The Role of Women in The Lord of the Rings

[Lush]

I don't think I've ever opened a thread specifically on Eowyn. Maybe the relationship between Eowyn and Aragorn? That might be lurking somewhere...Arwen and Luthien, on the other hand, have been 'done' by me.

Child, you wrote:

In the context of Middle Earth, thirteen children do make sense...

Really? I'd think they would make about as much sense as the "fairy-tale" or "mythical" or however you want to call them aspects of the book, i.e. Middle Earth is a place where you can fight a Balrog, meet an evil dude in the form of a giant eyeball, and have thirteen kids AND have them all survive and be healthy, AND have your wife survive and be healthy too. You see what I mean?

I don't really think that the notion of having thirteen kids neccessarily ties into any of the societal, "pre-feminism" values of Middle Earth, because, let's face it, if everything had to do with the values of the society that Sam and Rosie lived in, at least a couple of kids would end up dead. Rosie would probably end up dead too. Or maybe there are kids who died that Tolkien doesn't mention? I don't know. I do know that if this was about the reality of the values and themes of those times, we wouldn't get this picture-perfect gigantic family that Rosie and Sam produce. But this is a tale, and tales have their own rules, divorced from basic biology.

Per Eowyn, davem and others have talked about how wonderful it is that she has found her calling in something else than acting like a spurned damsel turned kamikaze, but I personally never bought the sudden onslaught of joy at her meeting with Faramir. Call me a spoil-sport, but I don't see how a woman recently driven toward death by despair can fall into the arms of handsome lover-boy and be automatically healed, i.e. I am not entirely sure that everything just kind of worked out for her towards a glorious resolution.

I do think she genuinely liked Faramir. He was probably hot too, that can't be left out of the equation. After facing the end of her life AND the end of the world in general, she probably realized that death and destruction weren't as appealing as she previously thought. So she made a choice. A good choice, but I don't think it necessarily reflects how peachy and peaceful things were going to be for her now.

Remember how she demanded of Aragorn to be happy for her after she had already agreed to be with Faramir? I've always read that as a kind of "See? I can be happy without YOU" assertion. I don't really think her feelings for Aragorn automatically turned off when she met Faramir. That doesn't necessarily mean that she couldn't be happy with Faramir, but it does point to a kind of emotional sacrifice that only a woman would have to make, just because that that's what expected of her at the end after the baddies have lost and all is well in the jungle again, if you know what I mean.

Honestly, why marry Faramir right away? That's perhaps what really bothers me in all of this. Was Tolkien so in a hurry to tie that particular end with a neat bow and leave it at that? Why not leave it at a flirtation that carries the seed of hope for a better future for E and her F? Why not leave it at a kiss? Why is this a wham-bam-thank-you-m'am union?

Why is there this quick need to disarm the warrior woman, however misguided her instincts might have been, and stick her immediately into the arms of a big strong dude? Don't get me wrong, I wouldn't mind ending up in the arms of Faramir either, but the fact that the whole process is written as if the characters are on speed is a bit disheartening. It's as if Eowyn, the only female in the book that strikes me as an actual character (as opposed to a symbol or a decoration), has no room for individual development in the narrative. Her development depends exclusively on the men in her life, and she flits between them like a moth between blinking Christmas lights.

So, to answer Fordim's original question about the role of women in Middle Earth, I'd say that the role of women is mostly decorative or symbolic, or something nice and pretty like that, but is definitely limited in the general scope of the story. A myth would be boring without a host of pretty women to be admired. Hey, life would be boring if pretty women didn't exist. But I'm not going to be all dignified here and talk about how it's wrong to view Tolkien's works through the prism of a "modern" perspective, because the idea of women as human beings with their own interiority isn't really modern at all, and it has little to do with the practical notions of the f-word that everyone so dreads.

I don't think Tolkien was especially gifted in the sense of describing the interiority of characters in general, though he did do an admirable job with some, and, to be fair, Arwen's end in Appedices is one of the most powerful moments in his entire combined works. But I really don't think he had a knack for writing about women from anything else than the perspective of their looks and charms, i.e. I don't see his women as characters per se. He came the closest with Eowyn, I believe. So she's still my girl.

But the actual "role" of women? I don't really see them as more than stand-ins for the ideas that Fordim has already listed, and the bottom line is that to me, they aren't real. Ok, so Balrogs and giant eyeballs aren't "real" either, but there is something about the experiences of the likes of Sam and Frodo with such creatures that really resonates with me. I can't say the same about the hot women of Middle Earth.