From: jchokey@leland.Stanford.EDU (James Alexander Chokey)
Subject: Re: Eowyn
Organization: DSG, Stanford University, CA 94305, USA
Date: Thu, 17 Dec 92 04:17:45 GMT

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>
Newsgroups: alt.fan.tolkien