Women in The Lord of the Rings

• 1. Introduction

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  Eleven women appear in The Lord of the Rings, and their significance has been debated ever since. Tolkien marked in italics the claim that the love between Sam and Rosie Cotton is 'absolutely essential' to understanding his hero. Their relationship is, by his own description, 'nowhere elaborated.' That tension between importance and near-invisibility defines the argument about women's place in the novel. J. R. R. Tolkien's epic has been called a story about men for boys, with no significant female characters. Yet three of those women, the Elf-queen Galadriel, the warrior Éowyn, and the immortal Arwen, have drawn sustained scholarly analysis. The nine-member Company of the Ring is entirely male. Scholars have asked whether that reflects Tolkien's limitations, or a deliberate vision of what power actually means. The scholar Nancy Enright argued that the women embody Tolkien's critique of conventional power. In her reading, selfless love is stronger than any attempt to dominate by force.

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• 2. The Author's World

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  J. R. R. Tolkien was orphaned as a boy, his father dying in South Africa and his mother in England a few years later. A Catholic priest, Father Francis Xavier Morgan, became his guardian. He attended boys' grammar schools and then Exeter College, Oxford, which at that time admitted only male students. He served with the British Army's Lancashire Fusiliers and saw the horror of trench warfare firsthand. Life as an officer was made bearable partly by the support of a male batman, a personal servant. After the war, he became a professor at the University of Leeds and then at Oxford's Pembroke College.

  In a letter to his son Michael, Tolkien stated that men were active professionally while women were inclined toward domestic life. He told an interviewer that H. Rider Haggard's novel She was his favourite. The scholar Dale Nelson noted that Tolkien 'was evidently spontaneously moved by mythopoeic and straightforward adventure romance,' as found in Haggard's work. He also admired John Buchan's Greenmantle. Nelson described it as a tale of 'desperate chances and plentiful good luck... and the heroism of a handful of men.' In On Fairy Stories, Tolkien wrote that the 'nameless North of Sigurd and the Volsungs' was the best of the imagined worlds he desired. At Oxford, he and C. S. Lewis founded an all-male literary group they called the Inklings.

  Brian Rosebury wrote that Tolkien gave his mother's memory 'something of the numinous intensity' that radiates from Middle-earth's feminine figures. He named Galadriel, Arwen, Goldberry, and the remote Varda among those who carry it. Rosebury also noted that Elrond's demand that Aragorn become king before marrying Arwen echoes a real episode in Tolkien's own life. Father Francis Xavier Morgan once forbade the young Tolkien from a romantic relationship until he came of age.

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• 3. Passivity and Empowerment

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  Robert Butler and John Eberhard wrote in the Chicago Tribune that every race of Middle-earth gets 'their due' in the novel. 'Women, on the other hand, do not.' They judged Tolkien's wife Edith Mary and daughter Priscilla to have had 'practically no influence on his writing.' The scholar Linda Voigts defended Tolkien, arguing he grew up when 'Oxford was a boys' club.' She added that he could not have been expected to think as a modern feminist.

  The critics Candice Fredrick and Sam McBride wrote that Middle-earth is 'very Inkling-like.' 'While women exist in the world,' they wrote, 'they need not be given significant attention.' The scholar Weronika Łaszkiewicz described the result as an image of 'both passivity and empowerment.' She traced this partly to early twentieth-century England, where women normally stayed at home.

  The Tolkien scholars Carol Leibiger and Maureen Thum replied that the charge of stereotyping is 'definitely disproven' by Tolkien's vigorous characterization of Éowyn. The Silmarillion, they noted, contains numerous strong female characters, including Lúthien. Liebiger wrote that Tolkien's female characters appear like 'chaste medieval ladies of courtly romance.' The few who are prominent are in fact extremely powerful in their own right.

  The scholar Nancy Enright stated that those few female characters are 'extremely important in defining power.' She called power the central theme of the novel. Figures like Aragorn and Faramir use traditional masculine power in a manner 'tempered with an awareness of its limitations.' Boromir, who matches the picture of the powerful male warrior, is in Enright's reading 'weaker morally and spiritually' than the others. Boromir falls; the women and the apparently unheroic hobbits survive. Liebiger noted that Tolkien's attitude toward destructive masculine power is 'compatible with that of contemporary feminists.'

  The most striking test case for these competing claims is Galadriel, the Lady of Lothlórien. The theologian Ralph Wood described her as 'terrible in her beauty.'

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• 4. The Lady of Lothlórien

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  Galadriel, as Tolkien portrays her, can read people's thoughts. She uses that power to test each of the nine members of the Fellowship in turn. The scholar David Craig, writing in Mallorn, notes that Tolkien would not have had a man do this. Craig calls it 'a gendered moment.' She gives each member of the Fellowship a personal gift, chosen to assist with both the quest and their private journey. Sam the gardener receives a box of earth to restore the Shire's fertility.

  The scholar Maureen Thum traced what she calls Galadriel's 'masked power.' She appears in the conventional guise of a medieval romance heroine, encountered in a garden, offering medieval-style gifts. She is admired from a distance. She rules her entire realm, not merely its garden. All who enter Lothlórien 'feel the power of the Lady.' By the end of the novel, the reader learns that she carries Nenya, the Ring of Adamant, one of the three Elven-Rings. Wayne G. Hammond and Christina Scull observed that 'Adamant' means both a type of hard stone and 'stubbornly resolute.' Both meanings suit her well.

  Scholars Marjorie Burns and Sharin Schroeder compared Galadriel to Ayesha, the eponymous heroine of Rider Haggard's 1887 adventure story She: A History of Adventure. Both are powerful and beautiful rulers of secluded realms. Ayesha overreaches, and perishes when she re-enters the immortal flame. Galadriel understands that she cannot wield the One Ring, even when Frodo freely offers it to her. She helps destroy it instead. Schroeder noted that Ayesha is capricious, enjoying male admiration, while Galadriel is serious and self-aware. Galadriel, Schroeder wrote, knows 'she is as fallible as they are,' and accepts Frodo's testing of her just as she has tested him.

  The scholar Mac Fenwick compared Galadriel to Circe and Calypso in Homer's Odyssey, rulers of secluded magical realms who offer help to the protagonist. Like those figures, Galadriel gives cloaks, food, wisdom, and light. Her gift to Frodo, the Phial of Galadriel, holds the captured light of Eärendil's star. That light can ward off the giant spider Shelob, the creature opposed to all Elvish light. Fenwick saw Shelob as Galadriel's monstrous opposite, just as the Sirens and Scylla oppose the helpful Circe and Calypso in Homer.

  While Galadriel exercises her power in concealment, Éowyn rides to war wearing a different kind of disguise entirely.

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• 5. Dernhelm's Disguise

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  The scholar Maureen Thum describes Éowyn as wearing, in turn, two masks. Her first appearance is that of a medieval romance heroine, 'a woman clad in white,' standing silent behind King Théoden's throne. Yet she is no meek subordinate: 'she looked on the king with cool pity in her eyes.' She thinks for herself. She appears conventionally beautiful, her long hair 'like a river of gold.' But Thum notes this impression is swiftly countered. Tolkien writes: 'Slender and tall she was... but strong she seemed and stern as steel, a daughter of kings.'

  Against orders, Éowyn rides to battle in the guise of a male Rider of Rohan, adopting the identity of 'Dernhelm.' In Old English, dern means 'secret' or 'concealed,' and helm means 'helmet.' Thum wrote that this name 'conveys Éowyn's rebellious nature far more powerfully than would any overt account of her thinking.' Jessica Yates found that Éowyn meets every requirement for a classic woman warrior. Those requirements include a strong identity, weapons and armour, a horse, skill in fighting, and special powers. Those powers appear when she turns the Ringwraith's prophecy of doom back onto the Witch-King of Angmar himself. Leibiger added that Éowyn's rejection of the domestic role enables her to fulfil the ancient prophecy. The Witch-King will not fall 'by the hand of man,' and she is no man.

  Melissa Hatcher, writing in Mythlore, argued that Éowyn's choice to become a healer reflects Tolkien's 'highest ideal: a fierce commitment to peace.' Some academics have read that transition as weak submission. Hatcher disagreed, describing Éowyn as 'a complete individual who fulfills Tolkien's theme of peace, preservation, and cultural memory.' She cited the philosopher Gregory Bassham's six essential ingredients of happiness in Middle-earth. They include 'delight in simple things, making light of one's troubles, getting personal, cultivating good character, cherishing and creating beauty, and rediscovering wonder.' Hatcher found these qualities present in Éowyn and the hobbit Sam, 'but in very few others.'

  The fantasy author Marion Zimmer Bradley wrote that the hobbit Merry understands why Éowyn belongs in the story while Arwen does not. Éowyn achieves, in Bradley's view, the passing of the 'Heroic Age when girls rebel against being women and dream of male deeds.'

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• 6. Immortal by Choice

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  The Tolkien scholar Verlyn Flieger wrote that Tolkien 'buries' the Arwen-Aragorn romance in his appendixes. It is there 'for the reader to find, if he looks.' Beyond those appendixes, there are 'a few scattered references in the story proper.' Even those mostly do not mention Arwen's name. When Galadriel asks Aragorn what gift he desires as he leaves Lothlórien, he gives no name. 'Lady,' he replies, 'you know all my desire, and long held in keeping the only treasure that I seek. Yet it is not yours to give me, even if you would....'

  Nancy Enright wrote that Arwen, like Christ, is an immortal who voluntarily chooses mortality out of love, here for Aragorn. Her inner power, Enright argued, is 'subtly conveyed' throughout the novel, even in Arwen's near-absence. The scholar Carol Leibiger noted that Arwen's limited involvement follows the general Elvish pattern of retreating to safe havens, established in The Silmarillion.

  Flieger found that the love of Arwen and Aragorn gives Aragorn his most pronounced romance characteristics. The relationship fits the medieval tradition in which a knight must 'endure hardships and perform great deeds for the love of a lady.' Tolkien's own courtship of his wife Edith underlies this. They were kept apart for a time, then reunited. Edith gave up an engagement and her church to be with him, just as Arwen gives up immortality for Aragorn.

  Melissa Hatcher described Arwen as 'a symbol of the unattainable, a perfect match for the unattainable Aragorn in Éowyn's eyes.' Arwen's sacrifice, the giving up of Elvish immortality, connects her to the novel's deepest theme. Sam's delayed marriage to Rosie Cotton carries the same theme in a humbler register, as the scholar Brian Rosebury described it.

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• 7. The Other Women

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  In a letter, Tolkien placed Rosie Cotton at the heart of his novel's meaning. She represents, he wrote, the relation between 'ordinary life' and 'quests, sacrifice, causes, and sheer beauty.' He italicized the word 'absolutely' in calling her essential. Megan N. Fontenot, writing in Tor.com, found that Rosie serves as both an emotional anchor for Sam and a real-world anchor for the reader. In the Appendices, Tolkien described Sam and Rosie's eldest daughter, Elanor, as possessing uncommon Elf-like beauty. Elanor became a maid of honour to Queen Arwen, and eventually inherited the Red Book of Westmarch from Sam when he sailed to Valinor.

  Amy Sturgis, writing in Mythlore, described how Rosie has been 'reimagined' by female fans in response to her 'incomplete literary portrait.' Online fan fiction transformed her into various guises: 'the paragon of the hearth, the iconoclast of the bedroom, or the agent of the supernatural.' Sturgis wrote that this explosion of fan creativity depended on two things. The first was the Internet; the second was Peter Jackson's Lord of the Rings film trilogy, where Rosie was played by Sarah McLeod.

  Lobelia Sackville-Baggins has drawn a different kind of attention. Tolkien told his publisher Allen and Unwin that Lobelia was modelled on an elderly woman he knew. Commentators have suggested she is a caricature of Vita Sackville-West, an aristocratic novelist and gardening columnist of Tolkien's era. The journalist Matthew Dennison noted that Lobelia's name resembles Sackville-West's. Her frustrated attempts to acquire Bag End, Dennison found, mirror Sackville-West's unsatisfied longing to inherit her family home, Knole House. The Tolkien scholar Tom Shippey observed that the Sackville-Bagginses have attempted to 'Frenchify' their name, since 'Sackville' translates as 'Bag Town.' Lobelia, armed with only an umbrella, defied Sharkey's thugs during the Scouring of the Shire. She also gave generously to displaced Shire-folk afterward. Fontenot called her 'a compelling character in her own right' and 'an unexpected hero.'

  The critic Leslie A. Donovan argued that the scarcity of women has led some feminist commentators to see them as disproportionately important and strong. She called this tendency 'the Valkyrie reflex.' Lobelia 'may be valkyrie-like,' Donovan wrote, 'but her greediness and covetousness early in the texts are not common valkyrie traits.' Katherine Hasser, writing in the J.R.R. Tolkien Encyclopedia, found little role-separation between male and female Shire-folk. Several men perform cooking, cleaning, and party arrangements; Bilbo adopts and nurtures the young Frodo alone. Ann Basso, writing in Mythlore, found Goldberry the one exception among the novel's women. Wife of Tom Bombadil and daughter of the River-woman, she appears as a biblical Eve figure to Galadriel's Mary. Hasser noted that Goldberry shares domestic duties with her husband and appears equal to him in status.

  Ioreth works as a healer at the Houses of Healing in Minas Tirith. A talkative woman, she delivers what turns out to be a crucial piece of information. She tells the Wizard Gandalf that 'the hands of the king are the hands of a healer.' That remark prompts Gandalf to bring Aragorn to the wounded survivors of the Battle of the Pelennor Fields, proving his birthright publicly. The theologian Fleming Rutledge compared Ioreth to three Biblical women. The first is Anna the Prophetess, who announces the infant Jesus in Jerusalem. The second is Naaman's Israelite slave girl, who vouches for the prophet Elisha's healing powers. The third is the Samaritan woman at the well, who asks: 'Can this be the Christ?'

  Gilraen, Aragorn's mother, is briefly sketched in the novel. She speaks a sad linnod about her loss of hope for herself. Yet she has given the world her son Aragorn, also called Estel, meaning 'Hope.' Kate Madison's 2009 fan film Born of Hope grew from that small hint. It imagines the lives of Aragorn's parents, Gilraen and Arathorn, and the orc attack on their village.

  Tom Shippey noted that the women may have seemed 'insufficiently prominent' to those responsible for marketing Peter Jackson's Lord of the Rings film trilogy.

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• 8. Jackson's Adaptation

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  Tom Shippey noted that a publicity shot for The Two Towers placed Viggo Mortensen's Aragorn at the centre, sword raised. Arwen and Éowyn flanked him on either side. The image suggested a love triangle. To create that impression on screen, Shippey wrote, 'pretty drastic' changes were required. In Tolkien's text, Éowyn speaks only 42 words, of which just 5 are to Aragorn. In Peter Jackson's film, she appears in 14 of 62 scenes. Arwen does not speak at all in Tolkien's The Two Towers. In the film, she features prominently in 3 scenes. Jackson drew on material from Tolkien's appendix about Arwen. He also reassigned some of Gandalf's dialogue to Grima Wormtongue, so that Éowyn could appear more directly in its place.

  The Tolkien scholar Janet Brennan Croft wrote that in the novel, Arwen is never a temptress or an obstacle. She is 'an inspiration and a source of strength.' Jackson's Aragorn, Croft found, reacts to both women 'as at least distractions if not outright temptresses.' In the film, Aragorn tries to reject Arwen's pendant, even though she says it is hers to give. Tolkien has Aragorn speaking to Éowyn 'with great delicacy of care for her feelings'; Jackson's version is 'even rather harsh towards Éowyn's infatuation.'

  The scholar Maureen Thum took a more generous view. Jackson presents 'a vivid picture' of all three powerful women, their visual importance matching their 'unusually high significance in a novel... dominated... by men.' Thum found that Jackson 'stresses what Tolkien implies' in depicting Éowyn's feelings and battle skill. She considered the invented scenes for Arwen appropriate to the character's significance. In Thum's view, although Jackson often departs radically from Tolkien's text, he accurately represents Tolkien's view of women.

  Croft observed that in Tolkien, Aragorn's faith in Arwen protects him; in Jackson, the same relationship becomes a struggle. That single shift clarifies what the adaptation changed. Tolkien's text insists these women matter, but never stops concealing the degree to which they do.

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