Please consider: If Tolkien wasn't a coward Feanor would have been female and it would have been way cooler. a) Gives some real weight to the idea that Feanor was worried the crown would go to one of Finwe's other kids. b) More ladies in Tolkien, always a plus. c) You'd better believe Feanor's the greatest craftsperson of the Noldor- she made 7 of them! (Also the sheer drama of newly single mum Feanor and her 7 boys in Middle Earth) d) Silmarils as kids2.0 e) Blacksmith lady hot
Lady Feanor would indeed be awesome. The historical part of my brain can't help but think that critics of the time would have unfortunately interpreted ambitious kick butt single mom Feanor as a prime example of the "monstrous woman" type, ala Medea or something, who "got what was coming to her" in the end, so in a way I'm glad that the Prof. decided to write Feanor as a man so that we didn't have to deal with that nonsense.
I can't help but wonder if he'd lived at a later date if he might have considered female Feanor, I mean, this is a man who took one look at one is Shakespeare's most famous plays and said, "the answer to the prophesy is a C-section?? Booooo! Macbeth should have been killed by a woman! (And also the trees should have actually come alive)" and "its bogus that Orpheus turned around after all that and Eurydice had to die! Rip to them but if i were trapped in the underworld my wife would be different!"
And then proceeded to write his own genderbent fix it fic of both of those perennial works x)
So yeah, I think if the character had come into his head as female then Tolkien would have 100% been down with it