Where Can Female 🧌Orcs Be Found in Tolkien's Writings?

[Olorgando]

Yes.
But not "vaguely".

Dude, there are those famous La Brea Tar Pits in L.A. which have yielded tons of bones of critters by now extinct. Yo, those Uruks were tough, but tar pits would have left Saruman with a bunch of dinky Orcs that the Rohirrim would have dispatched in 15 minutes ...

 

[Sir Eowyn]

Of course not... but I love the tar pits. Pretty horrific.

 

[TrackerOrc]

I think I've always assumed (and must have read it somewhere) that Orcs were bred from Elves captured by Morgoth; if this is true then obviously female Orcs could have been part of the mix, so to speak, as female Elves were possibly captured as well?

 

[Sir Eowyn]

And considering that Azog died in 2799 in that battle, and his son Bolg was around 140 years and more later, to fight before the Lonely Mountain, we know that they live long. Maybe they're like Elves in that they only die when they're killed... who knows? But anyway, the relationship between Azog and Bolg does show that they have family relationships, with acknowledged children.

 

[TrackerOrc]

And considering that Azog died in 2799 in that battle, and his son Bolg was around 140 years and more later, to fight before the Lonely Mountain, we know that they live long. Maybe they're like Elves in that they only die when they're killed... who knows? But anyway, the relationship between Azog and Bolg does show that they have family relationships, with acknowledged children.

If they were indeed bred from Elves, then I don't see why they wouldn't have the same life-span as them? Which, of course, means that some of the Orcs fighting the War of the Ring may have been around for a very long time indeed! Obviously they lived a more warlike lifestyle than the other peoples of Middle-earth, if only because the other peoples definitely had a "the only good Orc is a dead Orc" policy towards them (which could be seen as quite problematic really).

And I would say that the Azog - Bolg relationship you menationed shows not just family relationships, but hereditary kingships, which is a fairly high development?

 

[Squint-eyed Southerner]

Tolkien later changed his mind, and decided orcs were bred from Men -- probably for some of the reasons you mentioned.

 

[TrackerOrc]

Tolkien later changed his mind, and decided orcs were bred from Men -- probably for some of the reasons you mentioned.

Well I'm still going to stay in my happy place, thinking that the likes of the Tracker Orc (my favourite extremely-minor character) has been around for millenia, and has also survived the latest little setback and is happily pottering around down south somewhere!

 

[Squint-eyed Southerner]

Well, that's one role model, I guess.

"Though I say it as shouldn't, you may think."

 

[Elthir]

Maybe the tracker orc is a Maia-orc who chose its relative "smaller-ness" for deception? If so, perhaps he is flourishing these days . . . with so many people to track!

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[TrackerOrc]

Maybe the tracker orc is a Maia-orc who chose its relative "smaller-ness" for deception? If so, perhaps he is flourishing these days . . . with so many people to track!

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This would help explain his brilliance with the bow as well!

 

[Olorgando]

In the light of the Ainulindalë, Morgoth being able to pervert either archaic Elves, or Men, into Orcs simply does not make sense.
But then, except for trashing Númenor, that nominal "father" of the Eruhini seems to have done practically nothing to help his "children" ...

 

[Matthew Bailey]

Tolkien went through no less than five different “possibilities” for the question: What are Orcs?

And it was this very issue, and some others close to it, that caused him to fail to make much progress on the Mythos, and re-writing of the First Age after the completion of The Lord of the Rings. Tolkien indicates in The History of Middle-earth, vol X: Morgoth’s Ring that he had trouble conceiving of something so “heinously evil” as the corruption of either Elves or Men to such a state that they “bred true” as Orcs begatting Orcs.

He was fairly clear in his most complete conception of them that they did reproduce through normal “biological processes of sexual reproduction.” But he also still tended to cling to two earlier conception of Orcs (if not three), namely that there were some Orcs who were very minor Maiar who were corrupted by Morgoth, or that they were automatons, at first, “created” by Morgoth, and incapable of movement or action without Morgoth’s Will motivating them. The third conception he tended to return to was that they were “soulless animals” with a limited speech ability, such as some of the Wargs, Ravens, or as some terrestrial parrots are able to mimic speech.

Really, though, none of these conceptions of Orcs are mutually exclusive, and we could have seen Morgoth make use of all of them at one time or another, depending upon the period in question, or need of the moment.

This could mean that there are thousands to millions of the automaton-Orcs standing like the Chinese Terracotta Army of Qin Shi Huang (the first Chinese Emperor) beneath the waves of Belanger, awaiting Morgoth’s return before marching up out of the sea.

But as for “Orc Women,” why would we expect them to show-up in any of the stories?

All of the stories we have for Middle-earth are supposedly the translations from Elvish of the First/Second Ages, and immediate Eye Witness for The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings, in the form of Bilbo, Frodo, Samwise, Merry & Pippin. And thus they would probably not have seen such a thing as being salient. Tolkien comments upon this aspect of the accounts of Middle-earth in both “Letters” and HoM-e, where he points out that we would likely have a very different perspective were these histories to have been the original Elven account, or later accounts by Men (whether of Númenór or Middle-earth), Dwarves, or people living under the dominion of Sauron.

So the anthropological account of Orc Society isn’t exactly a point of relevance to the “authors” of these accounts.

MB

 

[Elthir]

( . . . ) But he also still tended to cling to two earlier conception of Orcs (if not three), namely that there were some Orcs who were [snip for brevity, by Elthir or Galin] or that they were automatons, at first, “created” by Morgoth, and incapable of movement or action without Morgoth’s Will motivating them. ( . . . ) This could mean that there are thousands to millions of the automaton-Orcs standing like the Chinese Terracotta Army of Qin Shi Huang (the first Chinese Emperor) beneath the waves of Belanger, awaiting Morgoth’s return before marching up out of the sea.

While I certainly might have forgotten something here, at the moment my general recollection is that once (within a general time frame at least) Tolkien switched from Morgoth "making" Orcs to Morgoth corrupting already existing beings, the notion of orcs as automatons was not a consideration.

Sorry to be lazy, but can you provide the source for the automaton idea resurfacing?

 

[Sir Eowyn]

If they were all automatons, the Dark Lord wouldn't be uneasy openly informing them about the Ring... as he is. Plus, the nature of orcs can make them unruly. I very much doubt it was Sauron's intent for that brawl in Cirith Ungol to basically empty the place.

 

[Elthir]

In Myths Transformed (Morgoth's Ring) I dimly recall Tolkien comparing the notion of "puppets" to "absorbed orcs" -- but the latter were not actual automatons if I recall correctly -- I think it depended upon how much of Morgoth's "eye" was upon a group of the Absorbed (at a given time).

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[Matthew Bailey]

While I certainly might have forgotten something here, at the moment my general recollection is that once (within a general time frame at least) Tolkien switched from Morgoth "making" Orcs to Morgoth corrupting already existing beings, the notion of orcs as automatons was not a consideration.

Sorry to be lazy, but can you provide the source for the automaton idea resurfacing?

The idea was discarded and picked-up again a couple of times, with his last comments again rejecting it (from the essay Orcs in The History of Middle-earth, vol X: Morgoth’s Ring in the latter part of the book titled Myths Transformed).

Ultimately he never definitively resolved the issue of “What are Orcs?” While the Orcs being “corrupted existing beings” was what he last explored, the concept disturbed him immensely, as Tolkien struggled with, and was repulsed by, the need to “think like Satan” in order to accurately understand the various things Morgoth (and then Sauron. The former being described as “Satan” and the latter as “The Devil,” which in Catholic Theology and Mythology are actually two distinct “entities/things) did that corrupted the world.

In the case of Orcs being corrupted Elves or Humans, Tolkien recoiled from the idea due to him considering it “too Evil to contemplate.” Which is a bit of an irony if you think about it: The source of all Evil in the world begins the process of corrupting Elves and Humans, and then stops himself, saying “Woah! What am I doing here?! This is just too Evil for even me, the source of ultimate Evil in the Universe, to contemplate. I better think of a less-Evil way to do this.”

The “thing” Tolkien attributed to an ”Absolute Evil Too great to contemplate,“ was that Morgoth’s “Corruption” of the Elves and Men would produce a race/breed of beings that bred true as Orcs, and not as Elves or Men (that a male and female Orc having bred would produce another Orc, rather than producing an Elf, or Human offspring). Tolkien struggled with this largely out of ignorance with Biology, and no small rejection of Evolutionary Theory, which the Catholic Church at the time still rejected (Which would mean that within Eä, Evolution as it exists in our Universe is impossible. The Metaphysics required for that are daunting, to say the least). So.... He wasn’t even aware that such “corruptions” would EASILY produce Orcs that “Bred True,” without having to even resort to what in our universe would be considered a “Supernatural Mechanism.”

But one of the things Tolkien never really explored was that none of these methods or explanations for the origin of Orcs were exclusive, or contradicted by the others. Orcs could very well have been all of the different manifestations Tolkien attributes to them. Especially given the paradoxes that Tolkien identified in the First Age, where he began to understand that the 590 years he allotted for the First Age was really 2,000 to 3,000 years too little, and that in order for not just the Orcs to come into existence, but also the History of the Edain demanding many more than a half-dozen generations between their awakening, and discovery in Beleriand (and their first Fall as described in the Athrabeth).

There are also some unpublished materials that Tolkien wrote on this subject that will not see the light of day for several decades, as both JRRT and CJRT did not want them exposed (Tolkien felt ashamed that he had even contemplated their contents). I have seen one of these in 1982, just prior to Christopher Tolkien taking possession of the entirety of the Bodleian Library’s collection of JRRT’s writings for the First/Second Ages. It is very likely that collectively these could answer more definitively the issue of “What are Orcs?” despite none of these essays themselves reaching a firm conclusion.

mB

 

[Squint-eyed Southerner]

Quite interesting, MB!

I'm not sure how ignorant Tolkien was about biology; he himself described his interest in science from an early age, and certainly had a lifelong fascination with botany, as his letters make clear.

As far as conflict with Catholic doctrine, then or now, well, there are always workarounds, but even they aren't necessary for "secondary creation", or, to put it in other terms, a hypothetical expression of ideas in artistic context, as Tolkien said in defense of Elvish "reincarnation".

And for orcs, we have Saruman and his Uruk-hai, which seems pretty evil, though the author distanced himself from the implications a bit by placing speculation about their origins into the mouth of Treebeard.

Still, you raise interesting questions -- I'd particularly like to hear more about the manuscript you saw!

 

[Elthir]

The idea was discarded and picked-up again a couple of times, with his last comments again rejecting it (from the essay Orcs in The History of Middle-earth, vol X: Morgoth’s Ring in the latter part of the book titled Myths Transformed).

Matthew, nice post. But here, as I noted above, I don't recall JRRT considering orcs automatons after the general period of the notable "switch" (so to speak) -- from Morgoth creating orcs
(idea found in early Silmarillion texts for example, and initial drafting for the Annals of Aman, for another) > to Morgoth corrupting existing beings, as opinioned by Frodo in The Lord of the Rings.

If the only text here is one of the later orc notes in Myths Transformed (meaning those published directly after MT "orc text X"), in my opinion Tolkien doesn't seem to reconsider and reject orcs as automatons, but rather brings up the notion of "puppets" because the absorbed orcs could seem like automatons, even though they were not.

Granted, I guess one could see this as an idea being picked up again and rejected, but to my mind Tolkien's comparison here does not, or at least does not necessarily, amount to a reconsideration of orcs as automatons at such a late point in Orcology.

Anyway, "hair split", I guess.

That said, if there is anything pertinent to this question in the yet unpublished writings you saw, or anything else, I promise to keep it secret . . .

. . . just add it to this thread in invisible "ink"

 

[Alcuin]

There are also some unpublished materials that Tolkien wrote on this subject that will not see the light of day for several decades, as both JRRT and CJRT did not want them exposed (Tolkien felt ashamed that he had even contemplated their contents). I have seen one of these in 1982, just prior to Christopher Tolkien taking possession of the entirety of the Bodleian Library’s collection of JRRT’s writings for the First/Second Ages. It is very likely that collectively these could answer more definitively the issue of “What are Orcs?” despite none of these essays themselves reaching a firm conclusion.

I, too, would like to know something of these materials. I wonder if they will become available again now that CJRT has passed. If you would, please convey what you can recall of them!

 

[Matthew Bailey]

Quite interesting, MB!

I'm not sure how ignorant Tolkien was about biology; he himself described his interest in science from an early age, and certainly had a lifelong fascination with botany, as his letters make clear.

As far as conflict with Catholic doctrine, then or now, well, there are always workarounds, but even they aren't necessary for "secondary creation", or, to put it in other terms, a hypothetical expression of ideas in artistic context, as Tolkien said in defense of Elvish "reincarnation".

And for orcs, we have Saruman and his Uruk-hai, which seems pretty evil, though the author distanced himself from the implications a bit by placing speculation about their origins into the mouth of Treebeard.

Still, you raise interesting questions -- I'd particularly like to hear more about the manuscript you saw!

Tolkien’s ignorance of Biology was largely due to the state of the Science at the time, but also due to his Religious Faith. I was born Catholic, but grew-up among varieties of “creationists,” whether of the Catholic variety, or Evangelical, Accommodationalist or not, and they all manifest a sizable blindsight when it comes to the Life Sciences (which I took-up the formal study of my second time through a University).

The problems with Tolkien’s understanding of Biology, and the ignorance regarding, are more to do with Theological perspectives than Scientific ones (and thus are more to do with Metaphysics than actual Science). He rejects what is the foundational principle of Biology, namely Evolutionary Theory, as during most of his like the position of the Catholic Church was that “no such thing exists.”

That tends to make a complete understanding of Biology outright impossible, where any understanding is going to be ephemeral, and only cover Biology as it exists within a single organism, rather than between organisms, and across an environment or biosphere as a whole.

His ignorance wasn’t that of the raving Creationist, like Ken Ham, or Ray Comfort (the Banana-Man, whom I had the distinct misfortune of having to debate at UCLA in 2011. DAMN he is stupid!), but rather that of having a basic understanding that biology operates via chemical reactions within cells, that form organs, which have functional operations that keep us alive that we tend to think of in terms of things like Metabolism (which is actually an intra-cellular process).

And his understanding of Genetics was pretty much confined to Mendel, which did not provide a great deal in terms of understanding how the fundamental phenotype can be altered radically through the DNA/genotype. His comments on bemoaning how corrupted Elves/Humans to “create” Orcs would be unable to breed more Orcs, but would instead produce Elven or Human children in such a Union reveals that gap in his understanding of Biology and Genetics.

This is all a case of the Metaphysical inference of “Given the existence of X, Y, & Z within Middle-earth, properties A, B, C, ... etc. must be True in order for X, Y, Z, ... to exist as described.”

Tolkien crashed into that wall of Metaphysical necessity/requirement again-and-again, due to the results all arriving EXACTLY where all past Catholic Theologians, and all past Philosophers, have arrived due to these same assumptions over the last 2600 years. And in Tolkien’s case, like that of Catholicism, these “collisions” produced heretical answers that Tolkien’s Faith refused to allow him to consider.

So Tolkien’s ignorance isn’t due to a lack of intelligence, it was a matter of self-censoring much of Biology that Catholicism considered time be “heretical” and “anathema” until very late in his life (Pius XII’s Humani generis in 1950 proclaimed that “no conflict existed between Biblical Creation and Evolution. But that work contained a LOT of caveats concerning animals “evolving” into “different species.” And the whole muddied-water of the concept of “race” still existed at that time as well. But that is just one of the many different topics/issues that Tolkien had to tangle/engage with that kept circling back around to heretical solutions. But even with the Catholic Church saying that “no conflict exists,” that isn’t the same as outright accepting it as something that actually happened, happens, and will continue to happen). The larger essay we have no shortage of statements indicating his ideological blindsight, rejecting whole swaths of Biology because it conflicts with Catholic Faith.

For instance:

The History of Middle-eart, vol. X: Morgoth’s Ring, Orcs. pp. 409 – 424.
It also seems clear (see Finrod and Andreth) that though Melkor could utterly corrupt and ruin individuals [emphasis mine], it is not possible to contemplate his absolute perversion of a whole people, or group of people’s, and his making that state heritable [Added later: This latter must (if a fact) be an act of Eru.]

Here we have Tolkien saying “I cannot bring myself to contemplate Melkor/Morgoth being able to so corrupt/pervert a being that their offspring inherit that same corruption/perversion. And this statement isn’t the only place where he says this. Later on he repeats it, and in Letters of JRRT we see identical statements regarding Morgoth being unable to induce “heritable changes” to a species/race.

When the simplest knowledge of biology, and Mendelian Heritability shows that such a thing is pretty trivial to produce.

But Tolkien prevents himself from even considering it due to the Catholic/Christian Theology regarding the sanctity of the Body (and it’s “appearance” — look into the theological and philosophical properties of Physiognomy, or that the appearance of a thing dictates its “nature” or “Soul”).

Anyway... I am derailing my train of thought on a paper I am writing for Mythopoeic Press on the Infrastructure and Construction Methods of the Númenórean Kingdoms in Exile (and their 2nd Age construction in Middle-earth: Umbar, Pelargir, Vinyalondë, Tharbad, and the unnamed multitude of Cities in Harad that became the bastion of the Black Númenóreans after the Akallabêth)... So I will need to put those thoughts back in order before this subject overwhelms it.

As for the other writings on Orcs... I am unable to reveal very much of its contents via an agreement that got me access to his works in the first place. In it, Tolkien was more indulgent of “considering” possibilities for the origin of Orcs that he indicates his “inability to contemplate” in the different sources that are published. I kind of got the feeling when reading it that when he went to confession after having written it that his confessor told him that he must cease “entertaining such thoughts” (a common prerequisite for absolution in Catholic Confession), and that his inability to “contemplate” these things was due to an edit from his confessor, resulting in his being unable to discover a solution he was “allowed” to contemplate. It isn’t likely that even Christopher, were he still alive, would be able to shed any light on that subject, if he were both able and willing to do so (I’ve had two conversations with Christopher, totaling a little over an hour, combined... And there were many subjects that he was “unable to discuss/reveal anything further.” The conversations were not without revealing a great deal about Middle-earth, and he did compliment me on having focused primarily upon the Metaphysical and Theological aspects of Middle-earth, rather than the languages. He said something to the effect of it being very tiring for people to constantly ask for new Sindarin, Quenyan, or Númenórean/Westron words, as if he had the Middle-earth equivalent of an Oxford Dictionary. I said that I was more interested in knowing how Middle-earth IS — Existential, Ontological, and Teleological properties... i.e. “Metaphysics” — than I am in what language the people within it speak when they describe these properties).

MB

I, too, would like to know something of these materials. I wonder if they will become available again now that CJRT has passed. If you would, please convey what you can recall of them!

It will still be some few decades before any of this material makes its way into the public’s hands due to instructions left by both JRRT and CJRT. Both left instructions that it was to be kept in Trust until around 2060-something.