A Safe Arrival

“What Do You Fear, Lady?” Éowyn Knows What She Fears as She Seeks For What She Desires.

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The Fellowship of the Ring by J.R.R Tolkien (Harper Collins 1991) pp. 765-767

In my last piece on this blog I touched on the words of Éowyn that I want to think more about this week.

“What do you fear, lady?” Aragorn asks her. And Éowyn replies:

“A cage,” she said. “To stay behind bars, until use and old age accept them, and all chance of doing great deeds is gone beyond recall or desire.”

It is worth remembering here that The Lord of the Rings was published in the early 1950s and largely written during the late 30s and the 1940s. In other words before the modern women’s movement of the 1960s and beyond. The ideal world of a certain form of conservatism is one in which women largely remain in the home caring for their men and their children. It is one in which my mother had to give up her nursing career in England when she married in 1953. The modern nursing profession in England was created by Florence Nightingale in the mid 19th century and modelled upon a monastic style vocation in which women would give their entire life to nursing without the distraction of home and family. I remember my mother saying when she was particularly cross with the behaviour of myself and my four younger brothers and sisters, “If it were not for you I would be a matron (the senior nurse in an English hospital and a very powerful figure) now!”

So it is worth noting these words that Éowyn speaks in that particular context, the context of Tolkien’s world before the 1960s. She wants to go with the soldiers into battle. She tires of her responsibility as keeper of the hearth for the men until they return. Aragorn speaks truly when he reminds her that a deed that no-one notices is no less noble than one that is seen and praised by all. But Éowyn is no less true when she makes this reply.

“All your words are to say: you are a woman, and your part is in the house. But when the men have died in battle and honour, you have leave to be burned in the house, for the men will need it no more.”

I do not want to think here about the question of whether the role of a women in either public affairs, (in Éowyn’s case, in the world of battle at a time of national crisis), or domestic affairs, (in Éowyn’s case, her responsibility to lead the women of her people as they watch over homes and families so that their men will have something to return to after battle is done), is more noble in one case than another. Clearly Aragorn is saying to her that her domestic role is just as honourable than any role that she might play in battle and in one sense that is true. The creation of an hospitable home is a wonderful thing as anyone who has experienced one will attest to and perhaps our deepest longing is to find rest within such a home after the trials of life. In Tolkien’s legendarium we might think of Rivendell as such a place, The Last Homely House, as Tolkien named it in The Hobbit. As Sam puts it when he and Frodo return there after their adventures for a brief stay, “We’ve been far and seen a deal, and yet I don’t think we’ve seen a better place than this.” (The Return of the King p. 964) There is a constant dialogue within The Lord of the Rings between deeds done beyond the domestic sphere and the places of shelter and hospitality within the story. Perhaps one comment that I might add is that the great places of hospitality are the shared responsibility of both women and men, of Arwen and Elrond, of Goldberry and Tom Bombadil, and at the end of the story of both Rosie Cotton and Sam Gamgee. And in the great battle of the Pelennor Fields great deeds are done, both by men and women, as we shall see.

But although Éowyn speaks bitterly about her feeling of being caged within one set of expectations and denied access to another, the most important thing she speaks of here is her own desire. And at this point in her story what she knows of herself is her fear. Her fear of living a caged life, and especially her fear of living within a degraded cage, “a thatched barn where brigands drink in the reek, and their brats roll on the floor among their dogs”. (The Fellowship of the King p. 849)

Éowyn knows what she fears. She also thinks that she knows what might free her from those fears as we shall consider in the next piece, but I would say that at this point she does not know what she truly wants, what she desires more deeply than anything else. But then for each one of us that is one of the hardest journeys of all. The journey into our hearts in order to discover what we truly desire.

“O Lòrien! The Winter Comes, The Bare and Leafless Day”. Galadriel’s Lament as She Bids The Fellowship Farewell.

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The Fellowship of the Ring by J.R.R Tolkien (Harper Collins 1991) pp. 361-364

Haldir’s return from the Northern Fences of Lothlórien to guide the Fellowship out from Caras Galadhon to the hythe, the small landing place upon the Silverlode where the boats promised by Celeborn await them, gives especial pleasure to Frodo for whom departure from the enchanted land is particularly hard. Their friendship grew in Cerin Amroth when Haldir took Frodo, not just into a place of beauty, but into the deeper meaning of that place to which the beauty pointed. Frodo longed to remain at rest within Lothlórien and that longing could not be satisfied until he came to Valinor itself, to “the far green country” that “opened before him under a swift sunrise” in his dream in the house of Tom Bombadil.

Frodo’s longing for true rest is constantly being refined by the ever growing burden that he bears, the burden of the Ring. As he reluctantly, makes his journey towards Mordor, yet with total dedication, he comes to know that Middle-earth can no longer be a home for him, not even the Shire. Already he has suffered the hurt of the Morgul blade that almost bound him to the will of Sauron to make him a tortured wraith alongside the Nazgûl. Elrond saved him from this fate but it has left its mark. Ahead of him still lies the terrible sting of Shelob in her lair and the tooth of Gollum that will cut the Ring from his finger and which will always remind him of how at the last he was defeated by the power of the Ring and so could not accomplish the heroic deed of casting it into the Fire. And all of these things will separate him, hurt by hurt from the world he once called home, the world that Bilbo said to Gandalf that he was still in love with, and so could not even make the journey to Rivendell that Bilbo was about to take after the long expected party all those years ago.

But if Frodo’s longing is being refined by all that he experiences upon this journey Galadriel’s longing is of a different kind. When the Company meet her swan ship upon the waters of the Silverlode they hear her sing, “sad and sweet”, not only of longing but also of loss. 

O Lórien! The Winter comes, the bare and leafless Day;
The leaves are falling in the stream, the River flows away. 
O Lórien! Too long I have dwelt upon this Hither Shore
And in a fading crown have twined the golden elanor.
But if ships I now should sing, what ship would come to me, 
What ship would bear me ever back across so wide a sea?

In these beautiful lines much of the long story of Galadriel is told. Her rejection of the forgiveness of the Noldor by the Valar at the ending of the First Age was because she wished to be a Queen, free from their rule, and to create her own realm within Middle-earth. This she has done with Celeborn in Lothlórien and it is here that she has created “the heart of Elvendom on earth” singing of leaves of gold so that in her song the golden tree that grew “by the strand of Ilmarin” in the Undying Lands might be remembered in her mallorn trees. But even in the creation of such beauty she and all Elves were caught up into the corruption of Sauron. Although Sauron played no direct part in the making of the three Elven Rings, one of which Galadriel bears, they are inexorably linked to his making of the One Ruling Ring so that if he triumphs all the works of the Elves will be laid bare before him and if he falls and the Ring is destroyed all the works of the Elves must eventually fall with him.

Is there a future for the Elves? Galadriel wonders if she will ever be permitted to return to Valinor after her long rebellion. Will she be condemned to share forever in the fading of the Elves and their works upon earth? Frodo senses her as “present and yet remote, a living vision of that which has already been left far behind by the flowing streams of Time”. And we too mourn the paradise that we have lost and long for a world in which that beauty might be restored and yet be free of the taint of corruption, and yet we long for more, a world that is more than memory in which all fading will be passed, our own included.

“A Golden Light was All About Them”. Arriving at the House of Tom Bombadil and Goldberry.

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The Fellowship of the Ring by J.R.R Tolkien (Harper Collins 1991) pp.118-120

I have always found that the trials and tribulations of a day’s travel, however difficult, however wearying, are forgotten swiftly if the day ends well. Even, on one occasion, arriving at a police station in a small Zambian town at 3 o’clock on a bitterly cold morning in pitch blackness and being permitted to sit on a chair next to a charcoal brazier felt like an arrival in a place of safety, welcome and comfort.

The arrival of the hobbits at the house of Tom Bombadil and Goldberry is in some ways like my memories but it far surpasses them in its wonder. As they arrive at the house and its open door they hear a voice singing, “as young and as ancient as Spring, like the song of a glad water flowing down into the night from a bright morning in the hills”. It is Goldberry, the River Daughter.

And then, words that read like a benediction which end the chapter.

“And with that song the hobbits stood upon the threshold, and a golden light was all about them.”

I think that we need to remind ourselves what a day the weary travellers have had; beginning before dawn at Crickhollow and the first wary steps into the Old Forest, then the terrifying encounter with Old Man Willow and then the bewildering yet wonderful rescue by Tom Bombadil. That would be enough by itself but there is a strangely unsettling passage before the chapter reaches its beautiful resolution. If we were to use a musical analogy we might describe it as a coda, the Italian word for a tail. A coda is a concluding section of a piece of music that either extends or re-elaborates themes heard earlier in the piece.

This coda is the brief passage that describes the journey that the hobbits take along the path by the Withywindle in the direction that Bombadil has outlined to them. So strange and unsettling is this passage that some readers have described a feeling of doubt when reading it for the first time. Can the hobbits really trust Tom Bombadil? Are they being lured into a trap? Far from the fears of the day being at an end they seem to return with renewed intensity.

“It became difficult to follow the path, and they were very tired. Their legs seemed leaden. Strange furtive noises ran among the bushes and reeds on either side of them; and if they looked up to the pale sky, they caught sight of queer gnarled and knobbly faces that gloomed dark against the twilight, and leered down at them from the high bank and the edges of the wood. They began to feel that all this country was unreal, and that they were stumbling through an ominous dream that led to no awakening.”

Should we try to reassure the hobbits by telling them that far worse terrors lie ahead for them or shall we let them be? Perhaps it is just as well that all that has happened to them in this day has been easily solved and that the fears of this last part of the journey all lie in their imaginations. The hobbits are learning one step at a time so that when real dangers come and there is no one to rescue them they will stand bravely, ready to go to their deaths if need be.

But “today’s trouble is enough for today” as the gospels put it and so we will leave them in peace even though they do not know it is peace. The golden light flowing from the door of the house to which they wearily stumble still awaits them. And when they have been fed and are sitting at their ease they will not be thinking of the fears of the last part of the journey, the strange coda to a fearful piece of music that they had hoped had been resolved completely when Tom Bombadil had first appeared. But now, at last it is resolved and they are safe from all that can harm them. The glad water in the hills has reached down into the terrors of the night and has completely transformed them.

I have done my best to find the names of the artists who have produced the artwork displayed in this week’s post. I hope they will forgive me where I have not found the name. I am more than happy to include it where I am informed. Do look at the many imaginings of the House of Tom Bombadil and Goldberry in your search engine. It is well worth doing.