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Finding Woman's Role in The Lord of the Rings

2007; Mythopoeic Society; Volume: 25; Issue: 3 Linguagem: Inglês

0146-9339

Melissa McCrory Hatcher,

Themes in Literature Analysis

IN The Lord of the Rings, J.R.R. Tolkien gives the 20th century a fantasy epic of proportions. It is a story of the littlest person, a hobbit, overcoming the tides of war. In his trilogy, Tolkien fashions a narrative that forcefully asserts the idea that wars should only be fought to protect and preserve, not to conquer and destroy. While a number of critics have accused Tolkien of subsuming his female characters in a sea of powerful men, one heroine, Eowyn, the White Lady of Rohan, is given a full character arc in the novel. After being rejected by Lord Aragorn, Eowyn searches for meaning in life, choosing to follow her brother, Eomer, to fight in the War of the Ring. The White Lady of Rohan chooses as her fate to die in battle with glory and honor. However, after being wounded by a Ringwraith and restored in the courts of healing, she decides to give up life as a warrior and become a healer. Modern scholars have seen this as a choice to accept conventional female submissiveness. However, in choosing the path of protecting and preserving the earth, Eowyn acts in accordance with Tolkien's highest ideal: a fierce commitment to peace. Rather than submission, Eowyn embodies the full-blooded subjectivity that Tolkien posits as essential for peace. While other characters--most notably Sam--also embody this ideal, it is Eowyn who most successfully fulfills the role. In making this argument, I hope to show how modern criticism has misread the role of women in Tolkien's epic, and has thus overlooked much of the importance of his vast and compelling work. Many modern scholars discount this fantasy epic not only because of its genre, but for its mass-market appeal and its seeming lack of depth. Feminist critics, however, have been even harsher in their dealings with Tolkien. While a professor at Oxford, J.R.R. Tolkien formed a literary club. The Inklings, including C.S. Lewis and Charles Williams, were the first audience to hear The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings. This male-dominated institution inspired Candice Fredrick and Sam McBride in Women Among the Inklings to pose the idea that Middle-earth is very Inkling-like, in that while women exist in the world, they need not be given significant and can, if one is lucky, simply be avoided altogether (108). Tolkien's world of men seems, to most, very chivalric in its philosophy of leaving women behind, and some female readers feel abandoned by Tolkien's lack of women characters. There are only three significant ones: Galadriel, Arwen, and Eowyn. Hobbit women are mentioned, but only as housewives or shrews, like Rosie Cotton or Lobelia Sackville-Baggins. Tom Bombadil's wife Goldberry is a mystical washer-woman. Dwarf women are androgynous, while the Ents have lost their wives. When discussing and female characters, it is important to note that only the real humans achieve emotional fullness, and the mythic individuals attain only romanticized futures. Those rare readers and scholars who dissent from the majority of critics often cite presentism as their chief defense, arguing that we, as readers in the 21st century, should not judge Tolkien by our modern feminist standards. Claiming that Tolkien lived in a different time where women were more subservient, these scholars justify this idea by insisting that [s]exism was the norm and not subject to evaluation and attention (Fredrick and McBride xiv). This idea of presentism, however, fails both to adequately explain Tolkien's own sexism and to take seriously the powerful female characters in The Lord of the Rings. Tolkien's contemporaries were Virginia Woolf and the Bloomsbury group and Gertrude Stein and her Paris writers group. Tolkien himself worked with several strong female scholars at Oxford such as medieval historian Margerie Reeves and Mrs. Sutherland, a fellow of Lady Margaret Hall specializing in Provencal studies (Fredrick and McBride 4). Moreover, when Tolkien was writing his masterpiece, from 1937 to 1948, women were even controlling the home front in England--taking over male jobs during World War II. …