sjester

It is a fair criticism to point out the paucity – in numbers – of female characters in J. R. R. Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings. In this case, however, what is lacking in quantity is made up for in quality. Malory may have put a sizable number of women in Le Morte Darthur, but they are quite flat; in many cases they do not even warrant a name while each knight, no matter how minor, does get a name. In contrast to such treatment, Tolkien proves himself capable of writing female characters with much more depth and complexity. Eowyn is an excellent example of this: not only is her role non-traditional, she is morally ambiguous. Some call her a heroine while others consider her a deserter. But it is not a simple question; to give an unqualified answer on either count ignores important nuances. A precise answer includes both options. The more important question is the acceptability of her actions within the world of Middle-earth.

From a deontological point of view, Eowyn appears to be a deserter. The simplest formulation of the issue is that she ran off to go to war instead of staying behind to lead the people of Rohan in the absence of Theoden and Eomer. Clearly, because she did not stay behind, she shirked her duties, thereby committing an ethical wrong. On closer reading of the text, however, such a statement of the case proves too simplistic.

Eowyn does fulfil the letter of her duty, at least as far as the reader knows what that duty is. Theoden's explicit instructions to her are to lead the people to Dunharrow, and to rule them in his absence. Aragorn finds her at Dunharrow, where he reminds Eowyn (and the reader) that she is to remain there as ruler until Theoden's return, which occurs the day after Aragorn leaves for the Paths of the Dead. Here is a chance for Eowyn to display a serious disregard for duty. She asks Aragorn if she might join those going with him to the Paths of the Dead. He does not allow it because of her charge, which he cannot and will not release her from. So she does indeed stay until Theoden arrives at Dunharrow. Her explicitly-stated charge is fulfilled, and the reader does not find out if she is given another. When Theoden left Edoras for Helm's Deep, his farewell to and appointment of Eowyn as his deputy was public, but he conducts his farewell to Eowyn at Dunharrow in private – it is a scene which neither the reader nor those within the story bear witness to.

It may be objected that even if Eowyn was not specifically commanded to serve as ruler after Theoden's departure for war in Gondor, she did her people a disservice by leaving them leaderless. This speculation does not rest on solid evidence from the text. Simply because Tolkien does not write a scene in which Eowyn hands her authority to someone else does not mean that she did not leave without making arrangements. Obviously her going to war was not a complete secret; she seemed to have an understanding with Elfhelm, leader of the eored she rode with. It is hard to imagine that such a leader would be willing to look the other way if no arrangements had been made for Eowyn's absence. Later on, there is no report of Rohan falling completely to pieces because no one was there to lead them. In general, Middle-earth never seems to lack for someone to lead: when the line of kings in Gondor fails, the stewards are there to take over; when Gandalf falls in Khazad-dum, Aragorn takes the leading role; when there is neither king nor steward in Minas Tirith, Imrahil is appointed interim leader. Furthermore, the Rohirrim appear capable of choosing their own leaders – Hama the Doorward originally suggests to Theoden that he appoint Eowyn to lead in his absence.

These ambiguities concerning Eowyn's specific responsibilities and the state of affairs in her absence do not constitute a full defense of her actions. It is important to consider her motivations as well. Most discussion of this subject centers on Eowyn's emotional state at the time of her desertion. There is much textual evidence to suggest that she acts on impulse and out of despair. Dernhelm – Eowyn in disguise – wears an expression that Merry notices is "the face of one without hope who goes in search of death" (Return 69). This hopelessness is the key to understanding Eowyn's reasons for going to war.

One popular reading of Eowyn's hopelessness anchors it in her obvious infatuation with Aragorn. Her desire to follow him on his journey comes out of love. That he leaves her behind would seem to be the thing that drains her of all hope. (It does not hurt this argument that one of Aragorn's many names, Estel, means "hope," fostering the interpretation of Aragorn's departure from Dunharrow for the Paths of the Dead as a representation of hope leaving Eowyn.) It is the second time that she has been left behind while others go to war and opportunities for valor, a situation which feels to her like being shut in a cage. These incidents come after a string of events sufficient to sap the joy out of anyone, namely the decline of her uncle, Theoden, and Grima's treatment of her. This picture of Eowyn is that of a woman already brought low who becomes desperate for a way out of her situation when denied love.

If, however, Eowyn's love for Aragorn is so strong a motivator as to bring her to such a desperate pass, one might expect her to follow Aragorn despite his refusal to allow it. Assuming that it is that point that she utterly loses all hope, she would, in her own mind, have nothing to lose and everything to gain by leaving with the Grey Company. Her reason for doing so would match their reason: love for Aragorn. Instead, she chooses to stay and wait for Theoden's arrival. It is only after being left behind for a third time that she deserts Dunharrow.

Eowyn's reasons for disguising herself and running off to war lie much closer to home than a kingly man she just met. Her desperation truly comes out when the members of her household leave her again, this time with the very real possibility that they will not come back. This, not Aragorn's departure, is the breaking point. The Rohirrim, with help from the Ents, have won victory over Isengard, and it is time to ride to the aid of Gondor, where no victory is assured and is in fact quite unlikely. The threat of total annihilation in the West, magnified in the coming of the Dawnless Day, is very real; there is little hope that either Theoden or Eomer will come back to Rohan. All those present at the muster of Rohan think it more likely that it will be Sauron's armies who come to that land. Aragorn says as much when he tells Eowyn "there will be need of valor without renown, for none shall remember the deeds that are done in the last defense of your homes" (Return 47). Even as these words become more likely to prove true, Eowyn's answer becomes more apt: she has "leave to be burned in the house, for the men will need it no more" (Return 47). If the combined forces of Rohan and Gondor cannot stop Sauron's army, the group left for the last defense do not have a better chance of succeeding where the much larger force failed.

The hopelessness of the situation is not the main reason Eowyn deserts. After all, she did not choose her moment to do so when Aragorn went on the Paths of the Dead – a situation just as hopeless as that of the Rohirrim. When the Riders leave, those leading them are not simply men Eowyn respects, but they are the members of her household, men she has known and loved all her life. There is Theoden, her uncle who is a father to her in addition to his role as lord of Meduseld and king of Rohan. Second to Theoden is Eomer, her brother and peer. This group of three – Eowyn, Eomer, and Theoden – resembles a comitatus.

The notion of comitatus is prominent in the poem "The Battle of Maldon." In this piece, the fighting force is an earl, Beorhtnoth, and the his warriors, the "sharers of the hearth" (204). These men will fight to the last for their lord, even after his death: "[T]hey desired all one of two things, / to leave life or else to avenge their dear lord" (207-8). Loyalty is the foremost value among the band of warriors. As one of them says:

I have no desire among Sturmere's unyielding heroes
to reproach my word, now that my patron has perished,
that I now lordless go on a homeward journey,
having turned away from battle, but rather I shall be taken by weapons,
either spear or iron. (249-53)

For the members of the comitatus it is a fate worse than death to be cut off from the group, particularly from the lord, either because one is the sole survivor or an exile. In return for this fierce loyalty and love, the lord has a responsibility to take care of his warriors, both within the mead-hall and out on the battlefield. Tolkien considers Beorhtnoth to have failed in that responsibility, as he discusses in the "Ofermod" section of "The Homecoming of Beorhtnoth Beorhthelm's Son." In a cocksure moment, Beorhtnoth allows the Vikings across the bridge without a fight, confident that he can beat them once they get across. It is not the best tactical decision he could have made, and it is one that forces his warriors into a difficult position. He is not, in fact, able to overcome the Viking forces, and he is himself slain. Most of his warriors stand their ground and fight on, fulfilling their part of the arrangement even after Beorhtnoth's failure. In Tolkien's view, the warriors are the more honorable for keeping their oaths, though Beorhtnoth is not entirely undeserving of honor.

There are several comitatus-like groups in The Lord of the Rings. The first of these is the hobbits. Sam, Merry, and Pippin are willing to follow Frodo out of the Shire, where ever he must go, out of a sense of love and friendship, of which loyalty is a part. In turn, Frodo feels a responsibility to them in that, unlike Beorhtnoth, he does not want to lead them unnecessarily into danger. The group Aragorn leads into the Paths of the Dead is another example. Legolas, Gimli, and the Grey Company all accompany Aragorn out of love and loyalty, and he does not require that they go for any other reason. Other comitatus groups conform to the model presented in "The Battle of Maldon" to varying degrees. Pippin and Beregond display love and loyalty to Faramir, whose life they go to great lengths to save. The Company of the Nine Walkers is a looser, more egalitarian sort of comitatus; neither Gandalf nor Aragorn seem to hold themselves above the other members of the fellowship, though as leaders they are responsible to the others. In this group, each member is mutually loyal to all other members.

Eowyn, trained as a shieldmaiden, has the skills of a warrior and is thereby eligible for membership in a Rohirric comitatus. As alluded to above, this comitatus consists of Theoden's household. He provides for Eowyn and Eomer, and in return their love and loyalty is given to him (though undoubtedly Theoden loves them; they are a family as well). The dynamics of the comitatus relationship lead Eowyn to her stand against the Witch-king. After his attack on Theoden, all of his knights are either scattered or dead, except for one, "Dernhelm the young, faithful beyond fear; and he wept, for he had loved his lord as a father" (Return 114). Eowyn upholds her end of the arrangement, even though Theoden appears to have failed in his responsibility to her as a member of the comitatus. In the first place, he is prone to underestimating her worth. When Hama suggests that one of the House of Eorl lead the people during the battle of Helm's Deep, Theoden's first thought is of Eomer, who must go with him, not of Eowyn, whom he does not consider until Hama clarifies his suggestion. Second, leaving her behind in Rohan is, in essence, exiling her from the group. Third, he is likely to (and does) go to his death in Gondor, and because she of her exile, she would have no chance to avenge that death as a proper warrior should do. Eowyn is likely to be condemned to that fate worse than death for not just one, but two reasons. She seeks death not because she has been rejected by Aragorn, but rather because everyone she knows and loves is doing the same thing. The Rohirrim ride to Gondor without hope of coming back. There is nothing left for her; she either endures exile from her comitatus, or she goes with them to what appears from the gloom of the Dawnless day to be certain death.

Fortunately for everyone, Eowyn does not allow herself to be abandoned by her comitatus. Instead, she takes decisive action to fulfil her duty as a member of that group, and in the process achieves heroic deeds. From a teleological viewpoint, achievement of these deeds warrants praise and honor. Regardless of the means it took to get her to the fields of the Pelennor, in the end she was meant to be there.

Eowyn's deed – the slaying of the Witch-king – is one that few others in or near Minas Tirith at the time could have achieved. The Macbeth-like prophecy about the Witch-king is that he cannot be defeated by any living man. He is, however, in considerably more danger than Macbeth, as Middle-earth is full of beings who are not living men. There are Elves, Dwarves, hobbits, wizards, Ents, and the Army of the Dead, not to mention women. Few of them happen to be around during the battle of the Pelennor Fields, however, since it is almost exclusively men save Eowyn and Merry (also left behind by Theoden, his lord) who have ridden to Gondor's aid. Gondor's own defensive forces are similarly lacking in potential Witch-king foes with only Gandalf and Pippin among them. Gandalf on his own is up to the task of battling the Witch-king, and he thinks it his fate to do so. But it falls to Eowyn and Merry to defeat him, since Gandalf is called away to defuse the Denethor powder keg. Loss is inherent in every possibility, but if Eowyn and Merry had not been at Pelennor to stop the Witch-king, the losses could very well have been more grievous. With only Gandalf around, either the Witch-king could have caused more havoc on the battlefield after attacking Theoden, possibly scattering all the armies of the west, or Denethor would have proceeded with his plan to put both himself and Faramir on the pyre.

In addition to being a requirement of fate, Eowyn's presence on the Pelennor enhances the parallels within the narrative. The cancellation of the confrontation at the gate between Gandalf and the Witch-king stands at the beginning of two sequences of events: Gandalf's rescue of Faramir and the Witch-king's attack on the Riders of Rohan. The key figures in these events are Denethor and Theoden, who die within the same hour. If the confrontation at the gate had taken place, Theoden would have been spared, to the loss of Faramir and the parallels between Theoden and Denethor. Tolkien sets up these two characters as foils. Both are aging rulers under threat from evil forces (Sauron and Saruman), both lose sons (Boromir and Theodred), and both acquire a hobbit squire (Pippin and Merry). The difference between the two rulers shows in the oaths they take from their new squires. Merry offers his service to Theoden out of love, as befits a comitatus system. In contrast, Pippin offers service to Denethor out of a sense of duty. If love plays any part in his decision, it is admiration for Boromir, not for Denethor – the lord he swears fealty to. The parallels continue into the next generation with Eowyn and Faramir. They both suffer from the Black Breath of the Nazgul after having gone through experiences that already deprived them of hope, both are thought to be dead or as good as dead but are discovered to be alive and are subsequently healed by Aragorn.

It is fitting, then, that in the end, Eowyn and Faramir are rewarded with a chance for happiness together. In Middle-earth, the characters ultimately get their just deserts for their deeds. Evil characters come to a bad end: Gollum falls into the Cracks of Doom; Sauron is defeated, presumably never to rise again; Saruman dies at the hands of his servant; Wormtongue falls outside of battle full of hobbit arrows after getting kicked in the face. Those characters on the side of good get chances for happiness: Frodo seeks healing in the Undying Lands; Sam becomes a gentlehobbit and starts a large family; Aragorn takes the throne and weds Arwen; Beregond, kicked out of the Guard of the Citadel, gets a new assignment among Faramir's men, for whom he sacrificed his place in the Guard; Gimli spends the rest of his life in Middle-earth in the Glittering Caves of Aglarond, then removes with Legolas to the Undying Lands. Those few good characters who die before the end of the book – Boromir and Theoden – at least get a glorious death in battle, a death a warrior can be proud of. Boromir's case is especially noteworthy because he is not unequivocally good; he gives in to the temptation of the Ring, and had he been able to get it from Frodo, who knows how far he would have gone before realizing his mistake. He does get a chance to repent and is rewarded with a noble end. Similarly, in the larger context of Middle-earth Eowyn is forgiven her transgression, that is, desertion, for her valiant role on the fields of the Pelennor as shown by her reward of a happy life following the War of the Ring. Even if she had fallen before the Witch-king, her death would have been a valiant one. In whatever way that battle had ended, it was worthy of songs of the White Lady of Rohan. Eowyn appears to have been forgiven among her own people, for the Rohirrim remember things in song.

When all is said and done, is Eowyn a heroine or a deserter? Yes. She is both. She had to desert Rohan in order to achieve the heroic deeds fated for her. In doing so, she was motivated by the values of Rohirric culture, namely courage, valor, and loyalty to one's lord. Therefore she deserves and receives forgiveness for her transgression.

Works Cited/Consulted
"The Battle of Maldon." Trans. Douglas B. Killings. July 12, 2004.
http://www.georgetown.edu/faculty/ballc/oe/maldon-trans.html.
Tolkien, J. R. R. "The Homecoming of Beorhtnoth Beorhthelm's Son." The Tolkien
Reader. New York: Ballantine Books, 1966. pp. 3-27.
---. The Return of the King. New York: Ballantine Books, 1966.
---. The Two Towers. New York, Ballantine Books, 1966.