By Dawn Felagund
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At the point in the ten-plus-year history of the Character of the Month biographies, we've written about all of the Valar except one: Estë. Estë is in that class of characters whom I like to say separate the wheat from the chaff (or the fans from the truly devout) on Tolkien trivia nights. She's not a readily recognizable character, and she's a character who, at first glance, it is hard to take seriously.
But my completionist tendencies have led me here, to write the final biography to complete the set on the Valar, and I'd make the case that Estë is important within the broader context of the legendarium. Rather, as is often the case with female characters in the legendarium, it is her characterization and depiction (not her potential) that lacks, and as ever, that lack could be remedied through fanfiction and other transformative works.
We've all probably said it at one time or another: "I slept right through it!" An important event, a performance we hoped to catch, an exciting place visited while too tired to enjoy. Or a movie. Or a class. One could draw the conclusion that Estë sleeps right through The Silmarillion without being entirely wrong. Certainly, we don't see much of her; she is mentioned only eight times.1 Furthermore, her role within the legendarium is as a goddess of rest who, canonically, sleeps through the day.2
Aside from her place smack in the middle of the catalogue of the Valier (female Valar) in the Valaquenta, Estë is introduced in the usual way of many female characters in Tolkien: in the context of a male relative, in this case, her husband Irmo. She is given the epithet "the gentle" and described as "the healer of hurts and of weariness. Grey is her raiment; and rest is her gift." Next comes the line that could lead one to believe that she slept through The Silmarillion:
She walks not by day, but sleeps upon an island in the tree-shadowed lake of Lórellin. From the fountains of Irmo and Estë all those who dwell in Valinor draw refreshment; and often the Valar come themselves to Lórien and there find repose and easing of the burden of Arda.3
There are a couple takeaways in this passage. First is that she "walks not by day," which implies not so much a lack of activity as a transposition of activity to a time when most characters are at rest. Estë could, in other words, be seen as the night owl of The Silmarillion. As a night owl myself, and not unfamiliar with the charge of laziness often made against my kind, I feel duty-bound to point out that Estë could very well be doing important work that fails to be recorded due to the inconvenience of the time in which she is doing it.
In fact, this passage also introduces Estë's importance within the legendarium as a character who offers relief to the mightiest of her kind. As I will discuss in greater detail below, the idea of weariness as an affliction and rest as a comfort needed at times by all pervades the legendarium and threads some of Tolkien's most important tales. Estë's work, then, less lacks in importance than it goes unseen and--given the high profile of her clientele--like as not shrouded in mystery.
Estë is mentioned twice more in The Silmarillion. The first concerns her role as the mentor of Melian, the Maia who marries Thingol, mothers Lúthien, and whose enchantments protect Doriath for hundreds of years:
Melian was the name of a Maia who served both Vána and Estë; she dwelt long in Lórien, tending the trees that flower in the gardens of Irmo, ere she came to Middle-earth.4
Melian's own potency and agency within the story suggests Estë did more than sleep and dabble about in Lórellin. Instead, we see in her relationship with Melian her role as a teacher of other women in her arts and power. Estë's role in mentoring so powerful a character as Melian implies a similar--or greater--power within Estë herself, even if this implication never bears out in the text of The Silmarillion.
Estë's final appearance concerns the making of the Sun and Moon. First, she is associated with Tilion, the young Maia chosen as steersman of the Moon:
[Tilion] was a lover of silver, and when he would rest he forsook the woods of Oromë, and going into Lórien he lay in dream by the pools of Estë, in Telperion's flickering beams ....5
Here, again, we see her vital role in providing relief to the Ainur, including some additional details as to its mysteries.
Next, responding to Varda's plan that the Sun and Moon should both remain constantly aloft, in mimicry of the mingled light of the Two Trees, issuing from opposite horizons and crossing at the sky's zenith, Estë and her husband Irmo protest the obvious imperilment such a plan poses for the Circadian rhythms of Arda:
Because of the waywardness of Tilion, therefore, and yet more because of the prayers of Lórien and Estë, who said that sleep and rest had been banished from the Earth, and the stars were hidden, Varda changed her counsel, and allowed a time wherein the world should still have shadow and half-light.6
Of course, we see again Estë's association with her role as the Vala of healing and rest but, more importantly, we see her in the role of an advocate, speaking for the necessity of rest and sleep for the health of all living beings upon Arda. She is, indeed, not a character who slept through an important event but one who calls upon her experience and wisdom to shape the cosmology of Arda. Nor can I help but note that, in doing so, she cannily points out to Varda that the lack of darkness means that Varda's own stars will be obscured, a rhetorical flourish that leaves her looking rather clever and aware of how best to get her way, not at all the girl who slept through class.
In a final appearance, Estë's name is again mentioned in the context of her role as her people preserve the body of the Noldorin queen Míriel Serindë:
[Míriel] went then to the gardens of Lórien and lay down to sleep; but though she seemed to sleep, her spirit indeed departed from her body, and passed in silence to the halls of Mandos. The maidens of Estë tended the body of Míriel, and it remained unwithered; but she did not return.7
And with that eighth--and final--appearance in The Silmarillion, Estë likewise does not return.
As I've written elsewhere, the Valar function as a prototype of how Arda is organized. Descending to Arda in a 50/50 division of male and female, the Valar establish that same ratio as normal for the other Children of Eru. Furthermore--and this is the hopeful part--their equal numbers mean that women and men possess equal enthusiasm for involvement in shaping their worlds. But there the prototype, at least as a harbinger of gender equality, falls apart.
Tolkien fans and scholars alike tend to become defensive over charges of sexism against him. He is, they argue, a product of his times, and it is hardly fair to extend today's values around gender equality to someone who, one hundred years ago, was already a young man. I'll consider these fair points insofar as I don't believe that Tolkien engineered intentional sexism into his legendarium.8 Rather, I think it more likely that he didn't fully connect with women to comprehend the full range of roles they could occupy. Part of this was certainly the patriarchal organization of the elite academic world he occupied and the time period in which he lived, when marriage most often meant relegation to housewifery for women. He would have seen few examples in his own life, compared to young men today, of women in diverse roles requiring competence and agency. Part of it was the ancient and medieval sources he himself took as inspiration, which also fail to model what we'd today call gender equality. And so it goes: a feedback loop wherein ancient sources inform a new mythology9 that in turn has informed a generation of fantasy literature endowed with similar marks of sexism.
One criticism against Tolkien's representation of women is simply their absence from his work. Tolkien scholar Una McCormack makes the startling point that there are more named horses in The Lord of the Rings than there are named women.10 Women in The Silmarillion fare slightly better: Roughly 19% of the named characters in The Silmarillion are women. The Valar are one area where Tolkien can't be criticized for underrepresentation of women; there are just as many women as there are men. However, as my own research has shown, these women play a less active role than their male counterparts, and Estë is a perfect example of this.11 What often seems to happen is that the Valier--compared to the male Valar--often occupy roles notable for their symbolic importance within the larger legendarium rather than their agency within the story.12 Estë, for example, is the "healer of hurts and of weariness" among the Valar. This is a vital role. Again and again, Tolkien emphasizes weariness as an especially cruel malady and rest as something desirable to everyone from the merest Hobbit--both Bilbo and Frodo desire rest for their weariness and head West to seek it--to the mightiest of the Valar, of whom Tolkien says "as Time wears even the Powers shall envy" death as a reprieve from the endless weary burden of living.13 Within the context of the legendarium, then, Estë's role is more significant than simply a "goddess of sleep." She provides rejuvenation of a kind essential within the legendarium and reinforces the eschatological concept that eternal life is a grinding, exhausting existence, and one should face death not only without fear but with gratitude for the rest it provides.
Where Estë falls short, along with many of her counterparts among the Valier, is in Tolkien's failure to translate that vital symbolic role into one of agency. What does a goddess of sleep do to shape and sustain the world she made the choice to enter? We never see Estë in action; we never hear her voice. We can infer that she was active by her mentorship of Melian, but we do not actually see her in this role. We can infer her advocacy on behalf of those all-important concepts of rest and rejuvenation when she protests the Sun being ever aloft, but we never actually hear her voice.14
Given this, it becomes too easy to dismiss Estë as the goddess who sleeps through the book.
In his Book of Lost Tales, begun in the mid-1910s and forming the first written work on what would become The Silmarillion, Tolkien extensively develops many of his Valar. While a few drop away before his next iteration of The Silmarillion, his Valar are remarkably fixed even at this early point. There are only two who were not present at the outset: Vairë and Estë. Estë first appears in the 1930s text called by Christopher Tolkien The Earliest Annals of Valinor, where she is introduced at the end of a catalogue of the Valar at the beginning of the work by name only: "... and Estë."15 Here, she is established as the wife of Irmo Lórien: Christopher Tolkien observes that it is implied in the construction of the passage,16 and a version of this section written in Old English identifies her as "Estë Lóriendes cwén" ("Estë Lórien's wife").17
From the outset, then, Estë emerged simply as the wife of a preexisting character without her later key (albeit largely symbolic) role. The Earliest Annals of Valinor seem to show Tolkien was busy rearranging his existing pantheon, including the relationships between the various Valar, at this stage of his work on the mythology. The texts at this point suggest that he wanted Irmo Lórien to have a wife--perhaps to better emphasize the parallel between Námo Mandos and Irmo--but hadn't yet developed much of a character for this woman.
The Later Annals of Valinor, written later in the 1930s, echo the same opening passage and its catalogue of the Valar with few revisions, save that Estë is now introduced as "Estë the pale with Lórien."18 In another 1930s text, Estë finally emerges in the form in which we will see her in the published Silmarillion. This text, which was incomplete, seems to have marked Tolkien's final work on the Silmarillion material prior to beginning his work on The Lord of the Rings.19 Estë is here described:
Estë the pale is his wife, who walks not by day, but sleeps on an island in the dark lake of Lórien. Thence his fountains bring refreshment to the folk of Valinor.20
After completing The Lord of the Rings, Tolkien returned "with great energy" to the Silmarillion material. Christopher Tolkien dates work on most of this material to 1950-1951.21 Here, Estë's story takes a surprising turn. In The Annals of Aman, Tolkien removes Estë altogether from the ranks of the Valar. She does not appear in the list of the Valar and is thus described:
The wife of Lórien is Estë the pale, but she goes not to the councils of the Valar and is not accounted among the rulers of Arda, but is the chief of the Maiar.22
This change is echoed in The Later Quenta Silmarillion 1 (LQ 1), a revision of the earlier Quenta Silmarillion that was made into an amanuensis typescript in 1951-1952 using the same language as The Annals of Aman about her absence from councils and adding that "Estë is not numbered among the rulers."23 Yet in true Tolkienian fashion, this change was just as quickly reversed. When he took up the second phase of The Later Quenta Silmarillion (LQ 2) in 1958, it was Uinen bumped from the ranks for the Valar and Estë who was reinstated.24
In the midst of her boomeranging status, Estë gains the rest of her role in the published Silmarillion. In The Annals of Aman--the same text where she had been demoted from Vala to Maia--the restful pools of Lórien are first assigned to her and not her husband.25 In that same text and the LQ 1, she and Irmo first plead with Varda for a cycle to the Sun and Moon that allows for darkness and rest, a role that she takes from the more powerful Nienna.26 In LQ 1, Estë also gains her role as the mentor of Melian. Interestingly, this passage initially appeared as, "But great and fair was Melian of the people of Yavanna, who on her behalf tended once the gardens of Estë, ere she came to Middle-earth," with the emphasized text later struck out, implying that Melian's relationship with Estë shifted from one embarked upon on behalf of Yavanna to one she sought for its own value.27
In Tolkien's later revisions, Estë is first implicated as playing a part, albeit minor, in the political and emotional quagmire that is the death of the Noldorin queen Míriel. As part of LQ 2, Míriel is said to have "remained unwithered in the keeping of the maidens of Estë," while her body passes to Mandos.28 And at this point, in 1958, Estë exists in the form in which she will appear in the published Silmarillion. If Tolkien wished to further revise or expand upon her story, he did not find the chance to do so before his death fifteen years later.
The rapid expansion and revision of Estë's character--a minor character in the legendarium, even with the generous reading I am giving her here--serves as a reminder of how tenuous is the published Silmarillion as a finalized text. Such a minor character allows a close look at how quickly Tolkien changed his mind on details, relegating a character to a lesser role even as he expands her role within the text. It is tempting to speculate what might have gone through his head as he undertook these changes. Perhaps, for example, having added her to the roster of the Valar in name only, he initially saw her role as insubstantial, especially compared to Uinen, whom she eventually displaced in the catalogue of the Valarin queens. However, as he embroidered details onto her story, he may have come to see that role--which as I note above, is of particular thematic importance within the larger legendarium--as more essential than a third sea deity. Especially in the wake of having just completed The Lord of the Rings, with its themes of weariness and healing, Estë may have loomed larger than he initially intended when he added her to the list of Valar with a plainspoken name only: Estë, rest. But, to be clear, this is speculation only.
Estë's emergence within the story does show, however, how a female character evolves in the legendarium and also how she ultimately falls short. Beginning as a name, then as a wife, she eventually develops some agency within the story. However, she ultimately plays a mostly symbolic role. As Tolkien makes decisions over who will speak in councils and who will transcend such symbolic roles to become actors within the story, he almost always chooses male Valar. Estë--along with many of her female counterparts--lingers in the background: of stated importance but not really acting in that capacity.
Throughout his work, we see numerous examples of how Tolkien can weave a narrative, beginning only with a name. So begins Estë, and long she lingers with little beyond that name, until in a whirlwind of characterization, she is given the identity most readers encounter for the first time, in the published Silmarillion: that of a goddess of sleep and rest.
Yet as much as she appears to sleep through The Silmarillion, we are given tantalizing glimpses of Estë at work, in addition to the vital importance of her role to the themes Tolkien developed in his legendarium, especially The Lord of the Rings--perhaps not coincidentally completed shortly before he developed Estë's character. And some would make the case that, by assigning such roles to female characters that reflect the key ideas of the legendarium, Tolkien elevates his female characters, few though they may be. Estë falls short, however, of a fully realized character. Looking at her male Valarin counterparts, we see them in action: speaking, advocating, arguing, adventuring, leading, fighting. We see them permitted a range of emotions. They occupy the arc of a dynamic character, including making mistakes and learning from them. Their personalities are not just described but depicted in their actions. Estë--and many of her sistren among the Valar--are not realized in this same way. Tolkien, despite what appear to be good intentions where his female characters are concerned, seems simply to lack the ease with which he writes about the actions of men.
In many ways, his vacillation between which Ainu should hold the seventh seat among the Valier--Estë or Uinen--reflects his own seeming realization that many of his women just aren't that interesting. Neither Estë nor Uinen possess the vibrancy or agency of their male counterparts. Both appear passive much of the time: lying beside a lake or lying beneath the surface of the sea. Does it truly matter who is the seventh queen? As ever, these lacunae in characterization have been remedied by fanworks creators, who have taken upon themselves the challenge of giving fuller life to women who are not fully realized in the texts. Possibly not what Tolkien envisioned when he imagined those "other minds and hands" at work in his legendarium but waking characters like Estë from the slumber imposed upon them nonetheless.
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Dawn Felagund is the founder and owner of the Silmarillion Writers' Guild and has written about one hundred stories, poems, and essays about J.R.R. Tolkien's The Silmarillion, some of which have been translated and published in fan magazines around the world. Dawn is a graduate student in the humanities, and her academic work on Tolkien's cosmogony and the Tolkien fan community has appeared in Mythprint and Silver Leaves (in press) and has been presented at Mythmoot II, Mythmoot III, and the New York Tolkien Conference. Dawn can be emailed at DawnFelagund@gmail.com.
History of Middle-earth Summaries. The History of Middle-earth project is an ongoing attempt to summarize the entire book series and put together the many ideas, commentaries, and footnotes of the series into easy-to-follow summaries.
Silmarillion Chapter Summaries. Designed as a resource for leading readings of The Silmarillion, the chapter summaries are also a nice review for those returning to unfamiliar sections of the book or who would like guidance while reading it for the first time.
A Woman in Few Words: The Character of Nerdanel and Her Treatment in Canon and Fandom. A review of the canon facts available on Nerdanel and discussion of why she remains so popular with fans despite her scarce appearances in the texts.
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