Eowyn and feminism and Tolkien

[davem]

It was a bayonet-school of instruction, and "O. C. Bayonets"--Col.
Ronald Campbell--was giving a little demonstration. It was a curiously
interesting form of exercise. It was as though the primitive nature in
man, which had been sleeping through the centuries, was suddenly
awakened in the souls of these cockney soldier--boys. They made sudden
jabs at one another fiercely and with savage grimaces, leaped at men
standing with their backs turned, who wheeled round sharply, and
crossed bayonets, and taunted the attackers. Then they lunged at the
hanging sacks, stabbing them where the red circles were painted. These
inanimate things became revoltingly lifelike as they jerked to and
fro, and the bayonet men seemed enraged with them. One fell from the
rope, and a boy sprang at it, dug his bayonet in, put his foot on the
prostrate thing to get a purchase for the bayonet, which he lugged out
again, and then kicked the sack.

"That's what I like to see," said an officer. "There's a fine
fighting-spirit in that lad. He'll kill plenty of Germans before he's
done."

Col. Ronald Campbell was a great lecturer on bayonet exercise. He
curdled the blood of boys with his eloquence on the method of attack
to pierce liver and lights and kidneys of the enemy. He made their
eyes bulge out of their heads, fired them with blood-lust, stoked up
hatred of Germans--all in a quiet, earnest, persuasive voice, and a
sense of latent power and passion in him. He told funny stories--one,
famous in the army, called "Where's 'Arry?"

It was the story of an attack on German trenches in which a crowd of
Germans were captured in a dugout. The sergeant had been told to blood
his men, and during the killing he turned round and asked, "Where's
'Arry? . . . 'Arry 'asn't 'ad a go yet."

'Arry was a timid boy, who shrank from butcher's work, but he was
called up and given his man to kill. And after that 'Arry was like a
man-eating tiger in his desire for German blood.

He used another illustration in his bayonet lectures. "You may meet a
German who says, 'Mercy! I have ten children.' . . . Kill him! He
might have ten more." http://infomotions.com/etexts/gutenb...02/nicbt10.htm

Let's not forget that one of the main reasons for war is that a great many people get off on it...... (or that Eowyn says she will no longer "take joy only in the songs of slaying."

[CSteefel]

Originally Posted by davem

Let's not forget that one of the main reasons for war is that a great many people get off on it...... (or that Eowyn says she will no longer "take joy only in the songs of slaying."

This could have been part of what motivated in Eowyn, but I think this is also what she got over...

More important for her in the end was to avoid

'A cage', she said. 'To stay behind bars, until use and old age accept them, and all chance of doing great deeds is gone beyond recall or desire.'