What breaks the enchantment?

[Bêthberry]

Originally Posted by davem

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.

Originally Posted by Lalwendë

I would not expect Shakespeare or Austen or any other writer to present us with anything other than the world they are presenting us with; they are not presenting us with our world, so I don't expect to see our world.

My disappointment over the lack of choice granted Eowyn has nothing to do with late 20C/early 21C femininism, davem and Lalwendë. (Believe it or not, I'm not one.) It has to do rather with the fact that Tolkien's Middle earth is a construct of late Victorian/early Edwardian culture rather than a universally applicable culture.

In early Medieval Europe, women were as educated as men in monasteries and nunneries. And sometimes noble women inherited vast estates and managed them in their own name and right. Julian of Norwich, Hildegard von Bingen, St. Bridget (Sweden) were all learned and highly respected women. The French poet Christine de Pizan earned her living as a writing. St. John's College, Oxford, owes its (initial) wealth to its founding patroness. There is much evidence for the equality of women in Viking cultures. I could go on.

Austen did not presume to present a culture of universal significance. Her novels are thoroughly and completely grounded in her early 19C culture.

In short, my disenchantment has to do not with my purported baggage from my own time, but with the "baggage" (I use this word simply because you have chosen to continue to use it) of his own time which Tolkien brought to Middle earth. There were other choices available to women like Eowyn in early culture but Tolkien choose the one most predictable according to his own cultural viewpoint. Eowyn, in short, is a late Victorian/ Edwardian imposition upon the kind of early culture whose history/mythology Tolkien was trying to create. I grant that all kinds of narrative imperative makes the marriage with Faramir attractive, but it still represents a perspective limited to Tolkien's own time rather than the universal world view which he tries to create in Middle earth.

Do I still enjoy reading him? Yes, of course. Do I think he was one of the best? Yes, of course.

[davem]

Originally Posted by Bb

There were other choices available to women like Eowyn in early culture but Tolkien choose the one most predictable according to his own cultural viewpoint. Eowyn, in short, is a late Victorian/ Edwardian imposition upon the kind of early culture whose history/mythology Tolkien was trying to create. I grant that all kinds of narrative imperative makes the marriage with Faramir attractive, but it still represents a perspective limited to Tolkien's own time rather than the universal world view which he tries to create in Middle earth.

But the issue is not whether or not there were 'other choices available to women like Eowyn in early culture' but whether there were other choices in the culture in which she existed - which was not the medieval period of our world, but the end of the Third Age of Middle earth. This is what I'm talking about - whether its bringing a Middle eastern demon into our reading of LotR or our knowledge of Medieval history - they don't apply. Eowyn is a product of her culture not of ours - either now or 800 years ago. This approach will inevitably lead to disenchantment because if we expect Eowyn, or any other 'Middle earthian' character to behave as if they belonged to another cultural or historical epoch we'll inevitably be unconvinced by what they do.

Middle earth may (or may not) reflect Tolkien's own value system - this is why I said that after experiencing the art for what it is in & of itself we should (if we wish) try & find out what the author was telling us. It may be that we then find out that the art he produced wasn't always entirely in accord with what he himself believed. After that we can ask 'What do I think about the art, the author him/herself & what does it mean to me?'. If we take the latter approach in with us from the start we'll never have any chance of being affected by the art itself, only by our own responses to it.

That's why I don't accept that:

Eowyn, in short, is a late Victorian/ Edwardian imposition upon the kind of early culture whose history/mythology Tolkien was trying to create. I grant that all kinds of narrative imperative makes the marriage with Faramir attractive, but it still represents a perspective limited to Tolkien's own time rather than the universal world view which he tries to create in Middle earth.

Because Eowyn is hardly a typical Victorian/Edwardian lady. The question is not whether the end of Eowyn's story - marriage, children, becoming a healer to & guide for her people - is what was expected of a character in a Victorian/Edwardian novel(not to say a real Victorian/Edwardian woman) but whether, within the culture in which she exists it is a convincing ending. I think it is. It is right for her - in my reading. In fact, I can't think of a more satisfying ending for her. She can heal & study lore & be a wife & mother as well as being the second most powerful woman in Middle earth after Arwen. Your alternative, which only allows her the first two (or rather only one of the first two) options, seems insufficient reward for everything she has done & been through. And to condemn it as representing

a perspective limited to Tolkien's own time rather than the universal world view which he tries to create in Middle earth.

is asking a bit much of the poor professor - isn't it inevitable that his perspective was limited by his own time? After all, he didn't possess the psychic ability of Shakespeare (as revealed to us by Mr Steiner) to know the future

[littlemanpoet]

All right, that's twenty-two posts in one day, some of you doing as many as a half dozen. I'd like to know how to get on the Barrowdowns payroll so I can quit may day job too, and have the time of day and security to keep up with the discussion.

Now back to catching up on the all the jousting....