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Originally Posted by Lindale
The father-son bloodline of the Stewards did not fail, from Mardil to Denethor. Apparently the Stewards learned from the Kings' mistakes  |
Making sure that the Steward couldn't leave the realm must have helped as well in that regard.
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Perhaps the Gondorians shouldn't have been so stupid as to disregard the female line... for princesses could bear potential heirs for their crowned brothers too. That is the thing hard to believe, that the line of Anarion truly ended, i.e., wouldn't a male heir via a female descendant have counted? This for me is sexism, Salic Law-style.
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I
think this was the exact problem with Arvedui's claim on the Southern Throne. If there had been a stronger tradition of allowing for the female line to count, presumably his claim would have been stronger. However, I think the rejection of that claim was more based on the fact that people in power in the South didn't want a Northern king at this point than any sort of sexism. They used such reasoning to further their own ends, and at a great detriment to themselves.
What is interesting is that even though sometimes Tolkien's societies do not honor the role of females in succession, Tolkien himself
does. The line of Elendil came from the line of the Kings of Numenor
because of a female (older female from before women were allowed to rule? I don't remember). Heck, I don't even remember the name of Silmarien's husband: she essentially started the line of the Faithful who ended up becoming Kings in Gondor. And again we have the case of Firiel--you could argue that not allowing her blood to validate Arvedui's claim was a result of the corruption of Gondorian society at this point and ended up hurting them in the long run.
Then we also have the interesting case of inheritance in the Shire, where after marriage husband and wife are regarded as one legal unit with joint ownership, allowing the survivor of the two to inherit all legal and economic power regardless of sex.
Bringing this back to Rohan, I think the fact that the people are willing to accept Eowyn as a ruler shows that their society is relatively healthy. True, it's not something that Theoden immediately thinks of (Whom do you trust? The house of Eorl! ...But... I need Eomer in battle!), but other people think of it, put the idea forward, and don't seem to care about the fact that Eowyn is a woman. It's more important that she's part of the right bloodline.
Which means that her dereliction had more to do with personal reasons than any sort of feminism, although of course when you're soul-sick you can use any sort of reasoning to justify something that's wrong and I'm sure some of that reasoning was "they don't want me to come along because I'm a woman!". Well... not really...