Quote:
|
Originally Posted by Bb
The issue of Eowyn is a good one, as it appears axiomatic that she must marry someone. She cannot simply choose to become a healer or, more independently and originally, a loremaster
|
At the risk of being accused of being argumentative for the sake of it, or deliberately misinterpreting what is being said
, I have to say that if something like that had been the outcome of Eowyn's story it would have broken the spell for me, because it would have made that part of the story nothing but an allegory of feminism - & a bad one at that. Eowyn assumes the right & proper role of someone of her rank & station in a world like Middle earth.
She simply would not have thought of doing what you suggest because of the culture she was brought up in. The fact that she was a 'shieldmaiden, daughter of kings' accounts for her decision to take up arms & fight - alongside her despair in her failed hopes for Aragorn - but to take a step against the whole cultural background of the world she inhabited would have come across to me as ridiculous & unbelievable. Things like that didn't happen in Middle earth. This is why I say we must come to the story as free as possible of our own values & pre-conceptions. I think we gain more from accepting that world as it is, the fates of its inhabitants as what they are, &
then analysing our reactions to them. Eowyn is not a 21st century woman, with all the options of a 21st century woman. She is (quite convincingly for me) a woman of her time. To feel 'disenchanted' by the fact that she is not something she could never possibly have been seems (to me) to support my argument that if we carry our own baggage with us into the secondary world we'll never have a full experience of it.