So in this Chapter Aragorn is reunited with the Grey Company, and looks into the Stone, and takes the Paths of the Dead into the South of Gondor, and then summons the Dead at the Stone of Erech, and leads the way into the storm of Mordor (and I suppose we can throw in the next Chapter, and the muster of the Rohirrim). And I want to talk about Eowyn. Wait, what?
Now, I view Eowyn, and my sense is that all readers view Eowyn, as a magnificent character and a magnificent person. And yet, as far as I can tell, she has the fewest lines of dialog – and perhaps the fewest scenes – of any major character, from Frodo to Boromir to Galadriel. Nevertheless, my attention, and I suspect the attention of many readers, is always drawn to her in the scenes she is in. Why?
Perhaps one clue lies in a story about the filming of Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar in Hollywood in the 1950s. Marlon Brando and others are bounding all over the movie set, emoting, overacting, saying “pay attention to meee!” John Gielgud as Caesar is sitting in the middle of this, motionless, impassive. And then suddenly he makes a sharp motion – and all eyes are fixed on him. A story sometimes cited as a shining example of great acting.
And I think there is that aspect to Tolkien’s portrayal of Eowyn. We are in the middle of the moving and engrossing trial of Theoden, and then we see Eowyn notice Aragorn, and a brief glimpse of her reaction, and we might say, wait, what’s that about? Our attention goes suddenly off what’s happening, and onto pondering Eowyn. Or we are in the forest of the Druedain, and our focus is on the darkness of Mordor, and the ride of the Rohirrim, and the beleaguered city of Minas Tirith looming in the distance, and then we stumble across a Rohirrim called Dernhelm, and we realize it’s Eowyn. Wait. What’s she doing here?
But I think there’s more to it than that.
I know someone who I like to think of as the Person Who Does Not Fit. This is because until you know that person really well, you and the people about you are constantly being surprised by what that person says and does. They said that? They did that?!? And the reason, it turns out, is that in fundamental ways, that person does not fit neatly into the categories we typically use to predict behavior and thinking in a shared culture. I have found that we really need to understand that person well and change our categories before we can, again, predict that person’s behavior and feel true empathy.
And in many ways, that’s the way I keep seeing Eowyn in all the scenes she’s in. As Sesame Street says, one of these people is not like the others. She seems to me to be a lot of the time, in LOTR, the Woman Who Does Not Fit.
So here she is, in her first scene with Aragorn. And she brings him a cup of welcome, and he thinks, how thoughtful. How worthy of a High Princess of Rohan. And then he notices her hand trembling, and he thinks, wait. What was that? Omigod, she has a crush on me. OK, this is so not good. What is she going to do next?
And now we arrive where we are now in the story of LOTR, and Aragorn rides up to Edoras and tells Eowyn he is taking the Paths of the Dead. And at first her reaction is that of any Rohirrim: Are you crazy? Why are you throwing away your life needlessly, without a purpose? But then he sticks to his guns, and her reaction now is: Take me with you. To fight.
OK, this is not High Princess of Rohan. It’s not really schoolgirl in love, either. This Woman Does Not really Fit either of those categories. What’s going on here? Is she a warrior princess, like Boudicea, like Molly Pitcher?
But Eowyn doesn’t leave it there. She comes back to Aragorn, and when he still refuses her, gets down on her figurative knees and begs. An act of bravery, in my opinion, every bit as noble as that of facing down the Lord of the Ringwraiths. An act that she knows exposes her to potential ridicule and patronizing pity for the rest of her life. An act that doesn’t quite Fit High Princess, nor lover, nor warrior. Or perhaps it does. At this stage, we don’t know. What we do know is that there is something profound in this person beyond the easy generalities of age, sex, and culture.
And so, we look beyond this Chapter. We look beyond where Theoden sees her tears for Aragorn’s departure to the Paths of the Dead, and easily assumes them the normal tears for the loss of someone altogether admirable. We look beyond the scene in the Druedain Forest, where Eowyn is again, naggingly, the piece of the picture that Does Not seem to Fit. We look to the scene with the Nazgul.
And to me, this scene would be richly comical if it were not so profound and horrifying. The Lord of the Nazgul looks to squash another bug, as he has done for thousands of years. And then Eowyn rips off her helm, and shows him that she Does Not Fit. She is not yet another man; she may be the woman of prophecy, doomed to kill him. Eowyn gets the Lord of the Ringwraiths to doubt himself. To wonder, for a brief second, if all the easy categories into which he has placed the world are wrong. To shatter the certainty of the evil-doer as nothing else can. And then she (and Merry) kills him. And she pays a terrible price for that, for being the Woman Who Does Not Fit.
And then we reach the scene of healing. When Gandalf seems to offer a Fit for Eowyn: “she, born in the body of a maid, had a spirit and courage at least the match of [Eomer’s, any man’s].” By some readings, Gandalf is saying, just think of her as a man. How possibly patronizing. How possibly clueless. Except that I think Gandalf is saying something rather different.
In the Gnostic Gospels, there is one in which (I am doing this from memory) Jesus says to his disciples, in this new world I am proclaiming, women are equal to men. And Peter protests, but woman are inferior in understanding to men! And Jesus replies, “Then we will make men of them.”
Now, this sounds very insulting to women, unless you understand the subtext, which everyone reading it would have understood. Peter in the Gnostic Gospels is not the rock of the Church; he is the disciple who is dumb as a rock. The Gnostics believed that there were certain truths about Jesus and God that only certain people, at this stage, could grok. Others, like Peter, needed to be aided in their understanding and might never attain these truths. So what Jesus is giving to Peter, what Gandalf is giving to Eomer, is the truth that he can accept easily, a springboard to possible further understanding later.
It is, in fact, the second level of empathy, the Golden Rule, the supposed core of the religion: imagine yourself in your neighbor’s place. Think of women as men, or, to make it easier, people who we will make into men, like male children. You wouldn’t think of a boy as incapable of being a warrior someday, or any other position of responsibility, would you, says Jesus, says Gandalf? Good. That’s a start. But, Gandalf carefully does not say, that doesn’t mean Eowyn Fits this category.
And, sure enough, we look further ahead to the courtship of Eowyn and Faramir, and we witness the seemingly abrupt shift of Eowyn from a warrior, concerned only with filling the saddle of a dead Rohirrim, to a high Earth Mother; even to domestic tranquility, to Kirche, Kuche, Kinder (church, cooking, children), as the Germans used to say, like Arwen, like Rosie. I have my own ideas about why this is not necessarily such an abrupt shift after all, which I will discuss when we get there in the story. But in any case, now possibly we can begin to understand the full profound magnificence of Eowyn, as encompassing all of these personas, in a true and empathic Fit. Now she can live happily ever after in our minds.
Or maybe not. Maybe she will go on being the Woman Who Does Not Fit, the unconventional, the daring, the brave.
Consider the scene at the end of the courtship. Faramir and Eowyn approach the head Healer, and he says to her, I know you’ve been itching to get out of this hospital. Well, my diagnosis is that you’re cured. I hereby discharge you from the hospital. Go and be happy with Faramir.
And Eowyn says, actually, I’ve decided that I like it here. I’m going to stay.
And the Healer (and we) says to himself, good, that’s taken care of – wait a minute.
What did she just say?
Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings Like You’ve Never Heard It:
- The First of a Series of Ramblings About JRR Tolkien
- Part II. Pre-Psychology Writing, Poetry, and a New Hero
- Part III. Torture, Enlightenment
- Part IV. Weather, Mushrooms, Leaders
- Part V. In the Moment, Sam the Obscure
- Part VI. Folk Songs, Master, First, Fair
- Part VII. Hiking, Curses, Noble Language
- Part VIII. The Hiker’s Extrasensory Writing
- Part IX. Torture, Elves, Endings
- Part X. Your Highness
- Part XI. Business Meetings, Dwarves
- Part XII. Horns of Wild Memory
- Part XIII. Ecstasies of the Dwarves
- Part XIV. Valaraukar, the Third Touch of God
- Part XV. Memory, Nature, Passion
- Part XVI. The Gift of Enchantment
- Part XVII. Frontier Maturity
- Part XVIII. Pity, Decisions, Endings
- Part XIX. Into the Shadow, Kings, Names, Winds
- Part XX. People of the Morning, Child Soldiers
- Part XXI. Herdsmen and High Trees
- Part XXII. The Faith of God
- Part XXIII. Theoden’s Law
- Part XXIV. Helm’s Deep, Zangra, and A Life Worthy of Song
- Part XXV. Book of Marvels, Book of Friendship
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