In J. R. R. Tolkien: Author of the Century, Tom Shippey observes that Bilbo is a member of the middle class, a bourgeois. Bilbo does not have any servants, but his hole is “the home of a member of the Victorian upper-middle class of Tolkien’s nineteenth-century youth, full of studies, parlours, cellars, pantries, wardrobes, and all the rest.” His pantry is always well equipped and Bilbo “is fond of all meals, as we soon learn, but most especially his tea.” His life is well organized by the rhythm of his clock. Bilbo is a relatively wealthy person. We do not know where his assets come from, but according to Gloin Bilbo “looks more like a grocer than a burglar,” so perhaps this is a clue how Bilbo made his little fortune. However, as Shippey notices, Bilbo is not an aristocrat, neither belongs to the upper-middle class. His family name suggests rather a vulgar background.
As a bourgeois, Bilbo does not fit the company of the dwarves. He cannot “hoot twice like a barn-owl and once like a screech-owl.” As Shippey remarks, Bilbo in the company of the heroic dwarves is “comically out of place.” He does not like any adventures. He is not happy about the perspective of leaving his home for a quest to the Lonely Mountain. The thought of an adventure makes him helpless and even contemptible. The aristocratic world of ancient heroism is alien to him. He prefers a walking stick to a sword and a handkerchief to a shield. Even as he travels with the dwarves, he keeps thinking about “‘himself frying bacon and eggs in his own kitchen.”
Nevertheless, the quest slowly changes Bilbo. We see it when he finds the ring and receives a sword. Then he starts to feel more at home in the world of adventure. He shows courage and turns out to be of more help than the dwarves thought he could be. But in all this, he does not become like a dwarf. His courage “is a significantly different type or style of courage from the heroic or aggressive style of his companions and their allies and enemies. Bilbo always remains unable to fight trolls, shoot dragons, or win battles,” notes Shippey. The Hobbit’s courage is not motivated by honor but by loyalty and the sense of duty. It does not seek public recognition and usually is revealed in solitude when no one can see him.
Bilbo’s kind of courage comes to the forefront when the danger of a war between the dwarves on the one hand and the elves and the people from Lake-town on the other hand arises. Thorin does not want to share his newly recovered riches with the Lake-town dwellers, who ask for compensation for the damage made by Smaug. The negotiations between Thorin and Bard do not move forward due to Thorin’s sense of honor. Here Bilbo takes the initiative, “and he does so with a return to the ‘business manner’ which was so unsuccessful at the start” (Shippey). His merchant negotiation skills prove to be successful, and the stalled argument is resolved. Thus, Bilbo confirms that accord is more important for him than honor and wealth.
In the end, the dwarves change, too. At their farewell, both Balin and Bilbo say the same thing. They mutually invite one another to pay a visit and promise a good meal. And dying Thorin admits: “There is more in you of good than you know, child of the kindly West. Some courage and some wisdom, blended in measure. If more of us valued food and cheer and song above hoarded gold, it would be a merrier world.” Shippey claims that the words of Thorin are a sign of recognition that the values represented by Bilbo are a necessary balance for the ancient epic dignity of the dwarves.
But what does it all have to do with the Reformation? Perhaps an answer to this question can be found in Sources of the Self: The Making of the Modern Identity by Charles Taylor.
Taylor speaks about “the affirmation of ordinary life,” where ordinary life is the life concerned with production and reproduction. He claims that the Reformation teaching about vocation brought about the affirmation of ordinary life and at the same time it denounced Aristotle’s teaching about life and good life. According to Aristotle, production and reproduction were perceived as belonging to the sphere of life but not to the sphere of good life. “They are, of course, necessary to the good life, but they play an infrastructural role in relation to it,” explains Taylor. “The proper life for humans builds on this infrastructure a series of activities which are concerned with the good life: men deliberate about moral excellence, they contemplate the order of things; of supreme importance for politics, they deliberate together about the common good, and decide how to shape and apply the laws,” he continues. Aristotle’s idea of good life encompasses two parts: “theoretical contemplation and the participation as a citizen in the polity.” Taylor observes that even though partly Plato and especially the Stoics rejected Aristotle’s definition of good life, the postulate of the participation as a citizen in the polity returns to favor among early humanists. They perceive the life of production and reproduction as inferior to the life of civic activity.
Further, Taylor states that this new “citizen ethic was in some ways analogous to, and could at times even partially fuse with, the aristocratic ethic of honour, whose origins lay in the life of warrior castes.” Later he adds that “it involved a strong sense of hierarchy, in which the life of the warrior or ruler, which turned on honour or glory, was incommensurable to that of men of lesser rank, concerned only with life. Willingness to risk life was the constitutive quality of the man of honour. And it was frequently thought that a too great concern with acquisition was incompatible with this higher life. In some societies, engaging in trade was considered a derogation of aristocratic status.”
Even though the late medieval humanism shared many common elements with the Reformation, Taylor claims that the “citizen ethic” was altered by the Reformers’ teaching about vocation, which “displaced the locus of the good life from some special range of higher activities and placed it within ‘life’ itself. The full human life is now defined in terms of labour and production, on one hand, and marriage and family life, on the other. At the same time, the previous ‘higher’ activities come under vigorous criticism.” What used to be marked by a stigma of inferiority has been elevated as essential to good life, and what used to be valued as superior has been degraded as fruitless and even destructive. Common activities, such as crafts or even trade, received a place of honor higher that theorizing or pursuit of (vain)glory.
“In contrast to the aristocratic search for military glory, which was seen as wildly destructive and as frequently turning to the piratical quest for plunder, commerce is a constructive and civilizing force, binding men together in peace and forming the basis of ‘polished’ mores. The ethic of glory is confronted here with a fully articulated alternative view, of social order, political stability, and the good life” (Taylor). Thus, the aristocratic ethic was replaced by “bourgeois” ethic which constituted modern liberal society.
If Taylor is right in his description of societal changes which took place in the 16th and 17th century under the influence of the reformers, and if Shippey is correct in his assessment of Bilbo, then we can see some similarities between the bourgeois ethic described by Taylor on the one hand and Bilbo’s demeanor on the other hand.
The aristocratic ethic of honor and glory is represented in The Hobbit by the dwarves and especially by Thorin. Honor and glory are his battle cry and his life motto, and the only common good he is interested in is only the good of his kingdom. In his posture, he is more like the ancient Greek or Norse heroes, at least at the beginning of the story. Bilbo is almost an exact opposite of Thorin. He loves the ordinary life and its advantages, but cannot suffer adventure. His courage is not for show. Nevertheless he is more than ready to risk his life for his companions. It is true that Bilbo has no wife, and so he is not involved in reproduction, but we can say that in the person of Samwise Gamgee this prerequisite of ordinary life is met, and besides Frodo serves as a kind of Bilbo’s son and heir. If Bilbo, and by extension Frodo and Sam, go to fight, it is not for fame or riches but to protect the Shire which is an epitome of ordinary life. For there is nothing more dear to the hearts of the Hobbits than diligent work and feasting in a good company.
Tolkien shows how much he values the idea of ordinary life when he states: “I think the simple ‘rustic’ love of Sam and his Rosie (nowhere elaborated) is absolutely essential to the study of his (the chief hero’s) character, and to the theme of the relation of ordinary life (breathing, eating, working, begetting) and quests, sacrifice, causes, and the ‘longing for Elves’, and sheer beauty” (The Letters of J. R. R. Tolkien). It is true that Sam is neither Bilbo nor Frodo, however if Frodo is the extension of Bilbo, then Sam is who Frodo might have become, had he not suffered so much for the peace of the Shire that he had to leave it. Sam can, in the end, enjoy the ordinary life because of Bilbo’s and Frodo’s (and of course his own) sacrifice and accomplishments. Nevertheless, it was the idea of good life understood as ordinary life which guided the Hobbits in their adventures, which they entered not for the love of the adventure but the love of the Shire. Faramir was not a Hobbit, but his words express the Hobbit (or the ordinary life) mindset: “War must be, while we defend our lives against a destroyer who would devour all; but I do not love the bright sword for its sharpness, nor the arrow for its swiftness, nor the warrior for his glory. I love only that which they defend: the city of the Men of Númenor.”
I am sure that when Tolkien wrote The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings, he did not intend to make a straight connection between his works and the reformers’ teaching on vocation. However, even though the connection might not be a direct one, it seems that it can be established via Taylor’s observations on the elevation of ordinary life to the level of good life which happened during the Reformation era. Bilbo, Frodo, and Sam might not be self-consciously following the ideals of the reformers, nevertheless, it seems that we can justifiably perceive them as an embodiment of these ideals.
Bogumil Jarmulak, a Pastor in Poznan, Poland, is Presiding Minister of Anselm Presbytery in the Communion of Reformed Evangelical Churches.