Tolkien Tuesday: Queering Tom Bombadil in Emily Tesh's "Silver in the Wood"

Tobias Finch, the hero of Tesh's lovely novella, offers a queer gloss of Tolkien's most fascinating and frustrating creation.

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Welcome to Tolkien Tuesdays, where I talk about various things that I love about the lore and writings of Tolkien, whether in a chapter reading or a character study or an essay. I hope you enjoy reading these ruminations as much as I enjoy writing them and, if you have a moment, I’d love it if you’d subscribe to this newsletter. It’s free, but there are paid options, as well, if you’re of a mind to support a struggling writer. Either way, thank you for joining me!

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Emily Tesh’s Silver in the Wood is one of those books that I read because it was my book club’s choice for the month of April. As soon as I began it, though, I knew that I was reading something special. In prose that is rich and poignant, Tesh gives us the story of Tobias, a man of the woods, whose placid, mostly predictable, life is unexpectedly turned upside down upon the arrival of Henry Silver, the new lord of the nearby manor. Thus begins an extraordinary love story, one which sees Tobias falling more than a little in love with Henry before joining with the young man’s mother to save him from a deeply malevolent and capricious forest spirit that seeks to claim the bright young man for its own.

One of the things that immediately leapt out to me as a reader was how much Tobias has in common with another wood spirit of great antiquity: Tom Bombadil. Of all of the characters that Tolkien created, Bombadil is often the most frustrating and the most enigmatic and the most fascinating, precisely because there is so much about him that resists attempts to understand or categorize him. In a simplistic sense, he just is, and there is nothing more to be said about the matter (even Tolkien himself suggested that he didn’t really know that much about Tom or his origins).

When we first meet Tobias he has managed to forge a lovely little life for himself in the woods (even though, as time will tell, his origins are far more sinister and bloodstained and traumatic). He has a little cat, he spends time darning socks, he spends time with dryads; in short, he does all of the things that you’d expect of a figure like this one. He has embraced his life in the forest and the rhythms that entails, and Tesh’s lush prose allows us as readers to enjoy this aspect of his life even as, at the same time, we get the sense that there is something more going on here, something that is far more sinister.

It’s for this reason that Henry’s arrival is so shocking. From the moment that Tobias lays eyes on the young man he seems to fall under his spell for, unlike the man of the wood, Henry is a ball of seemingly inexhaustible energy. If Tobias represents the stolidity and deep roots of the forest and the trees, Henry is a babbling brook, chattering and racing, even as he is also an intrusion of the human world into the seemingly sacred and inviolate space of Greenhollow Wood. The two strike up a sweet little romance and, through their bond, Tesh brilliantly offers a queer gloss on Tom Bombadil.

Indeed, Tesh has admitted as much, remarking in an interview that she often referred to the novella as her “sad gay Bombadil story.” What’s so fascinating about Silver in the Wood is not just the way that it queers the figure that Tolkien created but also that it uncovers and excavates the very queerness that has always been a part of Bombadil’s appeal from the beginning. Obviously I don’t mean this in an explicit way, since Bombadil is happily married to Goldberry. However, I do think that there’s something inherently queer about a figure who exists outside of the normal bounds of human, worldly time and who moves through the world according to his own rules, headless of what anyone else might think.

In Tobias case, that latent queerness is brought to the surface through his understated yet undeniably powerful romance with Henry. Just as the hobbits bring a new sort of disruptive energy into the rigid confines of the Old Forest, so Silver disrupts the rhythms of life that Tobias has constructed for himself through all of the long centuries of his existence. Tobias receptiveness to Henry obviously goes beyond that which Bombadil shows to the hobbits–at first subtly and then more insistently as the novella unfolds. By the time that he sets off with Henry’s redoutable mother to save him from the clutches of Fabian, the other sinister man of the woods who rides out periodically to ensnare pretty young men to sustain himself, it’s clear that he loves Henry in a deep and powerful way.

Like Bombadil, Tobias plays a key role in rescuing Henry from the clutches of Fabian but, to do so, he must give up the very things that have sustained him and given him his remarkable power. This is obviously a corollary to Bombadil’s rescuing of Frodo and his companions both from Old Man Willow and, even more importantly, from the Barrow-wight. Much like the Barrow-wight, Fabian is a creature who has existed far beyond his mortal span of years and, also like the resident of the Barrow, he preys on others who stumble into his realm. Tobias’ actions, however, are far more motivated by love than Bombadil’s and, obviously, require a great deal more sacrifice on his part. It’s hard to imagine a being as powerful as old Tom giving up his powers for anyone.

Also unlike Bombadil, who stays bound to the Old Forest even beyond the bounds of the narrative told in The Lord of the Rings–or so we can assume, anyway, since the last we hear of him he is having a conversation with Gandalf after the War of the Ring has been brought to a successful conclusion–Tobias actually ends up leaving his wood. He essentially sets off with Mrs. Silver on a monster-hunting expedition, chasing out those wild creatures that are making a nuisance of themselves intruding on human realms. As so often in fantasy, something must be given up during one’s quest.

There is, I think, something deeply sad and even a bit tragic about the fact that Tobias ends up losing his power–and, in some important ways, his connection to the forest that he has called home for so long–while Henry Silver ends up being bound in his own way. Yes, he gets to see much more of the world than he would have otherwise, and he seems to have a special knack for encouraging sinister magical beings to leave humans alone. Still, it’s made clear that his transition from man of the forest to regular human being is a not entirely seamless one, not least because Henry has now taken up Tobias’ former position.

Silver in the Wood demonstrates the extent to which queerness remains a deep and powerful well of strength for writers and characters alike. Though Tobias obviously bears some important similarities to Tom Bombadil, he takes the traditional old man in the wood story into new directions, showing that one doesn’t always have to stay rooted to the same place. Of course, this comes with its own form of sacrifice, but perhaps it was worth it. After all, even a man of the woods can yearn for love, no matter the cost.

I’m already hard at work reading the sequel, so I hope to return next week with further thoughts on Tesh’s brilliant and melancholic queering of everyone’s favorite frustrating Tolkien character.