J.R.R. Tolkien created a universe of good and evil in which The Lord of the Rings is one tale. As told there, only a woman can smite a Ringwraith. The battle between the woman and the Ringwraith is symbolic, her triumph being attributable less to mastery of arms than to fecundity.
The Ringwraiths appear first in the story. As Tolkien describes them, the creatures are demonic. Consider his lines over Minas Morgul, the Ringwraith’s dwelling place:
“All was dark about it, earth and sky, but it was lit with light. Not the imprisoned moonlight welling through the marble walls of Minas Ithil long ago, Tower of the Moon, fair and radiant in the hollow of the hills. Paler indeed than the moon ailing in some slow eclipse was the light of it now, wavering and blowing like a noisome exhalation of decay, a corpse-light, a light that illuminated nothing.”
Tolkien was addressing something here too repulsive for direct speech—the perversion of fallen angelic natures. As created, they should administer the cosmos, but as fallen, they violently loath all flesh. Tolkien approached the point indirectly, describing only the anti-light emanating from the Ringwraiths’ dwelling.
Éowyn appears later, and like most of the good characters, she is weak. In Tolkien’s account, strength is useful but never decisive. For every good strength of Middle Earth, (Elves, Wizards, Tom Bombadil), there is a countervailing evil (Ringwraiths, Balrogs, Sauron).
The balance is thus in weakness. The evil characters are not helped by their weakness. “Oft evil will doth evil mar,” Tolkien’s good characters remark. In contrast, the good seem to benefit from weakness. An obvious example is the decision of Elrond’s Council to send a hobbit against Mordor:
“Elrond raised his eyes and looked at him, and Frodo felt his heart pierced by the sudden keenness of the glance. ‘If I understand aright all that I have heard,’ he said, ‘I think that this task is appointed for you, Frodo; and that if you do not find a way, no one will. This is the hour of the Shire-folk, when they arise from their quiet fields to shake the towers and counsels of the Great. Who of all the Wise could have foreseen it? Or, if they are wise, why should they expect to know it, until the hour has struck?'”
Éowyn is a less obvious example. She is nearly the opposite of the hobbits, in fact. Female, yes, but more importantly, she is proud and aspires to be free. The hobbits are by contrast really free, and in their weakness not so proud.
Tolkien first mentions Éowyn by name after her uncle, King Théoden, is freed from the influence of the liar Wormtongue. Théoden says to her: “‘Go, Éowyn sister-daughter!’ . . . . ‘The time for fear is past.'” Éowyn then encounters Aragorn and perceives something of his stature:
“The woman turned and went slowly into the house. As she passed the doors she turned and looked back. Grave and thoughtful was her glance, as she looked on the king with cool pity in her eyes. Very fair was her face, and her long hair was like a river of gold. Slender and tall she was in her white robe girt with silver; but strong she seemed and stern as steel, a daughter of kings. Thus Aragorn for the first time in the full light of day beheld Éowyn, Lady of Rohan, and thought her fair, fair and cold, like a morning of pale spring that is not yet come to womanhood. And she now was suddenly aware of him: tall heir of kings, wise with many winters, greycloaked, hiding a power that yet she felt. For a moment still as a stone she stood, then turning swiftly she was gone.”
This encounter is critical to the story. Éowyn is a proto-feminist, a woman of genuine ability who is chained, so it seems, to a circle too small for her talents. She longs to lead, not serve, and Aragorn represents an escape from her circle in Théoden’s court.
When the men prepare for battle, Éowyn is placed in charge of those who cannot fight. Théoden honors Éowyn by conferring on her sword and mail. She accepts her charge, “[b]ut as she spoke her eyes went to Aragorn who stood nearby.” Then, as the men leave, “[a]lone Éowyn stood before the doors of the house at the stair’s head; the sword was set upright before her, and her hands were laid upon the hilt. She was clad now in mail and shone like silver in the sun.” Éowyn is ready to fight and expects to do so. She “is not yet come to womanhood.”
After the men win victory in an initial battle, Éowyn addresses Aragorn and asks to accompany him to the main engagement. Their extended dialogue shows the bitterness of Éowyn but also her love for Aragorn, or for what he symbolizes:
“Then suddenly she laid her hand on his arm. ‘You are a stern lord and resolute,’ she said; ‘and thus do men win renown.’ She paused. ‘Lord,’ she said, ‘if you must go, then let me ride in your following. For I am weary of skulking in the hills, and wish to face peril and battle.’
‘Your duty is with your people,’ he answered.
‘Too often have I heard of duty,’ she cried. ‘But am I not of the House of Eorl, a shieldmaiden and not a dry-nurse? I have waited on faltering feet long enough. Since they falter no longer, it seems, may I not now spend my life as I will?’
‘Few may do that with honour,’ he answered. ‘But as for you, lady: did you not accept the charge to govern the people until their lord’s return? If you had not been chosen, then some marshal or captain would have been set in the same place, and he could not ride way from his charge, were he weary of it or no.’
‘Shall I always be chosen?’ she said bitterly. ‘Shall I always be left behind when the Riders depart, to mind the house while they win renown, and find food and beds when they return?’
‘A time may come soon,’ said he, ‘when none will return. Then there will be need of valor without renown, for none shall remember the deeds that are done in the last defense of your homes. Yet the deeds will not be less valiant because they are unpraised.’
And she answered: ‘All your words are but to say: you are a woman, and your part is in the house. But when the men have died in battle and honour, you have leave to be burned in the house, for the men will need it no more. But I am of the House of Eorl and not a serving-woman. I can ride and wield blade, and I do not fear either pain or death.’
‘What do you fear, lady?’ he asked.
‘A cage,’ she said. ‘To stay behind bars, until use and old age accept them, and all chance of great deeds is gone beyond recall or desire.’
‘And yet you counselled me not to adventure on the road that I had chosen, because it is perilous?’
‘So may one counsel another,” she said. “Yet I do not bid you flee from peril, but to ride to battle where your sword may win renown and victory. I would not see a thing that is high and excellent cast away needlessly.’
‘Nor would I,’ he said. ‘Therefore I say to you, lady: Stay! For you have no errand to the South.’
‘Neither have those others who go with thee. They go only because they would not be parted from thee—because they love thee.’ Then she turned and vanished into the night.”
This passage is a fine rhetorical dual. It turns on whether men and women have distinct roles. The characters try to work around that issue, and their inability to do so places Éowyn on her path to the Ringwraith.
Éowyn’s opening play is to be treated as one of the men. Like them, she wishes to “‘face peril and battle.'” Aragorn does not dispute her premise; in fact, he responds with a standard taken from the world she wishes to join: “‘Your duty is with your people.'” When Éowyn complains of her duty, Aragorn points out that he has treated her as she wished: “‘If you had not been chosen, then some marshal or captain would have been set in the same place, and he could not ride away from his charge, were he weary of it or no.'”
Éowyn counters that the standard is unfair in her case. She is not like the men. She is a woman and thus asks rhetorically: “‘Shall I always be chosen?'” Éowyn knows the answer: her lot is to provide “‘food and beds when they return.'”
Aragorn cannot deny her case is different. In the traditional culture of the story, Éowyn is bound to a certain role. Aragorn instead appeals to their shared peril and the fact that the fight might yet come to her. To that extent, at least, Aragorn is still granting Éowyn’s premise that she should fight like a man.
But home is not where Éowyn wishes to fight. Her argument becomes inarticulate. She repeats that she is tied to domestic duties, which she finds undignified, comparing it to the life of “‘a serving-woman.'” Éowyn has talents beyond that—”‘I can ride and wield blade'”—and she demands to use them.
Aragorn then abandons Éowyn’s premise. He no longer accedes to her suggestion that she should fight like a man. He instead applies Éowyn’s own words to her: “‘I would not see a thing that is high and excellent cast away needlessly.'” Becoming inarticulate in turn, Aragorn simply tells her to accept her role: “‘For you have no errand to the South.'”
Éowyn likewise abandons her premise. Speaking no more of renown, a reference to battle and the role of men, she now speaks of love, a reference to home and the role of women. Éowyn still nods to the male role, saying of Aragorn’s own men, “‘they love thee,'” but the reader knows her meaning. Éowyn is professing her love of Aragorn. Unable to have him under either guise, “she turned and vanished into the night.”
Éowyn next took the name “Dernhelm” and dressed like a man to elude orders. It was a radical, alienating choice. When the hobbit Merry saw “Dernhelm,” he “caught the glint of clear grey eyes; and then he shivered, for it came suddenly to him that it was the face of one without hope who goes in search of death.”
Under this guise Éowyn rode with the men to the Battle of the Pelennor Fields, where King Théoden led a charge against the forces besieging the City of Gondor. The King of the Ringwraiths attacked the men from above. Théoden fell beneath his horse, and his men fell down around him.
Éowyn and Merry were nearby, however. Merry “thought he heard Dernhelm speaking; yet now the voice seemed strange, recalling some other voice that he had known.” What Merry heard was Éowyn reclaiming her womanhood.
She had taken a position before her uncle. The Ringwraith warned her, “‘Come not between the Nazgûl and his prey!'” Éowyn gave her answer:
“A sword rang as it was drawn. ‘Do what you will; but I will hinder it, if I may.’
‘Hinder me? Thou fool. No living man may hinder me!’
Then Merry heard of all sounds in that hour the strangest. It seemed that Dernhelm laughed, and the clear voice was like the ring of steel. ‘But no living man am I! You look upon a woman. Éowyn I am, Éomund’s daughter. You stand between me and my lord and kin. Begone, if you be not deathless! For living or dark undead, I will smite you, if you touch him.'”
The scene is splendid not only for the dramatic turn, but also because it shows the particular fierceness of women when they defend the weak. Éowyn is tough and tender, fearsome and afraid. No man can approach the combination:
“A little to the left facing them stood she whom he had called Dernhelm. But the helm of her secrecy had fallen from her, and her bright hair, released from its bonds, gleamed with pale gold upon her shoulders. Her eyes grey as the sea were hard and fell, and yet tears were on her cheek. A sword was in her hand, and she raised her shield against the horror of her enemy’s eyes.”
Merry now understood with whom he shared the field:
“Éowyn it was, and Dernhelm also. For into Merry’s mind flashed the memory of the face that he saw at the riding from Dunharrow: the face of one that goes seeking death, having no hope. Pity filled his heart and great wonder, and suddenly the slow-kindled courage of his race awoke. He clenched his hand. She should not die, so fair, so desperate! At least she should not die alone, unaided.”
Merry stabbed the Ringwraith in the leg, setting up Éowyn’s blow:
“‘Éowyn! Éowyn!’ cried Merry. Then tottering, struggling up, with her last strength she drove her sword between crown and mantle, as the great shoulders bowed before her. The sword broke sparkling into many shards. The crown rolled away with a clang. Éowyn fell forward upon her fallen foe. But lo! the mantle and hauberk were empty. Shapeless they lay now on the ground, torn and tumbled; and a cry went up into the shuddering air, and faded to a shrill wailing, passing with the wind, a voice bodiless and thin that died, and was swallowed up, and was never heard again in that age of this world.”
A Catholic reader might think of the Blessed Virgin Mary here, but the analogy is not close. Mary’s abasement of self as “handmaiden” is far from Éowyn’s assertion of self as “shieldmaiden.” Mary’s “Magnificat” glories in the lowly being lifted up, but Éowyn set herself high and wished to go higher.
If Tolkien intended dogma to live in Middle Earth, a better candidate would be Divine Providence. Repeatedly in the story a character falls to temptation, but the fall is turned to good. Boromir impetuously and pridefully seeks the ring for Gondor, which drives Frodo (and Sam) apart from the others on a secret route through Mordor. Pippin steals the palantír and uses it, which diverts attention from the path taken by Frodo and Sam. Gollum lustfully pursues the ring throughout, and only his fanatical desire separates the ring from Frodo, who at the end claims it as his own.
Éowyn’s heroism fits this pattern. She was ignoble in disobeying orders and hiding her identity. She left her charges when her own wishes were not met. Yet these dishonorable acts placed her where she could defend another.
That said, Éowyn nearly died in the encounter. She long lay unconscious in the Houses of Healing, where Aragorn, Éomer, and Gandalf tended her. The discussion between these three arguably reveals Tolkien’s mind regarding the conflict which drove Éowyn to the battlefield. Aragorn’s speech on this point is his most personal of the book:
“‘Alas! For she was pitted against a foe beyond the strength of her mind or body. And those who will take a weapon to such an enemy must be sterner than steel, if the very shock shall not destroy them. It was an evil doom that set her in his path. For she is a fair maiden, fairest lady of a house of queens. And yet I know not how I should speak of her. When I first looked on her and perceived her unhappiness, it seemed to me that I saw a white flower standing straight and proud, shapely as a lily, and yet knew that it was hard, as if wrought by elf-wrights out of steel. Or was it, maybe, a frost that had turned its sap to ice, and so it stood, bitter-sweet, still fair to see, but stricken, soon to fall and die? Her malady begins far back before this day, does it not Éomer?’
‘I marvel that you should ask me, lord,’ he answered. ‘For I hold you blameless in this matter, as in all else; yet I knew not that Éowyn, my sister, was touched by any frost, until she first looked on you. Care and dread she had, and shared with me, in the days of Wormtongue and the king’s bewitchment; and she tended to the king in growing fear. But that did not bring her to this pass!’
‘My friend,’ said Gandalf, ‘you had horses, and deeds of arms, and the free fields; but she, born in the body of a maid, had a spirit and courage at least the match of yours. Yet she was doomed to wait upon an old man, whom she loved as a father, and watch him falling into a mean dishonoured dotage; and her part seemed to her more ignoble than that of the staff he leaned on.
‘Think you that Wormtongue had poison only for Théoden’s ears? Dotard! What is the house of Eorl but a thatched barn where brigands drink in the reek, and their brats roll on the floor among their dogs? Have you not heard those words before? Saruman spoke them, the teacher of Wormtongue. Though I do not doubt that Wormtongue at home wrapped their meaning in terms more cunning. My lord, if your sister’s love for you, and her will still bent to her duty, had not restrained her lips, you might have heard even such things as these escape them. But who knows what she spoke to the darkness, alone, in the bitter watches of the night, when all her life seemed shrinking, and the walls of her bower closing in about her, a hutch to trammel some wild thing in?'”
Gandalf’s point could be missed. Wormtongue was a liar, and Gandalf ascribed Éowyn’s misery to these lies. Gandalf reminded Éomer of his “horses, and deeds of arms, and the free fields,” not to indicate Éowyn should have had these also, but to explain that Éomer’s pursuits had kept him from Wormtongue. Similarly, when Gandalf said Éowyn was “doomed to wait upon an old man,” he did not name it as a curse. “Doomed” here means fate or lot, not punishment.
Taking everything together, Tolkien ably demonstrated how such lies work. Wormtongue unmanned Théoden by suggesting he could no longer fight, and he unwomaned Éowyn by suggesting her service to Théoden was undignified. Just as man is enervated by inducing him to approximate the role of a woman, so a woman is enervated by inducing her to approximate the role of a man.
Éowyn survived her encounter with the Ringwraith, but when she awoke in the Houses of Healing, she remained close to despair. Another patient, Faramir, courted her, yet she treated him with reserve. Faramir eventually pressed his case:
“‘Éowyn, do you not love me, or will you not?’
‘I wished to be loved by another,’ she answered. ‘But I desire no man’s pity.’
‘That I know,’ he said. ‘You desired to have the love of the Lord Aragorn. Because he was high and puissant, and you wished to have renown and glory and to be lifted far above the mean things that crawl on the earth. And as a great captain may to a young soldier he seemed to you admirable. For so he is, a lord among men, the greatest that now is. But when he gave you only understanding and pity, then you desired to have nothing, unless a brave death in battle. Look at me, Éowyn!’
And Éowyn looked at Faramir long and steadily; and Faramir said: ‘Do not scorn pity that is a gift of a gentle heart, Éowyn! But I do not offer you my pity. For you are a lady high and valiant and have yourself won renown that shall not be forgotten; and you are a lady beautiful, I deem, beyond even the words of the Elven-tongue to tell. And I love you. Once I pitied your sorrow. But now, were you sorrowless, without fear or any lack, were you the blissful Queen of Gondor, still I would love you. Éowyn, do you not love me?’
Then the heart of Éowyn changed, or else at last she understood it. And suddenly her winter passed, and the sun shone on her.
‘I stand in Minas Anor, the Tower of the Sun,’ she said; ‘and behold! the Shadow has departed! I will be a shieldmaiden no longer, nor vie with the great Riders, nor take joy only in the songs of slaying. I will be a healer, and love all things that grow and are not barren.’ And again she looked at Faramir. ‘No longer do I desire to be a queen,’ she said.
Then Faramir laughed merrily. ‘That is well,’ he said; ‘for I am not a king.'”
Éowyn had finally come to womanhood. The logic of relationship, the very thing which, through its denial, had driven her to battle, reached issue. Her nature was not in killing, but in giving life, and the sun shone on her when she realized it.
This is not a sappy ending to a sexist story. It is, like much of Tolkien, a metaphor. Tolkien was a Catholic writer in a renewed pagan world. Taking the deep imagery of that world, the mythology of the European peoples, he used it to state things which cannot be said, or at least will not be read.
Of all things which cannot be said, one of the most fundamental is the importance of birth. Birth is, like death, a profound act of human weakness. It is therefore, like death, shunned in an age obsessed with power.
The world Tolkien created was haunted by a lack of births. The Elves, Dwarves, and Ents were all fading. Former races of men were gone, and Gondor itself was in decline, as perceived by one young hobbit:
“Pippin gazed in growing wonder at the great stone city, vaster and more splendid than anything he had dreamed of; greater and stronger than Isengard, and far more beautiful. Yet it was in truth falling year by year into decay; and already it lacked half the men that could have dwelt at ease there. In every street they passed some great house or court over whose doors and arched gates were carved many fair letters of strange and ancient shapes: names Pippin guessed were of great men and kindreds that had once dwelt there; and yet now they were silent, and no footsteps rang on their wide pavements, nor voice was heard in their halls, nor any face looked out from door or empty window.”
Tolkien furthermore made the demographic decline correspond with an increase in the Ringwraiths’ power. The creatures were ranging far at the beginning of story, entering even the Shire. The conflict was thus whether the decline would continue, with the Ringwraiths and their master Sauron gaining control, or whether at least human births would recover, and the good of Middle Earth extend into the next age, that of men.
Here is the significance of Éowyn, the only human female among the major characters. She could give birth, a powerful weakness to be accepted in humility, a virtue she acquired only after her froward encounter with the Ringwraith. Tolkien undoubtedly knew the revelation to the Apostle: “Yet women will be saved by childbearing.” (1 Tim. 2:15.)
Hence of all the masculine deeds in Tolkien’s story—the dangers, chases, and triumphs—none features the climactic line. The climax of the story is somewhat obscure, like birth, and takes its significance from future things, like birth. It is the line which, describing the City of Gondor after the fall of Sauron, finally marks The Lord of the Rings as a natalist tract: “and all was healed and made good, and the houses were filled with men and women and the laughter of children, and no window was blind nor any courtyard empty.”