Burning in the House: Éowyn's Outcry and the Death of Aerin by Himring

In the chapter "The Passing of the Grey Company" in Return of the King, Éowyn and Aragorn have a much-discussed conversation.

During this, Aragorn says: "'A time may come soon ... when none will return. Then there will be need of valour without renown, for none shall remember the deeds that are done in the last defence of your house. Yet the deeds will not be less valiant, because they are unpraised.'"

Éowyn answers: "'All your words are but to say: you are a woman, and your part is in the house. But when the men have died in battle and honour, you have leave to be burned in the house, for the men will need it no more.'" ¹

Much of the discussion of Aragorn and Éowyn's conversation that I have seen in secondary literature as well as in fandom seems to centre on the question whether Aragorn or Éowyn's arguments are the stronger and which of them is right. After all, this is the passage in Tolkien's published work in which a female character comes closest to uttering proto-feminist ideas, although Erendis, the female protagonist of "Aldarion and Erendis" in Unfinished Tales, is arguably even more radical than Éowyn. ²

My personal view on that question is that Aragorn and Éowyn are, both of them, probably intended to be both right and wrong, although perhaps to different degrees. But it is not this question that I want to address here. I think it is noticed less often that the hypothetical situation described in this exchange between Aragorn and Éowyn resembles a situation that actually occurs elsewhere in the Legendarium, so I thought it might be of some interest to point out the resemblances, but also certain differences in treatment.

The situation I refer to is the occupation of Dor-lómin as described in the Children of Húrin. This is essentially the same as the corresponding chapter in the published Silmarillion text, ³  but the version in the Unfinished Tales  ⁴ --and the version in the Children of Húrin that is based on it--offers additional relevant details.

In the First Age, towards the end of The Battle of Unnumbered Tears against Morgoth, the first Dark Lord, all the men of Dor-lomin fall in a desperate last stand at Serech, including, it is widely assumed, their lord. (Húrin, lord of Dor-lómin, is in fact not dead, but captive, but to those of his people who remain in Dor-lómin this is still unknown more than twenty years later.) This sacrificial act of heroism is much honoured by their Elven allies, because it allows King Turgon to escape to Gondolin with the remains of his army. None of the men returns to their home in Dor-lómin. ⁵  The women and children of Dor-lómin face invasion by the Easterlings, which are subject to Morgoth.

Unlike the Rohirrim, Dor-lómin seems to lack even a minor tradition of shield-maidens, although it is possible that there were one or two isolated instances but that they had also died at Serech. The related House of Haleth seems to have had an early tradition of female warriors, so that the concept would be known in Dor-lómin, even if it apparently was not practised. ⁶  At any rate we do not hear of any women of Dor-lómin who fought the invading Easterlings weapon in hand. However, the women of Dor-lómin do not lack courage and they are described as offering their kind of resistance, in two different ways.

Morwen, wife of the fallen Lord of Dor-lómin, overawes the invaders by the sheer force of her personality and by her rumoured Elvish powers. This enables her to maintain personal independence and, to a degree, be a focus for covert, nonviolent resistance. ⁷

On the other hand, there is Aerin, who is a female relative of the fallen lord. ⁸  She is less impressive than Morwen at first sight and, in fact, she looks like a typical female victim figure. She is forced into marriage with an Easterling lord, Brodda, a brutal conquistador type. She lives in physical fear of him and for the most part is apparently only able to operate behind his back. ⁹  Nevertheless, she seems to be involved significantly in the covert resistance for which Morwen serves as the focus, and she continues to support her enslaved people in as many small ways, even after Morwen's departure, as she can, at the cost of enduring beatings by her suspicious husband. She even manages to do some things openly; thanks to her, her husband's hall is a little more hospitable to strangers than it would otherwise be. ¹⁰

By the time of her death, she has been holding out in this fashion for more than twenty years and she is an old woman. It is at this point that Túrin, heir of Dor-lómin, arrives and precipitates a fight in Brodda's hall between the Easterlings and the thralls of Dor-lómin. In this battle, Aerin's husband Brodda is killed by Túrin, but some of the people Aerin was trying to protect also die, in defense of Túrin. In other circumstances, this fight in the hall could nevertheless be a strike for freedom--the freedom of Dor-lómin as well as Aerin's personal freedom. However, the thralls of Dor-lómin are too weak for a general uprising and the general conditions are too harsh even for the successful flight of Aerin's people into unoccupied territory. Aerin, who seemed meek and generally cowed in her demeanour when she was first introduced, has harsh words with Túrin at this point. He suggests she is a coward; she accuses him of immaturity and rashness. The physically stronger among the thralls, that is the men, flee to the hills with Túrin, leaving the rest behind to face the wrath of the other Easterlings.

It is at this point that Túrin and his companions turn around and see a red light in the distance:

'They have fired the hall,' said Túrin. 'To what purpose is that?'

'They? No, lord: she, I guess,' said one, Asgon by name. 'Many a man of arms misreads patience and quiet. She did much good among us at much cost. Her heart was not faint, and patience will break at the last.' ¹¹

The reader is left to assume that Aerin died burnt in the hall that she set alight by her own hand, in a final act of despair, seeing no other means of resistance or defiance left to her. ¹²

This is clearly not exactly the same situation as outlined by Éowyn, who, it seems to me, is envisaging the enemy burning down the ancestral house with its last female defender, sword in hand, in a final attack. Aerin's hall is not an ancestral one, but a symbol of Easterling oppression that her husband forced her people to build for him. ¹³  In fact, in the biography that I wrote for Aerin for the Silmarillion Writers Guild, I ended up comparing Aerin's death to Denethor, who, believing himself defeated, insists on choosing his own death, rather than to Éowyn's words or choices. ¹⁴

Moreover, although Aerin's story is chronologically much earlier in its setting than the War of The Ring, Aerin's story was still developing while Tolkien wrote The Lord of the Rings, and I think he may have not introduced this version of her death until later. ¹⁵  It seems to fit in with characteristic concerns of the post-Lord of the Rings period and the restructuring of the expanded version of Túrin’s story in the Unfinished Tales. So while, within the logic of the Legendarium, Éowyn could have known about Aerin's fate--the Rohirrim can be regarded as remote descendants of the people of Dor-lómin, but then so are the Dúnedain, so that in fact both Éowyn and Aragorn could have been familiar with the story--I am by no means claiming that it was actually in the back of Tolkien's mind as he was writing Éowyn's words. Thematically, we seem rather to be seeing the use of related motifs ultimately derived from Scandinavian poems and sagas, with which Tolkien was very familiar, such as the stories of Signy, Guðrún, Njál, and others, and which, in the cases of Éowyn and Aerin, he seems to be developing in a slightly different direction. ¹⁶

Nevertheless, I think it is worth bearing in mind that Tolkien, the author who wrote about Éowyn's despair and Denethor's, also wrote Aerin's story. He continued developing Aerin's story into the final version we see in the Unfinished Tales and the Children of Húrin and, leaving the final words to Asgon as he does, he writes it in such a way that suggests we are invited to sympathize with her, not condemn her choices.

I think this constitutes a warning to the reader, if one is needed, not to leap too quickly to conclusions about Éowyn's despair--or even Denethor's. Despite Aragorn's arguments in the debate with Éowyn in Dunharrow and Gandalf’s in the debate with Denethor in Rath Dínen, it seems to me that Tolkien has more sympathy with their position than is sometimes acknowledged. It is, in fact, possible to support such a claim by drawing evidence entirely from within the larger context of The Lord of the Rings, which has indeed been done by participants in the ongoing academic and fandom discussions I referred to at the beginning. The purpose of this contribution is to show that the treatment of this relatively little-known episode in the Legendarium (which is only hinted at in the published text of The Silmarillion) also can be invoked to support it and moreover that, in this way, the issues raised by Éowyn resonate with Tolkien’s preoccupations as seen elsewhere in the Legendarium.

Author's Note

With thanks to the readers at the LOTR Community on LiveJournal for feedback on an earlier version of the text and further thanks to my two reference readers at the SWG as well as Dawn Felagund for additional feedback and suggestions.

Works Cited

1. The Lord of the Rings, The Return of the King, "The Passing of the Grey Company."
2. Compare Oshun, "Erendis, the Mariner's Wife," Silmarillion Writers' Guild, August 2012, accessed June 22, 2018.
3. The Silmarillion, "Of Túrin Turambar."
4. Unfinished Tales, Narn i Hîn Húrin, chiefly in "The Departure of Túrin" and "The Return of Túrin to Dor-lómin."
5. The Silmarillion, "Of the Fifth Battle". Compare also The Children of Húrin, "The Battle of Unnumbered Tears."  (Sador calls Morwen Húrin’s widow shortly before Aerin’s death, and this can be presumed to reflect common opinion. Unfinished Tales, Narn i Hîn Húrin, "The Return of Túrin to Dor-lómin.")
6. Unfinished Tales, "Of the Druedain."
7. Unfinished Tales, Narn i Hîn Húrin, "The Departure of Túrin". We mainly hear about provisions being stolen back from Brodda to supply Morwen and Nienor, but at least an element of resistance and possibly a stronger impulse is implied in these thefts. Compare also Oshun, "Morwen," Silmarillion Writers' Guild, June 2008, accessed June 22, 2018.
8. For more details, references, and background, see Himring, "Aerin", Silmarillion Writers' Guild, June 2015, accessed June 22, 2018.
9. Unfinished Tales, Narn i Hîn Húrin, "The Departure of Túrin."
10. Sador reports this. Unfinished Tales, Narn i Hîn Húrin, "The Return of Túrin to Dor-lómin."
11. Unfinished Tales, Narn i Hîn Húrin, "The Return of Túrin to Dor-lómin."
12. In a discussion of an earlier version of this text, bunn has pointed out that Aerin may have intended to take some of the enemy with her and succeeded in doing so, making this a less passive act. In my own fanfiction version of Aerin's last acts, posted to the SWG Archive as Aerin and Broddun, "It Ends in Fire", I have in fact imagined quite a complex sequence of possible motivations for Aerin at this point, which also includes confusing the pursuers of Túrin and Asgon--but I doubt that Tolkien actually meant to imply all of these here.
13. The building of this hall by Brodda is described in Unfinished Tales, Narn i Hîn Húrin, "The Departure of Túrin."
14. Himring, "Aerin."
15. In the earliest version of the story, Aerin does not die at all at this point (The History of Middle-earth, Volume II: The Book of Lost Tales 2, Turambar and the Foalókë). The nature of intervening revisions makes it difficult to establish for certain when the original concept was abandoned.
16. In a discussion of an earlier version of this text, Zdenka pointed out that a similar scene occurs in the Völsunga Saga and hence also in Tolkien's poetic adaptation of this source (The Legend of Sigurd & Gudrún, Völsungakvitha en Nýja, "Signý"). There is also a burning of the hall in Guðrúnarkvitha en Nýja, although, unlike Signý, Guðrún does not die in the flames. But the Scandinavian motif is more widespread than I am able to trace here. If Tolkien was thinking specifically of Signý or Guðrún, then in his use of the motif in the Legendarium he may be consciously avoiding what he regarded as an element of treachery.