A High and Excellent Thing: Éowyn's Love

The third essay in a 5-part series on the Lady of Rohan

The original version of this essay was first posted on my blog, roadstainedfeet.wordpress.com.

In previous posts, I wrote about Éowyn’s need to be taken seriously and her longing for renown. Yet to focus on those motives, I had to isolate them from what is really inseparable: her love for Aragorn.

Éowyn is as lonely as she is frustrated. With no living women left in her family, she is surrounded by men. She shares mutual love and respect with Théoden and more so with Éomer, but they see her as someone to protect when she wants to fight by their sides. For all their excellent virtues, her kinsmen do not suspect her deep unhappiness. Both Aragorn and Gandalf see more in less time. As Gandalf says later to Éomer,

My friend, you had horses, and deeds of arms, and the free fields, but 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 part seemed to her more ignoble than that of the staff he leaned on.

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Her country’s fate looks ever bleaker, and her patriotism wanes with its might. Foes attack their borders and settlements. Her cousin Théodred, heir to the throne, falls in battle. Wormtongue leers at her from afar and poisons her with his words. Gandalf continues:

“Think you that Wormtongue had poison only for Théoden’s ears? ‘Dotard! 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?’ Have you not heard those words before? Saruman spoke them, the teacher of Wormtongue. Though I do not doubt that Wormtongue at home wrapped their meaning in terms more cunning.

My lord, if your sister’s love for you, and her will still bent to her duty, had not restrained her lips, you might have heard even such things as these escape them. But 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?”

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Éowyn had been shrinking, dying almost, from the burden of a duty that lacked happiness and conviction.

Into this dark, hopeless existence walks a noble lord, a king who had helped her country once before. Aragorn. He is salvation and renown and lordliness, and she falls in love with him.

She watches him ride with her uncle to Helm’s Deep while she leads her people to safety in Dunharrow. Days later, she greets Aragorn and his Dúnedain after their victory, and it is as she hoped: this great lord has helped restore her people to the renown in battle they once knew.

Then he tells her he must seek the Paths of the Dead.

When she cannot dissuade him, she begs him to take her with him. Though Aragorn reminds her of her duty and urges her to keep her post at Dunharrow, he knows that she is asking for more than vindication to go to battle. She wants a sign that he loves her in return.

He does not and cannot love her, but he will not intentionally harm her. From the first he is careful not to pay her more attention than necessary (Two Towers 527). She is young as well as lonely, and he knows that a young heart may read more into kindness than is meant. He gently hints to Éowyn that he already loves Arwen: “Were I to go where my heart dwells, far in the North I would now be wandering in the fair valley of Rivendell” (Return 792).

He also honors her gallantly after she begs him to ride with the Rohirrim.

Éowyn says,

I would not see a thing that is high and excellent cast away needlessly.

Aragorn replies,

Nor would I. Therefore I say to you, lady: Stay! For you have no errand to the South.

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So far, he has done what any honorable man should do when he senses affections he cannot return. As in all things, however, he goes beyond his duty. He believes she is a worthy, valiant woman, not just a naïve young girl, and he feels deep concern for her happiness.

Later, in the houses of healing, he says,

Few other griefs amid the ill chances of this world have more bitterness and shame for a man’s heart than to behold the love of a lady so fair and brave that cannot be returned. Sorrow and pity have followed me ever since I left her desperate in Dunharrow and rode to the Paths of the Dead; and no fear upon that way was so present as the fear for what might befall her.

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To guard her heart, he would never have told her this, but isn’t it beautiful that he sees her merit? This is how the sexes should value each other, even when there is no romantic love involved.

Aragorn’s actions echo those of other literary characters who recognize that someone is lovable but guard their hearts from falling in love with them. In Book 6 of Homer’s Odyssey, a princess named Nausicaa falls in love with Odysseus but helps him return home to his wife Penelope. Odysseus recognizes Nausicaa’s beauty but desires to continue on his long journey home. He wishes Nausicaa well:

And for thyself, may the gods grant thee all that thy heart desires; a husband and a home may they grant thee, and oneness of heart—a goodly gift. For nothing is greater or better than this, when man and wife dwell in a home in one accord, a great grief to their foes and a joy to their friends; but they know it best themselves.

Instead of letting her beauty lead him to infidelity, Odysseus is reminded of his love for his wife.

A sadder example is Lancelot and the Lady in Tennyson’s “The Lady of Shalott.” The Lady, confined to a narrow life, “half-sick of shadows,” and cursed to love Lancelot in vain, takes a boat down to Camelot but dies before she arrives. When the court sees her corpse, most of the knights are afraid:

But Lancelot mused a little space
He said, “She has a lovely face;
God in his mercy grant her grace,
The Lady of Shalott.”

Éowyn’s fate is not the same as the Lady of Shalott’s, but she would rather die than be unloved. When Aragorn rides away to the Paths of the Dead, she only knows that he has rejected her and, like everyone else, has told her to stay put and do her duty.

Aragorn is not arrogant, and he knows that Éowyn’s brief infatuation with him has as much to do with her loneliness and disappointment as with his appeal. “In me she loves only a shadow and a thought” (878). A shadow and a thought: she does not truly know Aragorn or his long history, does not grasp his calling or his cares. She does not understand that he goes to the Paths of the Dead to claim that army’s allegiance as the heir of Isildur.

In contrast, the woman Aragorn loves has already spent long years with him and knows how to counsel and comfort him from afar. Arwen has just woven his royal standard proclaiming his identity and sent him word by her brothers to act swiftly, for “either our hope cometh, or all hopes end” (Return 784). Though she is not an active character in this story, she is strong, wise, and perfect for him.

Éowyn sees in Aragorn “a hope of glory and great deeds, and lands far from the fields of Rohan” (878). Éowyn wants to be someone else, somewhere else and to escape from her trapped life in Rohan. If she cannot live with Aragorn as his wife or die with him on the Paths of the Dead, she will die on Pelennor Fields as Dernhelm, an anonymous Rider of Rohan.

She will not maintain her anonymity. Dernhelm’s name will drop with the helmet she casts off as she rises to the defense of the uncle she loves. Aragorn says later,

And yet, Éomer, I say to you that she loves you more truly than me; for you she loves and knows.

That love for uncle and brother is as strong and valid as any love on Middle Earth. It brings her to her king’s aid, where she will defeat a foe no man could kill.

In this way, their story of unrequited love is more powerful than if Tolkien had used the damsel-in-distress trope. Aragorn does not swoop in to save the princess from her misery. Éowyn’s inner struggles will continue after he leaves, taking her to a battlefield and then the aptly named Houses of Healing, where she will meet Faramir. Because of her broken heart, she will be too wise to suppose he can solve all of her problems, and that allows a genuine relationship to form.

Éowyn’s fulfillment will not come from the man she ultimately marries, but from the vocation that helps her make others whole.

I will be a healer, and love all things that grow and are not barren.

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Works Cited

Homer. The Odyssey. Translated by A.T. Murray. Theoi Project, 2017.

Lord Tennyson, Alfred, Poems. Boston: W. D. Ticknor, 1842.

Tolkien, J.R.R. The Return of the King: Being the third part of The Lord of the Rings. Houghton Mifflin Company, 2002.
—. The Two Towers: Being the second part of The Lord of the Rings. Houghton Mifflin Company, 2002.