This is based on an answer I posted on Quora.com in 2021.
No, Frodo wasn't gay, nor was Bilbo. I'm pretty sure Tolkien would have considered it indecent to write about homosexuality at all.
You must realize that the entire Western world, and more, was homophobic by modern standards. Homosexual acts were a crime in British law. Being homosexual was classified as a mental illness, and if it was discovered, you could be forced to take hormone treatments to fix you. To not view homosexuality as a form of criminal insanity was very, very odd.
And because of that, homosexuality was almost universally "closeted." Society hardly ever even thought about homosexuality, and then only as a strange and horrible aberration.
I think it likely enough that Tolkien got through the entire writing of Lord of the Rings without ever thinking about homosexuality in it at all. In this, he would have been entirely typical of his time and place.
Frodo and Bilbo both reached early middle age (for hobbits) without marrying, which was only mildly surprising to their neighbors, and then got swept away into adventures.
Bilbo came back with a strong reputation for eccentricity, which his fellow hobbits did not approve, and which would have made wife-hunting very difficult, assuming he was interested. Frodo, moving in with him, would have been tainted with it, though there was certainly a lot of money and property to weigh against it. But then Frodo came back from the War of the Ring with severe PTSD, as we call it (and Tolkien, a World War I vet, certainly knew all about it, though he may have called it "shell shock" or "battle fatigue"; he gave Frodo a classic case of it, bar the connection with evil magic), and that put the kibosh on any possible romantic life for him.
In the appendices of The Lord of the Rings, we learn that Merry and Pippin married and had children, though not many details are given.
There's no indication Legolas ever married. From Tolkien's description, elves don't seem to have very strong sex drives. They depend on their immortality to keep their numbers up, not that it seems to be working very well.
And if you're wondering about Sam, remember how often he moons wistfully about Rosie Cotton back home, whom he goes on to marry and have many kids with.
Return to Introduction to Essays
Return to Wind Off the Hilltop
Copyright © Earl Wajenberg, 2023