We rewind to the city of Minas Tirith, where for the second chapter in a row, a character is being incredibly goth and talking about how much they want to die. This time it's Éowyn, who is staying at the Houses of Healing and annoying the Warden. When he refuses to let her leave, she demands to see Faramir in his capacity as Steward, and complains to him that she isn't dead yet.
It turns out Faramir is into goths, because he now dedicates the rest of his time at the Houses of Healing to wooing Éowyn, up to and including interrogating Merry for intelligence. He persuades Éowyn to hang out, and so while high drama is happening in Mordor, they promenade about the gardens in Minas Tirith. Eventually a bird comes to tell everyone that the good guys won, and Faramir has to do actual work when Aragorn arrives to be crowned.
Now that he's king, Aragorn makes Faramir Prince of Ithilien - handing out lands to your best commanders is always nice in Crusader Kings 2 - and packs Beregond off with him. We then get some heavy symbolism when Gandalf and Aragorn find a new white tree for Minas Tirith in the mountains, and soon enough Elrond and his household show up, and Aragorn and Arwen get married.
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When I talked about Éowyn earlier, I quoted Tolkien's characterization of her as "not really a soldier or 'amazon', but like many brave women was capable of great military gallantry at a crisis" (Letters, 244). So while she can participate in war, even very gallantly, because she's a woman, she doesn't get to be a "real soldier" but rather a sort or Hostilities Only auxiliary. The way she abandons her military career in favor of more womanly pursuits is a stark reminder that Tolkien was no feminist: as soon as Éowyn finds "true love", she is content to withdraw to the domestic sphere. With the "taming" talk and everything, Tolkien comes perilously close to betraying the way Éowyn was portrayed when we first met her; it's almost as if her entire life as a shield-maiden was some kind of whim or aberration. So while it's cute that she and Faramir find each other, and they have some good moments together, there's an unpleasant feeling of a woman being put in her place about the whole thing.
Faramir's courtship of Éowyn is ridiculously short and simple compared to his king's. If you read Appendix A, you learn that Elrond's condition for Aragorn marrying Arwen was that he restore the kingdoms of the Númenorans, which incidentally makes her sound like a Crusader Kings achievement. Judging from the flag she made him, she was into it, but you can make a fair case that a more descriptive name for this whole epic novel would have been The Unreasonable Father-in-Law.
Like the previous chapter, this, too, is best described as short and triumphal. Tolkien is taking his time tying up all the threads of the story, and there's a certain satisfaction to it.
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Next time: a road trip.
I think Aragorn was just an achievement hunter and looking to get 100%.
ReplyDeleteAlso I wonder if Tolkien was inspired by Henry V where you go from the drama and action of Agincourt (and the aftermath) and then smash cut to Princess Katherine talking in French with her handmaid about the oddity of English words (especially in the Brannagh version).
Never really got a proper sense of what Tolkien's relationship to Shakespeare's works was like - he must have had one!
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