Well damn. If Tolkien describes her as being in search of death, I guess that’s the correct answer, but I don’t like it. Without hope is fine, but searching for death isn’t a good attitude for a warrior.
I see Eowyn as ambitious more than anything else. She was infatuated with Aragorn not so much for the man that he was as for the fact that he was the biggest damn hero around. When he gently spurned her, she saw no hope of being great and sought a heroic death for herself out of a frustrated need to accomplish something important.
Everything changed because of the battle. She did indeed accomplish something huge that brought her respect and renown. I love the exchange between Faramir and Eowyn after he opens his heart to 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.’
In a modern army, sure. In a stratified honour culture like Rohan, I don’t think so much. Take the example of latrine duty - damn straight any Anglo-Saxon ætheling would have refused it as beneath him. Stuff like that is for ċeorls, not elite fighting men and certainly not for the royal family. There were some things you did not ask certain people to do because it was beneath their rank, and to rerquire it of them would be an insult worthy of retribution. .
As to the OP - I vote valorous, only tinged with suicidal at the end when the battle is at its worst. I think if she were truly suicidal, she would not have taken Merry along as she did.
But she wasn’t a soldier, she was a warrior. Her duty was to her country, not to her military superior, and under the circumstances - Theoden having been useless for years, and hence untrustworthy, and Aragorn having apparently disappeared for good - what she did was absolutely the right thing. As it turned out, it was necessary for winning the battle, but she wasn’t to know that at the time.
Fuck duty. Men can go out and do whatever they want but women have to stay back and mind the kitchen? She was born with a warrior’s heart and a warrior’s mind, and happened to be born in a woman’s body. HA HA. Sucks to be her! Stay home and never achieve any glory, never have people sing about you, just have babies, one after another.
Don’t get me wrong. Eowyn is not my favorite character. I like her all right, but I don’t love her. She was ambitious, pure and simple. And ambition is not a sin in a woman!
I would have wanted death in that battle, too, rather than live to face Sauron’s hordes afterwards. So would most people. A glorious death in battle rather than the grinding slow death of poverty and abject humiliation? There’s not even a choice. I’d ride out, too, and I’d do it every time.
and to think some people feel Tolkien didn’t write any complex characters.
My only problem with Eowyn’s actions is not knowing who she left in her stead as a leader. Running off from her responsibility to her people bothers me.
Both.
Eowyn is my favorite character in the book. That said…
Imagine if you will that Theodred had not been killed or even badly hurt at the Fords of Isen, and so survives long enough to accompany the Eorlingas. Imagine further that Theoden King had then ordered Eomer to stay behind to rule the people in his stead, giving him the same instructions that he gave the Eowyn in the book; and lastly imagine that Eomer had donned a disguise just as his sister did.
Are you willing to give him the same bye as you give Eowyn?
The (major) characters in LotR tend to be if two types: romantic and novelistic. Aragorn, Gandalf, Saruman, and perhaps Denethor are out of romance no less than, say, The Song of Roland; not only are they not complex, but they’re deliberately not so. Eowyn, Boromir, and the three young hobbits are novelistic, and of varying complexity. Eowyn’s the most complex, for reasons others have already shared.
But for him to rule in Theoden’s stead is not a consolation prize. When men rule, they are given respect. Eomer would have made the decisions, he would have been respected, and in the event of a crisis there he would be the law. Eowyn would have simply herded the civilians. If shit hit the fan, any men remaining would have vied to use her as a tool and seize power. She would have been a decorative ruler and a simple placeholder until a man could take over.
Was she going to be named Queen, or just a figurehead? I don’t really remember. But you can talk about equality of the sexes all you like when the fact is it just didn’t exist in that world. As kushiel says, she would have had to work twice as hard to even gain a fraction of the power Eomer would have had just for asking. And I love Eomer, I really do.
Eowyn may not be my favorite character but she is an amazing female character (out of the handful in the books that have any real depth). I empathize with her thoroughly. Even in this day and age, in 2011, I’m being told I can’t do certain things because it’s a man’s job. I can imagine what it would be like to be told that day after day, for everything that you ever wanted to do.
But let’s twist it a little. Eomer is not the character you are looking for as a subsitute. Eomer had great deeds of glory and heroism to his name already. Let’s talk about a fictitious younger brother, someone who’d always been overshadowed by Eomer, who yearned for honor and glory of his own, who’d always been told he needed to stay home and mind the castle. It’s still not remotely the same as the position of a woman, but let’s say further that what is basically the End of the World comes - and he is told to stay home and mind the keep? And he does what Eowyn does? We are, in fact, talking of Faramir if he had been born into Eomer’s household.
Faramir let his brother go off and he stayed home and dealt with his father and Gondor and Osgiliath. Would I have faulted him had he gone to seek his own honor and glory, presented with what definitely seems to be the End of the World?
No. Not for a second. Would it have been brave and noble for Eowyn to stay home and mind the keep? Perhaps…but I can’t really see how it would have made it any better. Sure, she might have been able to make her people’s lives temporarily bettter…until Sauron’s Eye turned toward them, and they were destroyed. In the meantime, here is your lot in life, live in misery and fear and despair and possibly grinding poverty, and never weaken, and support your people and love them. Or you go and throw your hand in the lot and see if it helps any - and thank goodness she did.
Come to think of it, why did the duty automatically fall to her? Why was it not Eomer who was instructed to stay home and mind the keep?
Just popping in to say that the role Denethor laid out for Eowyn - to lead her people while the armed me were off fighting - is a noble and worthwhile role too. It’s just one that Eowyn did not want.
You mean Theoden’s household, of course.
You make some good points, but I don’t think Faramir is the best example to use. He didn’t value glory in war for its own sake in the first place; just what they protected. So he’d not have been tempted to disobey in the way that Eowyn was, because he didn’t share that sort of ambition. It’s kind of like how he was more able to resist the Ring. It wasn’t simply that he was so honorable and strong-willed; it was that the primary thing the Ring offered – power over others – was something he didn’t want in the first place, just something he was willing to tolerate if such was his duty.
But, if he had had the desires that Eowyn did… then what?
I said Eomer’s household because isn’t he Theoden’s nephew? Because if he had been Theoden’s son then it would have been rather moot. I know what you mean, but I was narrowing household down very specifically in this case.
:: cough Theoden cough ::
Mika, though Eowyen’s being left behind was mostly because of the role of women in that culture, I can think of two other reasons:
- Eomer, certainly, would have advised the king to leave her behind, because he would have known that his sister wasn’t seeking victory; she was seeking death, in the form of getting killed while killing the enemy. (Incidentally, that was almost exactly what he himself was seeking when he thought she was dead on the battlefield. He charges off with utter abandon, because his uncle/foster father is dead and his sister is dead and he simply does not give a fuck what happens to him next as long as he gets to kill some orcs in the process.) Consider his conversation with Aragorn & Gandalf in the Houses of Healing. Unless his brief suicidal impulse, Eowyn’s drepression was not sudden; it had been building a long time. He knew there was something bad wrong in her soul, and he didn’t know what to do about it.
- Theoden loved Eowyn, I think, more than he loved Eomer. It’s that simple. I think in his mind, a conclusion of the affair in which Gondor was saved and he survived, but Eowyn died, would have been a failure.
But that’s not the question you asked. Not why was she left behind, but why she wouldn’t be left behind. If Eomer has a right to seek death, and Theoden has a right to seek death, so does Eowyn. She may be a woman but she’s human too.
But then again I don’t entirely think she was seeking death…not just any death, anyway. A glorious death in battle - well, if that was a man seeking it, I do believe there would be more respect at the very least allotted him, even if people still tried to dissuade him.
She spent her whole life living the life her father gave her, that Mordor and Sauron gave her, a life full of silent pain and heartache and sorrow, and here was an opportunity for at least one famous last stand. No, if she was seeking suicide, she’d have thrown herself into the river. She may have been seeking death, but she sought to give as good as she got before she left this world.
Also, good catch on the Denethor thing - I totally missed it. 
I would say she also wasn’t going to be left behind while others were going off to their deaths. She would have stepped in front of a ballista bolt for Theoden and Eomer alike.
The thing is, Eowyn was not, I think, trying to win the battle. She was trying to end her life in the battle rather than in a siege. (I can easily imagine her thinking that death in battle was better than an outright suicide). If that had been Eomer’s attitude, he’d have needed to be left behind too. Consider also that she handicapped herself by bringing along Merry. Now, of course that ultimately was to the good, because his barrow-blade was needed to help her kill the Witch-King; but that’s a fluke (or, rather, the subtle machination of Eru).
I love Eowyn, but as someone wrote upthread she wasn’t well. Like her uncle, she needed to be freed of Wormtongue’s malevolent influence. Gandalf simply missed it. Fortunately his pupil Faramir caught it at the right time. LotR is full of instances of people making decisions that are bad on their face, but ultimately, through providence, are to the good.
Related question. Why was she able to defeat the Nazgul, other than some Spell of Semantics Literalis? (ie that she was “no man”)
I don’t think that Glorfindel’s prophecy was a condition of what had to be the case for the Witch-King to die. It was simply what would be the case. He got a glimspe of the Witch-King’s future and saw that he would fall at the hand of a woman and adult male hobbit rather than a adult Man. But if Eomer or Theoden or Faramir or some other Man/man had happened to have the barrow-blade, they could have killed the WK too.