From: mcconnel@Nimitz.mcs.kent.edu (Mike McConnell)
Subject: Re: Eowyn
Organization: Kent State University
Date: Thu, 17 Dec 1992 16:36:45 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.
|> 
|> 	I think it's rather intriguing that Tolkien created a character who
|> would challenge the gender roles that he inscribed in LOTR.  I also think 
|> it's significant that he then has Eowyn rescind her challenge and happily take
|> up the role of the domestic woman.  Tolkien didn't have to create a character 
|> who would reject the gender roles that he assigned, but he did--  and he
|> later has her back away from that rejection.  It's almost as if Tolkien 
|> creates this challenge to the male/female order of things only to subsequently
|> subvert it.  I think that this is much more interesting and revealing that
|> if such a challenge had never been mounted in the first place.  What exactly
|> does it reveal?  I've said this in earlier posts, but I think it reveals
|> that, in Tolkien's mind (whether consciously or unconsciously), a woman's place
|> _is_ in the home and that women who think the home is a "cage" (to borrow
|> Eowyn's language) will ultimately "see the error of their ways" and realize
|> that they'd be much happier in a traditional female domestic role than in
|> a traditionally masculine one.
|> 
|> 	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>

Where, in her deciding to marry Faramir does Eowyn say that she is settling for
the life of a subserviant wife?  Where does it say that she has decided that what
she said before is wrong?  She says that she will be a shield-maiden no more; all
right, so she is not going to fight--but she says not that she will no longer take
joy in battle songs, but that she will no longer take joy _only_ in battle songs.
She now wants to be a healer and a tender of growing things.

Tolkien puts forth the argument in everything he write in LOTR that the most val-
uable thing that anyone can do is to be a healer and a tender of growing things.
Look at Galadrial, look at Tom Bombadil, look at Fangorn.  What about Aragorn:
"The hands of the king are the hands of a healer."  How is the return of the king
to be known?  Not through his actions as a warleader, but through his actions as
a healer.

On the other hand, honor is also given to people for their heroism in battle. 
That is part and parcel of a epic fanatasy.  And Eowyn _is_ given honor for her
great feat in slaying the Witch King.  No where, of should I say NO WHERE, does 
Tolkien say that she was wrong to go to battle.  No where in this passage does
Faramir say that she should feel ashamed at what she has done.  No where does she
show any shame for being a shield maiden.  What she now sees as wrong is her 
single-minded quest for war, which was no more wrong for her than it was for, say,
Boromir, but also no more right.

In the 'world' that Saruman, through Grima Wormtongue, helped set up in Rohan, she
saw a woman's postition as powerless.  She saw a world where the sword was the 
only means to self-hood.  But that was a cruel world, and evil world, and a world
of lies.  That is the world that the War of the Ring is fought against, just as 
much as it is fought against Sauron himself.  But after the fall of the Dark
Tower, another world can emerge.  The Fourth Age, at least for a time, is a world
where nurturing can happen, a world where the sword is not the only means of 
self-hood.

There have been attacks on parts of the feminist movement who, while claiming that
men are overly competitive and agressive, seem to see the only way to deal with 
agressive men is to become more agressive themselves.  In this way, perhaps, they
become ice-cold shield maidens.  They may be able to compete in the world of men,
as Eowyn does, but they will loose something in the process.  

What I take out of Eowyn's story, whether Tolkien meant it this way or not, is
this:  Eowyn saw life for a woman as a cage.  In part, this is because she was 
living in a pathological society, influenced by Saruman for his own ends.  She 
saw only on outlet, which was to take up the guise of a man.  But later, she was
able to envision a more healthy society and a healthy relationship with Faramir, 
where she did not have to 'be a man' to have an identity.  Faramir does not ask
her to be his wife and his servant, he asks her to be his wife and his partner.

If you feel that the only way that a woman can have any identity of her own is to
counterfeit the identity of a man, then perhaps you are more of a sexist that you
think.  I think that what Tolkien is saying is that in a healthy society, or a
'good society'--take your pick, no one has to be a warrior.  I see Eowyn's choice
as a choice of strength.  She will have a strong identity, that of a nurturer and
a builder.  Faramir, who is nobody's fool, fell in love with her because she has
this strength, because he knows that she will be his partner.  More power to him,
that he has the self-confidence, the true self-confidence, not to be frightened 
and want to 'tame' a strong woman.  

Mike McConnell
Dept. of Mathematics
Kent State University
Newsgroups: alt.fan.tolkien