/lit/ - Literature

[Anonymous No.4116471]

Is Eowyn a strong female character?

Why or why not?

[Anonymous No.4116559]

I've heard that she is a weak character because she vowed to give up fighting when she fell in love with Faramir.

Of course, by that point she was crippled and further fighting wasn't going to be necessary anyway, but what do you think /lit/?

[Anonymous No.4116605]

[Anonymous No.4116636]

>>4116559
Why would she be weak because she didn't want to fight anymore? She pretty obviously proved she had what it took to hang with the rest of the men of Rohan.

Though, apart from having the whole prophecied ability to kill the Witchking it was pretty stupid of her to go off and fight. With both Theoden and Eomer already off to fight they all could have died and left Rohan completely without anyone to rule them if things went south.

Interestingly its a pretty common thing in Tolkien's work for bad things to happen to you if you don't listen to other people and just do what you like anyway. I guess Eowyn caught a lucky break.

[Anonymous No.4116667]

>>4116636
The prophecy was just a play on the dual meaning of the word "man" and I doubt Eowyn was even familiar with it.

[Anonymous No.4116684]

>>4116667
You could also play around with that idea further: that some evils cannot be defeated by the brute hand of a man, but by the vigilance of a woman, similarly to the gentle and good-hearted Hobbits and the Ring.

[Anonymous No.4116723]

>>4116684
Eowyn wasn't like the Hobbits though. She was a fighter.

[Anonymous No.4116729]

Sort of off topic but I was reading Robert E. Howards wikipidia page earlier and im not really into fantasy but i found it interesting that it mentioned he was sort of a proto feminist, especially for the time and place.

>"Sword Woman", a story written somewhere between 1932 and 1934, is described by Mark Finn as protofeminist. Told in the first person, the story follows a 16th-century French woman "Dark Agnes" de Chastillon who may be based on Novalyne Price. She rejects her place in society, escapes an attempt at forced marriage and becomes a mercenary. There is no record of Howard ever submitting it for publication but he sent copies to correspondents such as Catherine L. Moore. Although Howard often included weaker female characters in his stories, they contain many stronger women as well. These include the several pirates: Helen Tavrel ("The Isle of Pirates' Doom", 1928), Bêlit ("Queen of the Black Coast", 1934), Valeria of the Red Brotherhood ("Red Nails", 1936) as well as the Ukrainian mercenary Red Sonya of Rogatino ("The Shadow of the Vulture", 1934).[14][15] Female fantasy writers such as Moore, Leigh Brackett, Jessica Salmonson and Nancy Collins have all expressed admiration for the Dark Agnes character.

So if you are into the grrrll power sheeit.

[Anonymous No.4116792]

>>4116723
I'm not comparing her with the Hobbits, what I meant is that normally, in epic fantasy stories, there's a stout hero who does the fighting and winning, and who embodies all the features in a super-protagonist: wisdom, strength, loyalty and rectitude. What Tolkien shows, I believe, is that everyone embody a bit of every quality, some more than others. The Hobbits' 'purity' is enough to steady them from corruption as they bear with them the Ring to Orodruim; and Eowyn's vigilance and womanly grace is what finally lays waste to the brutish Ringwraith. I'm just saying that it's a comparable: the Hobbits are little and frail, yet they successfully take the Ring into Mordor; and Eowyn being a cumbucket possesses a certain quality which defeats the Ringwraith (although the little cunt Hobbit, whose name I cant remember now, helped her in doing so).

It's basically all about the opposites in LOTR. Tolkien who did a lot of study on Beowulf - an epic which has this super-protagonist - wanted to turn things around in his own epic; he wanted the small and the unimportant ones to gain a bigger role than a hero like Aragorn. Eowyn also portrays a very strong feminine side which otherwise is not shown in fantasies of Tolkien's time; though it must be noted that many other female characters in his lore embody motherly love for their people and ancient wisdom which even surpasses Gandalf's (thinking of Galadriel etc), which I feel is a bit cliché.

[Anonymous No.4116827]

Yes (although I don't think the category 'strong female character' is a great one). Because she does what she thinks is right at great personal cost against substantial opposition.

>>4116559
>I've heard that she is a weak character because she vowed to give up fighting when she fell in love with Faramir.

Any extraordinarily stupid thing to say, and I am not sure how to think about anyone who agrees with it; if you really think that fighting is the only way to be strong, I'm not sure what to say to you.

>>4116792
It's more complicated than that. When thinking about this kind of thing in Lord of the Rings, you *always* have to be very aware of the mixture of styles and the way that he mixes different levels of presentation and different modes of representing reality, because those modes of representation affect everything.