Christian S. Trenk’s " Éowyn, the Male Gaze, and Its Place within the Text

In 2023, I participated at the Tolkien Seminar organised by the German Tolkien Society, on the topic of "The Visualisation fo Tolkien’s Work". One of the co-presenteres there was Christian S. Trenk, who presented a piece called: "Éowyn, the Male Gaze, and Its Place within the Text". This, along with other conference proceedings, was published in the Hither Shore journal, no. 20, in 2024. And it was only reading it here that I noticed several points in Christian’s paper that made me think a little deeper about them. So let me to share some of my observations/ideas that occurred to me while reading it.

• On p. 175, he writes about how Merry was able to see Éowyn’s glimmering eyes and how it is possible that he, nor anyone else noticed she is a female, not a young boy. I would argue that for one thing, Merry knew pretty little about Men by that time, except for Aragorn and Boromir, it was his first time spending a longer period among the Big Folk, and he knew even less about Big Folk’s teenagers or women. He hasn’t encountered either so far, so that may be why he didn’t recognize her — masked as a man — to be a woman actually. Also, the ride of the Rohirrim started on the first Dawnless day, so it was night-time-like dark and he might have barely seen anyone properly in that non-light, or even in a flickering torch light, althought he might have still been able to catch a glimpse of a glimmer in the eyes.

• Picture no 3 on p. 178 (Donato Giacanolla’s "Defender of Rohan") seems really plausible to me to mistake Éowyn for a man there, perhaps if she was painted with shorter (shoulder length) hair, she really would look like a long-haired young guy.

• On p. 178 he elaborated why Éowyn never looks upon herself and the possible meanings of her statement: "You look upon a woman." instead of "I am a woman" I think she uses this grammatical/syntactical construction because so far she did not identify with her gender (as some may say nowadays), she hasn’t embraced her womanhood. All her life she inclined to sword-fighting like a man (that of itself is not unusual for Rohirric women), identifying as a schield-maiden, who, however, was never allowed to realize her potential fully, and instead was put/forced into a stereotypical role of a woman-housewife by her male relatives. Sure, Éomer did it to protect her, and then she had the duty to care about bewitched Théoden, but being bound to the inside of Meduseld in that duty, she hated it. She wanted to go to battle with her brother and win big victories or die attempting so. She saw herself as a warrior (whether her desires were mistaken and why, is besides the point now), as a man. So I think that is why she doesn’t say "I am a woman", she does not think of herself in such terms. (And frankly, there are many women who, in their every day life, do not think of themselves as women, or in any specific gender terms, but rather as merely humans - me included). Moreover, because everyone wants to impose on her roles she is not aligned with, but which she cannot escape/protest against openly, she is used to looking at herself through the eyes of others, in terms of what she is to others and what duties are implied therefrom: a sister, a niece, a lady of Rohan, a woman.

• On a lighter note, looking at the pictures no. 7 and 8 (Don Marquez’s "Éowyn and the Witch-King of Angmar" and Frank Frazetta’s "Éowyn"), they reminded me of Bakshi’s rendition of Aragorn and Boromir. Poor guys running across Middle-earth in equally naked behinds like Éowyn in this pictures

• On p. 189 he then talks about Faramir’s look/gaze upon Éowyn. I think his stance/approach to her is a reflection of Tolkien’s thoughts of women as described in one of his letters: that women should not be romanticised and put on a pedestal as some kind of goddesses, because then they are entrapped on the pedestal and could do nothing (Éowyn felt similarly when she claimed she felt like in a cage) — and I would add, that when you put her on a pedestal, you can only look upon her from the bottom = right under her skirt. Instead, Tolkien claimed that women should be seen as equal companions in the shipwreck of this earthly life. And that is what Faramir sees in Éowyn. He sees a person equally abandoned by parents, not valued for who she truly is inside, trying to impress other by subduing to their wishes/the roles others impose on them, and equally hurt by life like he is. He sees her first as a person, and only then as a woman.

I shared these my observations with Christian and here is what he replied:

As to your first point, you will have read my reasoning why this does not convince me on p. 175f. – in addition to that: whenever the Hobbits encounter adolescent humans, they have no trouble identifying them as such; it is rather the other way around that problems arise (cf. Pippin and Bergil or Aragorn’s comments to Éomer). Merry is also, in the scene I quote, confident to identify her as a woman from far away. My main point, though, is that his perception is completely irrelevant. The Rohirric men around Éowyn don’t recognize her as a woman. So she was clearly well enough disguised to pass as a man at first (and even second) glance. Many of the illustrations don’t pass that test, I’d argue.

Your second point, re: Donato Giancola’s. I would only disagree with the need for shorter hair. As I state in the paper, this rendition is absolutely male-passing. If anything, it is not feminine enough (why would Merry think this Dernhelm to be an adolescent?). I’m not sure if that means that you disagree with all my other judgements as you single this one out On your third point, I would just refer to Sara Brown’s paper on this issue (her Oxonmoot 2023 paper, I believe), and therefore agree with the observation that she’s not happy with how her womanhood leads to her being forced into stereotypical roles. I still find it remarkable that Tolkien switches grammar from one sentence to the other, and while this undoubtedly expresses her self-distancing from her womanhood, I also think the “looking” is important – see the Faramir point below. Bakshi’s is a fascinating case. Not least because of the many native American evocations. That’s really something that hasn’t been explored widely enough in recent years (to my knowledge).

For Faramir, I would argue that the situation is more complex than you are able to express in a brief response. I would agree, however, that Faramir is uniquely disposed to see her for who she truly is – a woman but also a person, therefore not just looking upon a woman. And I would also agree that they end up as equals; sort of an idealized version of the Tolkiens’ own marriage, as I end up hinting at in this follow-up paper that was recently published in the Journal for Tolkien Research: https://scholar.valpo.edu/journaloftolkienresearch/vol19/iss2/2/ (No obligation or expectation for you to read it). I intend these comments as a preliminary indication of how I might think about any forthcoming rebuttal/response.

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