其实这个答案是Quora上搬来的，本来只是想翻译着玩玩，结果居然被知乎推送上了日报（捂脸）。。。向原作者Ara Ogle致敬：
Are there no female characters at all in The Hobbit?
有的知友反映Quora链接打不开，那我就把原文放上来吧。英语原文在最后。
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我们先来看看在《霍比特人》一书中女性出现的频率：
- 全书中没有任何女性角色
- 全书中只出现了一个有名字的女性，Belladonna Took——Bilbo Baggins 的母亲。但是她在故事开始之前就去世了
- "girl"一词在书中只出现了一次
- “woman/women"出现了两次
- "she"出现了一词，还是和Bilbo他母亲一起出现的
- 电影中共出现了两个女性角色——密林卫队长Tauriel和精灵女王Galadriel，其中Tauriel是导演硬加进去的，Galadriel则是从魔戒中借来的角色
相比之下，《魔戒三部曲》中虽然女性角色不多、塑造也不够丰满，但出现频率明显高了一个档次，而且像精灵公主Arwen、罗瑞安夫人Galadriel、洛汗王女Eowen也是性格各异、形象鲜明。
那么问题来了，为何在《霍比特人》中女性那么不受待见呢？
很大程度上这要归因于Bilbo Baggins的角色塑造。我们来看看Bilbo是怎么样一个人：
- 终身未婚，所以要收养侄子Frodo作为继承人
- 很内向，害怕和陌生人说话，也不喜欢呆在人多的地方
结论：《霍比特人》中没有女性角色是因为Bilbo无视了她们。《霍比特人》大部分时候都是通过Bilbo的角度来看中土世界的，而书中为数不多的几次"women","girl"的出现都是作者用上帝视角在进行描写。作为一个极其内向不敢与陌生人说话的霍比特人，Bilbo把姑娘们视为一种无法理解的生物而敬而远之，我们当然也无法通过他的视角看到有关中土女性的故事。就算是Bilbo真的在冒险途中遇到了Tauriel这样勇敢美丽的女精灵，他大概也会视而不见的吧。
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Are there no female characters at all in The Hobbit?
As far as I can recall, there is nothing except a brief mention of Bilbo's mother and her sisters. She is long dead when the book starts, so she does not count.
Nothing at all after that - there must have been female elves in Rivendell and the woodland kingdom, but I think they play no part. And right at the end, it is mentioned that Thorin was the elder brother of the (unnamed) mother of Fili and Kili.
There may have been females among the eagles or spiders, or even the whargs, but again not mentioned. (The only eagles identified by gender are male, while any individual spider is called "it".)
Jackson has corrected this a little, with Bilbo's mother shown with Bilbo as an infant in the Extended Edition. Galadriel at Rivendell, as well as elf-maids in the background. And more to come in Desolation of Smaug, it seems.
Ara Ogle, am a woman
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There are not. And I would go further and say that this seems to me to be an extremely deliberate action on Tolkien's part. While it makes sense that there would be no main female characters (given that all the main characters are essentially part of a military party and the author had no basis for women being members of a military), there aren't just no female characters, there are scarcely any women seen at all in The Hobbit. No elf-maids in Rivendell or Mirkwood. No women in the week they spend being feted in Lake Town. In the destruction of Lake-Town we get two sentences; "Women and children were being huddled into laden boats in the market-pool." and another essentially identical sentence, which insults the Master of Lake Town by listing him as the only able-bodied man to flee with the women. In Bilbo's return, we hear of his cousins 'the Sackville-Bagginses' but it is not made clear that they are a married couple and thus include a woman; we know this only because Lobelia is shown as a character in LoTR.
Just to be clear on how much women are missing in this novel,
- There are no female characters, named or unnamed (someone who is dead being mentioned in passing is not a "character").
- There is exactly one named woman in any conversation at any point, Belladonna Took (Bilbo's mother).
- The word 'girl' is used once in the novel. ("[Gandalf] had been away over The Hill and across The Water on business of his own since they were all small hobbit-boys and hobbit-girls.")
- The word woman/women is used twice in the novel (in the sentences mentioned above regarding Bilbo's mother).
- The word 'she' is used only once in the novel (in reference to Belladonna Took)
The big question is, 'why'? There are many females mentioned in TheLord of the Rings, even if most of them have very small parts. There are a number of women invited to Bilbo's party. Lobelia Sackville-Baggins torments Frodo. The wife of the mushroom-farmer is mentioned. Goldberry, Arwen, Galadriel, Eowen, Ioreth, and Shelob all play minor parts with agency. Deceased or mythical characters like Finduilas of Dol Amroth, Luthien Tinuviel, Nimrodel, and Elbereth Githoniel are referenced, and women in Minas Tirith and Rohan are shown, etc. etc. It is clear that not mentioning/including women at all is not a common trait in Tolkien's writing; why, then, is it so strong an element ofThe Hobbit?
It has always seemed to me that the lack of women in the Hobbit has something to do with Bilbo's character. While there are a few cases of author omniscience in The Hobbit, it is mostly viewed from Bilbo's point of view. It's worth noting that the few times we do get even a tiny mention of women (Hobbit-girls, Bilbo's mother, and the sentences from Lake Town quoted above) are all three instances of author omniscience rather than viewed from Bilbo.
And who is Bilbo? He is a lifelong bachelor. He's introverted; he seems to feel most comfortable in his own company or the company of very close friends. He's pretty shy. He doesn't like catching people's attention (he becomes the bearer of a ring that grants him invisibility!) and when he has to talk to people he doesn't know, frequently stutters or appears uncomfortable.
Therefore, my theory is that we don't see women in The Hobbit—even to the limited extent we see them in the main trilogy—because Bilbo doesn't see them. Bilbo doesn't see people as individuals until he gets to know them, but rather only as scary crowds that he prefers to stay far away from, and Bilbo actively avoids getting to know women, because he's afraid of them as an 'unknown'.