The Return of the King by J.R.R Tolkien (Harper Collins 1991) pp. 767-768

It is a grievous thing to witness the humiliation of a proud woman as Legolas and Gimli do the humiliation of Éowyn before Aragorn. I do not know whether Tolkien deliberately draws our attention to this contrast, but shortly after the scene in which Éowyn falls to her knees before the man who has, to her mind at least, rejected her, we read of Arod, the horse who has borne both Legolas and Gimli, standing before the door that leads to the Paths of the Dead, “sweating and trembling in a fear that was grievous to see”. In both cases it is the witnesses that grieve. Legolas and Gimli, proud sons of lords of their people, grieve to see a daughter of the king’s brother, casting aside her dignity in a last and utterly desperate attempt to persuade Aragorn to take her with him to Gondor and the battle. It is a grievous thing for those who hold honour dear to see such a thing. And we see the Dúnedain of the North, for whom the bond between themselves and their horses is a precious thing, grieved to see a horse bereft of its dignity.

Dignity and honour are things precious to us. As we leave the innocence of our childhood behind and begin to enter our adulthood, we do the work of creating a persona. I still remember my first night in a dormitory in an English boarding school, a boy who was fourteen years old, lying in bed with the sleeping forms of four other boys in the beds round about me, making conscious choices about the person I felt I needed to be if I were to be accepted by my fellows. I was no longer going to be the child that had slept in my parents’ home among my younger brothers and sisters just the night before, I had begun the process, quite literally, of re-inventing myself, and presenting a person of dignity to the world, worthy of the world’s respect, was central to that project.

Wise people have said that no-one should give their Self away until they have a Self, strong enough, secure enough, to be able to give. Until that moment comes then it is right and proper that the primary task of each person is to build a strong Self. This is the task in which Éowyn is now engaged and until now she has undertaken this task in acts of service as has been expected of a woman of her status among her people. While for other women among the Rohirrim this has meant serving a household, for her it has meant serving a king. And while others may have regarded such a position as being worthy of honour, for her it has become merely another form of servitude. Later, when she lay near to death in the Houses of Healing in Minas Tirith, Gandalf spoke truly of her in these words:

“Who knows what she spoke to the darkness, alone, in the bitter watches of the night, when all her life seemed shrinking, and the walls of her bower closing in about her, a hutch to trammel some wild thing in?”

So, as she kneels in desperation before the man she thinks of as her last hope of freedom from her shrinking existence, as she casts aside her dignity and merely asks for pity, we see a woman for whom the creation of a strong Self amidst the choices that seem to lie before her is an impossibility. She will make one more attempt to recover something of that dignity when she asks Théoden to allow her to ride to Minas Tirith among the Rohirrim, but when he refuses her request, she takes the matter into her own hands, going in the disguise of a man, knowing that her abilities as a horsewoman are such that she can match any one of them. And she will reach a place in the battle where she will perform a deed that no man could have done, a deed that will be one of the turning points of the battle.

All of this will be a part of her journey towards Selfhood. The words that she speaks in desperation into the darkness as her life shrinks about her, the words that she cries out to Aragorn in desperation before he takes the Paths of the Dead, her appeal to Théoden to let her ride with the Rohirrim to Minas Tirith, her action in going with the riders in the disguise of a man, her battle with the Witch-king of Angmar on the Pelennor Fields, her meeting with Faramir in the Houses of Healing, all of these are stages on her road to Freedom, her road to Selfhood. Such a road can never be a transition from one success after another. The authentic road will always be a road downwards before it can be an upward path.