From: mbs@zycor.lgc.com (Matt Shostak)
Subject: Re: Eowyn
Organization: Landmark/Zycor   Austin, Texas
Date: Thu, 17 Dec 1992 13:40:52 GMT

In article <1992Dec17.041745.6080@leland.Stanford.EDU> jchokey@leland.Stanford.EDU (James Alexander Chokey) writes:
>In article <BzDoL6.Got@acsu.buffalo.edu> sulkom@ubvmsb.cc.buffalo.edu (Mark Sulkowski) writes:
>
>>
>>	Remember that Sam also settled down to comfortable home life.
>>I'll bet many characters settled down.  Consider those that left to
>>the West.  They probably settled down too in their own way.
>>
>
>	That's very true.  But, as I noted in another post, Eowyn's 
>settling-down into a domestic life has other resonances.  For her, settling
>down also entails accepting a specific type of "female" role --  a role
>that virtually every other humanoid female characters in LOTR occupies-- and
>a role that Eowyn had previously rejected. 
>
>	I don't think this is purely speculation and interpretation--  There
>seems to be a very real basis in the text for looking at Eowyn's actions 
>in terms of "gender roles."  In her conversation with Aragorn, Eowyn uses 
>language that indicates an awareness of the textual reality that being a 
>warrior is a "man's job," while taking care of domestic affairs is a "woman's 
>job." She says:  "Shall I always be left behind when the Riders depart, to 
>mind the house while they win reknown, and find food and beds when they 
>return? . . . All your words are but to say: you are a woman, and your part is
>in the house.  But when the men have died in battle and honour, you have leave
>to be burned in the house, for the men will need it no more.  But I am of the 
>House of Eorl and not a serving-woman."  The fact that she has to disguise 
>herself as a man in order to ride to battle with the Riders just drives home
>the point that being a warrior is a specifically masculine activity in Rohan,
>as in the rest of Middle-earth.  In going off to battle, Eowyn really _is_ 
>challenging the gender roles that are encoded in LOTR.

How about an alternate explanation.  It is not because she is a woman per se,
but because she is a woman of the ROYAL LINE that she is not allowed to go.
Perhaps her use of the word "shieldmaiden" in one of her discussions
suggests that there were such fighting women in Rohan, but just that she
was not allowed to be one of them.

>
>	And, since it seems like one has to start putting provisos on posts
>for our ever-vigilant alt.fan.tolkien police who so kindly ferret out and
>condemn the existence of any discussion which seems to be even tangentially 
>related to any of the issues that are also concerns of the PC movement, let
>me just point out (once again) that neither I nor anybody else who has posted
>on this thread have been trying to impose some sort of PC dogma on Tolkien or 
>hisWorks.  Nobody here has been _blaming_ Tolkien for not conforming to any 
>sort of modern "politically correct" sensibility (or even expecting that he 
>could have had, or should have had, such a sensibility).  Nobody has said that
>his works are any less wonderful, less enjoyable, or less worth reading because
>of the presence of what might might now be called "sexist views" about male
>and female roles.  All we are doing is talking about something that is clearly
>an issue in LOTR and speculating upon it's meaning.  And if a Tolkien 
>newsgroup isn't the place to do that, then I don't know what is.
>	
>	--  Jim C. <jchokey@leland.stanford.edu>


-- 
Matthew B. Shostak              Landmark/Zycor
mbs@zycor.lgc.com               (512) 292-2357
"So you think you are strong because you can survive the soft cushions.
 Well, we shall see." -- Cardinal Ximinez