Love this project! Teaching the Tolkien class so often the last ten years I have really become fascinated by the fact that "our" copy of the Red Book was specifically in the possession of Eowyn's descendants for a century, who are known to have made at least some changes to the text (most notably making sure Arwen's tragic ending is recorded). Her life, and the contradictory way the people who come later remember her, is such an interesting loose end.
OOOOO, thank you for reminding me of that! I need to toss that in the pot as well! I need to go through the front material and the appendices (my stuff from LOTR so far is primarily the dialogue!). I also have a short mini-presentation from K'zoo about how Aragorn's, Eomer's, and Gandalf's dialogue along with some narration (Aragorn's POV) is given to Grima in the creepy rapey scene that the film has that is going to be expanded somehow . . .either for this project or for a film-focused essay on how Jackson, Boyen, and Walsh *show* the impact of war on the female characters (and show more women in background scenes) than Tolkien could ever show!
Can't wait to read your essays! If memory serves, I mentioned to you at some conference (maybe in Seattle) that the Daniel Grotta-Kurska (sp?) biography claims Tolkien created Eowyn to provide his daughter (Priscilla?) with a female character to admire. That biography has been dismissed by the Tolkien estate in favor of H. Carter's, but I did look up the reference not long ago, and it's attributed to (I believe) Tolkien's assistant.
On a barely related note, did you see the animated movie called The War of the Rohirrim? I wrote about it for Film Inquiry last year, and one of the things I tried to suggest (without spelling it out) was that the characterization of the protagonist, Hera, seems in part to have been a compensation for Tolkien's decision to marry off Eowyn in RotK. In case you'd be interested, here's a link: https://www.filminquiry.com/shieldmaidens-of-hollywood/.
I tend to avoid biographical criticism (generally, but especially in regard to Tolkien given the choke-hold control that his children/the Estate maintain over that sort of scholarship), but I do find Priscilla interesting and have paid more attention to her than to the info about her brothers. I've heard both that information about Eowyn as well as her own statements about her father's support for women's education in general and for her in specific.
Have you read John Rateliff's superb essay in Janet and Leslie's collection: "The Missing Women: J. R. R. Tolkien's Lifelong Support for Women's Higher Education" (_Perilous and Fair_)? He draws from multiple sources that the Estate does not control as well as the larger historical record on the fight for women's access to higher education in Britain which is part of "his time" (which makes the "man of his time" arguments fall apart since they all assume feminist organizing did not occur until recently, sigh). He also points out the "Tolkien spent all his time with men" arguments are flawed for that same reason (i.e. women in his professional settings). And I think Rateliff's argument that Tolkien could see the impact of systemic misogyny on his women students but had no language for systems of oppression makes the most sense of anything. (Oh, and also in regard to the biography blackout, have you read Nicole du Plessis's "On the Shoulders of Humphrey Carpenter"? (https://dc.swosu.edu/mythlore/vol37/iss2/4/). I think she is doing the most important work on biographical criticism and Tolkien at the moment.
I skipped the "Ride" film--am not generally a fan of anime or animated films generally. But I also am a bit weary of the "singular woman warrior" (aka: exceptional woman) trope which has been doing the major work in a male-dominated industry for decades--more art in all modes/genres about more women in relationships and community is what I want (in that note, another rec: Nicola Griffith's HILD trilogy--two volumes of three are out--in which she draws on contemporary medieval scholarship to create the life of Hild of Whitby from childhood on--and we see ALL the women not just the male warriors). (https://nicolagriffith.com/).
I live in hope that PCA will do another conference in Seattle which is just a bus ride away!
Many thanks for your recommendations! I just downloaded a copy of the du Plessis article and look forward to reading it. I recalled some of your earlier praise of the Hild series and am all the more curious after your description of it in this comment. I was an undergraduate at Reed College in the 80s when Highlander was released along with its all-too-perfect distillation of the patriarchal mindset, “There can be only one,” and it sounds like the Hild series offers some excellent, much-needed corrective.
I did finish the Rateliff essay last night and found it not just persuasive, but compelling in its corrections and complications of Humphrey’s simplified “men only, please” portrait. (The comparisons to CSL’s boorishness toward women students and scholars was particularly eye-opening — and disheartening, however predictable.) I read through Tolkien’s published letters back in the early 2000s and had somehow forgotten that Mary Renault (whose King Must Die I had read way back in high school) was a student of his, and I had also forgotten many women, apparently, who remained among his circle of colleagues, friends, and correspondents throughout his life. I also enjoyed reading Priscilla’s comments; such an even-handed approach to the education of all of his children should go without saying, of course, but as Rateliff’s essay suggests, it clearly didn’t. (And still doesn’t, alas.) Quick question: what do you now make of the idea that Eowyn was created at least in part for Priscilla’s sake? Do you think there’s any substance to the idea?
Last (for now). Brenda (my much better half) and I have been reading books aloud together since the early days of our relationship (she usually does cross stitch or other handcrafting and artwork while I read), and last year, she suggested we read through my old favorites, the Tolkien books. She’s a medievalist whose first book (which is called Our Old Monsters) is about Aristotelian tropes of the body — particularly misogynistic conceptions of the female body — that eventually worked their way into the origins of modern horror. When we first met, she dismissed Tolkien’s work (she’d heard too many Jesuits in Boston endlessly debating and obsessing over it), but she’s since come around to appreciating and even loving many elements of them. We have now worked through The Hobbit, LOTR, and the Silmarillion and are reading selections from Unfinished Tales before moving on to other books, but she has asked more than once why women seem barely to have existed for Tolkien. Reading Rateliff’s article, I now wonder all the more why there are so few women characters in the works for which he’s most famous and beloved (none in The Hobbit and only a handful in LOTR; Eowyn and Ioreth have a lot of work to do) when it’s clear that women’s company and scholarly work were so important in his daily life. The Silmarillion does balance things out somewhat, of course, but after watching the video of Kristine Larsen’s presentation about the early versions of the Sun and the Moon story and the persistent rape trope that it’s related to in his work, I’ve not been able, during this latest rereading of the Silmarillion, to consider the near ubiquitous threat of this form of violence for the women characters he came up with. (I’ve always loved the story of Beren and Luthien, but Larsen’s insights made it an even more disturbing read this time around.)
So let me end this overlong response by thanking you again for the superb work you have done and helped to bring out to expand the ways of approaching these stories that I have loved pretty much my entire life. I haven’t yet picked up a copy of Queer Approaches, but I will (especially after reading that fine review that, I believe, you shared a few months ago). You are helping to reveal greater complexities and more and more possibilities for insight and wisdom in Tolkien’s work that go way beyond the default explanations — a great service to all of us who have spent time wandering in Middle-earth. Thank you again!
I am *happy* to have expanded the number of people who have read (and fully appreciate) John's essay --it's one that I re-read regularly and find new ideas as well as ongoing enjoyment. (Oh, and there is no such thing as an overlong comment or Substack post in my world--I am a long-form writing and reading addict, which I shall now prove in this comment!).
And very much in the context of women and Oxford, I can also highly recommend Joanna Miller's historical novel, _The Eights_, about a group of women who are among the first admitted to Oxford who can earn degrees:
Re: the issue of how much substance in the idea that Eowyn was created for Priscilla?
I do enjoy that idea (for many reasons!), but I put in in the fandom category of "headcanon" (a term meaning a personal interpretation of canon that is not supported by canon [and of course the idea of what "canon" consists of for Tolkien is complicated by posthumous publications]).
Of course in this case, the claim is more about the author's intention than the published text, and that gets us into the different theoretical strands in Tolkien scholarship. I'm more interested in readers' responses/interpretations of the text than trying to parse out what in Tolkien's life 'caused' him to write X or Y a certain way (this is about the whole legendarium not just one character). Good biographical scholarship exists (I'm not a fan of the approach that slips into psychoanalyzing the author, but that's my personal bias), but I've never been inerested in using that approach.
Whether or not Tolkien wrote Eowyn for his daughter makes no difference to my reading/interpretation of the character (and the differing versions of her story that he considered over the process of writing LOTR is, for me at least, absolutely mind-blowing!).
This approach to literary analysis is the reason why when I taught Tolkien, I would assign the _Letters_ in some classes while always choosing contradictory letters to try to undermine the assumption that there is some singular intent "authors" always achieve in a text (mostly because my students tended to assume that their interpretation of the text was in fact the author's intent -- which is why I structured class discussions and peer responses as a major part as well).
And I keep going back to what Tolkien says in his preface: "An author cannot of course remain wholly unaffected by his experience, but the ways in which a story-germ uses the soil of experience are extremely complex, and attempts to define the process are at best guesses from evidence that is inadequate and ambiguous. (LOTR, Foreword to the second edition, xxiv)"
Nicole has some other excellent essays -- and is working on a major book project on marriage and Tolkien that I am eagerly awaiting! In the meantime:
duPlessis, Nicole. “To Grow Together, or to Grow Apart: The Long Sorrow of the Ents and Marriage in The Lord of the Rings.” Mythlore, vol. 35, no. 2, article 3, pp. 25-44, 2017, dc.swosu.edu/mythlore/vol35/iss2/3.
duPlessis, Nicole. “ ‘Changed, Changed Utterly’: The Implications of Tolkien’s Rejected Epilogue to The Lord of the Rings.” Tolkien Studies, vol. 15, 2018, pp 9-32.
Thank you for telling me about Brenda's book--I've ordered it (though horror is not my main genre interest, it is definitely a part of some of Tolkien's female characters!).
In terms of _Queer Approaches_: I'm very proud of that collection because I think it is doing so much original work, but it still focuses primarily on male characters (and like Tolkien scholars in general, does not acknowledge our default Whiteness): I discuss the problem of queer scholarship focusing on male characters and feminist scholarship focusing on female characters (without any acknowledgement of sexualities) in a recent presentation ("Wanted More Feminist Queer Medievalists, at JTR: https://scholar.valpo.edu/journaloftolkienresearch/vol23/iss2/10/). And part of my argument there is that medieval scholarship after Tolkien has revealed so much more about women's lives during that period that I think Tolkien scholars need to be aware of (and those of us who aren't medievalists can at least try to read some of the scholarship!).
And since you mentioned Kris's excellent presentation, I can also recommend Clare Moore's essay on the different versions of stories about enslaved women:
Moore, Clare. “Elmar, Aerin, and Aredhel: Female Enslavement in Tolkien’s Legendarium.” Mythlore, vol. 43, no. 1, article 9, 2024, pp. 143-66, dc.swosu.edu/mythlore/vol43/iss1/9.
I don't think there's any way to answer why there are so few women characters in any meaningful way -- what fascinates me is the fact that despite there being few women characters, etc. etc. there are and have apparently always been many women fans of Tolkien, and many women scholars writing about Tolkien (although as my forthcoming feminist killjoy bibliographic essay points out, women and nonbinary scholars write about all sorts of topics in Tolkien and are active as editors; only a small percentage of us write what I define [in that essay] as feminist scholarship on Tolkien--and we're not just saying he's a sexist.) That's why I'm writing a book on feminist receptions of Tolkien (although I now have at least one friend telling me I ought to write a book on Eowyn, and I shall probably do so)!
I tried to tease out my personal journey involving Tolkien and feminism in my piece in the Asexuality in Tolkien issue of JTR which has added a whole new collection of essays on asexuality and aromanticism as part of queer approaches to Tolkien: https://scholar.valpo.edu/journaloftolkienresearch/vol24/iss1/8/).
Love this project! Teaching the Tolkien class so often the last ten years I have really become fascinated by the fact that "our" copy of the Red Book was specifically in the possession of Eowyn's descendants for a century, who are known to have made at least some changes to the text (most notably making sure Arwen's tragic ending is recorded). Her life, and the contradictory way the people who come later remember her, is such an interesting loose end.
OOOOO, thank you for reminding me of that! I need to toss that in the pot as well! I need to go through the front material and the appendices (my stuff from LOTR so far is primarily the dialogue!). I also have a short mini-presentation from K'zoo about how Aragorn's, Eomer's, and Gandalf's dialogue along with some narration (Aragorn's POV) is given to Grima in the creepy rapey scene that the film has that is going to be expanded somehow . . .either for this project or for a film-focused essay on how Jackson, Boyen, and Walsh *show* the impact of war on the female characters (and show more women in background scenes) than Tolkien could ever show!
Can't wait to read your essays! If memory serves, I mentioned to you at some conference (maybe in Seattle) that the Daniel Grotta-Kurska (sp?) biography claims Tolkien created Eowyn to provide his daughter (Priscilla?) with a female character to admire. That biography has been dismissed by the Tolkien estate in favor of H. Carter's, but I did look up the reference not long ago, and it's attributed to (I believe) Tolkien's assistant.
On a barely related note, did you see the animated movie called The War of the Rohirrim? I wrote about it for Film Inquiry last year, and one of the things I tried to suggest (without spelling it out) was that the characterization of the protagonist, Hera, seems in part to have been a compensation for Tolkien's decision to marry off Eowyn in RotK. In case you'd be interested, here's a link: https://www.filminquiry.com/shieldmaidens-of-hollywood/.
Anyway, thanks again!
I tend to avoid biographical criticism (generally, but especially in regard to Tolkien given the choke-hold control that his children/the Estate maintain over that sort of scholarship), but I do find Priscilla interesting and have paid more attention to her than to the info about her brothers. I've heard both that information about Eowyn as well as her own statements about her father's support for women's education in general and for her in specific.
Have you read John Rateliff's superb essay in Janet and Leslie's collection: "The Missing Women: J. R. R. Tolkien's Lifelong Support for Women's Higher Education" (_Perilous and Fair_)? He draws from multiple sources that the Estate does not control as well as the larger historical record on the fight for women's access to higher education in Britain which is part of "his time" (which makes the "man of his time" arguments fall apart since they all assume feminist organizing did not occur until recently, sigh). He also points out the "Tolkien spent all his time with men" arguments are flawed for that same reason (i.e. women in his professional settings). And I think Rateliff's argument that Tolkien could see the impact of systemic misogyny on his women students but had no language for systems of oppression makes the most sense of anything. (Oh, and also in regard to the biography blackout, have you read Nicole du Plessis's "On the Shoulders of Humphrey Carpenter"? (https://dc.swosu.edu/mythlore/vol37/iss2/4/). I think she is doing the most important work on biographical criticism and Tolkien at the moment.
I skipped the "Ride" film--am not generally a fan of anime or animated films generally. But I also am a bit weary of the "singular woman warrior" (aka: exceptional woman) trope which has been doing the major work in a male-dominated industry for decades--more art in all modes/genres about more women in relationships and community is what I want (in that note, another rec: Nicola Griffith's HILD trilogy--two volumes of three are out--in which she draws on contemporary medieval scholarship to create the life of Hild of Whitby from childhood on--and we see ALL the women not just the male warriors). (https://nicolagriffith.com/).
I live in hope that PCA will do another conference in Seattle which is just a bus ride away!
Many thanks for your recommendations! I just downloaded a copy of the du Plessis article and look forward to reading it. I recalled some of your earlier praise of the Hild series and am all the more curious after your description of it in this comment. I was an undergraduate at Reed College in the 80s when Highlander was released along with its all-too-perfect distillation of the patriarchal mindset, “There can be only one,” and it sounds like the Hild series offers some excellent, much-needed corrective.
I did finish the Rateliff essay last night and found it not just persuasive, but compelling in its corrections and complications of Humphrey’s simplified “men only, please” portrait. (The comparisons to CSL’s boorishness toward women students and scholars was particularly eye-opening — and disheartening, however predictable.) I read through Tolkien’s published letters back in the early 2000s and had somehow forgotten that Mary Renault (whose King Must Die I had read way back in high school) was a student of his, and I had also forgotten many women, apparently, who remained among his circle of colleagues, friends, and correspondents throughout his life. I also enjoyed reading Priscilla’s comments; such an even-handed approach to the education of all of his children should go without saying, of course, but as Rateliff’s essay suggests, it clearly didn’t. (And still doesn’t, alas.) Quick question: what do you now make of the idea that Eowyn was created at least in part for Priscilla’s sake? Do you think there’s any substance to the idea?
Last (for now). Brenda (my much better half) and I have been reading books aloud together since the early days of our relationship (she usually does cross stitch or other handcrafting and artwork while I read), and last year, she suggested we read through my old favorites, the Tolkien books. She’s a medievalist whose first book (which is called Our Old Monsters) is about Aristotelian tropes of the body — particularly misogynistic conceptions of the female body — that eventually worked their way into the origins of modern horror. When we first met, she dismissed Tolkien’s work (she’d heard too many Jesuits in Boston endlessly debating and obsessing over it), but she’s since come around to appreciating and even loving many elements of them. We have now worked through The Hobbit, LOTR, and the Silmarillion and are reading selections from Unfinished Tales before moving on to other books, but she has asked more than once why women seem barely to have existed for Tolkien. Reading Rateliff’s article, I now wonder all the more why there are so few women characters in the works for which he’s most famous and beloved (none in The Hobbit and only a handful in LOTR; Eowyn and Ioreth have a lot of work to do) when it’s clear that women’s company and scholarly work were so important in his daily life. The Silmarillion does balance things out somewhat, of course, but after watching the video of Kristine Larsen’s presentation about the early versions of the Sun and the Moon story and the persistent rape trope that it’s related to in his work, I’ve not been able, during this latest rereading of the Silmarillion, to consider the near ubiquitous threat of this form of violence for the women characters he came up with. (I’ve always loved the story of Beren and Luthien, but Larsen’s insights made it an even more disturbing read this time around.)
So let me end this overlong response by thanking you again for the superb work you have done and helped to bring out to expand the ways of approaching these stories that I have loved pretty much my entire life. I haven’t yet picked up a copy of Queer Approaches, but I will (especially after reading that fine review that, I believe, you shared a few months ago). You are helping to reveal greater complexities and more and more possibilities for insight and wisdom in Tolkien’s work that go way beyond the default explanations — a great service to all of us who have spent time wandering in Middle-earth. Thank you again!
I am *happy* to have expanded the number of people who have read (and fully appreciate) John's essay --it's one that I re-read regularly and find new ideas as well as ongoing enjoyment. (Oh, and there is no such thing as an overlong comment or Substack post in my world--I am a long-form writing and reading addict, which I shall now prove in this comment!).
And very much in the context of women and Oxford, I can also highly recommend Joanna Miller's historical novel, _The Eights_, about a group of women who are among the first admitted to Oxford who can earn degrees:
https://portobellobookblog.com/2025/04/25/the-eights-by-joanna-miller-historicalfiction-oxford-joannamauthor-figtreepenguin/
Re: the issue of how much substance in the idea that Eowyn was created for Priscilla?
I do enjoy that idea (for many reasons!), but I put in in the fandom category of "headcanon" (a term meaning a personal interpretation of canon that is not supported by canon [and of course the idea of what "canon" consists of for Tolkien is complicated by posthumous publications]).
Of course in this case, the claim is more about the author's intention than the published text, and that gets us into the different theoretical strands in Tolkien scholarship. I'm more interested in readers' responses/interpretations of the text than trying to parse out what in Tolkien's life 'caused' him to write X or Y a certain way (this is about the whole legendarium not just one character). Good biographical scholarship exists (I'm not a fan of the approach that slips into psychoanalyzing the author, but that's my personal bias), but I've never been inerested in using that approach.
Whether or not Tolkien wrote Eowyn for his daughter makes no difference to my reading/interpretation of the character (and the differing versions of her story that he considered over the process of writing LOTR is, for me at least, absolutely mind-blowing!).
This approach to literary analysis is the reason why when I taught Tolkien, I would assign the _Letters_ in some classes while always choosing contradictory letters to try to undermine the assumption that there is some singular intent "authors" always achieve in a text (mostly because my students tended to assume that their interpretation of the text was in fact the author's intent -- which is why I structured class discussions and peer responses as a major part as well).
And I keep going back to what Tolkien says in his preface: "An author cannot of course remain wholly unaffected by his experience, but the ways in which a story-germ uses the soil of experience are extremely complex, and attempts to define the process are at best guesses from evidence that is inadequate and ambiguous. (LOTR, Foreword to the second edition, xxiv)"
Nicole has some other excellent essays -- and is working on a major book project on marriage and Tolkien that I am eagerly awaiting! In the meantime:
duPlessis, Nicole. “To Grow Together, or to Grow Apart: The Long Sorrow of the Ents and Marriage in The Lord of the Rings.” Mythlore, vol. 35, no. 2, article 3, pp. 25-44, 2017, dc.swosu.edu/mythlore/vol35/iss2/3.
duPlessis, Nicole. “ ‘Changed, Changed Utterly’: The Implications of Tolkien’s Rejected Epilogue to The Lord of the Rings.” Tolkien Studies, vol. 15, 2018, pp 9-32.
Thank you for telling me about Brenda's book--I've ordered it (though horror is not my main genre interest, it is definitely a part of some of Tolkien's female characters!).
In terms of _Queer Approaches_: I'm very proud of that collection because I think it is doing so much original work, but it still focuses primarily on male characters (and like Tolkien scholars in general, does not acknowledge our default Whiteness): I discuss the problem of queer scholarship focusing on male characters and feminist scholarship focusing on female characters (without any acknowledgement of sexualities) in a recent presentation ("Wanted More Feminist Queer Medievalists, at JTR: https://scholar.valpo.edu/journaloftolkienresearch/vol23/iss2/10/). And part of my argument there is that medieval scholarship after Tolkien has revealed so much more about women's lives during that period that I think Tolkien scholars need to be aware of (and those of us who aren't medievalists can at least try to read some of the scholarship!).
And since you mentioned Kris's excellent presentation, I can also recommend Clare Moore's essay on the different versions of stories about enslaved women:
Moore, Clare. “Elmar, Aerin, and Aredhel: Female Enslavement in Tolkien’s Legendarium.” Mythlore, vol. 43, no. 1, article 9, 2024, pp. 143-66, dc.swosu.edu/mythlore/vol43/iss1/9.
I don't think there's any way to answer why there are so few women characters in any meaningful way -- what fascinates me is the fact that despite there being few women characters, etc. etc. there are and have apparently always been many women fans of Tolkien, and many women scholars writing about Tolkien (although as my forthcoming feminist killjoy bibliographic essay points out, women and nonbinary scholars write about all sorts of topics in Tolkien and are active as editors; only a small percentage of us write what I define [in that essay] as feminist scholarship on Tolkien--and we're not just saying he's a sexist.) That's why I'm writing a book on feminist receptions of Tolkien (although I now have at least one friend telling me I ought to write a book on Eowyn, and I shall probably do so)!
I tried to tease out my personal journey involving Tolkien and feminism in my piece in the Asexuality in Tolkien issue of JTR which has added a whole new collection of essays on asexuality and aromanticism as part of queer approaches to Tolkien: https://scholar.valpo.edu/journaloftolkienresearch/vol24/iss1/8/).
It's such a fascinating project ! I'm looking forward to read more about it. Thank you so much.
Thank you! I'll probably be posting process posts although one friend has encouraged me to think about the project as a book!