[Sophia the Thunder Mistress]

I posted on this thread a bit ago, but the discussion has come so far I wanted to put in another small bit.

A lot of people have mentioned Eowyn and her courage and strength and so on. And partially, I agree (she is one of my favorite characters in LOTR after all...) but I think we forget that Eowyn's determination and such were inspired by her despair. She went to the battle, not so much to do great things, but to do great things and die while doing them. She saw nothing ahead of her but "female passivity" and was willing to do pretty much anything to escape from it. she was defeated in every area, denied Aragorn's love, forced to wait on the men, kept inside basically. Realistically, I think she was a little unbalanced.

When she does "come around" in the end we accuse her of accepting her male dominated role? True Tolkien didn't look too deeply into her thoughts, but I think something can be taken from the fact that she turns from war when she's no longer despairing. I can't however, imagine Eowyn sitting inside doing cross stitch. Let's not be so bloodthirsty as to assume that the only place for an independant female is out hacking up orcs. When she found a little appreciation (Faramir) Eowyn was free to pursue something other than virtual suicide.

And as a sidenote, if we're looking for flawed female characters, Galadriel's past wasn't spotless.