Twelve year old Éowyn loves women.
Not all women in general. Not living women, especially not those who look askance at her when she hits their sons with her new metal (blunted metal true, but still shining in the sun), sword while training, not these, but ones whom she finds printed across the pages of history.
And though there are far too few of these, Éowyn makes a point to ask her teacher s about all of them. "Who was she, and she, and she? And why did she only get a few sentences here if she ruled the entire kingdom so long and for so well? And why did she not refuse the marriage? And why did she not have her usurping brother killed and…"
She loves these women, thrilled at each achievement.
Rohan had fighting women once, called shieldmaiden. "Can I be one?" she asks excitedly, wondering where they are now, for she has never seen one. And she had not known about them until now. Perhaps, they are a secret group, only appearing in battle.
"They were only formed due the extreme need of that time, and do not exist anymore" her tutor says.
"Why would they only be used in extreme need? They pushed back the invasion did they not? It says here, look-" she points to the page.
"Enough questions, Éowyn."
"Well, who disbanded them?" She thinks. "Who made them turn in their swords and go home?"
Did they lay down their arms saying, "Thank you, we have had enough,"?
That could not have been what had happened. If they were so fierce, they would have found it hard to return to normal womanly life, once their spirits were awakened in battle. Éowyn herself knows that she would not give up her sword for anything and she has not even been in a real fight - not yet.
A shieldmaiden! She could have been one, had she been born earlier. These women galloped over the same rolling green plains that she does, and whenever she rides out alone, she scans the land around her, looking for any trace of these mysterious shieldmaidens long gone. Perhaps they are invisible, hidden, watching her progress and soon, as Éowyn improves in her training, they will come to her and take her away with them.
None of these women are named. They are blank, left entirely to her imagination and she can call them whatever she wants, putting on to them any physical features or traits of women around her that she admires. One can even be called Éowyn.
It is not just the women of Rohan that she idolizes. It is all of them as many as she can find it is Galadriel, and Melian, and Lúthien, although Éowyn wishes that the last's story said more about her dancing and her magic then about her love for Beren. This women ensorcelled Morgoth with a dance and a song after all.
Even with Thuringwethil and Ungoliant, bad creatures, she knows, it still excites her to see women appear in history, even though they are doing terrible things.
It seems that there are far too few women on either side good or evil, and she wonders where the women have been through the centuries of war and struggle. At home , her mind answers her own question, although she does not like it. Éowyn vows that should darkness ever come upon Rohan, this will not be her, and her name will be written down in remembrance of deeds of valor followed by a long life, or swiftly by death. She does not care which, as long as as it is there in the pages at all.
If women are scarce, women with swords in their hands are almost non existent. Besides the now gone shieldmaidens, she finds records of of Haleth, long dead, a leader all by herself who was protected by a squadron of female bodyguards, and Emeldir who was chieftan of her people for a while.
Elf women, it seems, know how to fight but again, they are used only in emergency. Why must it be only in emergency? Why are half of the people- human or elf- only allowed to fight when times are most dire? Perhaps it is the histories that are lacking, for she knows who writes them down and it is not women.
If she could write history, she would write only of them and she would change the stories why they did not please her. For example, Morwen Eledhwen would not stay behind but would follow her husband Húrin out onto the battlefield. With her strength of will she would be a great commander, and they would take the day. Or perhaps Rían, her sister did not die from grief at the mound of the slain. Maybe Rían could be a very powerful witch, who had expended her soul after putting the spirits of the dead which lay there to rest.
Arethel, an elf woman that she reads about, was a great hunter and Éowyn pages through her story excitedly until the narrative goes awry and Arethel is lost in the woods, finally reemerging with an unwanted husband, a pale child, and then killed by a javelin in her shoulder. Why must such terrible things happen when Aredhel only wanted to ride freely? Nothing will bind me, neither men, nor chain, nor magic, and I will not be caught off guard by spears or by poison, she thinks.
Sometimes she pretends that the male characters in stories are women instead. This is quite easy for Éowyn to do, as many of the names in tales are foreign, and her mind does not automatically know whether they are male or female, so she will stubbornly choose the latter despite the fact that she is contradicting the text. Thus the story becomes vastly more interesting, if someone like her is doing the adventuring, the slaying, the saving.
Éowyn must live her own hero's tale, if there are none to read of.