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Originally Posted by Bêthberry
I am still left with this fascinating question: why did Tolkien choose to portray the wrongness of war through the healing of a female character? Why is she the one given the desire for glorious death in battle and not others? (Perhaps I should ask, why is her desire healed and that of others not.) You are right that everything works symbolically--I said that myself. Yet, still, why choose the female character to work this out?
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A very good question…herm…haroom…
My general inclination is to look at Tolkien’s characters not individually but as they fit into or, more properly, generate resonance within the structure of the tale.
Bb, you made the point yourself – very well, I might add – that the characterisation of Éowyn and Rosie takes place within an overall structure. In the “paired characters” thread I argued that I think we have to examine each character in relation to the others that he or she echoes or interacts with thematically. I just believe that this is how Tolkien thought and created – his was an essentially Medieval imagination, according to which the individual person or character is simply insufficient to the task of bearing alone the full burden of generating meaning (like Frodo with the Ring???): that’s why the concept of the ‘hero’ is split amongst Aragorn, Frodo and Sam; ‘evil’ amongst Saruman, Sauron and Shelob; etc (not that I wish to kick of either of those debates here…) That’s why I began this thread with the four ‘significant’ women as they together form a corporate examination of ‘woman’.
Éowyn’s place in this structure is an interesting one, insofar as she is, unlike the other women, neither static nor unmoving in relation to her exploration of what it means to ‘be’ a woman in the context of the story. That is, Galadriel is the goddess, and remains the goddess; Arwen is the maiden and remains the maiden; Rosie, well, is the mother – to end all mothers. Éowyn, however, ‘moves’ between or from or through each of these positions in some way. The offputting thing for
Bb (and myself, I guess) is that she is presented as ‘evolving’ from a mode of action is defined as ‘masculine’ by Tolkien to a composite of the modes of the above women (she will become helpmeet for Faramir; the ‘goddess’ of Ithilien; presumably a mother?) – in this, she is being presented as the most ‘all around’ woman as she grows into the roles that women are granted in Tolkien’s world.
In this, I think that she is like two other characters that, at first, may seem like an unflattering comparison: Boromir and Gollum. What I think Éowyn shares with these other two is that these three characters are the only ones in the story who legitimately change or alter both in their responses and in their character (as distinct from something like Frodo’s growth, which I see as the development of something already native to him – Boromir, Gollum and Éowyn all actually
change as the story goes forward: which is very ‘modern’ and not very Medieval). Each of these characters explores the tensions generated at the ambivalent sites between certainties in the themes embodied by the other characters.
Boromir is the (male) ‘hero’ who is caught between the modes of action embodied by Aragorn and Frodo: he desperately wants to do what both of them are trying to do – he wants to save his homeland and do the world a good (he brags constantly about Minas Tirith holding back Mordor); while he also wants to fulfil his individual destiny, become a worthy successor to his father, and wise and effective ruler of Gondor. As the fates of Aragorn and Frodo demonstrate, these two desires (for the good of the world, and the fulfilment of the individual) are not always (if ever) compatible. Frodo saves the world, but loses himself. Aragorn fulfils his destiny, which is what the world requires. Boromir’s conflict/impossible situation leads him to long for the Ring and his own destruction thereby.
Gollum is the figure who is caught upon the nasssty hornses of the good/evil relation. It’s easy to see that Frodo is good, Sauron is evil – but with Gollum it’s more difficult. His tortured mind and spirit is fractured into two by, I think, the ongoing debate we’ve all been having about the nature of evil in
LotR as internal vs external. Half of Gollum goes one way following Frodo (Smeagol is the poor hobbit who was seduced by the Ring and gives way to it of his own will) while the other half goes the other following Sauron (Gollum is the monster who imposes his evil acts and will on others – Smeagol included – overpowering them and brining in evil from outside the will). We’ve all seen how difficult this discussion about internal/external evil is – no wonder Gollum goes insane!
But back to Éowyn and the women – like Boromir and Gollum, I see Éowyn as being very much caught between the modes of action/being defined by the other women. Like Arwen, she wants to help Aragorn (we do tend to forget that a major, if not the major factor in her decision to go to war is not for her own benefit but for the love of Aragorn – which is what motivates the men who follow him as well); like Galadriel, she wants to have some mode of power that will allow her a measure of effect beyond that which is proper to her; and like Rosie, she wants to be with her ‘mate’. Because she is so confused between these roles, she ends up being torn in a lot of different directions: her Arwen desire to help Aragorn gets all tangled up with her Rosie desire to marry him; her Galadriel desire for power nearly gets her killed, etc.
This is why, I think, Éowyn is the most interesting woman character insofar as she explores the problems and tensions within the ideal that is expressed so unproblematically elsewhere. Just as Gollum is and always will be the fly in the ointment of any argument that tries to definitively state the nature of evil in Middle-Earth, and Boromir will forever be the bugbear of those who wish to lay to rest the arguments over heroic-action, Éowyn will prevent any final word being uttered on the role of women.
Recognising this does two things for me, in relation to Éowyn. One, it makes me appreciate just how overwhelmingly important she is to the fabric of the whole – the fact that Tolkien felt that the ‘issue’ of women’s identity was so important to create an Éowyn is testimony to his very contemporary views of women and society. Two, the fact that she ends so ‘happily’ with husband, home and hearth, where his other ‘in-between’ characters are destroyed…well, that’s hard to read. Could it be that as a woman Éowyn has some special resource with which to avoid destruction that the other two lack? (It’s interesting as well that all three of these characters face as their greatest danger despair – Boromir despairs of himself and his city and thus wants the Ring; Gollum despairs of himself because the Ring has already destroyed who he is; Éowyn despairs of herself and her fate, but she is able to be ‘cured’ of her despair by her own actions at the Pelennor Fields and by Aragon and Faramir.)