Many years ago, at the height of my infatuation with Tolkien, I participated in a forum of discussion on things Tolkienian, but especially on the films, which had just been released.

All this sort of thing was new to me. I’d never been a “fan” of any kind before, and unaware at the time that I wasn’t really a “fan” of Tolkien as my fellow participants in the discussion could legitimately claim to be, I was surprised by remarks I perceived as profoundly superficial.

They were, for example, in complete denial of Tolkien’s Catholicism in all but the strictest biographical sense. Indeed, they found his faith something he rather “overcame” in his literary achievement, and often pondered aloud how it added to his greatness that he was able to set it aside for the sake of something so much “greater” in The Lord of the Rings. Just as the fan mentality handles Tolkien’s faith by dismissing it, his attitude toward women is “tolerated.” They excuse him as simply a product of his time. His borderline misogyny (by today’s extreme feminist standards) is, like his faith, not examined at all, since it does not enhance their cultish idolatry. It’s simply dismissed.

But Tolkien exhibited to me in the character of Eowyn an understanding of the feminine psyche unequalled by most other modern writers of fiction.

Joseph’s link in his post “Tolkien on Sex” in the International Business Times (http://www.virtueonline.org/portal/modules/news/article.php?storyid=18690#.UyFtnvldVOF) includes:

“From the vantage point of the 21st century, Tolkien will appear to many to be both out of step and out of tune with the sexual mores of our times. Tolkien would no doubt take this as a sincere, if unintended, compliment. He knew he was out of step, and he steadfastly refused to update his morality in order to pass the muster of the moderns.”

The writer is a man, so is Joseph, and so is Kevin O’Brien, who wrote insightful follow-ups on this subject. But their subject is sex.

A man’s attitude toward women is an illustration, a graphic one, of his attitude toward sex. I think it was gutsy of Tolkien to say—even in a private letter to his son—that men are not monogamous by instinct. (Personally, I’d mistrust the complete veracity of any man who claimed otherwise, despite whatever romantic fantasies might lead him to believe–temporarily.) Kevin’s exploration of this subject on his own site led him to a meditation on chivalry, a notion almost forgotten nowadays, and it’s precisely here that we arrive at Tolkien’s attitude toward women.

If I described, out loud, what I perceive as quintessential femininity (as Joseph, Kevin, the IBT writer, and Tolkien himself, have all said about masculinity), I’m pretty sure feminists would want me assassinated, preferably by some very gruesome means. Actually, such a descriptive statement isn’t necessary; Tolkien does it masterfully in his character of Eowyn—who is not at all some mythical “warrior maiden” who needs-not-man. Her magnificent heroism on the battlefield can’t be taken out of the context of her character, which is far more comprehensive than that. You cannot ignore Eowyn before that scene, nor after it. You cannot ignore what drove her to it, nor what healed her afterwards. Of course, I am speaking of Tolkien’s characterization of Eowyn, not Peter Jackson’s. (The latter virtually re-wrote LOTR according to his own views. Although the film had some great technological and cinematic features, its re-writing of the trilogy should be condemned.)

Succinctly (feminists may kill me), just as masculine sexuality is physical and mobile, the feminine is psychic and stationary. There’s a reason men are drawn toward cars and women toward houses. A woman is pursued; she does not pursue. She must be chosen, wooed, and won (that’s all passive voice) before she can bloom, before she can flower and be fruitful. That makes her dependent on man. That’s the way it is. That was Eowyn’s sorrow, the cause of her tragic heroism on the battlefield, and the source of her healing afterwards. She did not suffer repression by men; she suffered rejection by a man, the only man whom she knew at the time to be worthy of her.

Tolkien understood women. Better, I think, than most women understand themselves. We don’t like the idea of helplessness. But the truth is, when it comes to our femininity at its deepest level, the place that doesn’t care what the prevailing social or political ideas are, we are all damsels in distress, awaiting the knight in shining armor who will save us from the barrenness that awaits us if he does not save us from it. If there is competition for us, we are ourselves tested: our experience with our own fathers comes into subconscious play, but so does the tutelage and example of our mothers. Fortunate is the woman who was cherished by her father, and nourished in wisdom by her mother.