(Re)assessing gender roles at war through Tolkien’s Legendarium: agency, choice and refusal in the tales of Arwen Undómiel and Éowyn of Rohan

Resumen

Gender roles in J. R. R. Tolkien’s opus have been the object of intense debate through the last years, especially when it comes to the supposedly secondary space feminine figures hold in the Legendarium. In light of those discussions, this article aims to reassess the portrayal of Arwen Undómiel and Éowyn of Rohan during the War of the Ring, discussing whether their actions convey possibilities of theorizing feminine agency at war by refusing traditional gender roles. As specific objectives, I intend to: a) collect Tolkien’s perspectives on these two women throughout the Legendarium; and b) identify real-life feminine personalities who participated in war and civil rights conflicts during the twentieth century. In terms of methodology, I rely upon an exploratory literature review on the subject and apply documental analysis to revisit the Legendarium. The results suggest that, even though feminine figures (especially Arwen) might be said to occupy supporting and somewhat idealized roles in Tolkien’s works, their acts of refusal effectively contest gender paradigms, problematize traditional meanings of a woman’s place in the context of war and provide useful insights for the destabilization of the sexual dispositive in literature, in law and in society as a whole.