Entwives

2023-01-26T20:50:09Z

Hebekiah: Avoiding defining entwives as "mates"

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[[File:Luca Bonatti - Farewell to Fangorn.jpg|thumb|250px|''Farewell to Fangorn'' by Luca Bonatti]]
'''Entwives''' is the word in the common tongue that Treebeard uses to mean the females of his kind, the [[Ents]]. The Entwives were dedicated to [[Yavanna]].<ref>{{L|247}}</ref> They had gardens in the regions later known as the [[Brown Lands]], and their agricultural knowledge was passed on to [[Men]] and [[Hobbits]].<ref name=L144>{{L|144}}</ref>

==History==
During the [[First Age|First]] or the [[Second Age]] they started to move farther away from the male Ents because they liked to plant and control small things like vegetables, grass and flowers, while the male Ents tended the larger trees of the great forest. The Entwives passed eastward over the [[Anduin]] and went to the region that would later become the [[Brown Lands]]. After [[Morgoth]] was overthrown, their gardens blossomed and they taught agriculture to the primitive [[Men]] and they honored them.<ref>{{TT|Treebeard}}</reF>

When [[Sauron]] burned that region to stop the advance of the [[Last Alliance of Elves and Men|Last Alliance]] down the [[Anduin]], the Entwives were likely wiped out, although some might have been captured and enslaved as agricultural workers or have escaped into the east of [[Middle-earth]].<ref name=L144 /> The Ents held that the Entwives were lost.

[[Treebeard]] would tell [[Meriadoc Brandybuck|Merry]] and [[Peregrin Took|Pippin]] that the Entwives would love their country. Indeed sometime before the [[War of the Ring]], [[Halfast Gamgee]] claimed that he saw an [[Elms|elm]]-like "Tree-Man" walking in the [[North Moors]].<ref>{{FR|Shadow}}</ref> However, it was never learned whether the "Tree-Man" was an Ent, an Entwife, or just a story.

==Background==
One of the primary daggers on the survival of the Entwives is found in [[Letter 144]] of ''[[The Letters of J.R.R. Tolkien]]:
{{quote|I think that in fact the Entwives had disappeared for good, being destroyed with their gardens in the War of the Last Alliance ([[Second Age]] {{SA|3429|n}} – {{SA|3441|n}}) when Sauron pursued a scorched earth policy and burned their land against the advance of the Allies down the Anduin...|[[Letter 144]]}}<ref name=L144 />

In [[2017]], a [[Wikipedia:Quora|Quora]] user named Pip Willis published a partial image of a map he claimed his father drew and shared with [[J.R.R. Tolkien]] in [[1971]]. Willis alleges that Tolkien wrote on the map "Here may be Entwives", in an area on the west bank of a southern bow of the river [[Carnen]], flowing into the [[Sea of Rhûn]].<ref>{{webcite|author=Pip Willis|articleurl=http://www.quora.com/After-Lord-of-the-Rings-was-there-any-mention-of-the-entwives/answer/Pip-Willis|articlename=After Lord of the Rings was there any mention of the entwives?|dated=22 May 2017|website=[http://www.quora.com/ quora.com]|accessed=7 June 2017}}</ref><ref>{{webcite|author=[[Michael Martinez]]|articleurl=http://www.tolkiensociety.org/blog/2017/05/yes-but-is-it-canon/|articlename=Yes, but is it canon?|dated=24 May 2017|website=TS|accessed=7 June 2017}}</ref>

==See also==
* [[:Category:Images of Entwives|Images of Entwives]]
* [[The Ent and the Entwife]] (song/poem)

== External links ==
* [[User:Ardamir/Essays/Entwives|Of the Ents and the Entwives]] - An essay on the location of the Entwives by [[User:Ardamir|Ardamir]].
*[http://tolkien.slimy.com/tfaq/EnemyMisc.html#Entwives What became of the Entwives?] from the [[Tolkien FAQ]]

{{references}}

[[Category:Ents]]
[[de:Entfrauen]]
[[fr:encyclo/personnages/ents/ents-femmes]]
[[fi:Entvaimot]]

Talk:Entwives

2023-01-26T17:16:29Z

Hebekiah: /* Defining entwives as "mates" */ new section

== "Here there may be Entwives" ==

Is there any further information that can corroborate the claims made by Pip Willis about the Entwives' location, or that he is a qualified source? The best I can surmise is that he is somehow related to map-maker [[Didier Willis]], but that's a guess. Is Pip recognized as a Tolkien scholar who I'm unaware of? Either way, with all respect to Pip, I find it hard to view him as an authority on Arda's geography when he has used David Day's terribly inaccurate map of Arda in response to another Quora question [https://www.quora.com/What-lands-are-east-of-Mordor].

I guess my broader question is this: does citing this Quora post, without any further corroboration demonstrating the credibility of either the claim itself or the person making the claim, satisfy Tolkien Gateway's requirements of a reliable source? [[User:Protospace|Protospace]] 17:14, 7 June 2017 (UTC)

:I found the article at Quora noteworthy, as obviously Michael Martinez did as well. It could naturally be an elaborate hoax, and we will probably see more discussion about Willis' article in the future.--[[User:Morgan|Morgan]] 22:09, 7 June 2017 (UTC)

::I think the claim can be reported, as we have done, but we can't regard it as canon, of course. --{{User:Mith/sig}} 08:21, 17 June 2017 (UTC)

== Defining entwives as "mates" ==

The first line in the article "Entwives were the mates of the Ents." is absurdly sexist. Could you imagine seeing a dictionary define 'Men' as "the mates of women"?

The name "entwives" is gathered from Treebeard and the ents perspective who apparently missed their wives but still is a sexist reduction of their identity though that is just the word used in the common tongue and not Entish which takes a very long time to say and is hopefully more descriptive beyond them only existing as mates since they did indeed develop their own culture and habits. Elvish names for them, [[Ents|Onodrim and Onyalië]] are for all ents, male and female it seems.

I suggest the first line be changed.

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Entwives

Talk:Entwives