The Houses of Healing

Éowyn and Faramir Declare Their Love as Éowyn Understands her Heart at Last

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Éowyn receives her brother’s invitation to join the triumph at the Field of Cormallen after the fall of Sauron but she does not go. Once more the Warden of the Houses of Healing becomes anxious about her unhappiness and bids Faramir take time from his duties as Steward of Gondor to speak with her.

Faramir is a man of wise insight and he has learned much from the day he spent with Merry and so he says to her plainly:

“You do not go because only your brother called for you, and to look on the Lord Aragorn, Elendil’s heir, in his triumph would now bring you no joy. Or because I do not go, and you desire still to be near me. And maybe for both these reasons, and you yourself cannot choose between them. Éowyn, do you not love me, or will you not?”

In March 1941 Tolkien wrote a remarkable letter to his son, Michael, on the subject of marriage and relations between men and women. It is remarkable partly because it displays a closeness between father and son that is sadly very rare. Also because of its depth of insight. I think that most men on reading this letter would would wish they had enjoyed this closeness with their own father or that they could achieve it with their sons. Richard Rohr describes the general poverty of relations between fathers and sons as “The Father Wound”. Faramir has known this wound deeply but Tolkien, who never knew his own father shows that it need not be passed on to the next generation .

In the letter Tolkien writes about the Western romantic idea of courtly love in which a great lady would enjoy the devotion and admiration of young men, often expressed through poetry or deeds that would prove their love. A physical expression of the love was considered unacceptable although the two great Arthurian love stories of Guinevere and Lancelot and of Tristan and Isolde show that such relationships could move disastrously from the idealised form to the physical form. In his letter Tolkien also notes that to idealise a woman, to grant her some kind of divinity, does her no good at all. Tolkien describes this as “false and at best make believe. The woman is another fallen human being with a soul in peril.”

I refer to this, partly because I believe it to be Éowyn’s temptation. She desired the adoration of the greatest knight of his age and, with it, the adoration of all men and women. I also wonder if Faramir was tempted to idealise Éowyn. “Were you the blissful Queen of Gondor, still I would love you.” Perhaps not, perhaps Faramir simply feels that he has to declare his love with as much passion as he can to make Éowyn see it. Thankfully for his own sake he never has to know what it would be like to love the Queen of Gondor without hope! Éowyn sees reality at last or, as Tolkien puts it so beautifully, “the heart of Éowyn changed, or else at last she understood it”.

It is only possible to love flesh and blood although such love always points us beyond itself towards divine love which we glimpse in the temptation to idealise. Tolkien puts this powerfully in his letter. Every marriage, in a certain sense he writes, is a mistake. We could all find “more suitable mates”. It is possible to spend a whole lifetime either looking for the perfect mate or saying, “if only”. And we will never know. Even the best of marriages requires self-denial, perseverance and forgiveness. They require the decision to say the greatest, Yes, to reality, to the real person in front of us. I know that it has become popular to create our own wedding vows, as if by doing so we give the wedding ceremony more authenticity, but I become more deeply impressed by the vows of the old English Sarum Rite which is over five hundred years old and in which each person promises to “love and to cherish” for better for worse, for richer for poorer, in sickness and in health, till death us do part”. Both Éowyn and Faramir have to renounce some kind of idealised form of romantic love and commit themselves to the real person in front of them.

The Meeting of Éowyn and Faramir. Defences Begin to Come Down.

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Why would we want to be unhappy, to choose thoughts of darkness, even to seek out death? Why would we choose to build defences against the light, using all our strength to try to keep it out? There are some, like Sauron, who have chosen the dark, believing that the light is some small, temporary and fragile thing that must ultimately fail against the overwhelming power that is darkness. Sauron has made his choice and it is fixed for ever. Happily this is not the path that Éowyn has taken. She has not said the great “Yes!” of her life to the dark.

But her soul is in danger. The years of hopeless misery in the halls of Théoden as he became a shrivelled figure dominated by the whispering of Wormtongue have left their mark upon her. At least in part she regards herself as a woman from “a thatched barn where brigands drink in the reek, and their brats roll on the floor among their dogs”. Briefly a door opened into her inner darkness and the glorious light that is Aragorn shone into her heart. She allowed herself to believe that he would take her away from her unhappiness to a place of glory. She would become a queen, adored by the world and untouched by her past.

And then her fragile dream was snatched away. Aragorn chose the Paths of the Dead as he was destined to do and he rejected her love, even refusing to take her with him as the shieldmaiden that she believed herself to be. Since that moment she has sought death in battle believing that this is the only escape for her from dishonour and misery. She will not risk to hope for herself again. The pain of rejection feels too great. She cannot ride with the host to battle with Mordor as she did before and so she is condemned to wait, longing for the safe return of her brother whom she loves but refusing to hope for herself again. The danger for her soul is that the darkness that she believes to be her fate might yet become a choice. She might become embittered, vengeful and cruel or she might take the road of despair just as Denethor did.

And then she meets Faramir in The Houses of Healing and everything begins to be transformed within her. Her first words are proud but “her heart faltered, and for the first time she doubted herself. She guessed that this tall man, both stern and gentle, might think her merely wayward, like a child that has not the firmness of mind to go on with a dull task to the end.”

This sternness and gentleness so wonderfully combined in one man she has met before in Aragorn and as with Aragorn she knows that Faramir is a mighty warrior, tested in battle. Of course she does not wish to appear like a little girl before him but her defences remain firm against hope. Then Faramir does something that Aragorn could never do.

“Éowyn of Rohan, I say to you that you are beautiful. In the valleys of our hills there are flowers fair and bright, and maidens fairer still; but neither flower nor lady have I seen till now have I seen in Gondor so lovely, and so sorrowful.”

Éowyn still resists, speaking of herself as a shieldmaiden and ungentle, but her defences are a little weaker. She is not yet ready to take the risk that any who fall in love must take; the risk of hurt and rejection. And she does not yet want to take the risk that lies beyond that fear, that to fall in love means to give yourself away into the hands of another, not just when all seems fair but in times of sorrow and anger too. The old English marriage service speaks of having and holding “for better for worse, for richer for poorer, in sickness and in health, to love and to cherish”. Éowyn is still far from being ready to make that choice but at the very least she has ceased to walk away from its possibility. Faramir has called her back towards the light.

Image by Anke Eissmann anke.edoras-art.de

 

Éowyn of Rohan Is In Great Unrest in The Houses of Healing

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The times in our lives of not knowing are a great trial and Éowyn, the Princess of Rohan who rode to the Battle of the Pelennor Fields in deep despair close to Théoden who had been as a father to her and there did battle with the Lord of the Nazgûl and slew him, is “in great unrest”. I will not try to compare her suffering with that of Frodo and Sam in their last journey through Mordor or that of the Host of the West as they march without hope towards inevitable annihilation at the Black Gate. This is not a desire to diminish her suffering. She must carry her own load as best they may and do, as we all must, to support others in theirs. But Éowyn’s burden is hard in part because there seems to be no meaning to it. When she rode to battle with her people she looked for death in battle because the man that she had hoped would bring the meaning and the dignity that she desired had rejected her and now this same man had brought her back from the edge of death. But for what?

The Warden of the Houses of Healing is in no doubt as to what her purpose is and that is to get better and he is distressed to see that she has left her bed. “You should not have risen from your bed for seven days yet, or so I was bidden. I beg you to go back.”

Éowyn, on the other hand, knows that this is not her purpose. Simply to be healed in body is not enough for her. She does not even desire it. Gandalf spoke of her true dis-ease when she was first brought to the Houses of Healing from the battle.

“She, born in the body of a maid, had a spirit and courage at least the match of yours. Yet she was doomed to wait upon an old man, whom she loved as a father, and watch him falling into a mean dishonoured dotage; and her own part seemed to her more ignoble than that of the staff he leaned on.”

For Tolkien there is nothing unusual about a woman with the spirit that Éowyn has. His greatest love story is the tale of Beren and Lúthien, names that are written upon the stones beneath which he and his wife, Edith, are buried in an Oxford churchyard. In that story Lúthien goes into battle alongside the man she loves with a passion and ferocity that overcomes both Morgoth and Sauron too, the greatest foes of all. That Tolkien gave the name of Lúthien to his wife means that he recognised this spirit in her. Aragorn was inspired by this greatest of love stories in his love for Arwen of Rivendell and Éowyn is a woman who longs for a hero of Beren’s quality.

She also wants to be a queen. Gandalf spoke of this too to her brother, Éomer as he remembered Saruman’s contemptuous words at the doors of Orthanc.

“What is the house of Eorl but a thatched barn where brigands drink in the reek, and their brats roll on the floor among their dogs?”

So Éowyn is “in great unrest”. Death in battle has been denied her, for a time at least, and she is permitted no other occupation. What can she do?

I think that she reaches inside herself and begins to find her own answer. She is a woman of truth. She may not yet know her own heart but she does not lie to it or seek to deceive it either. This is essential to the healing that she will find in this place.

“Who commands in this City?”

“I do not rightly know,” the  Warden answers. “Such things are not my care. There is a marshal over the Riders of Rohan; and the Lord Húrin, I am told, commands the men of Gondor. But the Lord Faramir is by right the Steward of the City”

I am so glad that it was not the marshal of Rohan or the Lord Húrin that Éowyn asks to see, but I am not surprised either. Éowyn rightly knows her own greatness and that only an equal can meet her need.

 

 

The King’s Leaf. A Guest Blog by Olga Polomoshnova.

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I have been enjoying Olga’s work in recent months and so I invited her to contribute a Guest Blog based upon the chapter in The Lord of the Rings entitled The Houses of Healing. I am delighted that she agreed to do so and so I publish her piece today prefaced by a short introduction about herself. I do hope that you will enjoy this and other work that she has written.

Olga is a teacher of English with a passion for languages, British music, the works of J.R.R Tolkien, mythology and fantasy literature. You can find her reflections on the world of Middle-earth here https://middleearthreflections.com

A lot of folklore tales might sound unbelievable to those living years away from when these stories were first composed, but most of folklore has a grain of truth in it and is deeply rooted in the past. Speaking of the traditions or culture of the days gone by, such tales can be passed from generation to generation, but their factual value may diminish as ancient lore becomes forgotten and substituted by more contemporary ideas. However, at a certain point these beliefs of old can return and come to life before the unbelieving eyes of modern onlookers.

This is exactly what several characters experience throughout The Lord of the Rings. Tales which have long been dismissed as mere fiction or pure nonsense, come alive, as if bringing the magic and the fascination of old into the increasingly practical world. When we enter the Houses of Healing in The Return of the King and watch Aragorn tending the sick, we see a beautiful legend return from the oblivion of a mere myth.

When Aragorn asks Ioreth the old wife for athelas, his request is met with mild surprise. At first she does not even understand what herb Aragorn means until he uses its other name – kingsfoil:

No, we have none of it, I am sure. Why, I have never heard that it had any great virtue; and indeed I have often said to my sisters when we came upon it growing in the woods: ‘‘kingsfoil’’, I said, ‘‘’tis a strange name, and I wonder why ’tis called so; for if I were a king, I would have plants more bright in my garden’’
(Return of the King, p. 159)

Ioreth’s reaction plainly shows that a lot has been forgotten in Gondor, where the plant is not known to possess any healing virtues. Athelas is valued mostly for its refreshing scent and ability to cure headaches. In truth, Ioreth fails to understand the real meaning and implication of the name kingsfoil, thinking that having a name like that the herb should somehow look bright enough to fit kings’ gardens: she simply judges the book by its cover, looks on the outside but not inside.

When summoned, the herb-master is equally puzzled by Aragorn’s asking for athelas. He echoes Ioreth’s words in his ignorance of any virtuous qualities of this plant. However, he does remember the old verse:
When the black breath blows
and death’s shadow grows
and all lights pass,
come athelas! come athelas!
Life to the dying
In the king’s hand lying!
(Return of the King, p. 160)
The herb-master dismisses the verse as a mere doggerel «garbled in the memory of old wives» which they repeat «without understanding» and shows a somewhat scornful attitude to the rhyme, disbelief in athelas’s healing qualities. For him, just like for Ioreth, athelas and the verse about it are nothing more than a pack of meaningless nonsense. But both – the plant’s name and the verse bear a lot of significance and point to the old myth than will soon become reality for Gondor.

The word kingsfoil consists of the element king and the Old French element foil, which means «leaf»: the name of the herb in English literally means «king’s leaf». Both – its Sindarin name athelas and Quenya name asëa aranion, presumably bear the meaning «beneficial of kings». So, the herb’s name in any language does not imply, as Ioreth mistakenly thinks, that this humble-looking plant is supposed to grow in kings’ gardens for decoration, but that in the hands of the true king these leaves can work wonders.

By the time of the War of the Ring Gondor had been kingless for a long time. Under the rule of Stewards the people of those lands forgot a lot of lore which used to be common in the time of kings. So it is no wonder that the virtuous qualities of athelas are no longer remembered there: there was no king to use it in healing. Brought to Middle-earth by Númenóreans (who, in their turn, might have received it from the Elves of Tol Eressëa), athelas grew very sparsely and mostly near the places of their former dwellings. In the Third Age only those who wandered in the wild retained the knowledge of athelas’s healing properties.

When Ioreth weeps for the gravely wounded Faramir, little does she know that her wish is soon to be granted:

Alas! if he should die. Would that there were kings in Gondor, as there were once upon a time, they say! For it is said in old lore: The hands of the king are the hands of a healer. And so the rightful king could ever be known.’
(Return of the King, p. 154)
Especially powerful in the royal hands, athelas points to Aragorn as to the rightful king of Gondor – the heir of Isildur. With the war in progress, Gondor is going through very hard times. Amid the chaos of the destroyed Minas Tirith Aragorn’s mysterious arrival brings not only cure to the sick, but also hope to the people of Gondor: the true King has finally returned.

Works consulted:
1. J. R. R. Tolkien – The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring; HarperCollinsPublishers; London; 2001.
2. J. R. R. Tolkien – The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King; HarperCollinsPublishers; London; 2001.

“Come Athelas! Come Athelas! Life to the Dying in the King’s Hand Lying!”

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As Aragorn crushes two leaves of athelas in his hands after breathing upon them “straightway a living freshness filled the room, as if the air itself awoke and tingled, sparkling with joy”. And so begins Aragorn’s healing journey from Faramir to Éowyn and then to Merry.

I said last week that I have been looking forward to writing about this chapter in The Lord of the Rings for some time now and so I don’t intend to rush through it. I also intend at some point to include a guest blog from a young writer whose work has impressed me so do look out for that. But this week I want to begin with something a little more personal, a memory that was jogged as I read the chapter again last week. And it was the description of the fragrance of athelas that I refer to here.

Readers will remember that when Frodo was wounded in the attack of the Nazgûl upon the camp beneath Weathertop Aragorn had Sam look for kingsfoil and they will remember how its fragrance lifted their hearts and its virtue stayed the evil influence of the poison in Frodo’s wound long enough for them to reach Rivendell. Now as Aragorn is revealed as king the fragrance is immeasurably greater and so too is the healing virtue. It “came to each like a memory of dewy mornings of unshadowed sun in some land of which the fair world in Spring is itself but a fleeting memory.” And what follows for each is a fragrance that speaks of the particular way in which each is healed, made whole.

What this recalled for me was a dream that I had about fifteen years ago. In my dream I find myself in a hotel bedroom with a woman lying beside me and water pouring through a crack in the ceiling over my head. I climb out of bed telling the woman (who I never identify) that I will go and get the problem sorted out and find myself immediately in a field with a fence to my right and a long queue of people in front of me. I ask someone what the queue is about and they tell me that the Pope is in a shed in the field just up ahead and that they are waiting to see him. I decide to wait too and soon find myself in the darkened shed. The Pope is John Paul II and he is in the last stage of his life, a frail old man. Behind him a priest with shadowed face waits in attendance. No one speaks. I simply know that I must kneel before the Pope and wait for his blessing. He lays his hands upon my head and as he does so the room is filled with the most wonderful fragrance. I stand up knowing that everything is alright and that I do not need to return to the hotel room.

Of course it is my memory of the fragrance in the dream that was recalled when I read this chapter once again and it is the fragrance in relation to the revelation of Aragorn as king that I want to briefly ponder here as I think about my dream. In his book on male initiation, Adam’s Return, Richard Rohr thinks about the power of the king archetype that is so rarely revealed in most men except in its dark form in the bully or in the weak form endlessly complaining that no one is paying sufficient attention to him. Rohr describes the true king as “the master of all power, so much so that he can risk looking powerless… The kingly part of a man connects heaven and earth, spiritual and material, divine and human, inner and outer. When you meet a man who seems a bit larger than life, you know he has some king energy. He is a healer of souls.”

The king that I met within myself in my dream was old, not fearing to risk looking powerless. The power came in the blessing which is the true revelation of the king energy just as it is in Aragorn. My disordered state was healed in turning to the king energy within me. I can say quite candidly that it is still being healed to this very day but I am learning in my contemplative practice where to turn and I think there is hope for me yet.

The Hands of the King are The Hands of a Healer. Aragorn in The Houses of Healing.

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I have been looking forward to this part of The Lord of the Rings for some time now. Regular readers of this blog will know that I have been carefully reading Tolkien’s wonderful story and that each week I write a reflection or meditation inspired by what I have just been reading. And so in recent weeks I have been reading Tolkien’s account of The Battle of the Pelennor Fields and the Death of Théoden and the Fall of the Witch King of Angmar at the hands of Éowyn of Rohan and Meriadoc Brandybuck of The Shire.

And now I want to turn to the beautiful account of the coming of the King to The Houses of Healing and in the weeks to come we will walk with him to the beds of Faramir, Éowyn and Merry and feel for ourselves the power of the king and perhaps, from afar, catch the fragrance of athelas. 

And just in case regular readers may have noticed that I have not made any reference to the timely arrival of Aragorn upon the battlefield that is because I want to reflect on that event through the telling of the story by Legolas and Gimli.

The battle that has been fought has been unlike any other in that a power is at work in the wounded that is named “the Black Shadow, for it came from the Nazgûl”. Tolkien tells us that “those who were stricken with it fell slowly into an ever deeper dream, and then passed to silence and a deadly cold, and so died”. Viktor Frankl describes something remarkably similar in his account of working as an inmate physician in the Nazi concentration camps with nothing more available to him than a few bottles of aspirin. He noted that if someone lost hope and a sense of meaning then they would almost certainly soon die. But if they were able to hold onto hope and meaning then there was a good chance that they might survive the many epidemics that swept through the camps even though they were half starved.

It is the coming of the king that brings hope and meaning to the stricken. In their seminal work, King, Warrior, Magician, Lover Robert Moore and Douglas Gillette describe the energy of the King Archetype as being one that brings order and a sense that everything is in its right place without anything needing to be forced and as one that brings blessing and fruitfulness. It is not just Aragorn who brings this archetype to bear. We saw the impact that Théoden’s arising from his chair to lead his people once again had upon them. It was literally transformative. This transformation shows why Saruman and his agent, Wormtongue, put so much effort into unmanning the king. And now in the account of the events in the Houses of  Healing Tolkien makes it clear that Gandalf is unable to heal those who have fallen under the Black Shadow. It is not that Aragorn has a magic that Gandalf does not have but that he can connect to the King Archetype in a way that Gandalf cannot. Aragorn is the king.

In English history the belief that the king or the queen was a healer persisted right into the 18th century and a liturgy for the royal touch was included in the Book of Common Prayer that was possessed by most literate people of the time. It was only with the growing influence of the Enlightenment that the monarch came just to make a gift of money instead of also laying hands upon the sick. The Queen still makes the gift in a service on Maundy Thursday each year. Shakespeare wonderfully describes the older practice in lines from Macbeth,

“Strangely visited people, all swol’n and ulcerous,  pitiful to the eye, the mere despair of surgery, he cures, hanging a golden stamp about their necks, put on with holy prayers.”

It is this ancient belief that Tolkien draws upon here in the stories of Aragorn’s healings, and ancient belief that I would argue was seen at work in Viktor Frankl’s experience in the Nazi concentration camps. Frankl showed implicitly in a way that Moore and Gillette do explicitly that access to the King Archetype is available to all of us and will order, heal and bless.

 

Why Does Éowyn Want to Die?

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This week’s blog post in the current series of guestblogs on Éowyn of Rohan comes from David Rowe. As with Jennifer Leonard’s piece that was featured last week it ends with Éowyn’s healing journeying first with her desire to die. ‘David is the writer of ‘The Proverbs of Middle-earth’, soon to be published by Oloris Media. He tweets at @TolkienProverbs and @mrdavidrowe, and the following is an adaptation of a passage from his book.’ I am delighted that he has offered this excerpt from his work for this platform.

If you have a piece on Éowyn that you would like to include here then please send it to me in Word format using my email address mail@stephenwinter.net. Please include some detail about yourself and any links to your work that you would like me to include. 

 

‘I do not desire healing… and I do not desire the speech of living men. ‘I looked for death in battle… to ride to war like my brother Éomer, or better like Théoden the king, for he died.’

When first seen in her guise as Dernhelm, Merry shivers, perceiving in Éowyn ‘the face of one without hope who goes in search of death.’ Having disobeyed orders and ridden to war, rather than remaining in Rohan as the King’s regent, she achieves what no man could: the killing of the Lord of the Nazgûl. In doing so she rises higher than any woman, at any time, in any kingdom of Men, and yet her emptiness remains utter.

Recovering in the Houses of Healing, Éowyn feels like a prisoner: she is jealous of the dead, jealous of the now-departed host of the West, even jealous of those with a better view from their windows. How did she reach this point?

Éowyn grew up as an orphan, adopted into the King’s household but with neither mother nor adopted mother. Her lack of female role-models, alongside the restrictions that barred her from emulating the nation’s heroes (virtually all of whom, according to the Appendices, were male), left Éowyn powerless: unable to give vent to the determination, steely character, and latent greatness within her. With a spirit and courage at least the match of Éomer’s, but without the opportunity to fight for the fields of Rohan with a company of riders as he does, Éowyn lacks comradeship. She is left isolated and alone, an indomitable shieldmaiden reduced to ‘dry-nursing’ the declining King – a role she deemed ‘more ignoble than that of the staff he leaned on.’

The arrival of Aragorn to Edoras both sparks Éowyn back to life and plunges her into despair. As Faramir correctly diagnoses, ‘You desired to have the love of the Lord Aragorn… but when he gave you only understanding and pity, then you desired to have nothing, unless a brave death in battle.’ Having had her love and hope of high honour and nobility exposed as vain, Éowyn withers; seeking only the honour of a valiant end she goes ‘in search of death.’ Knowing that none have ever returned from the Paths of the Dead, she begs Aragorn to take her there with him, but is refused, and instead goes into disguise in order to ride to Minas Tirith with the host of the Eorlingas.

Where will wants not, a way opens, Éowyn declares as Dernhelm, Good will should not be denied. Although these words are spoken to and for Merry, a double meaning is also plain: Éowyn is using them to justify her own disobedience. While, by quoting traditional proverbs, Éowyn shows that she is still in touch with Rohan’s philosophical tradition, she is actually being unfaithful to its wisdom. In place of the Rohirric devotion to duty is a different fearless determination: that of self-destruction. While Théoden, Éomer, and Rohan at large embody the belief that doing your duty is fundamental to moral goodness, Éowyn scorns such a perspective. ‘Too often have I heard of duty,’ she says. ‘May I not now spend my life as I will?’

Disguised as Dernhelm, Éowyn becomes free at last, but the freedom she gains is the liberty to self-harm. She can ride with the host of the Rohirrim, but her motives are not theirs. A nihilism has taken over, arguing that life carries no intrinsic value or moral purpose, and therefore can be used (or disposed of) at the individual’s whim. Éowyn has become a lonely, solitary death-seeker, surrounded by courageous, faithful men, riding bravely against hopeless odds. She is alien even to her own people; not part of a company, nor sharing in the national motivations. She derides compassion, and is a stranger to dutiful courage and the great virtues. It is therefore fitting that, when she subsequently fails in her quest for death, she meets her match in Faramir, in whom these traits are so prevalent.

Éowyn emerges from her nihilistic darkness not through being argued into submission, but by being loved. Perhaps because she recognises that Faramir is a man ‘whom no Rider of the Mark would outmatch in battle’, she is able to listen to him and he to command her respect. Faramir draws her out of despair with his company and kindness, saying Do not scorn pity that is the gift of a gentle heart, referring both to Aragorn’s reaction to her and to his own love. And it is as this great warrior and leader willingly exposes his vulnerable core that ‘the heart of Éowyn changed, or else at last she understood it.’ The darkness departs, and she determines to marry, to become a healer, and to ‘love all things that grow’. Éowyn finally stops fighting, and Faramir is able to declare to the Warden:

‘Here is the Lady Éowyn of Rohan, and now she is healed.’

Eowyn: She is now Healed

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Dear friends and readers, I promised when I put out my request for a Guestblog on Eowyn of Rohan that I would begin to publish them during the week beginning July 25th and here is the first one. It has been written by Jennifer Leonard who writes as Lover of Lembas. Her work can be found at loveroflembas.blogspot.com

If you have not yet submitted a piece there is still space for a couple more. Please include a link to your blog or website so that I can publicise it.

 

Eowyn was raised in a culture that was totally war-obsessed.  The most glorified and praised members of her society were the warriors and soldiers.  Eowyn resented herself because she could not participate in the war-culture as a woman and it drove her half-mad.  Instead of seeing her person and her womanhood as a beautiful thing which lends itself to creating life, she saw it as “hutch to trammel some wild thing in”.

It was not until Eowyn met Faramir in the Houses of Healing (appropriate since it was there she was healed not only in body but in mind) that she learned there is more than war, more than glorified killing, and more to honor than before she knew.   Faramir put war into its true context for Eowyn—not something to be praised in and of itself.  Warriors and soldiers should be honored in the measure that they defend their people with their sacrifice.  But killing should never be seen as a wholly good thing and no one should aspire to be a warrior for the sake of war.  Faramir sums this up by saying: “War must be, while we defend our lives against a destroyer who would devour all; but I do not love the bright sword for its sharpness, nor the arrow for its swiftness, nor the warrior for his glory. I love only that which they defend.”

After her encounter with Faramir, Eowyn realizes that the killing and death of war is not the end, but is sometimes a necessary means in order to preserve life.  Ultimately, Eowyn has been focused on death and war, but she has missed the bigger picture; namely that life is more important than death, even death in honor.

Then Eowyn says: “I want to be a healer, and love all things that grow and are not barren.” This is the mark that she has accepted life rather than death.  In realizing this, Eowyn also learns to appreciate her status as a woman.  She no longer regards her body as a cage or a hindrance, but understands that it is ordered to create life and to sustain it; she understands that those goals are noble in and of themselves, and that nurturing life is an invaluable and honorable ability.

In summary, throughout Eowyn’s conversion and in her meeting with Faramir, Eowyn trades her idealism of death and her culture of war for an acceptance of herself and a love of life.  The maiden who once sought death now looks forward to nurturing life.  As Faramir says, “Here is the Lady Éowyn of Rohan, and now she is healed.”