Character Analysis: The Lord of the Rings' Éowyn

Character: Éowyn, Lady of Rohan

Alias: Dernhelm, Lady of Ithilien, Lady of Emyn Arnen, Lady of the Shield-arm

From: The Lord of the Rings

First Appearance: The Two Towers

Last Appearance: The Return of the King

Created by: JRR Tolkien

Portrayed by: Nellie Bellflower (cartoon voice over, 1980), Elin Jenkins (radio, 1981), Mirando Otto (film, 2002-03, pictured at left)

Gender: Female

Ethnicity: Rohan

Sexuality: Straight

Family: Éomer, brother; Théoden, uncle-guardian; Faramir, husband; Elboron, son; Barahir, grandson

Lover: Faramir (husband)

Allegiance: Reunited Kingdom, Rohan, Gondor

Significant Relationships: Aragorn, unrequited love-friend; Merry Brandybuck, ally-friend; Grima Wormtongue, nemesis; Witch-king of Angmar, enemy

Powers: Éowyn is a human, of the race Rohan from the realm called Middle-Earth. The Rohan people are warriors and most specifically, horse-people, traits which Éowyn shares. She is a trained fighter and excels in horsemanship and swordcraft.

Personality:  Éowyn is a woman who tends to run with her emotions. She falls madly in love with Aragorn and runs away to fight Sauron with the Rohan army. While she cares for her people, she finds her life as a stewardess of a keep tedious. She is, however, also very brave and very loving. She will fight to the end of her life to protect her home, her people, and her family - even facing down monsters that give great men pause.

Similar Characters: Kickass Female with a Sword: Rhapsody from The Symphony of Ages

Fantasy Women Who Were Written by a Man Who Might Not Like Women: Susan Pevensie from The Chronicles of Narnia

A Woman Who Delivers the Final Blow to the Enemy's 2nd in Command: Molly Weasley in Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows 

Works Featuring Éowyn: The Lord of the Rings

Character History: Éowyn was a member of the House of Eorl, the leaders of the horse-people called the Rohan. Eowyn's parents were killed by orcs, and she and her brother Eomer were raised by their uncle, King Theoden.

When Sauron, creator of the One Ring and an evil entity bent on controlling Middle Earth, re-emerged, his agents spread throughout the world. Theoden was slowly dying thanks to his advisor Grima Wormtongue, agent of Sauron, who was poisoning him. Éowyn and her brother were unable to help their uncle, and Theoden, under Grima's control, promised Éowyn to the evil sorcerer.

Luckily, the remants of the Fellowship of the Ring came to Rohan seeking help, and the wizard Gandalf freed Theoden from Grima's control. Grima fled, and Éowyn was freed. She met and fell in love with Aragorn, the true but uncrowned king of Gondor, but while it appeared Aragorn returned her affection, he was still in love with the elf Arwen. Éowyn was crushed and felt trapped by her life as the leader of the Rohan in the absense of her brother and uncle, who had joined with Aragorn's forces to fight Sauron.

Along with the hobbit Merry, who had also been left behind by Aragorn and company, Éowyn was told she was too weak to fight in Rohan's army against Sauron. She defied her orders, took the name Dernhelm, and rode to the war alongside the Rohan with Merry at her side, in the disguise of a man.

At the Battle of Pelennor Fields, Éowyn watched in horror as her uncle was struck down by the Wraith King, leader of the ghostly Nazgul, who, it was said, could be defeated by no man. Éowyn faced the Wraith King, killing its steed, but Éowyn's shield was shattered and her arm broken. Merry, as the Wraith King prepared to kill Éowyn, struck the King's knee, allowing Éowyn to plunge her sword into the void of Wraith King's crown-helmet, killing him, fulfilling the prophecy that no man would defeat the Wraith King, but rather, a woman.

The blowback left Éowyn nearly dead and unconsciousness. She was saved from the battlefield and taken to the Houses of Healing. There, she met Faramir, the Stewart of Gondor, and fell in love with him. The two are married and raised a family, after the defeat of Sauron and the destruction of the One Ring.

Other Versions: Éowyn has appeared in several film and cartoon adaptions of The Lord of the Rings, most notably portrayed by Miranda Otto in the Academy Award-winning film adaption by Peter Jackson. There were small changes to her character's plot but nothing significant. She also appeared in video game adaptions of the series.

Analysis: Tolkien's One Good Woman

Author David Eddings wrote the fantasy saga The Belgariad as a direct response to Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings. Eddings, who revealed many years after its initial publication that the books were co-written with his wife Leigh Eddings, believed that Tolkien's masterpiece failed completely in respect to its female characters. The Belgariad, with its main characters Polgara and Ce'Nedra, was designed to change that.

Now, after reading Éowyn's history, you might think that Tolkien did alright with women - after all, it was Éowyn, a woman, who took down the most powerful physical villain of the entire trilogy (Sauron only appears as an intangible force and looming eye in the sky). But, other than that, Éowyn still fails as a fully realized woman character. Tolkien's other women (basically, Arwen and Galadriel) are even worse.

Arwen appears only to be the love of Aragorn (the one he dumps Éowyn for), and she really only appears in the appendix to the sixth book. Galadriel refuses to truly help the fight, even though she is as powerful or more powerful than Gandalf. She is weak and cannot fight off the temptation of the One Ring. Éowyn's main personality is that of a whiny young woman who does not want to take her place as wife and mistress. She falls desperately in love at the drop of the hat. When she confronts the Wraith King, she does not do it out of bravery - she does it foolhardily and protecting her uncle's life is only a lucky by-product. She runs off to war only to follow Aragorn, who she has fallen in love with, not to protect the world.

And these are the women Tolkien gives us, in a world populated by strong, powerful men. It is both a failing of Tolkien's time and of Tolkien himself - both he and his friend CS Lewis were noted as not having the best female characters and possibly being misogynists (see: The Problem of Susan Pevensie). Éowyn could be heralded as a great female warrior, but instead, Tolkien gave her several negative attributes stereotypical of how women were viewed as being not as good as men. This wasn't rounding out her character - this was Tolkien having an inability to see a female warrior in equal stature to his male characters.

While it is she who defeats the Wraith King, the blow nearly kills Éowyn and Merry. It's almost like Tolkien's saying see: women can fight but they're going to screw it up. The men don't suffer similar fates when they fight - of the Fellowship, only Boromir perishes and he heroically sacrifices himself to save the others. Tolkien manages to imply in the text that what Éowyn does is brave but stupid. What Boromir does is heroic.

It's too bad. Éowyn is really really close to being one of the first great pre-feminist, genre heroines. Instead, we'd have to wait for Xena and Buffy to show us how women don't have to be defined by male strength.

Images: Top: Miranda Otto as Éowyn; Middle: a cover to The Return of the King, wherein Éowyn kills the Wraith King; Bottom: Miranda Otto as Éowyn

Comments

[GreenLeanBody]

GreenLeanBody

[C.L.L]

Um, but Eowyn was never madly in love with Aragorn. Delve deeper into her character. While I agree that Eowyn's Character is slightly off, she wasn't in love with Aragorn. Not real love. She was fed poisonous lies by Grima, which gave her misgivings about herself and her family. Eowyn is a woman who values her honor and wants to be remembered as someone who was worth just as much as a man. She could read the true meaning of Grima's honeyed words; 'Theoden and his kin are lowly, gibbering fools'. This drove her crazy, and she managed to convince herself she was in love with Aragorn. She respected him, and was in awe of his high and noble bearing and the respect he was shown. She wanted to be someone who could equal to him. She rode off to battle because she knew that Aragorn didn't love her, and she went to seek honor in another way, wanting to either win respect as a warrior or to die an honorable death. She killed the witch king to save her uncle. I think that is a heroic action, especially her speech to the witch king, proclaiming her own worth and that she can defeat him as well as any man. Yes, I know Tolkien and Lewis are kinda sexist, but they wrote in an era where women were still not all that respected. And also, The elf lord Glorfindel prophecied that the witch king would be defeated by no man, and the prophecy came true; he was defeated by a woman. Pretty epic, huh? and you've got to admit that LOTR is a classic.