The Wandering Trail: Episode 15

Jun 9

11 min read

Hello wanderers, and welcome back! In this episode of Beyond the Brandywine, we finally sat down with a question we've been circling since the very beginning: what does Tolkien actually do with his most powerful women?

Because here's the thing. The women of Middle-earth don't just show up and do impressive things — they do impossible things. They terrify the most powerful being in Arda. They break into the most fortified stronghold in the world armed with nothing but a cloak and a song. They sustain entire kingdoms alone for thousands of years. They kill the unkillable. And then, one by one, the story quietly runs out of road for them.

So the question isn't whether these women are impressive. That's settled. The question — the one Kelsey opened the episode with and neither host could quite shake — is what you do with a character who's already done the impossible. And the answer, it turns out, says something worth paying attention to.

She Came from the Void (And Then She Left the Same Way)

We started where the legendarium itself starts: with Ungoliant. Not a traditional hero, not a traditional villain — something harder to categorize than either. A giant spider-like being of darkness from before the shaping of the world, she works with Morgoth to destroy the Two Trees of Valinor (the literal light of the world at that point in history) and helps him steal the three Silmarils. And then, when they're fleeing, she turns on him.

What follows is one of the most remarkable power demonstrations in all of Tolkien: drunk on the light she's consumed, Ungoliant comes after Morgoth and nearly takes the Silmarils from him by force. The greatest evil in Arda screams for help and has to call in multiple Balrogs before she backs off. She doesn't lose. She just decides there are easier meals elsewhere.

"She is the only being in the legendarium who I think genuinely frightens him." — Kelsey

She eventually wanders off through Middle-earth, seeds a spider dynasty (Shelob is her descendant), consumes herself in an endless hunger that nothing can satisfy, and vanishes. She doesn't disappear because she's defeated. She disappears because the narrative doesn't have a shape for what she is. Which, as Kelsey noted, is a pattern worth watching.

Where to find it:

The Silmarillion, "Of the Darkening of Valinor" and "Of the Flight of the Noldor"

The Woman Who Moved the God of Death

Lúthien Tinúviel is the one Tolkien considered his greatest creation. Her gravestone reads: Lúthien. She is, explicitly, his love letter to his wife Edith. Half-elf (her father Thingol was one of the eldest of the Eldar), half-Maia (her mother Melian — more on her shortly),

Lúthien is, by the power math of Middle-earth, something unprecedented. When her mortal lover Beren gets himself captured in the dungeons of Tol-in-Gaurhoth, the Isle of Werewolves, she comes to save him — with Huan the Hound, who uses two of his three allotted words in the history of the world to speak to her. That alone tells you something.

What she does from there is worth stating plainly:

She defeats Sauron in one-on-one combat and destroys his fortress, singing it down around him.
She and Beren break into Angband — Morgoth's stronghold in the north, the most fortified place in Arda — which no one had ever survived attempting.
She dances and sings before Morgoth's throne until his entire court falls asleep. Morgoth falls asleep.
She and Beren leave with a Silmaril.

This is the man whose screams echoed in the mountains when Ungoliant came for him. Lúthien puts him to sleep with a song.

"She goes in there with nothing but her love and her voice, which, honestly, that's a statement in itself." — Angela

And then Beren dies of a wound, and Lúthien dies of grief, and she goes to the Halls of Mandos and sings to him — sings a lament so complete, so sorrowful, that Mandos, who had never been moved to pity in all the ages of the world, goes to Manwë and asks what to do. She is given a choice no elf has ever been offered: return to Valinor and live in bliss forever, or return to Middle-earth as a mortal and have whatever time she and Beren have left together.

She chooses mortality. They go off into the woods and live quietly. Nobody writes about them again.

"The greatest being in the world — if she fully embraces that power, it's a completely different story. She chooses not to." — Kelsey

Where to find it:

The Silmarillion, "Of Beren and Lúthien"
The Children of Húrin (context for the First Age world around her)
Beren and Lúthien, ed. Christopher Tolkien (2017) — the most complete standalone version of the tale

The One Who Called Everything

Melian the Maia is a being of the same order as Gandalf, Sauron, and the Balrogs — one of the lesser Ainur, the divine spirits shaped before the world. She served Yavanna in Valinor and is credited with passing the knowledge of lembas to the elves. She wandered into Middle-earth in the Elder Days, singing alone in the forests, until Thingol heard her and stood enchanted for years — literally years — before he could move again.

They built Doriath together. And to protect it, Melian raised the Girdle: a magical barrier that made their kingdom essentially invisible and impassable to anyone not invited. For thousands of years, she maintained this alone, by will and power, with no Ring of Power, no artifact, no assistance. Just her.

She also, repeatedly, tried to talk sense to her husband.

"Thingol, no." — Angela (on reading the Silmarillion)

When Beren came asking for Lúthien's hand, Melian warned against involving the Silmarils. When Thingol arranged to have the Nauglamír reset with a Silmaril, she warned against it. When she said something was a bad idea, she was right. When Thingol didn't listen, things went badly.

After Thingol is murdered in a dispute over the Silmaril — exactly as forecast — Melian's power withdraws. The Girdle falls. Doriath is sacked. And Melian returns to Valinor. She doesn't stay to rebuild. She was there for Thingol, and for Lúthien, and both of them are gone.

The text is plain about her reasons:

"For the love of Elwë Singollo she took upon herself the form of the Elder Children of Ilúvatar, and in that union, she became bound by the chain and trammels of the flesh of Arda." — The Silmarillion, "Of the Ruin of Doriath"

With his death, something changes. She goes home. The episode argued — and we stand by this — that she probably could have saved the kingdom. She chose not to. There's a difference, and it matters.

Where to find it:

The Silmarillion, "Of Thingol and Melian," "Of Beren and Lúthien," and "Of the Ruin of Doriath"

Two Paragraphs That Should Have Been Two Chapters

We gave Haleth her due, because she deserves it. A mortal woman of the First Age, she loses her father and brother in a single orc assault and becomes leader of her people in the wreckage. When Caranthir, one of the Sons of Fëanor, arrives to help them and offers land and protection under his lordship, she declines. She leads her people west through dangerous territory on her own terms, carves out a homeland in the forest of Brethil, and rules it. The house of men she founds is the only one named for a woman.

She gets a few paragraphs in a chapter of The Silmarillion that's largely a summary of side quests.

"She has the good sense to avoid getting mixed up in the Silmarils, which, honestly — women's intuition." — Kelsey

The brief also noted Morwen Eledhwen — "Elfsheen," mother of Túrin, wife of Húrin — whose story runs through The Children of Húrin. Her husband is captured and cursed. She sends her children away to safety. She survives through the fall of Dor-lómin on stubbornness alone, refuses pity, refuses help, and makes it through on quiet, unglamorous courage. She gets fewer songs than her husband. She probably deserved more.

Where to find it:

The Silmarillion, "Of the Coming of Men into the West" (Haleth)
The Children of Húrin, Chapters I–IV (Morwen)
Unfinished Tales, "Of the Five Wizards" and "Narn i Hîn Húrin" (extended Morwen material)

Seven Thousand Years of Wanting Something

Galadriel was tutored by Melian in Doriath. She crossed the Helcaraxë — the grinding ice of the far north — leading a group of her people across what is essentially an arctic land bridge over the course of years. She survived the First Age, the Second Age, and most of the Third. She held Lothlórien against everything Sauron sent at it. And she did it all while carrying Nenya, one of the three elvish Rings of Power, which she used to preserve and protect rather than dominate.

But Tolkien is unusually clear-eyed about her motivations. She didn't come to Middle-earth only out of loyalty to her kin. She came because she wanted to build something of her own. She wanted a kingdom. She wanted power, on her own terms, in a place where she could actually have it.

This is why, when Frodo offers her the One Ring, the scene matters so much. Gandalf doesn't want the Ring and recoils from it — he knows he'd be tempted. Galadriel is tempted. The Ring knows what she wants. And she turns it down anyway.

"I pass the test. I will diminish, and go into the West, and remain Galadriel." — Galadriel, The Fellowship of the Ring, Book II, Chapter 7, "The Mirror of Galadriel"

That decision — by someone who has wanted that kind of power for her entire existence — is not a small thing. She relinquishes a vision she's carried for seven thousand years. And then she sails west with a smile on her face, and the text closes behind her.

A note on the name: somewhere in the deeper notes of the legendarium, one of Galadriel's early names is glossed as Nerwen — "Man-maiden" — because of her height, her strength, and her ambition. Tolkien noted it himself. Her own mother called her that.

"She is the closest we get to a warrior woman, besides Éowyn. She's been a badass for a very long time." — Angela

Where to find it:

The Fellowship of the Ring, Book II, Chapter 7, "The Mirror of Galadriel"
Unfinished Tales, "The History of Galadriel and Celeborn"
The Silmarillion, "Of the Flight of the Noldor" (her departure from Valinor)

No Living Man Am I

We saved Éowyn for last because she is, in some ways, where all the threads land. She is trained. She is a shield maiden of Rohan. She knows how to fight and has been doing it, presumably, for years — she just hasn't been allowed to. When her uncle Théoden rides to the Pelennor Fields, she disguises herself as a man, rides with the army, and ends up standing between the Witch-king of Angmar and the king of Rohan.

The Witch-king has a prophecy on his side: no living man shall kill him. Glorfindel said so in the Second Age. The Witch-king has taken it as a guarantee.

Then Éowyn takes off her helmet.

"But no living man am I. You look upon a woman." — Éowyn, The Return of the King, Book V, Chapter 6, "The Battle of the Pelennor Fields"

With an assist from Merry — whose Barrow-blade from the Barrow-downs was specifically forged against the servants of Angmar, a detail Tolkien planted two books earlier — she kills him. The most feared of Sauron's servants, who had been plaguing men for thousands of years and destroying kingdoms, is brought down by a woman and a hobbit.

And then she wakes up in the Houses of the Healing and wants to go back out and die.

This is the part the episode spent real time on, and rightly so. Éowyn's post-battle despair is not decorative. She's been invisible her whole life — a woman with the skill and will of a warrior, in a culture that gave her no sanctioned way to use either. The glory she just won doesn't fix that, because the underlying wound wasn't about the battle. It was about being seen.

Enter Faramir, who is probably the only man in the entire Lord of the Rings who never once treats her fighting ability as something that needs explaining or excusing.

"He treats her like a wounded comrade. Not like a woman who wandered into a war." — Kelsey

She chooses peace — gardens, a life with Faramir, a rebuilt Ithilien. The episode made the case (and we think it holds) that this isn't defeat or diminishment. It's the first time she's had a choice. And if the Fourth Age decides to throw something terrible at them, Faramir is absolutely handing her a sword and riding beside her.

Where to find it:

The Return of the King, Book V, Chapter 6, "The Battle of the Pelennor Fields"
The Return of the King, Book VI, Chapter 5, "The Steward and the King" (Éowyn and Faramir)
The Two Towers, Book III, Chapter 6, "The King of the Golden Hall" (her introduction)

Reflections: What Tolkien Is Actually Saying

By the end of the episode, both Kelsey and Angela had circled back to something that surprised them both: Tolkien isn't writing women out of Middle-earth. He's writing women who choose to leave it.

The pattern is real. Ungoliant exits on her own terms into the void. Lúthien chooses mortality and a quiet life. Melian withdraws when what she came for is gone. Galadriel diminishes and sails west. Éowyn steps back from battle into peace. None of them are defeated. None of them are removed by the narrative as punishment or consequence.

They're done. And they know it. And they go.

Whether that's Tolkien's respect for his female characters or a product of the world he was writing in — or, most likely, both — is a question the episode left productively open. What's harder to argue is that these women are peripheral. Lúthien defeated Sauron before Sauron was the primary villain of anything. Melian sustained a kingdom for millennia on power alone. Galadriel outlasted nearly every other character in the history of Arda.

They didn't disappear because they were weak. They had other things to do.

Questions for our Listeners

The episode argues that most of Tolkien's powerful women leave on their own terms rather than being written out. Do you buy that reading — and are there women in the legendarium who don't fit the pattern?
Melian warns Thingol repeatedly, and he doesn't listen. Is that a critique Tolkien is making deliberately, or is it just how the story needed to go?
Éowyn and Faramir are one of the most beloved couples in the books, but their relationship is comparatively brief on the page. What is it about how Tolkien writes them that makes them feel so earned?
Galadriel has been called Tolkien's most revised character — Christopher Tolkien found more rewrites of her backstory than almost anyone else. What does it tell us about Tolkien that he kept returning to her?
If Lúthien had chosen to stay in the war after the quest for the Silmaril — if she'd joined the War of Wrath and used her power openly — how do you think the First Age ends?
Angela asked it and we're asking it again: are the women of Middle-earth too powerful for their own storylines?

We'd love to hear your thoughts. Reach us at hello@beyondthebrandywine.com or find us on YouTube, Instagram and Facebook @beyondthebrandywine.

The Wandering Trail: Episode 15

She Came from the Void (And Then She Left the Same Way)

The Woman Who Moved the God of Death

The One Who Called Everything

Two Paragraphs That Should Have Been Two Chapters

Seven Thousand Years of Wanting Something

No Living Man Am I

Reflections: What Tolkien Is Actually Saying

Further Reading and Listening

Questions for our Listeners

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