Artwork: Beren and Lúthien by Una
It took me a while to get here, but finally I am going to respond to some comments on the supposed sexism in Tolkien’s tale of Beren and Lúthien that I first read in 2020 and gave me much to think. I am deeply in love with the tale of Beren and Lúthien in particular in The Silmarillion and I have to say that these comments first felt like a personal attack, but thankfully I know better and appreciate that they express genuine concerns that at least two women gave voice to in full earnestness and preoccupation. It is never good or even respectful to just dismiss such statements as missing the point, failing to look at the bigger picture, misunderstanding related notions, or understating other aspects of the same subjects. I shall therefore try to avoid doing so and yet explain why I think, not only that Beren and Lúthien is not a sexist tale, but that actually it is a feminist tale of female empowerment, with reference to the original texts, that under close scrutiny always reveal something previously undisclosed at each new reading. A fuller treatment of the same subject is going to be found in my forthcoming monograph.
As far as I know, the comments that I am going to be concerned with were only advanced by MZL and Lillian King, being later reprised by others who did not add anything new. Other people might have voiced other similar concerns, but I am not aware that they have, and will only respond to what I have read. I will be glad if anybody will point me to other instances of related concerns about Beren and Lúthien specifically, because usually their tale is presented as an example of Tolkien writing a powerful female character and as such is taken to counterbalance the complete absence of women in The Hobbit and the comparatively lesser role of women in The Lord of the Rings (for example this view is presented in the excellent 2015 volume “Perilous and Fair: Women in the Life and Works of JRR Tolkien”, edited by Janet Brennan Croft and Leslie Donovan).
https://www.mythsoc.org/press/perilous-and-fair.htm
I will start first by presenting the statements that I wish to respond to. MZL in 2011 first wrote that Lúthien, although managing to retrieve the Silmaril when no one else could, only expresses bodily virtues such as physical beauty, healing, being a wife, childbearing, singing, dancing, and causing sexual attraction, and as such she is not only not superhuman, but actually less than human compared to her companion Beren, who is the only one who is allowed to express interior virtues like courage, intelligence, and wisdom. To be fair, this comment is applied to Beren and Lúthien by MZL only as an extension of a more general statement applied to all of Tolkien’s female and male characters. Galadriel and Melian are certainly intelligent and wise, but the archetypal Wisemen, in The Lord of the Rings, are rather the Five Wizards, the Istari in Elvish, who are all males, and Lord Elrond. Galadriel does not take part in the Council of Elrond, and Thingol every now and then is rather skeptical towards his wife’s counsels. I am not saying that I agree with MZL, but it is true that one may easily get from Tolkien’s works the impression that wisdom and intelligence are male virtues. I will not object to this impression, that is justified as such. What I will object to will be the idea that there is nothing to look at beyond the impression itself.
Besides, MZL adds, Lúthien is presented as a prize to be won. Her father Thingol will only give her to Beren in marriage if the latter brings a Silmaril to him, and Beren agrees to this bargain. MZL does not point this out, but Thingol actually talks of his daughter as his own jewel that only finds its pair in the Silmaril. Of course, in the past daughters were considered to be their fathers’s properties, to be exchanged for the adequate price in a marriage contract. Particularly among noble families, many marriages were combined as nothing more than a political contract signed by the two families of the spouses. Love had little or no part at all in it. It is only in the 20th century that the notion became widespread that it was a woman’s right to choose her partner freely, without any superimposition by her parents, and against their will if she so wished. Doubtlessly, MZL has this patriarchal customs in mind when she says that Lúthien is equated to a material object that can be exchanged as a commercial good, regardless of her own intentions. MZL’s concern in this aspect should not be considered inappropriate, because indeed the so-called “bride price” is a barbaric practice that nobody should endorse nor wish to see put into practice. And literature has a responsibility in perpetuating the stereotype.
I did not manage to find when precisely Lillian King built on MZL’s comments to write her own article published on Academia.edu, but certainly between 2011 and 2020, since the terminus post quem (the earliest date when it could have been written) is indicated by the year of MZL’s article, and the terminus ante quem (the latest date of composition) is the year 2020 when I first read both articles. King takes issues with Tolkien’s statement in Letters, No. 131: “It is Beren the outlawed mortal who succeeds (with the help of Lúthien, a mere maiden even if an elf of royalty)”. King quotes in praising terms an article stating that Tolkien’s expression “mere maiden” is sexist, and then adds:
“Even when a woman does something extraordinary, it is not enough to be valued as highly as a man’s work, and is just added onto his accomplishments. To Tolkien, Lúthien will never be anyone but the woman, whose heritage doesn’t matter because of her gender, that “helped” Beren along the way” (King)
In stating so, King’s concerns make full sense. The idea that a maiden is “mere” is sexist, and it was very unfortunate that Tolkien chose this phrase. There is no such thing as a “mere maiden,” whatever one may say. Just as it is unfortunate to contrast “mere maiden” with “an elf of royalty” to the detriment of the latter. Probably nobody would contrast being a “mere boy” with being “a prince” in the same way, if that were the case. He would rather be the boy prince, that carries the idea that he is going to become powerful one day. A girl princess carries no such implication.
And it is also unfortunate that Tolkien described the Silmaril Quest as an undertaking of Beren with the help of Lúthien, not only because it is rather unfair to her, but actually because it is rather the other way around: it is Lúthien who accomplishes the Quest with Beren’s help, and said help is rather little and gives the impression that he only or at least mainly helped her in the sense that he gave her a motivation to act, since she actually did everything by herself. King’s observation that it does not matter how great the accomplishments of a woman, she will always be considered as an extension of her male relatives, clearly have a point here.
However, I would like to propose that it is not the case that Tolkien’s tale of Beren and Lúthien is sexist, and on the contrary its full import, when considered carefully, is actually feminist, and very powerfully empowering for women. That this position of mine is not necessarily in contradiction with what MZL and King argue is possible because, as I said, their observations are meaningful and perceive aspects that are indeed present in the tale and in Tolkien’s comments about it and are clearly problematic as such.
But there is no contradiction, even so, because the tale of Beren and Lúthien is a feminist tale that is set in the world of Middle-earth, a world wherein feminism is never presented as an issue as such inside the setting. There is no movement of Elven suffragetes asking for a female transmission of power among the Noldorin Royals, there is nobody protesting that the highest deity is a male All-Father instead of an all-powerful female Mother-Goddess, and even Éowyn’s struggle with the societal construction of female roles among the Rohirrim is never presented as a stand for all women, but only her own personal fight.
So, Middle-earth is not a place where one finds a feminist movement. This does not necessarily mean that Middle-earth is a sexist, misogynist setting, meaning that it was constructed to promote sexism and misogyny, because any setting exists in order to present the stories that are told within it. And Middle-earth, in its very conception, existed primarily to host the three Great Tales, one of which is precisely the story of Beren and Lúthien. A story that, let us recall, did not even have the name of Beren in the title in its earliest version as “The Tale of Tinúviel.” The tale of Beren and Lúthien is intended from the start to be a celebration of women: of Tolkien’s wife Edith in a specific sense, but of Woman in general in a wider sense.
In The Lay of Leithian, Lúthien’s heritage is repeatedly stressed, not only in its Elven character, but also in its divine aspect: she is the “daughter of the deathless queen,” (l. 491) and “half Elven-fair and half divine” (l. 493). In The Book of Lost Tales there are multiple occurrences of the term “divine,” referred to the Valar who were then all also called the Gods. Tolkien later removed almost all the references to the Valar as divine, except a selected minority. Among these, the only three which Christopher included in The Silmarillion as published are all directly or indirectly referred to Lúthien. She is said to use a “divine” power to enchant the Wolf Carcharoth into sleep (S xix); her mother Melian is described as one of the “divine race” of the Valar (S xxii); and her descendants Elros and Elrond are defined as the heirs of the “spirits divine” existing before Arda, because they belong to the same lineage as Lúthien (S xxiv).
One might argue that Christopher unintentionally left only these three instances of the word “divine,” but actually, even if he did not consider the issue (and on the contrary I suspect that he would), the simple fact that his selection criterion in The Silmarillion is generally oriented on preserving the latest version of any given text suggests that he simply kept the text in the form that his father had lately prepared. This alone means that Tolkien in his late years deliberately wanted any reference to the divine, termed as such, to be obliterated from The Silmarillion except when referred to Lúthien. A strong indicator, if any such can be, that Tolkien believed in the Divine Feminine, in the form of a female aspect of God, if not as a Goddess proper.
But, if this was the case, what was Tolkien’s problem then? Why didn’t he straightforwardly state so? Why didn’t he press the case more explicitly? My answer is that the society of his time, like ours today, was very prejudicial towards the idea of the Feminine as Divine, because generally people in the Christianized world either were Christians who considered the female gender to have nothing to do with the divine, or they were agnostics or atheists who did not believe that there was anything divine. No middle ground was given then, and even today it is still difficult for people from Christian countries wishing to live religious experiences that are not founded on patriarchal monotheistic beliefs to actually do so.
Religion is not my main subject here, but I only bring it up because it serves as an introduction to one of the points that I wish to raise: that is, if Lúthien is inferior to anyone, she is only to Eru himself, and may probably be identified with Him, or be an expression of His. It does not matter that she does not defeat her adversaries by wielding material weapons. The fact that she does not even consider using them is an indicator by itself that physical strength is not the highest power. What matters is that, however she does it, she either is loved and helped or subdues and is served by all Nature, Beasts, Men, Elves, Maiar (lesser Gods or angels), and Valar (higher Gods or angels). Of course the fact that there is at least an instance of something or someone belonging to each category helping or serving her does not equal her being Queen of Everything, and she is never said to be such. However, the fact that such an instance exists in each case, without there ever being an instance of her defeat, except temporarily in her imprisonment on Hirilorn and temporarily again when dying for Beren, indicates at least the power of a Valarin God (or higher angel), not a “simple” Maia, and certainly not an Elf or Man. Indeed, in order to overthrow Morgoth and retrieve the other two Silmarilli, it was necessary to empty the whole Valinor of its hosts, which suggests that Lúthien is superior even to a Vala, and comparable to all of them together. This is Eru status.
So, Tolkien is shy, indirect, and allusive when it comes to female power. Partly because his character was not aggressive or assertive, and partly, and more relevantly, because his audience was not receptive of this message and still is largely not ready today. His “Tale of Tinúviel”, the most relevant instance of a powerful female hero who is presented as the protagonist, was introduced as a tale of old told by children to a traveler in distant forgotten lands. It had something of the foreign and the exotic, for all its being supposedly conceived as English mythology. Besides, it was never accepted for publication before Tolkien’s death and the publication of The History of Middle-earth by his son. The Lay of Leithian was not even finished, probably because, despite CS Lewis’s praises of it, Tolkien felt that it would not have found the reception that he would have liked it to have. He was probably right, since only this year Tolkien’s poetry will be collected in a publication by Christina Scull and Wayne Hammond to be appreciated as such. The other prose versions of the tale of Beren and Lúthien are less assertive and focus less on Lúthien, partly because they are shorter, but also because the hero was now thought to be Beren, whose name came first. But did Tolkien ever truly think of Lúthien as depending on Beren? I highly doubt it, and his assertion in letter 131 that she was his helper was mainly advanced in order to avoid the criticism that he would have met if he had written the story, or even its synopsis, as he would have liked to. Female-centred, and close to Goddess-worshiping. Also the widespread folktale notion that the future bride may be a helper to the hero in the quest to win her hand played its part here.
And why is Lúthien conceived as a prize to win? Who thinks of her so? Not Tolkien, who identifies with Beren. And Beren says to Thingol that a Silmaril is a little price to sell his daughter for. In many context, this could be taken as a recognition that daughters may be sold for a price. But not here. Because the Silmaril is not simply a material object, and indeed it is not presented as such except to clarify that it is pure light crystalized. The light it contains is compared to the soul of Men and Elves. It is living light, the very fountain of life from which everything came to be: the Flame Imperishable itself, that Tolkien implies to represent what Christians call the Holy Spirit. So, when Beren says that Lúthien is worth more than a Silmaril, he is not saying that she is the most expensive woman that one has to pay for. What Beren is saying is that Lúthien is worth more than the spirit of life itself. He is saying that she is worth more than the Flame Imperishable, more than the Holy Spirit, more than God itself. It really is a praise beyond compare, especially in the light of Tolkien’s professed Catholicism and the associations with Catholic theology that he establishes within his Legendarium.
To conclude, when MZL says that Lúthien’s virtues are only bodily, one can see that they are not only so. Indeed, even what she calls bodily virtues actually partake of the mind and soul. Nobody would be praising a dance, a song, a sexual union, a mother, a wife, an act of healing, or the beauty of someone by calling them “soulless”. All of them partake of the psychophysical unity that belongs to the human race in everything we do. Also courage manifests itself in acts of valor, wisdom in wise choices, and intelligence in solving practical problems. Even so called “non-physical” virtues are embodied. And Lúthien also possesses these latter virtues. She is called by phrases such as “Lúthien, most brave of heart”, and her courage is repeatedly stressed, not only Beren’s, and even not only together with his, throughout all versions of their tale. Her intelligence is evident in her escape from Doriath and in her disguise as a bat, and her wisdom is inherited from her mother Melian, a paragon of wisdom. These virtues allow her to vanquish her adversaries and to fool even Morgoth. So, to say that she is not powerful as a heroine only because she does not wield a sword makes no sense. A hero or a heroine simply wielding a sword could never reach the heights to which Lúthien is raised. She is more than Éowyn, but not only that: she is also more than Aragorn, Sam, and Frodo.
Lúthien is simply Tolkien’s declaration of love and veneration for Woman. His love is seen by everyone, and is not doubted by anyone even when somebody raises the issue of sexism. His veneration was whispered in a hushed voice, readable between the lines. But many prayers reach the Gods just this way.
WORKS CITED
Giovanni Carmine Costabile, “The Mirror of Desire Unbidden: Retrieving the Imago Dei in Tolkien and Late Medieval English Literature.” Peter Lang, forthcoming.
MZL, “Lúthien and the Female Other”
https://tolkienmedievalandmodern.blogspot.com/2011/04/luthien-and-female-other.html
Lillian King, “Sexism in Tolkien. A Summary”
https://www.academia.edu/11948382/Sexism_in_Tolkien_A_Summary
The Green Girdle 