Abstract
Lobelia Sackville-Baggins seems a thoroughly unlikeable character. From the moment of her introduction near the end of The Hobbit, she is set up in direct opposition to the Bagginses of Bag End, whose position and property she covets. She is presented and perceived as a huffy, boorish, social-climbing virago with very little to redeem her. Perhaps for that very reason, Lobelia’s character is not often examined by Tolkien scholars, even those of us interested in Tolkien’s women. When Lobelia is mentioned, it is often only in passing: a generic comment on “the greedy and self-aggrandising Sackville-Bagginses,” or merely a footnote, as in Leslie A. Donovan’s “The Valkyrie Reflex.” She is, in short, everything educated modern women strive not to be. For feminist scholars in particular, Lobelia seems more an embarrassment than an asset.
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Amendt-Raduege, A. (2017). Revising Lobelia. In: Vaccaro, C., Kisor, Y. (eds) Tolkien and Alterity. The New Middle Ages. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-61018-4_4
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