[From 2011]
Great blog post by Meg Clothier on heroines in fiction in The Guardian.
Click here to read it in full, but here’s my money quote:
…the most egregious example comes in Lord of the Rings (bear with me). In the climactic pages, when every man on the battlefield flees before the Lord of Nazgûl, Éowyn (her identity hidden behind her armour) stands her ground and kills him, saving the day. But does she get the man she loves? The man she’s fighting for? Does she, hell. He – Aragorn – falls instead for a wispy, floaty elf called Arwen whose entire contribution to the war effort was sewing a banner.
Éowyn was always my favorite character in The Lord of the Rings. My freshman English teacher, Mr. Winklebleck (really) gave me the books to read and I loved them from the first word, the near-Shakespearean style, the wonderful characters, the epic story. I reread them every few years, and I’ve even been known to read parts of them out loud, all by myself, just to listen to Tolkien’s language. That scene where Éowyn and Merry take down the Nazgûl King? It’s still my favorite, and it always irritated me that she got pawned off on Faramir, and for that matter, that Faramir got stuck with a woman who would always see him as second-best.
Chatter Random Friday Eowyn epic fantasy J.R.R. Tolkien lord of the rings women characters