On Sat, 14 Jun 2003 04:57:02 -0400 Karen Rhodes
 writes:
> At 07:50 AM 6/13/2003 -0700, darkelf wrote:
> 
> >Heh.  One wonders why the dwarves chose a hobbit to be their thief, 
> no?  A
> >middle-class, well-to-do hobbit, a bunch of 
> poor-but-noble-descended dwarves
> >(at least Thorin was, but I thought the rest might have been, 
> too)... hmm.  I
> >feel a classist reading of Tolkien coming on.  
> >
> >darkelf, probably will make me unpopular
> 
> Why?  English society was (and still is to a certain extent) 
> stratified and
> very much class-conscious.  Tolkien couldn't help but be affected by 
> that.

Affected!
It was the warp and weft of his existence. He probably didn't think that
much about it, period.
Simply the Way Things Work (and even corrective measures through out
history did (and do) simply substitute different names (and sometimes
faces) for/into the stratification; but the stratification itself remains
-- though in some cultures the border between is more permeable.....

=shrug= tygress

====
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