A friend sent me a link to a piece that mentions the relationship between Frodo and Sam in Tolkien's Lord of the Rings.
I wrote back:
I'll comment on just one aspect among many: Wolfe looks at Tolkien's work (and in particular the friendship between Sam and Frodo) as an American would. And why not? He is an American. But Tolkien is English, and further, English of a certain generation (he fought in WWI and was, if I remember rightly, rescued by another soldier). And because Tolkien is English, and born Victorian and raised Edwardian, there is in him an unspoken understanding and acceptance of English class distinctions of a type that we don't widely comprehend in America (even though some of them exist here, and we are careful to pretend they don't). It's essential to remember that Sam and Frodo are members of different classes -- and that class, more than anything else, defines the nature of the Sam - Frodo relationship.
The differences between Frodo and Sam are not only those listed by Wolfe -- how much money each has, nor that one employs the other. The important ones are embedded in class distinction -- and I don't mean the poor class vs. the rich class. I mean that Bilbo and Frodo are the equivalent of English 'gentlemen,' coming from a good family (the Bagginses are longtime relatively large land-owners in the Shire) while Sam comes from a lower class, whose members become what Americans might think of as employees or workers -- close, but not entirely accurate -- and the English of Tolkien's era thought of as the 'servant' class. We can tell this partly from their speech: Frodo's speech is that of someone well-educated, Sam's is not -- we hear his local, rustic way of speaking. When Frodo and Sam were growing up, they would not have been playmates or best friends -- and not only because Frodo was raised away from Bag End, among the Brandybucks. Even if Frodo had grownup at Bag End, he would have known Sam Gamgee only as Gaffer Gamgee's grandson. As soon as Sam was old enough, he would have been working around his home or elsewhere with his elders, which is where he would have learned what he knew, which was a lot. Frodo's playmates would have been boys like Merry and Pippin, scions of the Tooks and the Brandybucks, families as important as the Bagginses.
Wolfe speaks of a time of "everyone knowing his place" and that is exactly what the class system both is and does. It is a system that has to work at all levels to work at all, however, and merely mentioning certain dates -- 1789, 1798, 1848, 1905, 1917 -- the events in France, Ireland, the uprisings in various countries in Europe including France and Germany in the mid-19th century, the repeated petitioning of the Tsar and the Duma in the early years of the 20th century and the eventual Russian Revolution after WWI -- are enough to show that it was not working at all levels in those times in those countries, just as the General Strike of 1920 in England showed that it was not working as well as it had been before the War in England, either.
I note that escaping one's class and, especially, moving upwards was not easily done, in fact barely possible at all, not accomplished often and just about never without the prospect of lack of acceptance on all sides (Eugene's hesitation over the possibility of marrying his beloved Lizzie in Dickens's Our Mutual Friend, Maurice and Alec's class-crossover relationship in E.M. Forster's Maurice, Higgins's insulted surprise that Eliza would not only demand lessons but offer to pay him for them, and the hilarious scene in Mrs. Higgins's drawing room where Eliza perfectly enunciates her lower-class gossip in Shaw's Pygmalion are examples of this). It was at least in part the idea that it was possible to raise oneself out of one's 'place' at all (or perhaps one's children if one worked hard all one's life) in the New World, that brought huge waves of immigrants here in the late 19th and early 20th century, until immigration quotas were imposed. The thought that one could have realistic hope that one's children could be educated or earn sufficient money (or both) and thereby be raised up from their current class status and out of dire poverty and constant labor was a breath of hope in an otherwise static -- and therefore hopeless-seeming -- world of the 'lower' classes.
In contrast to Wolfe's picture.
Sam is comfortable when he's gardening, or when he's finding and cooking Frodo's (and his) food, or taking care of the pots and pans, and thinking about things that may be needed, like rope, on their journey. It's not that his role -- dictated by his class as much as assigned by Gandalf -- defines him -- he's more than just a kind of caretaker or companion -- it's more as though his role fits him like a suit of clothes, and he's not comfortable without it, just as we would not wish to be seen in public without suitable clothing. You can see the likeness to the Sam - Frodo pairing in other such pairings of similar date: Lord Peter Wimsey and Bunter, Bertie Wooster and Jeeves.
Bunter and Jeeves would be horrified at any suggestion that just because they knew their master's clothing and possessions better than their respective masters did, because they handled them in the course of taking care of them -- cleaning, polishing, brushing, repairing, etc. -- and keeping them ready for use at any time, that they should wear such clothes and use such objects themselves, assuming they had the money to do so, or even that they should pretend in any way to be of the class that would have these clothes and objects and have as well someone in their employ to take care of them and keep them ready at all times.
They would be horrified, and so would Lord Peter or Bertie Wooster, not because in any way they look down on Bunter or Jeeves -- LPW was literally saved from being buried alive by Bunter during WWI and never forgets he owes both his life and his sanity to him -- he had severe flashbacks (as we would now term them) after the War and Bunter nursed him back to normal health -- and Wooster tells us over and over how he feels Jeeves is above other mortal men, always will know just what to do to get Wooster or his friends or relatives out of some difficulty or other, and has a huge brain, and assumes Jeeves must eat a lot of fish to feed that brain.
Sam is the one who gets to (and knows how to) load and lead Bill the Pony and care for him, and who gets terribly worked up emotionally when they have to let Bill go outside the Mines of Moria, even though he understands intellectually that it is so. It's not because Sam is a softie, nor that the others are callous (Aragorn in particular sees Sam's distress); it's because Bill has been his responsibility, and Sam and the pony have become close along the way. Neither Frodo nor any of the others in the Company have this relationship with Bill. Why should they? They are either gentlemen (Pip and Merry are the sons of families as important as the Bagginses) or nobles (Boromir, Gimli) or princes (Legolas, Aragorn) or the Wizard Gandalf, widely recognized as the equal of no one, at least no Man, Elf, Dwarf or Hobbit. These members of the Company are bold fighters, valiant warriors, but they are not the kitchen staff or quartermaster, even though they can take care of themselves out in the wild when called on to do so, and help out in hunting and getting food for the group. Sam would not feel able to deal with 'high' matters of strategy or planning or attack or retreat, and would not want to have to. While he handles himself valiantly and even brilliantly when forced to do so, as when rescuing Frodo from Shelob and the orcs, he is happiest in his 'support' role which allows Frodo (and the others, while they are together) freedom from routine tasks to do what they can do best. And they value his contribution. And they like him and respect him as an individual. Neither side feels the need to say anything about it -- in fact they would be embarassed if anyone did. It is a part of their world, as it is not a part of ours in quite the same way today.
And what of the Sam-Frodo friendship? It's important to remember that during the latter parts of the journey, from the time they get just outside the walls of Moria onwards, they go through astoundingly difficult times, times that include experiences so extreme that they will forge bonds that end only with death. But it is important to note that, while questions of who has more cash or land back in the Shire or who pays whose salary back in the Shire fade into total insignificance, the question of which class each is a member of never changes: to Sam, Frodo is always Mr. Frodo, and to Frodo, Sam is always plain Sam, even at the edge of doom.
5:45:07 PM 
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