if not wholly discarded.

That said, I also would say that I can find Tolkien to have been wrong (even if that may lead me into the trap of “unappealing, thus not canon,”), not least because these are, at heart, unpublished drafts, however carefully kept. They can be fraught with error as well as constructive flights of fancy. Many authors lose track of timelines, little points of fact, and continuity over far shorter spans of writing time than Tolkien. And if he has come up with a great idea which nonetheless removes plausibility from a hugely important keystone plot point, well, I think he may have been wrong — or at least, that this brainstorm was compelling but ultimately a dead end. I find it important to distinguish between Tolkien the wildly creative, but not terribly disciplined and editorially reluctant, author, and Tolkien the infallible god-worldbuilder.

I, personally, think two of Tolkien's impulses are basically at odds here. …(yet somehow, Fëanor's fiery spirit doesn't seem to have seriously impacted Finwë's vitality at all!).”

Couldn’t agree more with everything you said here!

...but I also think he's trying to distinguish Elvish and Númenórean pregnancy and general biological development from his ideas of what is normal… And with the pregnancy stuff, I guess it seems to me like the very Tolkien Yikes.gif gender politics of it all and the also very Tolkien handling of it as strange and uncanny rather than normative is not all that easily disentangled.

And also here!

I do have a personal preference for leaning into weird eldritch aspects of the world building, esp with regard to Elves and Númenóreans, whose sheer strangeness gets watered down a lot in fandom IMO. So I am more inclined to see what I can make workable in stuff like this rather than throwing it out wholesale. I'm definitely not for accepting everything here, but it does seem more complex and interesting to me, I guess.

Here is where I disagree, which is 100% a matter of taste. However, I think that while some Númenorians and Elves are like this, there is pretty obviously a range of super-specialness that sometimes expands to include some Men, or retreats to exclude certain Elves. Túrin and Morwen are not Númenorean (though I do consider them forerunners, about which more later), and are so beautiful and otherworldly as to appear Elven to others, even other Elves. Tuor in some versions achieves immortality. Lúthien gives up immortality and dies naturally. Hador is physically stronger than any Elf in Hithlum, though Elves are meant to be generally stronger than Men. Gwindor of course experienced extenuating circumstances, but he is an example of an Elf who becomes more Man-like, especially in comparison to Túrin. Some Elves, like Saeros, are cruel fools. Salgant is not at all in keeping with the usual physical descriptions of Elves. It seems obvious to me that most Elves are Like That, but some Elves are not. At the same time, some Men are Like That, though most are not. There is a small zone of overlap between the two that is not exclusive to Númenóreans.

Then, of course, you have Númenóreans vs Other Men, where I also see a range. Boromir and Faramir have exactly the same family and yet do not share certain aspects of “Númenóreanness,” with Faramir noticeably more fey than his full brother (though Boromir still favorably compares himself, at least, to “lesser men”), and even, in some ways, than Aragorn, whose whole fate relies on successfully selling himself as quintessentially Dúnedain. This difference is immediately visible to Sam and Frodo and suggests a significant range within Númenorian “bloodlines” — as do Éomer and Éowyn, who are quarter Númenórean, and not just that, but Númenórean of Dol Amroth. To me, it’s just not how anything works to say, “Oh, all Númenorians are like this,” and any who are not are just “less Númenorian,” when they are nearly or exactly as “ethnically” Númenórean as other characters. To me, the far more likely (and, I will admit) palatable explanation is magic, spiritual strength, and destiny. I actually consider this more interesting and complex than simple and clear-cut differentiations between Men, Elves, and Númenóreans.

Five children doesn't seem a huge departure from the normal four children in Númenórean families, to me?

If even one exceptional pregnancy a la Arwen can spell the difference between ever having more children and not, and two pregnancies is the difference between “average” and “never,” than I would consider a one-pregnancy difference mathematically and qualitatively significant.

Tolkien uses "Númenórean" as a term both for literal Númenóreans on Númenor and their descendants on Middle-earth, but some of this pretty clearly only applies to Númenóreans on Númenor, or at least while it was still around… over 200 years

That’s a good point! Thank you for emphasizing it. I concede it partially, though I’d also take the moment to point out that the fact that “Númenóreanness” can be lost without much exogamy, as in the line of Dol Amroth, is another indication that Númenóreans as a group are not that inherently different to all other Men.

Furthermore…

But I suspect the real explanation is that Tolkien strongly (though not altogether consistently) prefers patrilineality and conceives of culture and nature in those terms..In Tolkien's view Morwen is not really bringing forth Númenórean children (they're just tall Rohirrim) and thus none of the difficulties of doing so would apply to her, anyway

I fully believe that you’re right about Tolkien’s thinking here; I think this is an approach that reoccurs frequently throughout his work. And I would fully believe that there could be a cultural system that believed in this patrilineality in-universe… but that just isn’t how anything actually works! Super-specialness is not a haplogroup-linked trait! Moreover, Morwen’s father was Númenórean, so even if the patrilineal logic held, Númenórean childbirth characteristics should apply to her, because “childbirth pain and conception phenotype” is definitely not linked to the sperm that fertilized you rather than your own dang body! And, considering that we see the Boromir/Faramir difference so clearly, patrilineal descent clearly doesn’t even necessarily always apply to sons, so Tolkien is internally inconsistent even wrt Men who are men. We do also see some rare exceptions among Elves, like Galadriel’s complicated identification with the Telerin people of her mother and Findis’ turn to the Vanyar, if one accepts drafts with Findis in them.

In all honesty, I do pretty strongly disagree that Tolkien suggests this also would include the Edain or that the general weirdness of Númenóreans is largely attributable to the Edain. I just don't see that in how he wrote about them. There are certainly cultural connections to the First Age Edain, but the element of the eldritch and uncanny and strange about the Númenóreans as a people—not in the way of witchy vibes but specific, widespread, very unusual qualities—is IMO very clearly attributed to Númenor itself and to the divine gifts given to the Edain who went there.

I disagree. There were Men who were not Edain on Númenor, and they did not become Númenóreans/Dúnedain. Specifically, per HoME, there were Drúedain on Númenor. They lived alongside Edain as refugees in Sirion and arrived in the very same boats as the Edain to Númenor, and yet, they did not become special. The answer to why this was is clearly “Tolkien is racist,” but in-universe, it seems like suffering all the same losses, making all the same choices, and living in the same place as the Edain for the same number of generations makes no difference to Men who are not Edain. Therefore, there must be something particular about being Edain that is a necessary, if not sufficient, condition to the island-acquired super-specialness.

However, if we don’t want to go the HoME road, there were also slaves on Númenor, at least partly taken from non-Númenórean groups in the Númenórean colonies. If just “living on Númenor” and “cultural Númenóreanness” were sufficient, then these slaves would have acquired at least some of that specialness, but one can clearly see that they did not, because even Faramir, fairly pro-“lesser men,” acknowledges their descendants or cousins as very different. They were not part of the initial group of refugees, and they, like the Drúedain, accrued no special characteristics from their physical presence and social acculturation on Númenor, because only the Edain do that.

Tolkien also very clearly does single out the Edain as special from the beginning — they were the Men who, just out of the inherent goodness of their hearts, resisted Morgoth’s call and went west into Beleriand, and later fought on the side of the Valar in the WoW. That is why they were given Númenor in the first place. No explanation for their initial Morgoth-resistance is given except that they’re just that naturally great and different. I don’t think Edain=Númenorean, but to me, Edain absolutely =proto-Númenórean.

As far as I'm aware, other Edain did not receive those gifts

I personally think it’s implied that the Edain who went to Númenor were the only Edain who were left in Beleriand post-WoW. There were no other Edain. Moreover, all non-Edain Men “fled back into the east” and the lands that were to become the southwest coast of Middle-earth were repopulated later by more groups of migrating Men.

They were profoundly changed by Númenor and the blessings of the Valar/Eru

I think this is, actually, wrong about the sequence in an important way. I think you are correct that residence on Númenor is important for keeping and intensifying these characteristics, but it is clearly stated in the published Silm that Eönwe came to Middle-earth and there blessed the Edain with “wisdom and power and life more enduring than any others of mortal race have possessed,” THEN Númenor was created, and THEN “the Edain set sail upon the deep waters, following the Star” for Númenor.

(And the Drúedain with them, per HoME! But they didn’t get any Númenóreanness avant la lettre or afterwards…)

So the Edain, and only the Edain, became Númenórean before setting a single foot on Númenor. Even though they subsequently bore “children fairer than their fathers” through the special Númenor vibes, that initial transformation was 1) not due to Númenor itself, and 2) given on a distinctly racial basis to only the Edain, because they had an inherent preexisting “goodness” that separated them from all other Men, which was why they were in Beleriand in the first place.

I don't fully get this [about age-wanking], either? [list of relationships]

Yes, you’re right, he totally contradicts himself, which is part of why I find this section probably not to be trusted/accepted. However, Tolkien does clearly state that the ideal and usual age for early Elvish men to “first beget” was effective-age 48, while the usual and ideal age for early Elvish women to “first beget” was less than half of that, “before they were of age 20.” (UGH, shudder.) For later generations of Elvish women, he generously raises this to effective-age 72, but later male Elves still father their first children older than that. And, as you say, “he seems uncomfortable with the idea of Arwen being functionally (rather than literally) a bit older than Aragorn.” I consider that discomfort telling.

I think he had this weird attack of the patriarchal in what became NoME, which I find distasteful and a huge part of why I didn’t much enjoy the book — but I also find it almost entirely contradictory with what he did write and publish, which you laid out so clearly, which is another reason I don’t consider it congruent with “canon” (and hopefully not actually congruent with what he generally thought), which for me has to start and end with the published LOTR. He tried very hard to make this view of relationships work, and, happily, he could not.

Lastly, regarding post-hoc gymnastics, this is a textual interpretation, and an ungenerous one at that, but I think the sentence, “Men who had dealings with the Eldar [therefore]… might even be unaware that some Elven-king or lord had a wife,” seems like a convenient excuse for why there are so many textual ghosts hanging around the parts of the Legendarium that are meant to be transmitted archival tradition.

Oh, one actually last thing: NoME contains three phases of thought about Elf pregnancies. The worst is, “Gestation, therefore, proceeds according to the growth and ageing scale of the Quendi, and occupies ¾ yên, or 108 MY.” Slightly better is that it lasts 9 “löar,” or 8 mortal years. OR, maybe it lasted 3 “löar,” for 2.6 mortal years. Or I guess we go back to what we already knew (cf why Elves celebrate begetting days rather than birthdays), and stick with 12 months. But if Fëanor was in the womb for [1 growth year = 12 löar], Míriel was actually pregnant for almost TWELVE years. I don’t like any of these options!

[alias_sqbr]

This is FASCINATING, thank you!

[anghraine]

You're welcome! :D

[makamu]

I have a copy of NoME and read it once when it came out, but I freely admit that I have yet to read and think about it properly. So this post and your discussion with chestnut_pod are fascinating and a great incentive to finally get my brain into gear. *g*

[anghraine]

I'm glad you're enjoying!

I do plan to continue the conversation, but have been too busy to give it the level of thought necessary, haha. So ... er, watch this space. ;)

[makamu]

Oh, as someone who has been sitting on a post for lack of brain power for six months: I get it and do take your time :)