Today I’m going to do something a little different. Instead of sharing a book from my collection that you might enjoy reading, summarizing the plot, the characters, what resonates with me about it, and – if I’m really on – how it applies to life, I am going to dig deep into one aspect of The Lord of the Rings trilogy (the books, not the movies): in particular, the women of The Lord of the Rings. So strap in for a bumpy ride.

I’m not going to bother summarizing the plot. Even if you’ve only seen the movies, you’ve got enough plot to follow what I’m talking about – or, well, almost enough. What you need to understand, if you’ve only seen the movies, is that The Lord of the Rings is basically an Ocean’s 11 of a trilogy: it’s about a band of men taking on adventures against all odds; and the only woman – Julia Roberts in Ocean’s 11 – is a distant thing up on a pedestal, the prize that Ocean will win if he succeeds over Andy Garcia’s character. I’m not saying that Aragorn goes on this quest to win Arawen – it’s just to say that Peter Jackson tried to flesh out Arawen in the movie and, in the books, it’s different, for reasons I’ll discuss in a minute. There are a lot of strong fantasy stories out there with strong female characters – even if they’re not the star players – but The Lord of the Rings ain’t one of them. And it’s a good trilogy in spite of that.

The Seven Women in The Lord of the Rings

There are really only seven women in The Lord of the Rings: Lobelia Sackville-Baggins; Goldberry; Arwen Evenstar; Galadriel; Eowyn; Ioreth; and Rosie Cotton. Other women are mentioned but they are women from the past, like Undomiel and Gollum’s grandmother – matriarch of his family – and the Entwives. But, for the most part, women in The Lord of the Rings are invisible, like women throughout history – except and unless, as the t-shirts say, the women misbehave. There are so many places in this book where women might be seen but aren’t. You don’t see them at Bilbo’s birthday party, at the Dancing Pony, in Helm’s Deep, or Minas Tirith; and the only woman in Rivendell is, apparently, Arwen.

Let’s look at the visible women in the order in which they appear.

Lobelia Sackville-Baggins

You may not remember Lobelia from the movie but she shows up three times in the books (plus once in The Hobbit). She shows up after Bilbo’s birthday party, where she is stealing spoons. Yes, stealing spoons. The second time is when Frodo sells her Bag End and “moves to Crickhollow” – she shows up before he hasn’t even left because she cannot wait to take possession.

She appears again at the end of The Return of the King, where she has become somewhat of a folk hero for being imprisoned for standing up to Saruman’s* lackeys. When she is rescued from the Lockholes, where she has been almost the entire time the boys have been off on their adventures, she is touchingly overcome by the cheering and applause that she receives. “She has never in her life been popular before.” She repents of her ways and, when she dies a year later, leaves all of her money to Frodo to help Hobbits who have been left homeless by Saruman’s evil.

Lobelia, to me, is hint about Gollum (Smeagol). Smeagol’s people were sort of proto-Hobbits, “akin to the fathers of the fathers of the Stoors” (the Stoors being a community of Hobbits that live along the water). Bilbo and Smeagol share a love of riddles and Smeagol’s people live a happy, rural life, “clever-handed and light-footed” much like Hobbits. Except that Smeagol and his best friend, Deagol, fight over gold – it’s not just Smeagol, it’s his friend, too – which shows that there is a vulnerability in the ancestor of the Stoors, an avarice. That same avarice appears in Lobelia, hinting that the same vulnerability lies hidden within all Hobbits, and within Frodo himself.

And yet, Lobelia is redeemed at the end of the trilogy, redeemed by the love that she earns from her community for standing up to tyranny and instead of hoarding gold, she gives it away to those who have suffered. Her redemption makes her a hero.

Goldberry

If you only saw the movies, you probably have no idea who Goldberry is. That’s okay; I’m not going to spend much time on her. She’s Tom Bombadil’s life partner; and he was left out of the movie, which was fine with me because he’s kind of a confusing character. I do regret that the initial incident that the boys encountered – that led to them being rescued by Bombadil and meeting Goldberry – was left out because it’s an important event in the arc of the story, demonstrating how unprepared for the adventure the Hobbits really are. But Tom Bombadil and Goldberry are otherwise unimportant to the rest of the story.

Goldberry is not really a woman anyway – she’s an elemental: the river’s daughter, bringing the spring rains that wash away the bad memory of the hobbit’s first real adventure.

Arwen Evenstar

This is the one that may surprise you the most, if you’ve only read seen the movies because she is the most changed in the movies.

I read something the other day that bemoaned the fact that combining Arwen with Glorfindel in the movies left out Glorfindel’s important contributions. I’m actually okay that they combined them in the movie – let Liv Tyler ride around a little bit and actually do something. I don’t mind how they changed her role in the first movie. My complaint is all of Aragorn’s dreaming about her and the scenes with her father and her almost leaving and all that other stuff that Jackson added. First of all, yawn. Second of all, blech.** Third of all, repurpose that screen time to add back in the what happened after the hobbits returned to The Shire instead, please.

Anyway, in the books, Arwen appears in Rivendell in Fellowship of the Ring. Frodo sees her, is bowled over by her beauty and presence, and the sense of age that he gets from her – here is someone who, despite her youthful appearance, holds herself as if she has lived ages already because she has.

And that’s it for our introduction to Arwen. She is described in one scene. She doesn’t speak or take any kind of action. She and Aragorn don’t even exchange glances.

Later, the narrator tells us that she is Aragorn’s love, that she grew up in Lothlorien with Galadriel after her mother was kidnapped and killed. She sends her brothers to Aragorn with a pennant that Aragorn carries into battle.

Once the fighting is over, she and Aragorn marry. Then she speaks two paragraphs, promising Frodo her place on the ships from the Grey Havens, her place in the undying land across the seas.

And that’s it.

That’s all there is to Arwen. She is, more than any other woman in the LOTR, an image on a pedestal, the evening to Galadriel’s morning, as Gimli says, seeing them together. I remind you that Gimli was at Rivendell with the others – he saw Arwen there and barely remembers her. That’s how non-entity she is.

Galadriel

Galadriel is, among all the women in LOTR, the most powerful. She holds one of the three elven rings and preserves Lothlorien. She grants the Fellowship refuge, resupplies them with boats, food, and rope; she gives the boys gifts of power. She shows Sam and Frodo possible futures in her scrying bowl. She advises each of the Fellowship members.

After they leave, she follows Frodo in her mind, nudging him at times: to get off the throne of seeing; reminding him of her gift of light in the darkness. She grants Gimli a gift of three of her hairs, and wins his Dwarven heart. She helps the injured Gandalf heal.

She resists the One Ring, which Frodo – overcome by her beauty, generosity, and power – offers her. She knows that Frodo destroys the One Ring, her Elven ring will lose its power and all that she has done with it will fade. She chooses to give up all her power, the beautiful land she has preserved for thousands of years, and “diminish” and go into the West. She gives up her life in this world (middle earth) to go to the mythic isles across the sea.

Eowyn

Eowyn is my favorite character in the LOTR. I’ve written before about her situation when we first encounter her: her father and mother, long dead. Her brother recently dead. Her cousin, imprisoned. Her uncle, lost in a depression caused by Saruman’s voice through Wormtongue. Wormtongue sexually harassing her. Their noble House of Rohan, falling.

And yet she keeps on, despite her own depression; she refuses to despair. She keeps the house running, she buries her brother, she cares for her uncle. This is a woman trained as a shieldmaiden, trained to fight, to lead a people who – like Vikings – look forward to dying in battle, sword in hand.***

As she does.

Everyone says that she loves Aragorn. I think she loves what he represents: his ability to fight, a willingness to walk the paths of death. Keep in mind when she meets him, she doesn’t know that he’s the king of everything that everyone has been waiting for. He’s just a ranger with a legendary sword, who shows up, leads her uncle into battle again, and wins an unwinnable battle.

And then they’re all just going to leave her there, with the women and girls, and with the men who are too young or too old to fight? To rule the people – who love her and will follow her, as her uncle tells her – depriving her of an opportunity to die a valiant death on the field of unwinnable battle with her kin, as opposed to waiting at home for Sauron’s orcs to overrun them?

No wonder she dresses in man’s clothing and hides in the back of the army, stepping forward to join the king’s guard only when they actually hit the field of battle. No wonder that she is willing to take on the Lord of the Nazgul, who cannot be slain by man. No wonder that she is so unwilling to return from the land of the dead. And, when finally drawn back by Aragorn’s magic, she says she is only willing to seek health, that she may fill an empty saddle and return to battle.

And then, what does she say when she finds herself trapped by inactivity in the Houses of Healing: her window does not even face eastward, the direction of Mordor, from whence the final blow will come. She is unable to even face her doom.

Of all the women in the LOTR, Eowyn has the most lines, takes the most agency, actually kills the Witch King of Angmar, and has the happiest ending.

Ioreth, Wise Woman of the House of Healing

She has a small role – perhaps intended as a humorous role – the garrulous gossip who whispers exposition to her sister, ironically called “the wise woman of the house of healing” because her ignorance about herbs delays Aragorn from healing Merry and Eowyn.

It seems almost a letdown to describe Ioreth after Eowyn. She eventually finds Kingsfoil for Aragorn; she tends the injured; her tongue runs on and on. Funny that Tolkien wasted a name and speech on a character who has such a small contribution to the quest.

And yet she has a name, one of the few living women in LOTR that does.

Rosie Cotton

What does Rosie think, in The Fellowship of the Ring, when Frodo moves to Buckland, at the far end of The Shire, further away than most people in Hobbiton have ever journeyed, and Sam announces that he is going with Frodo “to do for Frodo and look after his bit of garden”?

We’ll never know, for Rosie doesn’t appear in the books until Sam begins to reminisce about the Shire while the fellowship is deep into their journey. Sam starts by remembering the beer at the Green Dragon, the Shire, his father, and finally gets around to Rosie. The further he gets from home, the more she looms in his mind as the one who got away, a feeling that is crystallizes most clearly when he and Frodo are deep in Mordor, without enough food for the journey back and Frodo tells him that they are on a one-way trip, whether they make it to Mount Doom or not.

Sam is gone for years and no one assumes that he and Frodo will return to the Shire. And yet Rosie is still available when Sam returns. She waits for him, confident he will return, even when everyone else has given them up for dead. When Sam pauses a moment upon his return to speak to her again on his way to help Merry, Pippin, and Frodo take back the Shire from Saruman, she stuns Sam by teasing, “If you’ve been looking after Mr. Frodo all this while, what d’you want to leave him for, as soon as things look dangerous.” She then tells him she thinks he looks “fine” and urges him to hurry back when they’ve finished the job.

Eventually Sam and Rosie marry, she comes to live with Sam in Frodo’s home, and she and Sam raise a large family. Rosie, more than anyone, represents The Shire that Frodo and Sam left behind – the unspoiled innocence, unable to even imagine the dangers outside their borders, yet faithfully waiting for their return, helping Sam readjust to civilian life and reintegrate into the community, where Sam goes on to become mayor eventually.

And That’s It

Those are the seven women of the Lord of the Rings trilogy. Seven women with names****, seven women who speak and do things, who stand out from the crowd of women who aren’t even named and don’t even – like the Rohirrim mother in the movies who weeps as her son is drafted into the winless battle of Helms Deep, a travesty for a woman of Rohan to weep at such a glorious day – stand out from a crowd.

I encourage you, if you’ve only seen the movie, to read the books and see for yourself. If you’ve read the books, read them again with this in mind. Let me know what you think.

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^{*See what you missed watching the movies – my biggest complaint about the movies is that Jackson left out what really happened when the hobbits returned to The Shire. That is what makes the rest of the books make sense. And, if you saw the movies, you missed it. Hah! Read the books.}

^{**Imagine Julia Roberts popping up throughout Ocean’s 11 to haunt George Clooney’s dreams. Ick.}

^{***I see way too many meme’s about Aragorn dissing Eowyn or making fun of Eowyn’s stew. Stew! She’s a shieldmaiden – she doesn’t have time to be making stew!}

^{****I do not include the “Mrs.” characters – Mrs. Cotton, Mrs. Maggot. Although they have names, they are not shown actually doing anything – even serving dinner – and they do not speak.}