Women Figures in George Macdonald’s and J.R.R. Tolkien’s Fantasy Writings

It is an undisputed fact that George MacDonald’s fantasy books were among J.R.R. Tolkien’s many sources of inspiration when writing his Middle-earth epic. Among these, “The Princess and the Goblinˮ and “The Princess and Curdieˮ attracted my attention, through the figures of some interesting women who appear in both of them. This paper endeavours to draw a comparison between Tolkien’s outstanding female characters in “The Lord of the Ringsˮ and the earlier versions of the same feminine archetypes in the two MacDonald books, noting both points of similarity and differences, as well as the strong effect these women have upon other characters in the stories.