From: jchokey@leland.Stanford.EDU (James Alexander Chokey)
Subject: Re: Eowyn 
Organization: DSG, Stanford University, CA 94305, USA
Date: Wed, 16 Dec 92 10:55:19 GMT

In article <1992Dec15.093243.17296@odin.diku.dk> klaus@diku.dk (Klaus Ole Kristiansen) writes:
>
>jchokey@leland.Stanford.EDU (James Alexander Chokey) writes:
>
>
>>	And she also cops out at the end and decides that she would be
>>content just to marry a nobleman.  She starts off as a "battling woman," but
>>she renounces that status and ends up simply being a noble female for Faramir
>>to marry--  ultimately occupying the same functional role that Arwen does
>>for Aragorn.  The message imparted by Eowyn really seems to be that women
>>may want to go out in the world and be active like men are, but that ultimately
>>they'd really be more content just to get married and concern themselves with
>>domestic affairs.
>
>Yes, Eowyn marries. So does Faramir. So does Aragorn. So did Beren, and
>Hurin, and Tour. Even Tulkas is married. Why is it a cop-out for Eowyn
>to marry?

	Because she's the only character in all of LOTR who actively 
challenges the domestic role given to women in Middle-earth.

	Let's face it--  female characters are few and far between in LOTR, 
and where they do appear, it is almost always in a domestic role. The first 
significant female character in LOTR is Goldberry.  When she first appears, 
she is sitting indoors in Bombadil's House, where she had just made supper 
and drawn hot baths for the hobbits.  The next day she is not around,
Tom tells them, because it is her "washing day. . .  and her autumn-cleaning."
Ostensibly, this is intended to show some magical connection between Gold-
berry's activities and the rainy weather outside, but it's significant
that this link is established through the metaphor of domestic chores.
	Arwen, the second noteworty female character, appears at the feast in 
Elrond's house, but she does not she attend the Council the next day.  Her
two brothers, we are told, "were out upon errantry . . . far afield with
the Rangers of the North."  The male Elves are the ones who go out, travel, 
and fight--  the female ones stay indoors or in well-protected places where
they are perfectly safe and secure.  Arwen then vanishes completely until the 
end of Chapter 5 of RotK, where she suddenly arrives to marry Aragorn.  The
sole function which she seems to occupy in the narrative, in fact, is to
become Aragorn's wife.
	Galadriel is the third significant female character in LOTR.  Her role 
is not as overwhelmingly domestic as Goldberry's or Arwen's--  in fact, it
would probably be better described as "courtly" rather than "domestic"-- but 
even she is given a subservient role during the Company's first meeting with
her.   One first encounters her sitting next to her husband Celeborn
in their court at Caras Galadhon.  Celeborn is the one who speaks first and 
greets the guests--  Galadriel remains silent until the question of Gandalf's
absence is raised.  Even though she wears the Elven Ring and is probably more 
powerful than her husband, she defers to him in social settings; she lets
him conduct the audience and chimes in only to provide information or
to defuse the tension between him and Gimli. And she does, in fact, engage in
tasks that are more unambiguously domestic-- tasks such as weaving.  The Elf 
who gives the Elven-cloaks to the Company indicates this when he says that 
"she [Galadriel] herself and her maidens wove this stuff."
	There are some minor female characters present or alluded to
in the narrative who fit into the same functional pattern-- such as the
Healers of Minas Tirith or the Entwives, both of whom are clearly involved in 
more "domestic" tasks (i.e healing, nurturing, feeding, gardening) than their
male counterparts.  I'm not going to go into detail with them or with the
hobbit females, although the same argument could certainly be made for Rosie
Cotton that was made above for Arwen--  that her sole function in the story
is to become Sam's wife.  I'm going to skip over Shelob, because she seems
to be an entirely foreign sort of creature (although the fact that she is
a "she" does raise a number of interesting questions), and I think I've made
my point about the domestic role that is occupied by the female characters of 
LOTR.
	
	What makes Eowyn so interesting, IMHO, is that she is the sole
female character who rejects the domestic role that she is expected to 
assume.  When she first appears in TT, she is carrying a bowl of wine and 
serving it to the guests--  a domestic task if there ever was one.  When all 
of the Men of ride off to battle Saruman, she dons her armor and shield 
not to fight, but to lead the women and children of Edoras into safe and
secure hiding in Dunharrow-  her role is to be a caretaker and a matronly
protector.  In her conversation with Aragorn in Chapter 2 of RotK, she
explicity rejects both of those "domestic" tasks.  She says that she wishes
to ride with Aragorn and his company, insisting that she is "a shieldmaiden
and not a dry-nurse" who should have to stay at home and take care of "food
and beds."  She later emphasizes that she is "not a serving-woman" (even though
that was the exact role she occupied when she first appeared) and that she
"can ride and wield blade" as competently as anyone.  When Aragorn asks
her what it is that she is afraid of (since she said that she did not fear
death in battle), her response is: "A cage. To stay behind bars, until use
and old age accept them."  Quite simply, Eowyn is not content with the same
stay-at-home domestic role that she is being asked to play.
	And, as we know, she openly challenges that role.  Disguising herself
as a man, she rides off to Gondor with the other Rohirrim, where she 
certainly distinguishes herself on the battlefield, proving that she is indeed
as competent as any man.  

	But in the end, she changes her mind.  She renounces her desires to
go out to battle, to travel, and to do all of the things that female 
characters just don't do in LOTR.  Instead, she decides that she'd be
quite content simply to do what all the other women in Middle-earth do--
get married, stay at home, and take care of domestic affairs.  By having
Eowyn, the only character who mounts a challenge to the ideology of female
domesticity in LOTR, renounce that challenge and happily accept the status
of a married stay-at-home, Tolkien is effectively saying that her initial 
discontent with that status was a youthful mistake.  I stand by what I said 
before:  The message imparted by Eowyn is that women may think they'd like
to go out in the world and do the same things that men do, but ultimately,
they'd be happier just getting married and assuming a domestic role.

	--  Jim C. <jchokey@leland.stanford.edu>






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