Unfinished Tales - Part Two - II - Aldarion and Erendis

[Dilettante]

Thinlomien stated....

There's one thing that bothers me in all the stuff about Númenór. As a woman who loves the sea, I find it annoying most of the women hate or dislike it, or at best they have no feelings towards it. It's difficult to say why exactly it's so annoying. Maybe because it kind of restricts women to their homes and gardens and makes it seem none of them ever felt any longing to be elsewhere, to see the world, to be free.

I wonder about this myself. One would think that as much as the sea is emphasized among the Numenoreans, and that they are renowned as great seafarers and even called Sea-Kings if I remember correctly, that their women would like the sea as much as they do. Perhaps this is the providence of the Valar, knowing that if both men and women loved the sea they would all go out roaming and abandon Numenor entirely. Perhaps the women desiring to stay on land keeps their men coming back to the Land of Gift. Just a thought.

Still, it does seem strange that all the women hate and fear the sea. Certainly at least one or two women every generation or so would like to be a seafarer and adventurer as well? Tying into this is the fact that the women of Numenor also make no music. "For in Numenor in those days it was the part of men to play upon instruments." So, women don't go to sea and they don't play music? What's left for them to do then? Tend sheep (there appear to be a lot of shepherdesses) and garden and knit I suppose. Seems kind of a boring life. I know I would be bored.

What I find interesting is that Erendis surrounds herself with women. Her house in Emerie has no male servants and the closest man is several miles away, so it appears. She then proceeds to teach her daughter that men are evil, vile creatures and all females are better off without them. If this were a modern story, the first thing Erendis would do after Aldarion had been gone for a year would be to start an affair with one of the household staff or a handsome squire from the estate next door. Instead here, she turns her hatred of Aldarion into a hatred of all men in general.

As for the elven birds, I find them most interesting. They are truly the opposite of Aldarion and Erendis. They cannot bear to be apart and will only sing if they are together. Did the Eldar give them to Erendis in hopes that the two of them would be like these birds? Or perhaps to be a lesson to both of them: You should be like these birds, not happy unless together.

One more thing that perhaps should be touched on. Erendis seems to often, if not always, dressed in white and is called "the White Lady of Emerie." Is there a significance to this white? Is she in white because she is cold? Rather like Eowyn being the White Lady of Rohan and she is also as a frosted flower.