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Episode 20 - Queer Readings: Eowyn & Faramir Part 1 - Eowyn image

Episode 20 - Queer Readings: Eowyn & Faramir Part 1 - Eowyn

S1 E20 ยท Queer Lodgings: A Tolkien Podcast
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The Queer Lodgings team makes our triumphant Pride Month return after a break with our long-threatened series on Eowyn & Faramir! Well... it wasn't actually planned to be a series... but we recorded for 4 hours total, so decided to break it up into three parts. The first part frames the discussion and jumps into Eowyn's complex gender identity and presentations, including both trans and non-binary readings of her character. Plus the intricacies of how Eowyn relates to the patriarchal society of the Riddermark and its expected gender roles. Stay tuned for Part 2 on Faramir, and Part 3 on the queer aspects of their relationship!

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Transcript

Introduction to the Queer-Led Tolkien Podcast

00:00:12
Speaker
Hello, butchers, and welcome to Queer Lodgings, the queer-led podcast about everything Tolkien. I'm Grace, and I'm here with my usual co-host, Alicia. Hello. And Leah. Hi. Thank you for joining us today. Grab your bricks, bottles, and heavy handbags and draw a rainbow on them before you throw them through a window, because the first Pride was a riot, and today we're talking about queer readings of Eowyn and Faramir.

Queer Readings of Eowyn and Faramir

00:00:38
Speaker
Yay! Our long-threatened, long-anticipated free reading of Eowyn and Faramir. We have been threatening you guys with a good time for a solid year now. Yeah! We're finally doing it!
00:00:53
Speaker
Yeah, we are. So to give just a little bit of background about this, the framing of this episode comes from a paper that I just gave at PCA back in April. So the frame of this is that Eowyn and Faramir's relationship has big bi-wife energy.

Bi-Wife Energy and Bisexual Erasure

00:01:20
Speaker
And so if you're not aware of what bi-wife energy is, it is a viral song on the TikToks that Cringe and the Lizards wrote. And the entire song is, I mean, 60% of the song is just repeating My Wife Energy over and over again. Salad. Cool. Indeed. Because My Wife Energy is something that's kind of hard to actually place what it is. Well, to be honest, I'm a hetero guy, but I really try to be a good ally. And it ain't no secret. Let me tell you why. It's because I love my wife and my wife is bi.
00:02:06
Speaker
some So in the context of Eowyn and Faramir, it's about how they both have atypical gender expressions that are also complementary. And so they are in a heterosexual coded relationship, but it feels really queer to read. Yeah, yes. My wife energy, it's hard to like really nail down, but like in general what it is, is a queer femme gets into a straight-seeming relationship with a straight man
00:02:42
Speaker
who then becomes a ferocious ally and is often mistaken for being queer himself. And like it doesn't always break down along those particular gender lines, like any gender could potentially have bi-wife energy. But according to a UCLA study in 2011, women are roughly twice as likely to identify as bisexual than men. And approximately 80% of all bisexual people end up in straight passing relationships, so the stereotype holds true. It is often a femme inducting a um cashew man, as ah my autocorrect always likes to say. Cashew in front of his head, beautiful.
00:03:30
Speaker
or just walking back around to that was a journey and an adventure and I loved it. Sorry, it just like like just hit me when I was just like, wait.
00:03:45
Speaker
Sorry. Derailing. Alicia, one of the things that I loved in that paper that you gave is that you also, when you talk about this idea of like the straight passing relationship, the relationship where one or more of the participants are queer, but it appears to be heterosexual on the surface or at first glance, you also go into why that's problematic. Yeah, indeed. It's something that hits really close to home for me. In particular, I am definitely one of those people who when I came out to my mother, as bi, she was like, Oh, but you you married a man so you're straight. And oh yeah, that that's sort of like by erasure that that comes in to being in a liminal relationship where I mean,
00:04:35
Speaker
i I do look very straight from the wall. I mean, if you can ignore the the the blue hair, I do look very straight from the outside, but like ah by bisexuality and pansexuality are pretty liminal orientations. And it it is easy to overlook, if especially if the partners are, their gender expressions look more binary, but whether they actually are or not.

Queerness and Relationship Struggles

00:05:03
Speaker
I think there's a there's always this trade-off between perceptions of safety and then also erasure and the harms that arms and protections that come with each of those things in liminal relationships. And the harms of erasure are pretty significant.
00:05:20
Speaker
I will also point out that in a recent study that was done in the UK, approximately 80% of bi and pansexual people are not out to their families, and 64% of bi and pansexual people are not out to all of their friends. a lot of relationships that you know we kind of glide by in society and think we have an idea of what they are, we may not be correct on because a lot of folks just are not safe to to come out yet.
00:05:58
Speaker
oh That's just something to keep in mind as we are looking at relationships that seem to have folks who are, you know, one side or the other of a gender binary with each other. And then we're gonna problematize even that idea. Yeah. yeah I um don't want to just gloss over this because it is an important thing to bring up, but there can be queerphobic biracial inside the relationship as well. The kind of the dark evil cousin of my life energy is the straight a partner doesn't
00:06:39
Speaker
the cognitive dissonance of them being in a queer relationship is too much for them to deal with really. And so they participate in their queer partner's erasure to square the relationship in their own mind. And I mean, Paramir would never. Oh, absolutely not. as we are going to prove in more than 18 pages of notes. Yeah, we couldn't just disappear for a few months and come back with it and an episode with three pages of notes. What fun would that be?
00:07:15
Speaker
Yeah, I go into a little bit more about some of the the magic of my wife energy, Alicia, because I feel like there's a really important component of of this acceptance of the queerness of the relationship that I think is really important for people to kind of get across. You are leading me to say something, Leah. What is it that you want to say? You led beautifully. I'm not sure where we were going though. going into the deep emotional support and unquestioning fierce love because that is so central to Faramir and Aowin. Oh, I do see. Yes, the link up of the word magical. Yes, because it's so like that's key to the the magic of my wife energy and also like the magic of Aowin and Faramir, you know.

Character Comparisons: Eowyn, Galadriel, and Sam

00:08:09
Speaker
Yeah, in creating a place that is truly safe for your relationship and like your partner to truly thrive and achieve like self actualization, which is a spoiler alert where we're going with this. But I mean, surely you've read the Lord of the Rings and you were familiar with the houses of healing and know exactly the trajectory of this episode.
00:08:37
Speaker
Because like it is through the the kind of emotional support you usually find in these kind of bi-wife energy relationships that Faramir, quote unquote, tames Aowin, which is something that I disagree with on so many different levels. Oh, yeah. Yeah, let's kind of get into exploring Eowyn and Faramir kind of on their own terms as characters in and of themselves and then kind of explore a little bit more about that dynamic and also unpack some of the readings that a lot of people have have given to them that either assigns that that tamed sort of qualification or other readings like or contradicts that. Yeah, exactly.
00:09:28
Speaker
Yeah. Are y'all ready? You want to kind of get into, into talking about, about each of them? I know previously we've talked about there being some similarities between Galadriel and Aowin. We want to start there. And it seems like a good place for me to start. It's kind of my new pet theory that Aowin and Galadriel are essentially the same character. It's just Galadriel is like the more elevated version. of AO1 walks so Galadriel could run. Yeah. I love this theory too. And you introduced it to me. So I'm, it's totally my headcanon now. I mean, they, they have a very similar like bot trajectory once you pull out and actually look at Galadriel from Silmarillion on up.
00:10:13
Speaker
They're very heavily masculine coded at the beginning. And depending on your viewpoint end up being very heavily feminine coded. Again, depending on your viewpoint, I disagree with that, but I ah disagree with everything. yeah
00:10:37
Speaker
But I do think there's that kind of, that's a more simple read, but there's also the read of kind of overcoming your demons and Galadriel did that with overcoming, you know, the ban of Valar and like finally finding her real true place in the world. And Eowyn did the same thing in a way when she, you know, I referred to this in my paper as um she did a eukatastrophic murder. Yes. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. And and through that act also found what is her permanent place in the world. There are a lot of parallels there.
00:11:20
Speaker
And one of the things that I thought was interesting when I was researching this is that I found that there was, there's a paper called finding the woman's role in the Lord of the Rings. It's by Melissa Macquarie Hatcher. And she actually makes a comparison between Eowyn and Sam. Oh, that's fascinating. And how those two characters are uplifting Tolkien's true ideal of healing oh through essentially like a coming of age narrative. She positions Sam specifically as kind of a coming of age narrative because he doesn't have the same like like transformation that AOAN does through like dealing with her darkness because Sam
00:12:03
Speaker
never has darkness because he's a pure little shining star of joy. But I do think positioning them both as coming of age narratives is really useful because what is Aowans narrative and the Lord of the Rings, but a coming out tale, which is itself a very queer manifestation of a coming of age narrative.

Traditional Roles and Gender Coding

00:12:28
Speaker
Yeah. Oh, I love that. I think that that's a really interesting comparison that I kind of hadn't considered before. Yeah, not at all. And when do you think about the centrality of like their heroism to the narrative as well, like Sam is the reason the ring made it to Mount Doom 100 percent. Eowyn is the reason Minas Tirith did not fall 100 percent. Yeah. Oh, yeah. I love that.
00:12:58
Speaker
I think um one of the other like important things to kind of like touch on is the environment in which Eowyn is presented to us, the one in which she's living. Yeah, let's kind of get into her place in in Rohan as a member of the royal family and as and as a woman. I think that there's a lot of like interesting kind of unpacking that we can do about like some of the the gender roles in the Rittermark and you kind of pointed out like it's very traditional in a way and it's also very much not and a lot of the tradition is actually like it actually has its roots like in germanic literature and mythology traditional roles for for women which
00:13:45
Speaker
on the face like if you look at it you know sort of if you're not familiar with it you're kind of like oh there's a lot of like goddesses and figures of like the battle and war and you see all these these women engaging in battle and raids and so different fields that were traditionally, quote unquote, given to men. We've kind of talked about this a little bit like in our collateral episodes talking about Leslie Donovan's Valkyrie reflex paper and talking about a lot of how those different women in Tolkien sort of both ah embody and defy traditional Germanic and like northern sort of roles for women.
00:14:29
Speaker
Yeah, ah particularly coming from those Germanic, Anglo-Saxon, even Gothic influences and everything where I think there's also a ah risk for people who are only mildly informed ah about those historical traditions and how they weave into Tolkien's creation of the the Rohan and and and the Riddimark and all that. ah People who are who have a limited understanding and perhaps an intentionally limited understanding can often the limit and misread the roles that women take in history and then also in fiction.
00:15:14
Speaker
And one of my favorite sets of memes that goes around is about Vikings, like old Norse men and what their actual culture was like when they dyed their hair and they took baths and women controlled the money and they could divorce and all of these things that a lot of people think are really progressive. And by a lot of people, I mean the people who are willfully misinterpreting history for their own nefarious ends. um
00:15:45
Speaker
Yeah, I can hear a dog agreeing.
00:15:50
Speaker
That's Winston. He's very riled up. I was going to say, I think Winston is it's mad about certain people taking down those ah stereotypes for their own nefarious ends.
00:16:06
Speaker
So Rohan's based on Anglo-Saxon culture and Tolkien very specifically based them on Anglo-Saxon culture. The language is very is very similar. It's using like a similar type of poetry when And so far as he's actually like translating some Anglo-Saxon poetry basically directly into the book um and while still using the meter because he was showing off. So it's not surprising that he is working some of these really traditional things into the culture. And it's also not surprising that these traditional things are confusing to people who don't actually really understand the culture or have studied it or whatever. One of the things that I think is the most important in terms of ah Leslie Donovan's The Valkyrie reflex paper
00:16:56
Speaker
is she specifically calls out that Valkyries are cross-gender figures in mythology. They are martial maidens. They are intrinsically tied to death and battle in a way that women generally aren't. Women are generally tied to like, you know, birth and life-giving and healing as opposed to these Valkyries, but the Valkyries are very femininely

Eowyn's Gender Role Struggles

00:17:30
Speaker
coated. Like they are definitely like what you could consider masculinized women if you're going to go the Melanie Rouse route. And I think that it's beautiful, honestly, that those those sorts of gender roles have been ambiguous and fluid for so long. And it was like such a good example of it.
00:17:55
Speaker
Yeah, like, she's a really great example of kind of like the querying of those roles, I think. Because particularly to the idea of like, liminality, she is not required to exist in only one of those roles. Throughout the course of the narrative, she embodies multiple aspects. Yeah, and and it's due to her nature as being a part of the royal family that she was trained to be a shield maiden. She is a woman who is trained to lead. who And i not just marshally, but also she's trained to lead her people in a governmental sense. I think it's fascinating that Eowyn begins to conflate governing her people with the part of her feminine assigned gender role that she doesn't like.
00:18:51
Speaker
Mm hmm. Where she really embraces the the martial like more masculine coded side and she really pushes away the more feminine coded like stewardship side. Yeah, it's interesting that this idea of being a steward is so it becomes such a such a prison for her in a lot of ways and in a ways that are particularly gendered, which I think are in important. because it's not just the idea that she has a particular responsibility as a member of the ruling family. She has a particular responsibility as a woman in the ruling family, and she gets assigned a role and and a duty as a woman that is different from, say, Aamir of her brother, you know? Yeah, like 100%.
00:19:48
Speaker
It's very specifically when Theoden is healed and is leaving her behind to lead the people in his absence. that i that That moment is what is so interesting to me because she pushes back against it so hard. We'll come back to this in a minute, but specifically in that scene with her and Aragorn. when he's going into the paths of the dead. Like she has fully conflated at that point, leading her people with being a nursemaid and being held in a cage that she doesn't want to be in that is not safe. yeah Going back to the culture for one more point before we really dig into that. And and that is how strangely accepting the
00:20:45
Speaker
Proheoric men are in terms of being corrected than like the Gondorian men and in general when you're looking at the ones that we have examples of. o yeah so more A listener, Diana, after our toxic masculinity episode really wanted us to dig into how masculinity manifests itself in the Rittermark because she had noticed what I just said. Like the men in the Rittermark are generally more accepting of being corrected. They are more accepting of Eowyn having the shield maiden role because it's something that's embedded in their culture.
00:21:32
Speaker
Diana, much like I do, we we both read that Elfhelm knows that Dernhelm is Eowyn. There's a quote from Mary, where he says there seems to be some understanding between Dernhelm and Elfhelm surrounding him being as Elfhelm referred to him as Master Bag because he just felt like baggage. And that's reinforced later when they're about to ride on the Pelennor and Elfhelm allows Dernhelm to leave his arid in entirety and join the King's men. they right There has to have been some sort of understanding there.
00:22:12
Speaker
yeah Yeah, I can totally follow that. There's also like going back to like the being like corrected in a way and also kind of being being checked in a way. I feel like there's the moment when Theoden is about to start leaving for or Don Harrow when but he's sort of going with the like, but in whom do my people trust for me to to leave and to leave my people when I leave them behind? and He names every fucking person. apparently And apparently, well, it's crickets at first, because they're kind of like, you know, I don't know who. ah But Hama says ah from The Return of the King, Theoden says, in whom do my people trust? In the house of Eorl, answered Hama. But Eorl, I cannot spare. And he is the last of that house. I said not Eomer, said Hama. And he is not the last. There is Eowyn.
00:23:13
Speaker
of all of the people around Theoden, it's Hamah who finally speaks up and it's like, uh, Aylin can do the job. but and and And immediately Theoden says, it shall be so. And so I feel like that that kind of demonstrates a little bit of that, like getting, getting checked by you one of your advisors, you know, you're one of the people who is, you know, ostensibly beneath you, getting checked and being kind of like, uh, you forgot AON, my dude. And being like, yeah, you're absolutely right. We'll leave her in charge. Taking direction and being able to check your ego. Yeah. Very important aspects of non toxic masculinity. Yeah. Yeah. Another really good example of this is in the houses of healing between Gandalf and Aomer.
00:23:59
Speaker
because Eomear doesn't understand why Eowyn's not getting better because she is fully given over to despair and Gandalf says, 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 and her part seemed to her more ignoble than that of the staff that he leaned on. And after Gandalf put Aomer firmly in his place, Aomer didn't push back. Like he he he accepts that information and it changes the way that he views his sister.
00:24:36
Speaker
Yeah, like it really, it it moves him in a way that makes him like look on her with so a new understanding, which I think is a really ah lovely, lovely moment. He's able to access that different perspective that he has maybe never really sat down and considered thoroughly. And I do love that in our show notes, this says, once it's been Gandalf explained to him,
00:25:03
Speaker
I am delighted by that phrase because it is exactly what's going on. Gandalf is giving him all the tools that he needs to sit down and rethink his viewpoint and actually take into account the the viewpoint that he has never given as much credence. And this idea just came to me right now. This kind of untraditional, non-hegemonic masculinity that is in Rohan, which is 100% not depicted in the films at all. Amor's such a dick in the films. But I really think this might be what led AOIN to
00:25:47
Speaker
latch on to Faramir in the way that she did because Faramir is exhibiting a really like similar type of masculinity. One of the papers I was reading is the Melanie Rawls paper talks about how Eowyn, if she had married Boramir instead, would have suffocated and died under the negative masculinity. And I think there is something to that in that Boromir is potentially negatively masculine and in such a way that
00:26:24
Speaker
would drive Aowin to never actually fully integrate her entire personality and like accept her queerness. Because he seems like if he were to marry based on what we know about him, he would want like an Algarion, horrendous kind of situation where he wants a wife at home. Yeah. Yeah. and And the type of masculinity that's valued by Denethor is a type of masculinity that doesn't leave room for interrogation of those norms.
00:27:04
Speaker
Exactly. And I just, it's interesting because given the historical like parallels here, Eowyn had to have been a peace weaver in Anglo-Saxon terms or a war bride in more modern terms. Like she had to marry a Gondorian. It's lucky that she found the best one. And fell in love with them. Yeah. Yeah. That's such a good point. Glad that worked out. Yeah. That's such a good point. Yeah, I kind of want to get into some more of Eowyn's gendered experience in the Rittermark because for all that we've kind of been talking about, there's a big reason why she leaves, I guess, because she's really chafing against the assigned gender roles that do exist in the Rittermark. And I feel like the reason, like, you know,
00:28:02
Speaker
Gandalf does have to Gandalf's plane to Aamir that about Eowyn sort of lived experience experience that he suddenly like gets a new perspective on and is ready to sort of to embrace that perspective. But I guess where I'm going with this is that is like the ah conditions for her experience are also embedded in the society sort of just as much as this ah shield maiden aspect of her of her experience in her life is. She's had a rough time of it. shit she She's an orphan. She was raised by a family of men. there weren't any really We don't really hear, I guess, of any significant women in her life raising her.
00:28:49
Speaker
she and were orphaned when they were seven. Yeah. Yeah. And there, you know, she's it's a warrior society. It's a very futile sort of society. And being a man is sort of like the norm. And even though that she is trained to use a sword and to use to be a shieldmaiden, but When it comes down to it, she she's not allowed to actually use that and she's not allowed to actually perform. She's trained in all of these skills. She has these abilities. She is prepared.
00:29:28
Speaker
in all of these ways to meet the moment and then is being constricted and held back. And I think that speaks to this sort of dissonance that does exist within that society that she is the like the iconic depiction of. I think it's really interesting too that absolutely no one in her life sees her discontent I mean, Aemir obviously doesn't until Gandalf explains it to him. Theoden doesn't either. Gandalf doesn't even at first, because there's a point at which, after Wormtongue leaves, it's mentioned that, like, she's safe. But, like, that's not... No, she's not. She's not safe, because you're about to abandon her and it leave her in a way where she's not gonna be able to... She essentially loses bodily autonomy.
00:30:24
Speaker
Yeah. And no one really understands her need for being able to take her life into her own hands because it's not something that the men in this society have ever had to grapple with. Yeah. And she has to fill that like nurturing role because she's essentially, as far as we know, the only woman left in the entirety of the royal family. I mean, the royal family is a little small by this point. Yeah. Yeah. boy And and the the situation in which we find Aowin at the beginning of this book,
00:31:01
Speaker
You've mentioned she's an orphan. She's had all this training, but what is she doing? She's sitting around because her uncle is very ill. Who's making him ill? The dude who's constantly following her around is sexually harassing her. What just happens, her like cousin just dies and therefore she knows that her her brother is now like next in line to be king.

Aragorn's Influence on Eowyn

00:31:25
Speaker
like A lot of upheaval has happened in her in her life and absolutely no one is paying attention to her at all beyond what she can do for them in that moment. She has every right to anger and discontent and yet even the possibility of that is not perceived and dismissed in her conversations with the men around her.
00:31:48
Speaker
Yeah, it just enrages me and breaks my heart in in in so many ways. I feel like all of this is sort of happening in the context of her normal everyday life. And then, and then Uprol's Aragorn to kind of be this catalyst that sort of, I feel like, kind of puts her into kind of ah a crisis point of both, you know, like ah it hurt her understanding of herself and her understanding of just how much how much agency and how much autonomy has been taken away from her and has been withheld from her.
00:32:23
Speaker
And then in rolls up the literal soon to be King of Gondor to kind of stand in stark contrast to what her situation is. It's like, God, no wonder like she kind of clings to him in this moment because he represents to her, like he represents this as figure with the ultimate sort of agency and autonomy. Like here, here's somebody who's who makes his own decisions and who has responsibilities, but is able to enact them in ways that sort of affirm his own autonomy and his own agency. Nobody questions or asks why Aragorn is, that's what makes everybody panic. You know, when he's like, I have to go on the path of the dead. This is what I have to do. Everyone's kind of like, you've got responsibilities and stuff like that. And he's like, this is my responsibility. I'm going to do this. And he does it. So I feel like I've always been kind of really fascinated by
00:33:22
Speaker
Eowyn's sort of crush on Aragorn because of this this power dynamic of she sort of sees in him all this agency and autonomy and independence that she's she's been denied her whole life and it's incredibly appealing and incredibly, in like you know, kind of intoxicating to her. I'm really grateful that that's the version of Eowyn that we get to because Tolkien goes through a bunch of different iterations of who Eowyn's character will be, what her fate will be, how she's attached to Aragorn. And there is at least one iteration in which Eowyn is planned to be like the refrigerated girl who
00:34:07
Speaker
like guys to make Aragorn realize, you know, how how poignant his losses are or whatever, which that that's ah such a bullshit trope because of how common it is and was even in Tolkien's time. So I'm really glad that we get this version of a win. This this version of a win is far more interesting to me than some of the other limited things that could have been done with her character. One of the things that comes up a lot in the scholarship surrounding AO1 is how Tolkien so expertly writes what is an and incredibly female worldview. Like she is dealing with very feminine problems and you wouldn't necessarily think that Tolkien would be super great at writing that because he
00:35:02
Speaker
surrounded himself with men throughout the latter part of his life. But like when he was young, he was pretty surrounded by women until he ended up and an orphan himself. And he does have a remarkable insight into what makes this situation for her very distressing. And I've always read her seeing Aragorn as her way out.
00:35:33
Speaker
I don't think her love for Aragorn really has anything to do with love. I don't think i think she sees Aragorn as the part she can hitch herself to to move to a place where she can hopefully live in the way that she wants to live. Exactly, exactly. And then Aragorn so cruelly fucking denies her that. Oh yeah. ah From her perspective, I think he like Aragorn in this scene at like the mouths of the paths of the dead, Aragorn is trying his fucking best to not destroy this girl and there's no way to do it.
00:36:15
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I feel like Sarah Brown in her paper about Eowyn reading the Wild Shield. It's called Eowyn It Was and Durnhelm also reading the Wild Shield Maiden through a queer lens. She brings up an interesting point that as she is talking to Aragorn, Eowyn keeps using his name, but he but he doesn't use hers at all. He addresses her as lady. And this could be some kind of, you know, a gesture of distancing on his part, you know, kind of trying to, again, trying not to break her in a way. But it's a reminder that she does have power. What she doesn't really have is control, right? Like she has a position and a duty, but she doesn't necessarily have control of what she can do with that responsibility.
00:37:14
Speaker
Her response is so poignant. 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 honor you have leave to be burned in the house for the men will need it no more. That to me is a lack of bodily autonomy. She wants to be able to choose the manner in which she is at this point facing certain death and she wants to be able to choose the manner in which she will die. yeah And it is being denied to her.
00:37:50
Speaker
who and What she's being offered instead, though, a leadership role is not the role that she would choose in this moment. And she likens that to being a dry nurse. That is a role that she has been relegated to before. Because when we when we meet her, Theoden has been ah being controlled by Grandma Wormtongue, and she has been caring for him. And there's this element to that of ah very gendered reality still in our world today as well.

Gendered Caregiving Roles

00:38:29
Speaker
So Sarah Brown in that paper
00:38:32
Speaker
points this out. right this This is often highly gendered work of being a caregiver. And we've seen this throughout history. We've seen this, you know, men go off to war and women keep the home front, you know, keep morale up, that sort of thing. But specifically around the idea of caregiving, just a few important things to note. Caregiving is work that is disproportionately done by women. I will be mounting my soapbox now, everyone. So varying estimates from across different countries around the world indicate that in in the various countries, between 57 to 81% of all health caregivers for folks who are elderly are women.
00:39:18
Speaker
and that women are more likely to bear the burden of caregiving stressors, especially when working with family members who who are experiencing dementia and things like that, which is very relevant to Eowyn's experience as we first meet her here. In the U.S., women provide 2.2 times more unpaid family caregiving on a time per day basis relative to men. Women are disproportionately harmed by these norms. So that's both mentally and physically. In fact, there's an example from Sweden that Carolyn Creado Perez's book, Invisible Women Exposing Data Bias in a World Designed for Men, introduces. And that's that women are more likely to suffer physical injury after snowstorms because they're more likely to be engaged in caregiving and trip chaining on foot and therefore susceptible to injury on icy and uncleared routes.
00:40:18
Speaker
The cost of those injuries to the Swedish government are approximately 3.4 million euro per year. Once they went through and realized that this disparity was occurring and changed the prioritization of snow clearing routes to where sidewalks and footpaths were cleared before drivable roads, those falls and injuries were reduced by half. And so was the financial burden to the government that existed from not actually looking at the lived experiences of its citizens. These are the sorts of things that happen all over the place because the the work that caregivers, primarily women or people who caucus with women are doing is often invisible.
00:41:10
Speaker
These experiences are also incredibly damaging to men as well because the men who do step up and take on caregiving roles are often stigmatized and then isolated from support because of these cultural norms that exist through so many societies and countries. And when it comes to the psychological burdens, again, because women are doing so much more of the work, it's rarely even perceived and those those burdens get heavier and heavier to bear. So I said this is often talked about as invisible work. It's also called a mental load or emotional load. And I do have a recommendation that folks of all gender identities can take to work on untangling and on learning these norms. and There's a set of graphic novels that are really phenomenal by an artist named Emma. Their mental load and emotional load
00:42:03
Speaker
And the art form of it being through a graphic novel is a way to make the concepts incredibly accessible and identifiable. That will include a link to the artist's page in the show notes and what these two particular concepts relate to. But ah although this is looking at it through a modern lens that we need to be aware of today, This is an age-old issue that has been gendered and that we see Eowyn discussing and calling out in this fictional work that you know is written in Tolkien's time as well. And we keep seeing it progress through the ages and we haven't fixed it yet, so we need to keep working.
00:42:43
Speaker
Yeah, this actually is reminding me just now, published not too long ago, I was hearing about it on NPR, a book by Jessica Calarco called Holding It Together, How Women Became America's Safety Net, which kind of gets into a lot of some of the economic and sociological sort of implications of of caregiving and how sort of instead of having a national sort of safety net, we just rely on on women to to do it all. So it's a little bit outside of the scope of things, but I just wanted to... you Talking about it sort of reminded me that that this is a very this was actually like just published like this month. so
00:43:24
Speaker
There's research coming out that shows that throughout the pandemic, this disparity was not mitigated, it was only increased.

Eowyn's Transformation into Dernhelm

00:43:32
Speaker
And so let's see, to bring it back around to AON. In times of crisis like pandemic or war, women are often called upon disproportionately to fill gendered roles that they may try to get. Yeah, and here comes ol' Aragorn coming in here to kind of highlight in stark contrast just what is possible or could be possible for her and what she has kind of been experiencing. This sort of crisis point and content warning, talking a little bit about mental illness, depression, and suicidal ideation to a degree, something that I feel like some
00:44:15
Speaker
possible readings of AON as like you know this feminist role model this sort of strong independent fierce woman asserting her rights and stuff sort of glosses over how Just how much mental anguish and how much despair Eowyn is in when she when she becomes Durnhelm. Tolkien sort of reminds us of this back in the houses of healing specifically, but Eowyn is suicidal.
00:44:47
Speaker
and has been for days when they finally begin the ride to Gondor. She's sort of reached the point where there's like a moment where it's like, what's that moment where I think it's Mary who is sees her and her like, you know, she's looking like someone who's seeking death. And nobody else, nobody else sees that. it's and But it's sort of like when she finally becomes Dernhelm, she is seeking death. She is literally writing on her way to die. And it's sort of like she's kind of reached the point where
00:45:26
Speaker
having made up her mind to to complete suicide, really. I feel like she sort of, she kind of comes to this like apotheosis, I guess, at the moment when she confronts the Witch King. She seems very like triumphant and it has kind of like a hell yeah, feminist moment. But it's sort of like, this is, she's like literally looking death in the face. and then And that's kind of a common experience, I think, for our folks who have decided to complete suicide where their mood improves dramatically from having made the decision to do so, and it's kind of like it's a very dangerous and very, very delicate sort of moment for, for people to be in. So, I guess but something that's something that I really
00:46:12
Speaker
experience hard with Aowin because even having this moment of I guess again like this sort of swirling experience of realizing just how um how ah frustrated she is with her her her gender identity and her roles and just how much how much despair she really is in and how much like this this crisis point sort of reveals about her her mental state and also like how much this is sort of like, I don't know, I feel like this is kind of like a point where we get to sort of see Aowin start to kind of feel like, kind of like what else could be possible for for me. And she's, it's sort of like, she's kind of given up really though. She's kind of given up of any other new possibilities.
00:47:01
Speaker
I think it's worth noting, we I think we did touch on this in our, one of our Tolkien would hate this podcast episodes where we talked about Tolkien's experience with war and queerness and suicidality, that it's worth noting that Tolkien contemporaneously to his time and his experiences in war, I was absolutely aware of people who died in battle and perhaps perhaps performed incredible heroic acts on the battlefield that they were not likely to return from because their queerness had been discovered shortly before that battle. who And they were very high profile members of the British Armed Forces for whom this was the case. And so I think
00:47:54
Speaker
there there is a ah sort of lived experience kind of tragedy to at least having witnessed that among soldiers and ah in a society that cages and and traps people into limited roles. Yeah. Yeah, so there's this amazing Tumblr post by Lesbians for Boromir and honestly following up with both of you just said with Lesbians for Boromir seems a little disrespectful, but I'ma go. um and here We need to bring the queer joy back, okay? Yeah, totally. Where they say that reclaiming your agency over yourself, your body, your fate,
00:48:39
Speaker
And over the demands of a gender you never wanted and resting that from fraternalistic authorities is very much a trans narrative. It's also very much a feminist narrative. Eowyn is straddling that line. It's honestly a little weird to me how similar like trans and like feminist narratives are. They entwine quite closely. I think at the core of both of those things is you're fighting. I really want to boil it down to you're fighting against old white men. That is kind of what you're doing, right? Like you're you're you're pushing back against what society has
00:49:30
Speaker
told you you can and should do and be.

Eowyn's Gender Identity Exploration

00:49:33
Speaker
And as as miserable as AOAN is, and as suicidal as AOAN might be, the way that AOAN deals with that is by forcibly taking the agency that she's been denied. And yeah i hate that is powerful. That's kind of what I was trying badly to get to. But like that's sort of like this it's this this crisis moment where, as you put it, her her egg begins to crack. And that's really where she she becomes Dernhelm in this moment of deepest despair. And that's really like when she's like, it's sort of like in this deep despair, that's what she grabs onto. And that's who she becomes.
00:50:21
Speaker
who she embraces in order to get out of that despair. Well, and we've talked about Aowin chafing against gender norms. And we've talked about how she defies that. But I also want us to dig into some of the conversations that we've been having in our group chat and everything for the last year. We're talking about not just the gender norms, but questioning and problematizing the idea that Aowin
00:50:52
Speaker
is a woman or or is inherently a woman, that and there are trans elements to this story, and that we want to dig into those. Yeah, 100%. There are a couple of ways that people read Aowan's time as Dernhelm, as her rejecting her femininity and embracing masculinity, as turning her back on her people to you know go on a suicide mission. There are a number of readings. My specific reading of this is that Aowan is not disguising herself as Dernhelm.
00:51:34
Speaker
As Sarah Brown says, Eowyn is Dernhelm is Eowyn. They are the same person. When Eowyn becomes Dernhelm in the narrative, her pronouns switch to he. Yes. But Dernhelm is not a separate character. Dernhelm retains Eowyn's familial relationships. is evidenced by what happens on the battlefield when like when Dernhelm follows Theoden and when he essentially goes on a suicide mission to try to save Theoden when Theoden is about to be eaten by the Felbeast. Obviously this this is the same being, it is the same character, and I think that that switching of pronouns is so important
00:52:31
Speaker
It's so key and it's not just like one moment. It's like it's in the chapter like leading up to the moment and it's from different, and like it's from Mary's perspective and it's from the omniscient narrator's perspective. you know It's not played just as a surprise or ah a way to ah hold back the information until the strategic revelation. it's It's played as though the narrative is aware and so are other characters. And Dernhelm's identity is held as Dernhelm until there is an announcement of identity like at this eukatastrophic moment.
00:53:16
Speaker
And it's not as if Eowyn was always referred to as being female and feminine, and then Dern Helm happens and there's a break and masculine. When Eowyn is first described, the words that Tolkien uses are very masculine. He concentrates on her eyes. Brave and thoughtful was her glance as she looked on the king with cool pity in her eyes. She's perceived to be stern as steel. Like she gets these descriptions that are, you know, comparing her to metal, talking about her strength. they're not taught like She's also described as being you know a flower, cool spring morning, whatever. That's not how we're introduced to her. We're introduced to her in pretty masculine ways. So to have her then embody a masculine identity, i don't think I think is in line with how we were introduced to her. It's not at all surprising that that is what she would do.
00:54:20
Speaker
And yeah, she's also described as being fearless and high hearted and noble. Those are all very masculine adjectives, especially and in Tolkien. He's dealing a lot with, you know, nobility in terms of just war and things like that. And yeah, when Mary sees Sternhelm as a win is one of the most important things. When Durnhelm is attacking the Witch King ripped off his helmet, what Mary says is, hey when it was, and Durnhelm also.
00:55:02
Speaker
yeah ah Yeah, such a great like moment. And even her speech as she is talking to the Witch King, even her speech of no living man am I, you look upon a woman, it's like it doesn't make it any less queer and it doesn't make it any less trans because, again, ao when it was, and Dern Helm also. And so it's sort of like, I just love that like the inherent liminality that she embodies in in that moment when confronting the embodiment of this extremely liminal sort of being, this embodiment of of death, who is also in a very real sense
00:55:41
Speaker
literally crushing the body of her ah her uncle and crushing the body of of his uncle, you know. That moment of revelation, I always, the the other work that always comes to mind when I think of that is Macbeth, Shakespeare's Macbeth, and the the idea that ah spoilers but for however hundreds of years you haven's gotten around to reading request yet so sorry
00:56:15
Speaker
but where you have this this idea that, oh, like this character is not born of woman. They were born by a Caesarean section. And so and so there's this this twist to the understanding. And the thing that strikes me as similar here is not just like the twist and the revelation, but that the idea that we have of how a character's birth defines their identity is not the understanding that is true, and it is not the understanding that the character has of themselves. They uphold the full knowledge of their identity. And it is imperative, like their statement as to that identity is imperative to fulfilling the events that happen at the culmination of these works.
00:57:06
Speaker
oh being able to declare your own gender identity, your own identity, and have that be your statement heard by by the world. And being able to stand in that are absolutely essential for, you know, everything not to fall apart. Yeah. I referred to this as linguistically tricking faith. But yeah I do want to bring up that there are a number of gender
00:57:37
Speaker
non-conforming, non-binary trans people, well, not probably, not fully trans people. I'll go with the non-binary people who will still claim one gender or the other. I am genderqueer and I consider myself politically a woman. Because I still have, I have the parts that people attack and women and ah therefore I occasionally do choose to identify as one. And Eowyn in this moment is not, in my opinion, casting aside Dernhelm and that inherent masculinity.
00:58:22
Speaker
Aowin is doing what Aowin needs to do to get the job done. I don't think at this point that Aowin has fully integrated Darnhelm into her herself. I don't think that's something that happens until later after she meets Faramir. But I really love Sara Brown's paper. I really do. But if I'm probably going to poorly paraphrase this right now, but because I don't have it open in front of me. But what Sara Brown talks about how that Dernhelm is a masculine part of Eowyn's personality.
00:59:03
Speaker
and Just speaking as a genderqueer person, I don't think that quite gets the depth of how integral this masculinity that is in this in this narrative personified as Dernhelm actually is to AON as a entire person. I don't think that it's necessarily a part of her that is being integrated. It is and it's equal to who Aowin is. Yeah. it's It's deeper than just sort of like a, you know, the the masculine sort of part of her, like on a psychological level. It's it's deeper than than that. Yeah. And and it's it's hard for me to really
00:59:53
Speaker
put that into words because it is such a visceral feeling. Like what your actual gender identity is, especially if it's not one that you were assigned at birth, like figuring figuring all of that out and learning how to integrate what may be perceived as really contradicting aspects of who you are as a person.

Eowyn as a Trans Narrative

01:00:23
Speaker
like It is very visceral and I just i feel it so deeply at at this moment that she has become he and they are they. like she She is Dernhelm.
01:00:40
Speaker
And it's not necessarily like a part of her you could ever divorce away. And it was not a part of her that was ever divorced away. Dernhelm was always there. Dernhelm was just locked in an even tighter cage than Eowyn was. Yeah. Yeah, it's a like like you said, it's a trans narrative and it's a trans experience. And I can hear that like in your voice, like how much like that is such a visceral experience and yeah and how and how deeply I feel but but that that resonates with you, which I think is just amazing. And I think
01:01:19
Speaker
the more we we talk about AON, it's like, and the more like scholarship we sort of have i've seen and read around AON, it's sort of like, I feel like there's there's definitely work that gets close, but not not quite there, I think. And and I think it's because, it's it might be because a lot of folks writing about her aren't trans, you know? I had never read her as genderqueer in any way until I sat in on this presentation that I've talked about multiple times it had so and heard someone else read her that way. And this the next time I went through and read The Lord of the Rings, it hit so much harder. Yeah.
01:02:09
Speaker
yeah Because I had always liked Eowyn and I always chalked it up to the fact that she's the only actual female character that does anything.
01:02:19
Speaker
And then having this new lens through which to read her, it it opened up so much for me. And that was before I realized that I was not by Mary, because I didn't have words for that at the time. Yeah. Yeah. I love it. And this is a reading that you know I've come to because Alicia mentioned it. Yes, exactly. you know the This is how we start to to shift the ways that that we are reading things and what our assumptions of how they have to be read are.
01:02:54
Speaker
And so as I'm going back through and reading, one of the things that's key to me to remember is different than when I first read Lord of the Rings when I was in the eighth grade, or whatever, and my ideas of of like receiving information versus being able to engage with information. is remembering that Aowin's performance of gender is always her performance of gender, whether it is feminine and coded and and that's the role that Aowin has or masculine coded and like he him pronounces during home and everything. The agency and choice to be able to
01:03:43
Speaker
bring forward those those pieces of identity instead of that just being like how things are and somebody is telling me to look to read it that way like that that's been very key for me in the in like the non-binary reading. of AON and that understanding that I don't have to just take sort of like the societally received notions like AON is a female character. like No, it's it it can be much more complex than that and much more interesting that way. 100%. It is definitely hard for some people to be able to discern the difference between gender identity and gender expression. And that that is exactly what I'm trying to get at.
01:04:29
Speaker
Dernhelm and AON are one gender identity. They are two different gender expressions of one whole gender identity. Yeah, yeah. I'm one of those people who it took, it's still something that I still have to think very, be like, yeah, gender identity and gender expression are different. And it's specifically through reading a lot and through experiencing a lot of folks like, and again, Alicia bringing this up, I was kind of like, oh, I think I get it now. Yeah, okay.

Conclusion and Transition to Faramir Discussion

01:05:05
Speaker
Yeah, that makes so much sense.
01:05:07
Speaker
And yeah, it's like, this is why own voices and diverse perspectives and queer readings of of ostensibly written by straight people texts are so important because yeah, it'll basically change your mind, man. Is there anything that we wanted to touch back in on AON before we move to Faramir? Alicia, did you have anything else that you wanted to um get into or discuss before we do that? Not necessarily outside of Faramir. I think we're OK to move on. Let's do it. Let's get to let's get to our boy. This is going to be an episode part two.
01:05:53
Speaker
Oh, yeah. Oh, good Lord. We'll just see how we go. Yeah. Hi, editing Tim. Yeah. Sorry.
01:06:04
Speaker
yeah he has my wife energy Now sometimes people assume I'm queer and I have to say, Hey, just this great guy here, but I get it a lot. I don't mean to be cruel. It's just that my wife is a bisexual. Bye.
01:06:19
Speaker
Well, hello everyone. This is Alicia after the fact. Thank you for joining us in our discussion of Aowan. We talked for almost four hours, so this is going to be multiple episodes. Surprise. Join us next time where we are going to be discussing Faramir and his cultural milieu and the browsing finish of Aowan and Faramir's relationship together in part. I told you we talked for almost four hours.
01:06:57
Speaker
So see you in a little bit, and in the meantime you can find us on Apple Podcast, ah YouTube Music, previously known as Google Podcast, Spotify, or any of your podcast platforms of choice. You can also stream our episodes directly on Zencaster, that is zencaster.com slash queer lodgings the Tolkien podcast with hyphens in between all of those words. Please leave us a rating and like, share, and subscribe. It really does help us out a lot.
01:07:30
Speaker
You can find us on Facebook at queerlodgings, on Twitter, the only thing it's acceptable to deadname, at queer underscore lodgings. You can also send us an email at queerlodgingspodcast at gmail.com.
01:07:57
Speaker
We already did. Did you want us to actually say add a rainbow for pride month or was that a suggestion of something that was me? That was me being like adding a rainbow. It's it's pride month and we're back. So like where I am just emotionally is like what a purchase was throw a fucking brick through a window because it's pride.