Valour Without Renown: Éowyn's Reluctant Duty
The second 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.
The Rohirrim mount their horses and gallop off toward Helm’s Deep, leaving a lone figure clad in mail. Before riding to battle, Théoden had chosen Éowyn to govern Rohan in his absence and, in the event of his and Éomer’s deaths, to rule Rohan afterward. He had nearly passed her over, but one of his captains, Háma, had pointed out that Éowyn, beloved by the people, is as “fearless and high-hearted” as any captain in the Rohirrim.
Théoden then agreed and armed her with a sword and corslet before departing for Helm’s Deep. Éowyn will be a civic and military leader for the noncombatants who remain in Dunharrow (Two Towers 527-8).
Éowyn does not feel honored by her post, though. Before the battle of Helm’s Deep, but especially afterward, when the Rohirrim ride out to aid Gondor, she resents that she must stay behind instead of winning glory on the battlefield. She doesn’t feel like a military leader. She feels like a nursemaid.
Before the Rohirrim depart for Pelennor Fields, she begs Aragorn to let her follow him on the Paths of the Dead. He refuses by appealing to her duty to her people, not her femininity. He reminds her that she accepted Théoden’s charge to govern while he was gone.
If you had not been chosen, then some marshal or captain would have been set in the same place, and he could not ride away from his charge, were he weary of it or no.
RETURN OF THE KING 794
If Éowyn stays and leads her people, she will be doing “man’s work” as much as if she goes to fight. However, she fears that the role’s importance is diminished because she’s a woman. She will “mind the house while the Rohirrim win renown, and find food and beds when they return” (794).
She has already spent her youth serving her uncle’s “faltering feet” as a nurse and aide. Yet now that Théoden’s feet “falter no longer,” he does not free her to win glory with him. The target has moved. This is why she fears,
A cage. To stay behind bars, until use and old age accept them, and all chance of doing great deeds is gone beyond recall or desire.
Yes, Éowyn wants to fight for those she loves, but she also desires glory. In a culture where glory can only be won on the battlefield, Éowyn has no hope for renown.
Aragorn tells her,
A time may come soon, when none will return. Then there will be need of valour without renown, for none shall remember the deeds that are done in the last defence of your homes. Yet the deeds will not be less valiant because they are unpraised.
RETURN OF THE KING 794
This is the moment when the debate leaves politics behind. Women should be valued, and women should be able to fight for what they love, but Aragorn appeals to something deeper: the possibility of something unseen and unpraised having worth. A hero is a hero, even if no one else knows.
The Rohirrim do not fear death, only death without honor. Honor is a funny word with its two meanings. Éowyn has confused the honor of doing the right thing to the last with “honor,” renown, glory. She denies the value in unsung deeds and brings the conversation back to being a woman.
All your words are but 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.
RETURN OF THE KING 794
It’s unfair to Aragorn. He had never meant to diminish her role, but she thinks it has already been diminished.
Valour without renown may be important, but the fact remains that it is always Éowyn and never Éomer or Aragorn who must stay behind. Perhaps this is the defect in Rohan’s warrior culture. Perhaps it’s the defect in any chivalrous society that honors women as static icons of duty and goodness but denies them agency.
Éowyn resents that her role as “dry-nurse” of her people will win no glory, and that is the issue that women have always faced: our roles have not been valued.
Despite keeping the lore and history of the country by weaving tapestries of Eorl the Young in Meduseld, despite defending their homesteads and caring for the land while the men fight, despite raising children and caring for the weak, the women of Rohan will have no feasts honoring their contributions.
Yet Aragorn understands Éowyn’s situation better than she realizes. She sees the king, not the Ranger from the North who was feared and spurned by the people he protected. Neither the fat Barliman Butterbur nor the gentle hobbits suspect that Strider and the Dúnedain are the reason their lands have never been ravaged by orcs or wild tribes of men.
For all his life, Aragorn has lived valiantly without renown. He guarded those lands because it was his duty, not because he was ever praised to do so.
Even now, as all recognize him for the hero he is, he is not where his heart would take him. He would rather be with Arwen in Rivendell, but he knows his duty, and “few may [live as they please] with honor,” he tells Éowyn (794). Until the War of the Ring is over, Aragorn cannot do as he pleases. “Only [in following the Paths of the Dead] can I see any hope of doing my part in the war against Sauron.”
This self-sacrifice gives Aragorn his empathy for this sad, valiant lady. Empathy is a little lacking in the courts of Rohan - her brother Éomer, loving but unimaginative, is later shocked to learn that Éowyn had been depressed - but Aragorn truly grieves to see her so thwarted and lonely. He does not callously pass over her sorrow or pretend that doing her duty will make her happy.
Éowyn and Aragorn should do their duty because it is the right thing to do - they should deny their desires to serve a higher call. But as with everything with this beautiful, complex character, it’s not that simple for Éowyn. If it were, then she would not save the day by disobeying her duty and following Théoden to Pelennor Fields.
She can’t abandon Edoras out of a desire for glory. But she can abandon it because she loves her king more than she loves life.
And when she does, she will destroy an enemy that no man on that battlefield could have defeated, winning renown for herself that will last for centuries.
Whether her victory will make her happy is another question, one that will require us to look at another sorrow of hers: her unrequited love for Aragorn. See you in the next essay.
Works Cited
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.