Éowyn as An Exemplar of Systemic Failures to "See" Women

AKA, the start of a possible monograph. . . .because I clearly NEED another project to add to my list.

Sep 30, 2024

close shot of cobweb — Photo by Aaron Burden on Unsplash

I thought originally this post would be part of the Adaptations series, but it took on its own life and inspired some ideas that I’ve have proposed as conference presentations, so it ALL seems to be connecting. That means it’s likely to turn into its own monograph (which I’m visualizing as putting “Tolkien” [his work, and the adaptations and transformative works] in the center of a web of how women readers, writers, and academics have created their own “Tolkiens”).

So, a warning: not only is Substack warning me that this post is too long for email (quelle surprise!), I am warning you all that it will be rougher and messier than some of my other posts because it’s an early process draft. I do a great deal of my ‘thinking’ by typing (used to be typing on a manual typewriter on paper, now it’s is keyboarding on my laptop). My process involves multiple drafts/revisions.

I love to get feedback (at any stage) but do not require it!

First, I need to acknowledge that this project would not be possible without earlier work, including the first anthology on the topic of Tolkien and Women, Perilous and Fair Women in the Works and Life of J.R.R. Tolkien edited by Janet Brennan Croft and Leslie A. Donovan. That collection will be ten years old next spring, and I’m part of the trio of co-chairs who will be organizing the 2025 Online Midsummer Seminar (OMS), More Perilous and Fair, in honor of Janet’s and Leslie’s groundbreaking work.1 My co-chairs, Cami Agan and Clare Moore, are planning to edit and publish a new anthology building on Janet and Leslie’s: here is a link to their CFP: ‘Great Heart and Strength:’ New Essays on Women and Gender in the Works of J.R.R. Tolkien. I love how their title, and the description of their project and possible topics, reflect the changes in feminist, gender, and queer literary and cultural studies over the past decade.

I wrote my first feminist bibliography ever for Janet and Leslie, and it was a life-changing experience. I am not being hyperbolic. That experience, including their willingness to work with my self-acknowledged weird approach to scholarship, changed my scholarly questions and approaches, and the effects have kept rippling through the years.

So, in that way, I could say thinking about Tolkien and the scholarship on Tolkien differently for the past ten years, give or take, is the reason for this project, but I can also see how I’ve been working around to this project for twenty plus years, if you count my ten or so years researching feminisms and speculative fiction before Peter Jackson, Fran Walsh, and Philippa Boyens dragged me back into Middle-earth and changed my “research agenda” (which is what my administrators called it—they also seemed to think that one tidily outlines one’s agenda and then follows through with it for decades without fail, but none of them were from humanities fields).

My first (academic) attempt at writing on the topic was a 2012 presentation I gave at the Kalamazoo Medieval Congress: "Women and Tolkien: Amazons, Valkyries, Feminists, and Slashers.” I was never able to develop it beyond that presentation for multiple reasons, so I finally published it as a conference paper in 2018. But I kept thinking about it what sparked that presentation (a discussion about the extent to which men (and some women) keep saying that women and/or feminists don’t like Tolkien (or his work) which at K’zoo at least was contradicted by the demographics of the audience showing up and presenting and listening). It’s a sloppy overgeneralization. Some women and/or feminists not only LIKE Tolkien’s work, we love it (while in many cases being aware of some problematic things).

Feel free to join me in trying to connect some of the threads if you’d like—I’d enjoy hearing your ideas, or if you know of pieces others have shared about “women and Tolkien,” I’d like to read them.

I’m grouping all posts to do with this project under the new “Web Project” section I just created!

Part 1: The Canon Éowyn Through Merry’s Point of View

Then Merry heard of all sounds in that hour the strangest. It seemed that Dernhelm laughed, and the clear voice was like the ring of steel. ‘But no living man am I! You look upon a woman. Éowyn I am, Éomund’s daughter. You stand between me and my lord and kin. Begone, if you be not deathless! For living or dark undead, I will smite you, if you touch him.
The winged creature screamed at her, but the Ringwraith made no answer, and was silent, as if in sudden doubt. Very amazement for a moment conquered Merry’s fear. He opened his eyes and the blackness was lifted from them. There some paces from him sat the great beast, and all seemed dark about it, and above it loomed the Nazgûl Lord like a shadow of despair. A little to the left facing them stood she whom he had called Dernhelm. But the helm of her secrecy had fallen from her, and her bright hair, released from its bonds, gleamed with pale gold upon her shoulders. Her eyes grey as the sea were hard and fell, and yet tears were on her cheek. A sword was in her hand, and she raised her shield against the horror of her enemy’s eyes.
Éowyn it was, and Dernhelm also. For into Merry’s mind flashed the memory of the face that he saw at the riding from Dunharrow: the face of one that goes seeking death, having no hope.5 Pity filled his heart and great wonder, and suddenly the slow-kindled courage of his race awoke. He clenched his hand. She should not die, so fair, so desperate! At least she should not die alone, unaided (“The Battle of the Pelennor Fields,” 841).

Part 2: Éowyn Through Henderson’s Point of View

Dylan Henderson (2024) “‘A Bleak, Barren Land’: Women and Fertility in The Lord of the Rings

Even Melissa Hatcher, who argues for the centrality of Éowyn to some of Tolkien’s most cherished themes, admits that “Tolkien himself, in reality, probably was the stodgy sexist Oxford professor that feminist scholars paint him out to be” (44) [Henderson, 88]6
. . . .
Is it not telling that the most human and the most developed of Tolkien’s female characters, Éowyn, the White Lady of Rohan, renounces her femininity and, with it, the very possibility of motherhood by adopting a masculine persona and embracing battle as a lifestyle? In a world of men and, to a much lesser extent, goddesses, Éowyn stands out and, as a result, represents the novel’s many missing women. Symbolically, much depends on her, and everyone in her life—from her uncle, King Théoden, to his counselor, Gríma Wormtongue, to Aragorn and Faramir, the man she loves and the man who would love her—pressures her to fill the feminine role that, from the reader’s perspective, has been vacant for so long. And yet, she resists. Though young and beautiful and very human, she, too, is sterile—psychologically. Despite being drawn to her, Aragorn intuits this when they meet for the first time:

Very fair was her face, and her long hair was like a river of gold. Slender and tall she was in her white robe girt with silver; but strong she seemed and stern as steel, a daughter of kings. Thus Aragorn for the first time in the full light of day beheld Éowyn, Lady of Rohan, and thought her fair, fair and cold, like a morning of pale spring that is not yet come to womanhood. (LotR III.6.515)

In this physical description, we encounter both sides of Éowyn’s character, her outer beauty hinting at an inner capacity for love and affection and, by extension, motherhood, which is undermined by a vague, but powerful, impression of frigidity, suggested by the word “cold” as well as by frequent references to metals, shiny but lifeless materials incapable of growth and reproduction. As a result, Aragorn thinks of her not as a summer’s day, when the earth is in full bloom, but as a cold spring morning, as “a daughter of kings,” yes, but not as a mother of kings. Such descriptions prepare the reader for Éowyn’s decision to disobey her uncle’s orders and Aragorn’s advice. Scorning her role as “dry-nurse” to the people of Rohan, she leaves those in her charge to fend for themselves and rides to war in Gondor (V.2.784). [Henderson, 97-8]
Many modern critics view her, at least at this moment in the narrative, as a feminist role model, as a strong-willed and independent woman asserting her right to the lifestyle she desires, traditional gender roles be damned, but such readings can overlook just how bloodthirsty Éowyn becomes. In the words of Melissa Smith, “she desires to find death, not to renew life” (204).7 Unfair though it is, the burden of reproduction, of nursing the next generation, rests on Éowyn’s shoulders in The Lord of the Rings. In a novel comprised of men, there is, it seems, no one else. If she had embraced such a role, choosing the life of a “dry-nurse” over that of a shield-maiden, her actions would have suggested that there is hope for Middle-earth, that there is, despite Sauron’s wars and machinations, the possibility of growth and renewal. It would have, in other words, undermined the bleak message conveyed elsewhere in the text by the absence of women. Much hinges on this one character, this lone representative of the female sex, and nothing reinforces the impression of barrenness that hangs over the novel like her shocking preference for war and death. (Henderson, 98-9).
Note 10: As the most developed female character in The Lord of the Rings, Éowyn has attracted, and continues to attract, considerable attention from literary scholars (Madsen; Linton; Filipczak; Larsen). Historically, critics have struggled with the question raised by her character and her character’s sudden transformation: “Is she a role model for feminists, or merely a pitiful, flat character (easily described in one sentence), or is she a woefully misunderstood young woman who merely wishes to die in battle?” (Johnson 117).8

Part 3: Éowyn Through Melissa McCrory Hatcher’s, Melissa Smith’s, and Brent D. Johnson’s Points of View

Melissa McCrory Hatcher (2007)“Finding Woman’s Role in The Lord of the Rings”

In The Lord of the Rings, J.R.R. Tolkien gives the 20th century a fantasy epic of medieval proportions. It is a story of the littlest person, a hobbit, overcoming the tides of war. In his trilogy, Tolkien fashions a narrative that forcefully asserts the idea that wars should only be fought to protect and preserve, not to conquer and destroy. While a number of critics have accused Tolkien of subsuming his female characters in a sea of powerful men, one heroine, Éowyn, the White Lady of Rohan, is given a full character arc in the novel. After being rejected by Lord Aragorn, Éowyn searches for meaning in life, choosing to follow her brother, Éomer, to fight in the War of the Ring. The White Lady of Rohan chooses as her fate to die in battle with glory and honor. However, after being wounded by a Ringwraith and restored in the courts of healing, she decides to give up life as a warrior and become a healer. Modern scholars have seen this as a choice to accept conventional female submissiveness. However, in choosing the path of protecting and preserving the earth, Éowyn acts in accordance with Tolkien’s highest ideal: a fierce commitment to peace. Rather than submission, Éowyn embodies the full-blooded subjectivity that Tolkien posits as essential for peace. While other characters—most notably Sam —also embody this ideal, it is Éowyn who most successfully fulfills the role. In making this argument, I hope to show how modern criticism has misread the role of women in Tolkien’s epic, and has thus overlooked much of the importance of his vast and compelling work.
Many modern scholars discount this fantasy epic not only because of its genre, but for its mass‐market appeal and its seeming lack of depth. Feminist critics, however, have been even harsher in their dealings with Tolkien. While a professor at Oxford, J.R.R. Tolkien formed a male literary club. The Inklings, including C. S. Lewis and Charles Williams, were the first audience to hear The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings. This male‐dominated institution inspired Candice Fredrick and Sam McBride in Women Among the Inklings to pose the idea that “Middle‐earth is very Inkling‐like, in that while women exist in the world, they need not be given significant attention and can, if one is lucky, simply be avoided altogether” (108). Tolkien’s world of men seems, to most, very chivalric in its philosophy of leaving women behind, and some female readers feel abandoned by Tolkien’s lack of women characters. There are only three significant ones: Galadriel, Arwen, and Éowyn. Hobbit women are mentioned, but only as housewives or shrews, like Rosie Cotton or Lobelia Sackville‐Baggins. Tom Bombadil’s wife Goldberry is a mystical washer‐woman. Dwarf women are androgynous, while the Ents have lost their wives. When discussing male and female characters, it is important to note that only the real humans achieve emotional fullness, and the mythic individuals attain only romanticized futures.
Those rare readers and scholars who dissent from the majority of critics often cite presentism as their chief defense, arguing that we, as readers in the 21^st century, should not judge Tolkien by our modern feminist standards. Claiming that Tolkien lived in a different time where women were more subservient, these scholars justify this idea by insisting that “[s]exism was the norm and not subject to evaluation and attention” (Fredrick and McBride xiv). This idea of presentism, however, fails both to adequately explain Tolkien’s own sexism and to take seriously the powerful female characters in The Lord of the Rings. Tolkien’s contemporaries were Virginia Woolf and the Bloomsbury group and Gertrude Stein and her Paris writers group. Tolkien himself worked with several strong female scholars at Oxford such as “medieval historian Margerie Reeves and Mrs. Sutherland, a fellow of Lady Margaret Hall specializing in Provençal studies”(Fredrick and McBride 4). Moreover, when Tolkien was writing his masterpiece, from 1937 to 1948, women were even controlling the home front in England—taking over “male” jobs during World War II. He and the Inklings were aware of the women’s movement and lived at a time when it was impossible to ignore. Therefore, it is certainly not adequate to make the argument of presentism to defend a man living only fifty years ago (43-44)..
Tolkien himself, in reality, probably was the stodgy sexist Oxford professor that feminist scholars paint him out to be. In a letter to his son Michael he says, “How quickly an intelligent woman can be taught, grasp [her professor’s] ideas, see his point—and how (with rare exceptions) they can go no further, when they leave his hand, or when they cease to take a personal interest in him” (Letters 49).9 Despite Tolkien’s beliefs in the modern woman’s intelligence and value, The Lord of the Rings and its characters should be judged on their own internal merit, without considering the biography of its author. This is not an attempt to defend any anti‐feminist ideas in Tolkien’s own life, but in his work, where in the character of Éowyn we are given a complete individual who fulfills Tolkien’s theme of peace, preservation, and cultural memory.

Melissa Smith (2007) "At Home and Abroad: Éowyn's Two-fold Figuring as War Bride in The Lord of the Rings"

Raised in the company of great warriors, in a society that has taught her to glorify the battle‐arts, Éowyn, Lady of Rohan, seems an unlikely choice as a participant in The Lord of the Rings’ single romantic storyline. Noble, cold, and stern, she desires to find death, not to renew life; she searches for glory, not healing. Yet, amid the carnage and hopelessness of combat in The Return of the King, J.R.R. Tolkien develops a courtship centered on Éowyn, one that is ultimately imbued with the same wartime ethos that surrounded the young women of World Wars I and II.[Note 1] Éowyn, shield‐maiden of the Rohirrim, and Faramir, a former captain newly succeeded to the title of Steward of Gondor, figure principally in what is popularly termed a “wartime romance”—a relationship characterized by an accelerated intimacy attributed to the pressures and fears of war, including the uncertainty of prolonged separation and death. As Tolkien constructs it, however, Éowyn’s attachments are not so simplistically binary: Aragorn, son of Arathorn, has also attracted her affections, creating a system that actually allows for a comprehensive representation of the several incarnations of the World Wars’ “war brides.” Éowyn’s respective relationships with Aragorn and Faramir thus cast her in the dual roles of war bride‐left‐behind and foreign war bride, and while comparison of her experiences with the courtship, marriage, and assimilation experiences of women in the war‐torn twentieth century reveal her to be a negative example of the former, she is clearly, for Tolkien, a positive exemplar of the latter (204).
[Note 1] The influence of the events and atmosphere of the two World Wars upon the works of J.R.R. Tolkien has been extensively investigated. He has even been classed, by Brian Rosebury, Croft tells us, with the “killed war poets,” a group that included Wilfred Owen and Edmund Blunden, because of thematic similarities amongst their works (qtd. in Croft 13). Of the many analyses of the war’s influence on Tolkien that are available, perhaps the best source is Janet Brennan Croft’s War and the Works of J.R.R. Tolkien—though war brides do not enter her discussion.

Brent D. Johnson (2009) “Éowyn’s Grief.”

Éowyn daughter of Éomund and Théodwyn and niece to King Théoden, is one of the most enigmatic characters created by J. R. R. Tolkien in his epic story The Lord of the Rings. Is she a role model for feminists, or merely a pitiful, flat character (easily described in one sentence), or is she a woefully misunderstood young woman who merely wishes to die in battle? Surely there is more to her than the story of a niece left behind when the men folk ride off to glorious war, a twenty-four year old woman with a crush on one of the heroes of the book?
I propose in this paper that Éowyn's story of grief and recovery is a portrait of many soldiers' family members who remained in England during World War I, often close enough to hear the bombardment of artillery across the Channel, who struggled to recover from their losses, often without any resources in their communities. Tolkien also uses Faramir to show a possible path to recovery from traumatic grief. If it weren't for the compassionate presence of Faramir, a fellow patient who also suffered the loss of his entire family in the War of the Ring, she would not have recovered from her grief and would have died of despair.
Why isn't she a model of someone suffering from Post-traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD)? She has been in the midst of war, not merely as a witness, but as a combatant: she rode off with the Rohirrim cavalry to Minas Tirith and slew the mount of the Ringwraith threatening her uncle, and took part in destroying the Witch-king. PTSD requires symptoms in three areas identified as behavioral, cognitive, and emotive. A diagnosis of PTSD is not made until symptoms from all three areas have manifested after at least one month following a traumatic episode. Éowyn only suffers symptoms similar to some cognitive and emotive realms for a few short weeks. She hasn't had time to develop PTSD. Anyone who is actually diagnosed with PTSD, and willing to talk about their experience—whether suffering because of war, rape, or survival of a serious accident--will observe it took a long time for PTSD to manifest in their lives. Social workers who provide care for soldiers and their families around military bases in America often note that symptoms are often not noticed until 90 to 160 days following a combat deployment.
She is a woman who is gripped by grief. As a seven-year-old child she lost both of her parents. Her father fell in combat, and her mother wasted away in grief (Lord of the Rings [LotR] App. A: 1044). Raised by her maternal uncle, she nearly lost him when he mysteriously took ill, only to be rescued from an untimely dotage by the arrival of Gandalf (II.6.503). She loses her cousin Théodred, sees her brother imprisoned and then freed only to immediately ride off to a war she is forbidden to join, and witnesses the gruesome impact of war on her nation. When her beloved uncle Théoden is slain before her eyes, and she is nearly destroyed by the Witch-king that was her uncle's killer, she loses consciousness and nearly dies. When she recovers, it is a near thing brought about only by the superior healing skills of Aragorn, the man she thought she loved; she is so frigid she fails to respond to anyone who attempts to raise her spirits. She is overwhelmed with grief” (117-18).

Part 4: Robin’s Counterargument(s) and Critique

Highlighting Seven Key Quotes (Two from Tolkien, five from Henderson):

Éowyn/Dernhelm as Merry sees her:

He caught the glint of clear grey eyes; and then he shivered for it came suddenly to him that it was the face of one without hope who goes in search of death (803).
For into Merry’s mind flashed the memory of the face that he saw at the riding from Dunharrow: the face of one that goes seeking death, having no hope (841)

Éowyn as Henderson sees her:

renounces her femininity and, with it, the very possibility of motherhood by adopting a masculine persona and embracing battle as a lifestyle?
Scorning her role as “dry-nurse” to the people of Rohan, she leaves those in her charge to fend for themselves and rides to war in Gondor.
such readings can overlook just how bloodthirsty Éowyn becomes. In the words of Melissa Smith, “she desires to find death, not to renew life” [I point out the problems with Henderson’s choice of quote and his use of it in Footnote 7]
If she had embraced such a role [the role of taking on “the burden of reproduction, of nursing the next generation”] choosing the life of a “dry-nurse” over that of a shield-maiden, her actions would have suggested that there is hope for Middle-earth, that there is, despite Sauron’s wars and machinations, the possibility of growth and renewal.
nothing reinforces the impression of barrenness that hangs over the novel like her shocking preference for war and death.

The more I re-read Henderson’s essay and thought about his argument in developing my responses, the more I wondered if one of the reasons I resist his interpretation of Éowyn is that I read Merry’s description of Éowyn/Dernhelm completely differently.10

In the two quotes above, Merry perceives first, an anonymous young Rider and thinks that his face is “the face of one without hope who goes in search of death.” When he sees Dernhelm take off his helm and reveal Éowyn, he has the same response: that he is seeing “the face of one that goes seeking death, having no hope.”

The question is: whose death is Éowyn seeking?

From what Henderson says, he perceives her as going into war to kill others (sort of like an unmarried Lady MacBeth, demanding to be “unsexed” so she can commit murder). In Henderson’s reading, Éowyn “renounces femininity” (and motherhood); embraces battle “as a lifestyle”; becomes “bloodthirsty”; she develops a “shocking preference for war and death,” which reflects her “barrenness” (which also “hangs over the novel”)—being “unsexed” means not having babies, not fulfilling her natural womanly function.11

However, this reading doesn’t hold up against her complete narrative arc: the claim that she "is “embracing battle as a lifestyle” is contradicted by what happens after the battle when she rejects the warrior life.

Éowyn fights in one battle (granted, the most significant traditional battle of the Third Age—although the deciding “battle” was Frodo and Sam’s, and it wasn’t done by heroic masculine dudes with big swords). The only violent acts we see her performing are cutting off the head off the Fell Beast, and then delivering the death stroke to the Witch-King of Angmar (after Merry stabs him in the knee). Her motive at that moment is protecting the fallen King, her uncle. And she obviously intended to protect him: she leaves her order in the battle ranks as they approach the Pelennor and moves up to ride closely behind him.

Moreover, had she not been there as a woman (which she continues to be despite her “adopting a masculine persona”), presumably the Witch-King would have survived, and the battle might have gone very badly, making it impossible for Aragorn to lead the forces out against Sauron in order to give Frodo and Sam a better chance to destroy the Ring.

Afterwards, she “renounces” her masculine persona to become the ruling Lady of Ithilien and to be “a healer, and love all things that grow and are not barren” (965) (definitely not a lifestyle of bloodshed and slaughter!).12 I admit at age ten, I was pretty mad about that decision not only because I was in love with Éowyn, I was more or less deciding about then that I was never going to get married let alone have babies!

I have *always* read that line as Éowyn seeking her own death in battle: lacking all hope is one of the most dangerous states in LotR (as Denethor shows!). She doesn’t plan to commit suicide, as Denethor does, but in effect, she goes to war assuming she will be killed in the battle (and death in battle was one of the endings to Éowyn’s narrative arc that Tolkien considered!). I asked a few friends, completely informally, how they read that line, and they all agreed with me that she was seeking suicide (they were all women!), but I would be interested in how others have interpreted that phrasing.

Craig quotes some of Tolkien’s notes/ideas for the character that changed over time, and then comments on him: his essay is one of my favorite readings of Éowyn, but I don’t see it cited a lot (probably because it appears, on the surface, to be about Frodo and Sam!).

‘Make Éowyn. . . .a stern amazon woman.. . . .Probably [she] should die to avenge or save Theoden.’46 Only two roles are conceivable for Éowyn in the narrative: marriage or death. Having rejected the marriage option, Tolkien toyed with the warrior-woman idea, thinking that Éowyn might go openly to battle, and that there was a precedent for this in the history of Rohan.47 However when he returned to the story two years later he had made some decisions. Éowyn’s love for Aragorn would remain, but she would be refused even when she begged him to stay or take her with him.48 Tolkien also decided that she would go to war in defiance of her king, and disguised as a man, both of which emphasise her transgressions. This adds complexity to Eowyn and is supposed to highlight her despair. But it was still proposed that she die in battle destroying the Witch King. Once this was changed the overall shape of Éowyn was in place.44 (13-14)
46 See Treason of Isengard 447-8. After this decision Tolkien considered making Aragorn love Eowyn, and never to marry after her death.
47 War of the Ring, 243
48 War of the Ring, 406,418
49 War of the Ring, 369

Beautiful but frigid:

In this [Tolkien’s} physical description, we encounter both sides of Éowyn’s character, her outer beauty hinting at an inner capacity for love and affection and, by extension, motherhood, which is undermined by a vague, but powerful, impression of frigidity, suggested by the word “cold” as well as by frequent references to metals, shiny but lifeless materials incapable of growth and reproduction.

Henderson analyzes what Aragorn sees and thinks, upon seeing Éowyn for the first time which is itself a textbook example of the male gaze: Aragorn’s impression is shaped by the male narrator/author, and is interpreted by a male scholar. There are multiple levels of masculine mediation to this description of Éowyn, reflecting systemic sexism (correlating “outer beauty” with the “inner capacity for love and affection and, by extension, motherhood,” phrasing that implies that only beautiful women have the capacity to love and be mothers, or are the only ones worthy to be mothers) [pauses for *eyeroll*]

Tolkien’s imagery blends the sense of Éowyn’s beauty and strength (and coldness). And his equation of beauty with goodness and ugliness with evil is an old stereotype, and ubiquitous enough to be a TV trope!, that is not unique to him.

However, I find David Craig’s analysis of Éowyn’s characterization, in his essay, “‘Queer lodgings’: Gender and Sexuality in The Lord of the Rings” to be much more interesting, detailing how Tolkien struggle with how to resolve her story probably inadvertently resulted in the characterization reflecting a psychological depth and interest that is missing in many of the other characters.

However, as I discussed in two previous posts, I have a very different response to and interpretation of Éowyn (which originated in my first reading of the novel 58 years ago). I’ve written about my queer and resistant reading of her story as well as how some of the dialogue between the men as they stand around her as she lies, unconscious in the Houses of Healing, is downright creepy (and works perfectly when Jackson, Walsh, and Boyens adapt it for Gríma’s attempted seduction scene!).

“Dry-nurse” vs. “Shieldmaiden”

Now let’s talk about the whole “dry-nurse” thing: Henderson is quoting Éowyn, and he references this term twice in the passage I excerpted.

In the first quote, “dry-nurse” is used figuratively (to describe her caring for the people of Gondor while the King and his heir are off fighting the war). In the second quote, the usage is more literal: “nursing the next generation” implies taking care of her children, presumably involving breast-feeding them, which would have “provided hope” (I’ll note there are other ways in which Tolkien shows his characters having moments of hope [one of my favorites is Frodo and Sam seeing the golden stonecrop on the decapitated head of the the kingly statue at the Crossroads, in the light of the sun!]. Tolkien doesn’t give all the responsibility for hope to the women!

Scorning her role as “dry-nurse” to the people of Rohan, she leaves those in her charge to fend for themselves and rides to war in Gondor.
If she had embraced such a role [the role of taking on “the burden of reproduction, of nursing the next generation”] choosing the life of a “dry-nurse” over that of a shield-maiden, her actions would have suggested that there is hope for Middle-earth, that there is, despite Sauron’s wars and machinations, the possibility of growth and renewal.

A dry-nurse is not the mother of the child she cares for: she is hired to help with the “burden” of reproduction and child care, as the OED definition proves.

The first meaning of “dry-nurse” (noun) in the OED is:

1. A woman who takes care of and attends to a child, but does not suckle it (opposed to wet nurse); formerly, also, in the general sense of ‘nurse’. at dry nurse (cf. nurse n.1 I.2a).
2. figurative. A person who is charged with ‘looking after’ another; esp. one who instructs or ‘coaches’ a superior in his or her duties.

The wet nurse is the one who breast-feeds a child. The dry nurse does not breast-feed: instead, she made and fed the baby cereals or soup. Neither the wet nor the dry nurse are the mother of the child they are caring for (and if they were not enslaved, which was common in slave cultures, including in the U.S. system of chattel slavery), they were paid to do so. Both wet and dry nurses could be hired after the infant’s mother died or could not, or chose not, to breastfeed. There is a long complicated history behind both functions, and terms (and that isn’t just in the past: now it’s called “Sharing Breast Milk” through Human Milk Banks as well as more informal methods.

Éowyn is the daughter of the King of Rohan’s sister; she is of the House of Eorl. Her duties while he is gone are those of governance and protection. Théoden asks his people who they want to rule them while he, and his heir, go to war (which nobody ever describes as “deserting their people”! just saying!!).

Háma asks for someone from the House of Eorl (any of royal blood), be named to rule in their absence. Théoden claims that Éomer cannot stay, and that he is the “last of that House.” Háma responds:

I said not Éomer. . . .And he is not the last. There is Éowyn, daughter of Éomund, his sister. She is fearless and high-hearted. All love her. Let her be as lord to the Eorlingas, while we are gone” (“The King of the Golden Hall,” 523).

Go Háma!

Éowyn does describe her function as that of a dry-nurse: the conversation she and Aragorn have at Dunharrow is a complicated one, about duty and choices, but Aragorn states clearly that he sees her duty as the same as that of any male commander or lord who agreed to take over in the King’s absence. She is honor-bound to fulfill the “charge to govern the people until their lord’s return” that she agreed to. He is not talking about her marrying and having children, not given the threat that Middle-earth is facing at this time.

If the Rohirrim return, victorious, she would step down from the governing position, and at that point would be likely to marry, and in fact that is the case in the timeline that Tolkien settled on! If the Rohirrim and their allies are defeated, as she notes, that Aragorn is telling her that “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.” Given Sauron’s plans for Middle-earth, I think her assessment is accurate (not being killed by invading forces would just mean enslavement).

I think she’s right, but Aragorn is also right that “a time may come soon. . . when none will return. Then there will be need of valour without renown, for none shall remember the deeds that are done in the last defence of your homes. Yet the deeds will not be less valiant because they are unpraised” (784).

It’s not a simple situation with an easy “yes” or “no” answer, at least not in my reading, and not in the work done by the earlier scholars. I think it’s worth noting that a quick count of the scholars who have published on Éowyn listed in my bibliography, which is a selected not necessarily a comprehensive one, shows that sixteen women have published compared to four men. The publications range from a single focus on Éowyn to analyses of several or a group of female characters.

I know from personal experience that some women and feminists dislike Tolkien’s work—but some *men* dislike his work as well (and have from the start). Somehow the fact that some men dislike his work never seems to translate to a claim about men, as a collective, disliking it. Just women.

Oh, and the meaning if “shield-maiden”: I was surprised when I saw the OED entry that identifies the earliest appearance of “shield-may” in writing (as far as they know) as happening 1849! The first citation for “dry-nurse” is 1616! And then I realized it made sense because it’s a translation of an Anglo-Saxon word “Wælcyrian”! The term is defined as “A maiden warrior, an Amazon. (By some English writers used as equivalent to Valkyrie n.)” with its origin in Teutonic mythology.

A note about “Songs of Slaying”:

Henderson also describes Éowyn forswearing her (previous) enjoyment of “songs of slaying,” renouncing her joy along with her “masculinity” to marry Faramir:

When the “Shadow” that lies over her spirit finally departs, she tells Faramir that she will no longer “take joy only in the songs of slaying,” a remarkable admission considering the novel’s condemnation of senseless violence, usually associated only with Orcs, and its praise of pity and mercy (VI.5.965).

I have two issues with this claim: one specific to Éowyn, the other relating to the claim about the “novel’s condemnation of senseless violence. . . and praise of pity and mercy.”

Rohan’s culture is an oral culture: their history and values are shared through song. Aragorn sings one of their songs for Gandalf, Gimli, and Legolas (in Rohirric!) as they approach Edoras. The Rohirrim sing as they charge into the battle of the Pelennor Fields. As Tom Shippey has discussed at length, Tolkien based some aspects of the Rohirrim on the pre-Christian Germanic (Anglo-Saxon) cultures. Lots of other medievalists have pointed out the same thing, as well as pointing out allusions to Beowulf this part of the novel. (I am not a medievalist, so I’m not familiar with that branch of Tolkien scholarship.) Presumably that’s what Éowyn has grown up listening to in the Hall her life.

Little remains of the Germanic pre-Christian culture (Tolkien laments the lack of a mythology for England!). However, recent archeological scholarship has identified some of the burials that were thought to be of male warriors buried with their weapons to actually be skeletons of women buried with weapons! There’s debate over what that means, i.e. whether they actually fought, or the weapons were ceremonial due to their high status, but it’s certainly challenging some of the sexist assumptions.

In any case, the “songs of slaying” are not only referenced in regard to Éowyn; they are performed by the Rohirrim as they fight. When Éomer believes that the black ships carry corsairs to support the forces of Mordor, he sings his resistance, and determines to die doing deeds worthy of song even if all are conquered.13 And of course, there’s the song created by Gléowine (the King’s minstrel) that is sung by the Riders of the King’s House at Théoden’s burial mound (976). That song will be sung in honor of the King through later generations. Little boys and little girls will listen to the song, and others, and be influenced by them—because that’s how humans learn our culture.

There’s some scholarship by medievalists on the conflict that Tolkien felt between his Catholic beliefs/values and the ideal of (pagan) Northen courage, connected to the Norse belief that they were doomed to lose in the Last Battle (Ragnarök) but that they would still fight. With that in mind, my reading of Éowyn is that she embodies that ideal of Northern courage.

If those of us living today are going to consider that her to be barbaric/ bloodthirsty/ etc., then I would argue that same judgement has to apply to Rohan’s warriors (and all the other men fighting the war against Sauron). And their deaths would also have an effect on fertility: if (young, unmarried) men die in battle, they won’t be able to marry anyone and have babies with them! A great deal changed in England after WWI because of the high death rates of young men (including fewer women marrying not because they wanted to become warriors but because so many men died). Presumably that would apply in Tolkien’s Secondary World as well, when the battles are lost conclusively and many men die.

But the larger claim that Henderson makes—that “senseless violence” is “usually associated only with Orcs” is an even more significant problem, relating to systemic racism.

In "The Wretched of Middle-Earth: An Orkish Manifesto,” published in The Southern Journal of Philosophy, in 2022, Charles W. Mills presents specific evidence that torture and wholesale slaughter of the “enemy” described is primarily done by the forces of the West (and that they are extremely selective about which characters receive “pity and mercy) (tldr; not the Orcs!).

Consider the following incidents from the many skirmishes and battles of Middle-Earth. Two prisoners are tortured for information and then killed; one is skinned and nailed to a tree, the other is beheaded and has his head mounted on a stick (TH, 130–31). A weapon is devised which sets its victims on fire, sticks to them so they cannot get rid of it, and eventually burns them alive (TH, 102–3). A policy is announced of killing the enemy’s children on sight (TT, 83). Those killed in battle are not given a decent burial; rather, their bodies are desecrated, thrown into a mass grave, and burned (TT, 44). Finally, and most importantly of all, the enemy are never allowed to surrender, but are always hunted down and killed in cold blood (TH, 289–90; TI, 44, 79, 187, 191; RK, 151, 318).

The brutal savagery of the murderous orcs? Not at all; these are, in fact, the recorded actions of the Western Allies, war crimes under any reasonable construal of the term. The orcs’ atrocities, by contrast, are almost always subjunctive—what they would do, if they had the chance. But of course, they never get the chance, because they are always massacred in time. We see here the classic cognitive schizophrenia of the West’s encounter with the non-West: the savages have to be savagely killed before they can demonstrate their savagery, but, of course, this killing is completely different (129-30).

Before Éowyn is condemned for her bloodthirstiness and reveling in slaughter, let’s talk about how all the noble forces of the West engage in wholesale slaughter of the Orcs (while taking the men fighting for Sauron or Saruman prisoners, and then arranging for them to be released) as well!

Part 5: Oxford English Dictionary Definitions of “dry-nurse” & “shieldmaid”

Dry-Nurse Noun (literal and figurative meanings)

1. A woman who takes care of and attends to a child, but does not suckle it (opposed to wet nurse); formerly, also, in the general sense of ‘nurse’. at dry nurse (cf. nurse n.1 I.2a).

a1616 One Mistris Quickly; which is in the manner of his Nurse; or his dry-Nurse [1602 try nurse]; or his Cooke. W. Shakespeare, Merry Wives of Windsor (1623) i. ii. 4

a1618 After a while thou didst love thy Drie-nurse, and didst forget the other. W. Raleigh, Instr. to Sonne ii, in Remains (1661) 84

1663 There's no cook, nor dry-nurse, like a wife. S. Tuke, Adventures of Five Hours v. iii

1731 Make a dry-nurse of thy muse? J. Swift, To Gay 8

1839 Neglecting the poor little dear out at dry-nurse. R. Barham in Bentley's Miscellany vol. 6 640

1848 To play the drynurse to three starving brats. C. Kingsley, Saint's Tragedy iii. iii. 169

1849 Mrs. Horsfall had him at dry-nurse. C. Brontë, Shirley vol. III. ix. 206

“Dry-nurse, N., Sense 1.” Oxford English Dictionary, Oxford UP, September 2023, https://doi.org/10.1093/OED/9645922534.

2. figurative. A person who is charged with ‘looking after’ another; esp. one who instructs or ‘coaches’ a superior in his or her duties.

1631 Well, this dry-nurse..is a delicate man. B. Jonson, Bartholmew Fayre i. v. 11 in Workes vol. II

c1640 You must have a dry nurse, as many Captaines have..I can hire you an old limping decayed sergeant at Brainford. Capt. Underwit in A. H. Bullen, Collection of Old English Plays (1883) vol. II. 322 (Farmer)

1785 Grand caterer and dry nurse of the church! W. Cowper, Task ii. 371

1820 The old general who, in foreign armies, is placed at the elbow of the Prince of the Blood, who nominally commands in chief, on condition of attempting nothing without the advice of his dry-nurse. W. Scott, Monastery vol. I. vi. 187

1826 When the Horse Guards are obliged to employ one of those fellows like me in whom they have no confidence, they give him what is called a second in command—one in whom they have confidence—a kind of dry nurse. Duke of Wellington in Croker Papers (1884) vol. I. xi. 343

“Dry-nurse, N., Sense 2.” Oxford English Dictionary, Oxford UP, September 2023, https://doi.org/10.1093/OED/1052423342.

Dry-Nurse Verb

transitive. To bring up ‘by hand’, without the breast; to play the dry-nurse to (literal and figurative); to ‘coach’ or instruct (a superior) in his or her duties.

1581 Her daughter..she committed to the outlawes..who..promised to drie nurse the child so well as thei could till she should make retourne. B. Rich, Farewell Mil. Profession (Shakespeare Society) 185 Citation details for B. Rich, Farewell Mil. Profession

1663 As Romulus a Wolf did rear, So he was dry-nurs'd by a Bear. S. Butler, Hudibras: First Part i. ii. 84 Citation details for S. Butler, Hudibras

1767 A round flexible pipe might be contrived for the feeding dry-nursed children. S. Pennington, Letters vol. IV. 13Citation details for S. Pennington, Letters

1840 She had dry-nursed a young baronet. F. Marryat, Poor Jack ii. 8Citation details for F. Marryat, Poor Jack

1858 Franz of Lorraine bears the title of Commander, whom Seckendorf is to dry-nurse.e T. Carlyle, History of Friedrich II of Prussia vol. II. x. iv. 623Citation details for T. Carlyle, History of Friedrich II of Prussia

1894 Some regular officers who had been selected..for the purpose of dry-nursing their inexperienced colonels. Lord Wolseley, Life Marlborough vol. I. 282

“Dry-nurse, V.” Oxford English Dictionary, Oxford UP, September 2023, https://doi.org/10.1093/OED/2061024248.

Shieldmaid & Shieldmaiden goes to entry on Shieldmay

Teutonic Mythology.

A maiden warrior, an Amazon. (By some English writers used as equivalent to Valkyrie n.)

1849 The Wælcyrian or Shieldmays were the choosers of the slain. J. M. Kemble, Saxons in England vol. I. i. xii. 393 Citation details for J. M. Kemble, Saxons in England

1870 Brynhild answered, ‘..I am a shield-may, and wear helm on head even as the kings of war’. Morris, Story of Volsungs xxiv Citation details for Morris, Story of Volsungs

“Shieldmay, N.” Oxford English Dictionary, Oxford UP, July 2023, https://doi.org/10.1093/OED/9790729554.

Part 6: Selected Bibliography

Benvenuto, Maria Raffaella. "Against Stereotype: Éowyn and Lúthien as 20th-Century Women." Tolkien and Modernity 1, edited by Frank Weinreich and Thomas Honegger, Cormarë Series 9. Walking Tree P, 2006, pp. 31-54.

Błaszkiewicz, Maria. “Tolkien’s Queen-Women in The Lord of the Rings.” ‘O, What a Tangled Web’: Tolkien and Medieval Literature, a View from Poland, edited by Barbara Kowalik, Cormarë Series 29, Walking Tree P, 2013, pp. 69-91.

Costabile, Giovanni. “‘No Englander May Hinder Me’: Éowyn the Highland Pipe Major and Other Highlights of Tolkien’s Awareness of Sexual, Class and Ethnic Divisions in Wartime.” “Something Has Gone Crack”: New Perspectives on J.R.R. Tolkien in the Great War, edited by Janet Brennan Croft and Annika Röttinger, Comarë Series 41, Walking Tree P, 2019, pp. 357-77.

Craig, David M. “‘Queer Lodgings’: Gender and Sexuality in The Lord of the Rings.” Mallorn, vol. 38, Jan. 2001, pp. 11–18. https://journals.tolkiensociety.org/mallorn/article/view/145. Rpt. “Queer Lodgings: Gender and Sexuality in The Lord of the Rings - Reprinted with a New Introduction by the Author.” Mallorn, no. 61, 2020, pp. 20–29.

Croft, Janet Brennan, and Leslie Donovan, editors. Perilous and Fair: Women in the Works and Life of J. R. R. Tolkien. Mythopoeic P, 2015.

Crowe, Edith L. “Power in Arda: Sources, Uses and Misuses.” Mythlore, vol. 21, no. 2, article 40, 1996, https://dc.swosu.edu/mythlore/vol21/iss2/40/, pp. 272-77. Rpt. in Croft and Donovan, pp. 136-149.

Donovan, Leslie A. “The Valkyrie Reflex in J. R. R. Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings: Galadriel, Shelob, Éowyn, and Arwen.” Tolkien the Medievalist, edited by Jane Chance, Routledge, 2003, pp. 106–32. Rpt. in Croft and Donovan, pp. 221–57.

Enright, Nancy. “Tolkien’s Females and the Defining of Power.” Renascence, vol. 59, no. 2, 2007, pp. 93-108.

Fife, Ernelle. "Wise Warriors in Tolkien, Lewis, and Rowling," Mythlore, vol. 25, no. 1, article 11, 2006, pp. 147-62.

Fredrick, Candice and McBride, Sam."Battling the Woman Warrior: Females and Combat in Tolkien and Lewis," Mythlore, vol. 25, no. 3, article 4, 2007, pp. 29-42.

Hatcher, Melissa McCrory. “Finding Woman’s Role in The Lord of the Rings,” Mythlore, vol. 25, no. 3, article 5, 2007, pp. 43-54.

Harris, Isiah D., et al. “Fertility and the aging male.” Reviews in Urology vol. 13, no. 4, 2011, 184-90.

Hesser, Katherine. "Éowyn." J. R. R. Tolkien Encyclopedia: Scholarship and Critical Assessment, edited by Michael D. C. Drout, Routledge, 2007, pp.168-69.

Holtz-Wodzak, Victoria. "Tolkien Sidelined: Constructing the Non-Combatant in The Children of Hurin," Mythlore, vol. 33, no. 2, article 9, 2015, pp. 93-109.

Hopkins, Lisa (1996) "Female Authority Figures in the Works of Tolkien, C.S. Lewis and Charles Williams," Mythlore, vol. 21, no. 2, article 55, 1996, pp. 364-66.

Hunt, Elle. “ There’s a crisis in male fertility. But you wouldn’t know it from the way many men behave.” Guardian, 12 Mar. 2024.

Johnson, Brent D. “Éowyn’s Grief.” Mythlore, vol. 27, no. 3, article 15, 2009, pp. 117-127.

Linton, Phoebe C. "Speech and Silence in The Lord of the Rings: Medieval Romance and the Transitions of Éowyn." In Croft and Donovan, 2015, pp. 258-280.

Reid, Robin Anne. “Bibliography: Feminist/Gender/Queer Tolkien Scholarship (1971-present).” Writing from Ithilien. Substack, 25 Nov. 2023.

---. “The History of Scholarship on Female Characters in J.R.R. Tolkien’s Legendarium: A Feminist Bibliographic Essay.” In Croft and Donovan, pp. 13-40.

Smith, Melissa. "At Home and Abroad: Éowyn's Two-fold Figuring as War Bride in The Lord of the Rings," Mythlore, vol. 26, no. 1, article 12, 2007, pp. 161-72. Rpt. Croft and Donovan, pp. 204-17.

Wallace, Anna. "A Wild Shieldmaiden of the North: Éowyn of Rohan and Old Norse Literature." Philament, vol. 17, 2011, pp. 23-45.

Last week, while attending the Oregon Shakespeare Festival (in Ashland, Oregon [which I *highly* recommend]), I saw their amazing production of MacBeth. The witches were superbly directed and costumes, and the performances were AMAZING. We thought they were much more in the pagan/nature spirits mode than the stereotypical Anglo-European witch with a pointy hat, and it worked beautifully. We thought they were the Best. Witches. Ever. So, I’m now strongly associating the witches with the conference (three co-chairs, three witches!). Witches can be (from a feminist perspective) mythopoeic (by some definitions). My two co-chairs bear no responsibility for my wayward mind, nor do I speak for them.

Bechdel-Wallace Test, coffcoff! In my ongoing fanfic, there are already, and will be more scenes, where she will be talking to women, lots of women (aka: Original Female Characters)!

One of my major problems with Henderson’s argument is that it is based on an extremely old and outdated stereotype that “barrenness” is always/only/forever amen! the woman’s problem when there’s a good deal of recent work being done that shows *male* fertility is in something of a crisis these days (Harris, Hunt). Arguably, male lack of fertility could presumably have been a problem in some cases all along: for instance, Henderson notes that Goldberry must be sterile! And I’m, Tom Bombadil is a LOT older than she is, so who knows how his sperm count is doing (if we’re going to start diagnosing fictional characters, I expect to see parity!). And, given how that stereotype is being dragged back into a zombie life through the far-right extremists running for office these days, it’s even more frustrating to see it so simplistically deployed.

Henderson’s concluding paragraph sums up his argument but continues to present the assumed views of a number of groups of people without any attribution: specifically “feminsts” and “modern readers and filmmakers.” And he also claims that he has accurately identified “Tolkien’s views on gender and sexuality” which “resurface, again and again” in the novel. As I note in note 9 below, John Rateliff presents a very compelling argument about Tolkien’s “views on gender and sexuality,” one I highly recommend reading.

From a feminist perspective, the interpretation that this essay offers also fails to satisfy. That is, it explains, or attempts to explain, the notable absence of female characters in The Lord of the Rings as well as the significance of their sudden predominance at the very end, but it also suggests that, for Tolkien, these women are, first and foremost, symbols of fertility. Those that reject that role, as Éowyn does, he depicts as sick, as dysfunctional. They exist, it seems, to provide the male characters with sexual healing and to provide Middle-earth with children. It is not my intention, however, to defend or promote Tolkien’s views on gender and sexuality, only to demonstrate how they resurface, again and again, in The Lord of the Rings, in the process shaping the reader’s understanding of Middle-earth and the threat Sauron poses to it. The novel’s female characters may not play the role that many modern readers, and filmmakers, would want them to play, but in an indirect way, they are central to the narrative.

Merry remembers seeing the (at that point) anonymous young rider as he rides with the Rohirrim in “The Muster of Rohan.” I have bolded some language in the text earlier quote that is repeated in the later one:

They passed down the long ranks of waiting men with stern and unmoved faces. But when they had come almost to the end of the line one looked up glancing keenly at the hobbit. A young man, Merry thought, as he returned the glance, less in height and girth than most. He caught the glint of clear grey eyes; and then he shivered for it came suddenly to him that it was the face of one without hope who goes in search of death (802-3, emphasis added).

The excerpt from Hatcher’s essay consists of the first four paragraphs of her essay (the introductory section) which is nearly 900 words long. The sentence that Henderson quotes is the first sentence of the fourth paragraph; the overall point of that paragraph is that Hatcher is not concerned with Tolkien’s personal feelings [she tends, as I do in my work. to focus on the text, not the author, because of the problem of the fallacy of authorial intentionality]. Hatcher’s point in that fourth paragraph is that:

Despite Tolkien’s beliefs in the modern woman’s intelligence and value, The Lord of the Rings and its characters should be judged on their own internal merit, without considering the biography of its author. This is not an attempt to defend any anti‐feminist ideas in Tolkien’s own life, but in his work, where in the character of Éowyn we are given a complete individual who fulfills Tolkien’s theme of peace, preservation, and cultural memory.” (emphasis added).

Hatcher’s argument about Éowyn differs dramatically, yet he failed to acknowledge her argument exists and, as a result, ignores the need to provide evidence and a reason for readers to accept his interpretation over Hatcher’s. Instead, he chooses one sentence and presents it to support his claim.

Hatcher does claim that feminists (unspecified) have criticized Tolkien, but that isn’t her main argument which is expanded in her concluding paragraph, a paragraph that hints at something I’ve been muttering about for years, the extent to which contemporary Tolkien scholarship as a field may be as, if not more, “sexist” than some accuse Tolkien of being!

The lesson of The Lord of the Rings is that the marginalized, the ignored, and the presumably weak are a necessity in the destruction of evil. Women and hobbits should not stay in their traditional places, because extraordinary times call for extraordinary measures. Unlike one-dimensional characters such as Boromir, Gimli, Faramir, and Aragorn, Éowyn is a complete and expansive character who is allowed to change. The Lord of the Rings has been misread by modern scholars who see women as non‐existent. On the contrary, Éowyn not only embodies equal strength in physical violence, but more importantly, she is equipped to pursue what is essential: peace, preservation, and cultural memory (54).

In this case, Henderson embeds a partial quote from Smith’s essay in the middle of his analysis of Éowyn’s character; this placement implies he sees her argument as additional support for his claim. That approach is a conventional and appropriate rhetorical strategy when the source argument is fully and fairly summarized (or if the chosen quote is, in fact, the argument of the essay, or a significant part of it). But if one is mis-representing the overall argument, the result is a weakening of their claim *if* their reader is familiar with the original essay.

The excerpt from Smith’s essay, which is the opening paragraph, is about 350 words long; the nine-word-long clause quotedis in the second sentence, but notice that it is followed by the word “Yet” which implies a contrast. Given that academic analysis/persuasion is often framed as a dialogue, it is common for a scholar to summarize a point of view, or argument, that she then proceeds to argue against in the essay.

Henderson quotes the portion of the sentence that agrees with his argument (““she desires to find death, not to renew life”) while ignoring Smith’s overall claim that, despite Éowyn’s characterization at the start of her narrative arc, she is the one chosen as half of the only courtship story in the novel(the only one given any narrative space—Sam and Rosie’s ‘courtship’ narrative is, to say the least, subtextual!).

In addition, Smith’s argument is more complex than “Éowyn is a frigid barren woman who wants to make people miserable.” Smith analyzes Éowyn’s narrative arc and characterization in the context of the modern concept of “war-brides” that arose as a result of the events of the two World Wars. Smith identifies two types of war brides, and discusses how Tolkien places Éowyn in both categories (“war bride‐left‐behind and foreign war bride”). As often happens, Smith’s own argument comes at the end (not the beginning) of the introductory paragraph when she states that “comparison of her experiences with the courtship, marriage, and assimilation experiences of women in the war‐torn twentieth century reveal her to be a negative example of the former, she is clearly, for Tolkien, a positive exemplar of the latter (204).” Smith acknowledges the complexities and contradictions in the characterization of Éowyn, rather than trying to reduce her to one or the other of side of the binary stereotype!

The final paragraph of Smith’s essay shows how more complex her analysis of Eowyn is, compared to Henderson’s, at least in part because she contextualizes the novel, and Éowyn’s story, in the 20th century’s wars and the historical effects that the wars had on gender relations and civil rights, effects that Tolkien saw in his personal and professional life!

The analogy or comparison of Éowyn to the war brides of Tolkien’s time adds further proof to the influence of the World Wars on Tolkien’s works. However, the promotion of the idea that the women men leave behind can only cope by defeminizing themselves and abandoning their traditional roles (and ecessitating the introduction of foreigners in order to restabilize society), as supported by Éowyn’s failure to fulfill the role of war bride‐left‐behind, is a very unsettling one to all but the most ardent feminists—unless one reads it as a subtle condemnation, on Tolkien’s part, of war as a disturber of a valuable social equilibrium. It certainly reveals, however, his sympathies with the difficulty of the role that war imposes upon women, striking down the theory that Tolkien is simply a narrow‐minded misogynist who dooms the women in his work to weakness and failure. Knowing from experience that the war would defeat the women’s attempts to maintain the status quo despite their best efforts, he diminishes Éowyn’s original role, focusing instead on her potential to rebuild and renew. His heavy focus on Éowyn’s success as a foreign war bride thereby magnifies Éowyn’s courage in taking up a new life in a new culture, perhaps symbolizing the way in which the women of his time aided the reforging of society after the war, and the bravery with which they and their husbands faced a new post‐war culture, determined to look forward and heal the ravages that war had wreaked upon their way of life. It is this same spirit that would make the White Tree flower again.

The historical perspectives on the two World Wars tended to hide/dismiss/criticize what women did (looking at work about the U.K. and the U.S.) but feminist historians since the 1970s (at least) have addressed that attempt to ignore and downplay women’s contributions and the effects on the struggle for civil rights: How World War I strengthened women's suffrage; Women in World War II. Those sites are about American women, but the same discussion is being done in Britain as this article in the Guardian attests. In fact, the death rate of men fighting in World War I in Europe was so great, and so unprecented, that it significantly changed labor patterns: The Missing Men (here’s the Online Appendix with data for that article). Melissa Hatcher notes the ways in which WWI affected British culture; and Brent Johnson foregrounds even more the impact of the war on a culture and on individuals in his essay. Henderson fails to consider any of that context in his analysis of Éowyn’s characterization and narrative arc.

Henderson places Johnson’s quote—a single sentence, punctuated as a question—in one of his footnotes. My thirty-five years of teaching may have made me too cynical, but my experience over the years lead me to think that in most cases, people don’t read the footnotes (and I’m not just talking about students here!). Discursive footnotes (when they are used to explain additional information, or related claims) as opposed to footnotes that contain only bibliographic information can be quite an interesting read!

Johnson’s question is the second sentence of the first paragraph in Johnson’s essay. The excerpt is 580 words and four paragraphs long, again, acting as the introduction to the essay. The sentence consists of three interrogative clauses in a row, linked by coordinating conjunctions. I’m breaking the sentence down into its three clauses to show their common syntactical structure and binary structure:

Is she a role model for feminists, or
[is she] merely a pitiful, flat character (easily described in one sentence), or
is she a woefully misunderstood young woman who merely wishes to die in battle?

All three clauses are what linguists call a “yes-no” question, or sometimes a binary or polar question. This type of question is structured to convey the meaning that the expected answer is either yes, or no. (The other type of question in English is the open-ended wh- and h-questions which are structured around an interrogative pro-form that starts the clause: who; what; when; where; why; and how. The second type of question cannot be answered in one or two words!)

Yes/No questions can be loaded (in which case they are a type of fallacy) such as the well-known example of “have you stopped beating your wife yet?”; but even the more neutral Y/N ones limit the possible answers (unless the person being interrogated wants to challenge the unwritten rules of the interaction—for instance, by asking “how do you define “feminists?"? Or, “why does she only have to be one of these and not two or even three?”

In this case, especially given what follows the sentence, including Johnson’s overall argument and his concluding paragraph, I think he chose to construct a loaded question in the beginning of his essay (playing devil’s advocate for himself) which might reflect some readers’ responses to Éowyn fuctions as a set-up for his analysis and its resulting complex and nuanced argument.

Johnson opens his essay with the claim that Éowyn is “is one of the most enigmatic characters created by J. R. R. Tolkien,” followed immediately by the yes/no questions, which are followed immediately by a another (modified) Y/N question: “Surely there is something more. . .” By changing “Is there something more to her story than” to “SURELY, there is something more,” the question definitely angles for a “yes,” answer, and Johnson proceeds to give us that “something more” in the first sentence of the second paragraph.

Johnson lays out his purpose and theoretical approach (that of trauma theory), answering the “Surely there is more to her story” question fairly decisively:

I propose in this paper that Éowyn's story of grief and recovery is a portrait of many soldiers' family members who remained in England during World War I, often close enough to hear the bombardment of artillery across the Channel, who struggled to recover from their losses, often without any resources in their communities. Tolkien also uses Faramir to show a possible path to recovery from traumatic grief. If it weren't for the compassionate presence of Faramir, a fellow patient who also suffered the loss of his entire family in the War of the Ring, she would not have recovered from her grief and would have died of despair.

If I were still teaching, I would love to use these four paragraphs, including analyzing the questions with my class, as a class exercise to get my students thinking—and realizing what it means that there (probably) is no 100% consensus on the characterization! One of my questions would be to ask the students to answer the three questions on their own, and then compare their answers in a group discussion. And we would also work through the four paragraphs I’ve excerpted to study how beautifully he sets up his argument.

But back to my point here: Henderson pulls out the second sentence to support one of his claims in Note 10, stripping it of all context, implying that these are the questions “critics” have struggled over, a drastic oversimplification compared to what the scholars have actually written:

Note 10: Historically, critics have struggled with the question raised by her character and her character’s sudden transformation: “Is she a role model for feminists, or merely a pitiful, flat character (easily described in one sentence), or is she a woefully misunderstood young woman who merely wishes to die in battle?” (Johnson 117)

While there has been debate and disagreement over Éowyn’s characterization and narrative arc, I think the questions driving much of the scholarship are more complex than “is she X, or Y, or Z,” (especially given the loaded adjectives which appear in the second and third questions; arguably the words “feminists” and “role models” are themselves sufficiently loaded these days, and have been since the backlash of the 1990s that no adjectives are needed).

But a look at Johnson’s final paragraph makes it quite clear that *his* view of Éowyn is, again, far from “she’s a frigid female who wants to kill lots of enemies and bathe in their blood!” stereotype that Henderson evokes:

Tolkien's stated aim in writing his Middle-earth legendarium was to create a mythology for England, a nation that lacked any mythology of its own. Myths contain fragments of light, elements of truth that are conveyed to listeners of those myths and instructions on how to live a meaningful life. In the passages that revolve around Éowyn and her grief in The Lord of the Rings Tolkien, as a sub-creator, sheds light on various sources of grief, the perils of unattended grief, and how healing of a despondent soul may be brought about. England was rocked by grief following the staggering loss of so many lives in World War I, and he witnessed a growing toll again as he wrote during World War II. Myth points listeners and readers towards hope, and Éowyn becomes a model of recovery in the mythopoeia that is Tolkien's life work. If Tolkien's belief that Applicability "resides in the freedom of the reader [...] (not) in the purposed domination of the author" (LotR Foreword xvii) holds true, then each individual who reads Éowyn's tale of grief will find hope restored in her healing and her calling as a healer 126-7).

John D. Rateliff. “The Missing Women: J. R. R. Tolkien’s Lifelong Support for Women’s Higher Education.” Perilous and Fair, pp. 41-69.

Yes, there is the letter to Michael, and also Humphrey Carpenter’s “he spent all his life with men” claims in biography, but recent scholarship has argued for doing more than accepting either of those at face value.

Instead, people should read John Rateliff’s excellent essay in which he draws from Scull & Hamond’s extensive work as well as from a wealth of scholarship on the history of women students at Oxford to show just how many women in Tolkien’s life have been ignored by the scholars who think he only spent time with men (those nifty homosocial groups—and I’ve made a whole lot of men horribly uncomfortable by pointing out they are homosocial even when I explained that “homosocial” was not a synonym for “homoerotic” or “homosexual”!).

Rateliff covers not only all the significant women in Tolkien’s personal life, but also his students (and how one of his male professors/mentors was in fact a supporter of women’s right to education). The evidence for his support for his students comes from accounts written by those students about his support! Rateliff has a whole section of the essay devoted to analyzing (not just quoting one or two bits from) the letter to Michael, and he has what I find a convincing argument about the part of the letter where talks about how gifted women students “can go no further” when they are in classes but can “go no further” (61). Rateliff argues that:

I think here Tolkien is wrestling with a phenomenon he would have seen through his career: why did his male students do so much better, after they had left his supervision, than his female students did?
[Redacted: Numerous examples of the success his male students had, compared to relatively few of his female students.]
Faced with such a discrepancy, Tolkien, who had seen how skilled these women were when he worked closely with them and knew how smart and dedicated they were, in the Letter to Michael is, I think, reaching for some sort of explanation of why they failed to continue as they had begun and faltered once they had graduated with their degrees. Looking back now from well into the twenty-first century, I think the key factor he failed to take into account was that he underestimated the glass ceiling. There were precious few professorial chairs to go around—even noted scholars like Lord David Cecil (1948), C. S. Lewis (1954), and Nevill Coghill (1957) had to wait years to gain one—and inertia and institutional bias was against their going to a woman, however gifted. I would suggest that when Tolkien wrote “they can go no further, when they leave his hand” he was observing a very real phenomenon but completely missing the factors that caused it (61-62).

As a faculty brat from birth (my father was a geology professor), and someone who, with the exception of a few years doing lousy clerical jobs while writing poetry and trying to be an activist in my twenties, spent my entire professional life as a graduate student or a faculty member (in English programs which consisted mostly of women students), I think Rateliff is on to something here. And I’ll go further and say that in many ways, things haven’t changed that much as well as, historically and currently, always being worse for women of color.

One more great point from John Rateliff’s essay near the end (before he quotes some really nasty sexist shit from C. S. Lewis!): “When I described my paper’s thesis to my wife, she made two points I think worth sharing:

The reason Éowyn resonates with so many women is because he’s writing about how women, who were capable, could do the job, but, because they were women, were not allowed to do the job.
Sometimes they might be the only person who could do the job—i.e. defeat the Witch-King—and they had to defy everybody to do the job.
How did Tolkien, who’d never been told you can’t do that, you’re a girl, come to understand that so well?
And a second question: Who taught Éowyn to fight?
Whoever it was, that person is analagous to Tolkien teaching a talented young woman something she wanted to learn, but which there was very little chance of her ever being able to use. (65)

I’d need a whole other lengthy post/paper to consider the complicated issues of how people “see” “Éowyn” and “Dernhelm” along a whole spectrum of gender theories (from Tolkien, to Merry, to the dudes in the Houses of Healing, to scholars, etc.). Henderson only mentions “Dernhelm” once (as a disguise), but his essentialist language throughout focuses on Éowyn “rejecting” her feminine/nurturing/baby-making/breast-feeding/making men hope again side for a bloodthirsty rebellious killer lifestyle (which keeps falling apart for me when I actually read the novel (or even watch the film) to see how few of the enemy we see her kill.

Some of us working with contemporary gender/queer critical theories are quite willing to talk about “masculine women,” or “masculine femininity,” drawing on Jack Halbertam’s work, as Sara Brown does here in her recently published essay: “Éowyn it was, and Dernhelm also’; Reading the ‘Wild Shieldmaiden’ Through a Queer Lens.’”

When I develop this section for the book, I’ll probably have to stick in the sources where JD Vance’s temper tantrums about miserable childless cat ladies show how long-lasting the stereotype is, but if you haven’t seen those (and every woman I know HAS), feel free to Google for yourself.

There are a few more bits of information about her life in the Fourth Age that are found in the Appendices, and The Peoples of Middle-earth. In Appendix A, “Third Line,” we are told “Éowyn was slender and tall, with a grace and pride that came to her out of the South from Morwen of Lossarnach, whom the Rohirrim had called Steelsheen.” A footnote also explains that she was was “known after in the Mark as the Lady of the Shield-arm” because her shield-arm was broken by the Witch-King (1070). There is no indication she is condemned by her people, or by the people of Gondor for her bloodthirsty foray into battle. In Appendix B, she travels with Éomer and the sons of Elrond to Rohan; the sons of Elrond go on meet Arwen and her escort in Lórien and bring her to Edoras, and they travel back to Gondor for the wedding (May 8-Lithe 1). I am assuming, though it’s not 100% clear, that Éowyn travels with Arwen and they get to know each other (which will be a part of my Fourth Age fanfic!). I also assume that Éowyn travels with the funeral escort, bringing King Théoden’s body back to Edoras for burial (July 22-August 10). As a daughter of the ruling house, she would have responsibilities. A bit more information is found in The Peoples of Middle-earth: page 207, in Faramir’s brief biography: “He retained the title of Steward, and became Prince of the restored land of Ithilien, dwelling in the Hills of Emyn Arnen beside Anduin. He wedded in 3020 Éowyn sister of King Éomer of Rohan.” Later, on a geneaological table, it’s possible to see that they had one child (Elboron, “Second Prince”) (221). So motherhood achievement unlocked! But she isn’t the mother of a king, just a prince. Generally one has to marry a king to have a child destined to become king.

The Rohirrim love their “Songs of slaying”—I cannot resist this superby written section showing the singing Rohirrim!

For morning came, morning an a wind from the east; and darkness was removed, and the hosts of Mordor wailed, and terror took them, and they fled, and died, and the hoofs of wrath rode over them. And then all the host of Rohan burst into song, and they sang as they slew, for the joy of battle was on them, and the sound of their singing that was fair and terrible came even to the City (838)

After Éomer sees Éowyn’s body:

‘Éowyn, Éowyn,’ he cried at last. ‘Éowyn, how came you here? What madness or devilry is this? Death, death, death! Death take us all!”
Then without taking counsel of waiting for the approach of the men of the City, he spurred headlong back to the front of the great host, and blew a horn, and cried aloud for the onset. Over the field rang his clear voice calling: ‘Death! Ride, ride to ruin and the world’s ending!’
And with that the host began to move. But the Rohirrim sang no more. Death they cried with one voice loud and terrible, and fathering speed like a great ide their battle swept about their fallen king and passed, roaring away southwards (833)

The corsairs’ ships approach, and Éomer sees them, and “hope died in his heart, and the wind that he had blessed he now cursed. But the hosts of Mordor were enheartened, and filled with a new lust and fury they came yelling to the onset” (847).

Stern now was Éomer’s mood, and his mind clear again. He let blow the horns to rally all men to his banner that could come thither; for he thought to make a great shield-wall at the last, and stand, and fighting there on foot till all fell, and do deeds of song on he fields of Pelennor, though no man should be left in the West to remember the last King of the Mark. So he rode to a green hillock and there set his banner, and the White Horse ran rippling in the wind.
Text within this block will maintain its original spacing when published
Out of doubt, out of dark to the day’s rising
I came singing in the sun, sword unsheathing. 
To hope’s end I rode and to heart’s breaking:
Now for wrath, now for ruin and a red nightfall!
These staves he spoke, yet he laughed as he said them. For once more lust of battle was on him; and he was still unscathed, and he was young, and he was King: the lord of a fell people. And lo! even as he laughed at despair he looked out again on the black ships, and he lifted up his sword to defy them.
And then wonder took him, and a great joy; and he cast his sword up in the sunlight and sang as he caught it.

Writing from Ithilien