The Mantle of Eowyn

On March 25th, as the Host of the West stands before the Black Gate and Frodo and Sam ascend to the Sammath Naur, Faramir and Eowyn stand upon the walls of Minas Tirith:

No tidings had yet come, and all hearts were darkened. The weather, too, was bright no longer. It was cold. A wind that had sprung up in the night was blowing now keenly from the North, and it was rising; but the lands about looked grey and drear. They were clad in warm raiment and heavy cloaks, and over all the Lady Eowyn wore a great blue mantle of the colour of deep summer-night, and it was set with silver stars about hem and throat. Faramir had sent for this robe and had wrapped it about her; and he thought that she looked fair and queenly indeed as she stood there at his side. The mantle was wrought for his mother, Finduilas of Amroth, who died untimely, and was to him but a memory of loveliness in far days and of his first grief; and her robe seemed to him raiment fitting for the beauty and sadness of Eowyn.

To me, this “great blue mantle” that Faramir wraps around Eowyn is rich with meaning and symbolism. First, it calls to mind a traditional Catholic image of Mary, associated with the stars and the moon. I am not trying to make a one-to-one allegorical comparison between Eowyn and Mary. Clearly such an allegory does not hold water and was not Tolkien’s intent. But I do want to explore the connections here because they shed light on the depth of meaning in this scene between Eowyn and Faramir and perhaps illuminate for us the roots underlying the leaf-mould of Tolkien’s imagination. 

Catholics believe that the woman in Chapter 12 of the Book of Revelation symbolizes Mary, the mother of Jesus. Chapter 12 of the Book of Revelation begins thus:

A great portent appeared in heaven: a woman clothed with the sun, with the moon under her feet, and on her head a crown of twelve stars. She was pregnant and was crying out in birth pangs, in the agony of giving birth…And she gave birth to a son, a male child, who is to rule all the nations with a rod of iron. But her child was snatched away and taken to God and to his throne; and the woman fled into the wilderness, where she has a place prepared by God…

In Catholic tradition, the woman is interpreted as being Mary and the child as Jesus, and thus there is a long history of Mary being associated with the stars. The Litany of Loreto, which Tolkien knew and prayed, refers to Mary as the “morning star,” and Tolkien wrote a Marian poem himself called Consolatrix Afflictorum, in which he refers to Mary as “stella vespertina,” the “evening star.” 

The connection in Tolkien’s works between Elbereth, the Vala of the Stars, and Mary has been recognized from the very beginning. In Letter 213, Tolkien notes that one reviewer of The Lord of the Rings connected Varda to Mary (“one critic (by letter) asserted that the invocations of Elbereth, and the character of Galadriel as directly described…were clearly related to Catholic devotion to Mary.”). Elbereth is treated as the primary intercessor for Elves when they ask for help, just as Catholics believe Mary to be their primary intercessor in prayers to God. Tolkien made this intercessory nature of Elbereth explicit in his letters, as in Letter 153 (“For help they may call on a Vala (as Elbereth), as a Catholic might on a Saint…”) and in Letter 156 (“Those under special Elvish influence might call on the angelic powers for help in immediate peril or fear of evil enemies…[Footnote] The Elves often called on Varda-Elbereth, the Queen of the Blessed Realm, their especial friend; and so does Frodo.”). The connection between Elbereth, Queen of the Blessed Realm, and Mary, Queen of Heaven, is well-known in Tolkien studies and I won’t belabor the comparison much further (Stratford Caldecott, for example, points out the similarities between the Elves’ hymn to Elbereth Gilthoniel and the Ave maris stella (hail, Star of the Sea) hymn to Mary). 

Back to Eowyn’s mantle, which is covered in stars. There are more evocations of Mary related to this mantle. Eowyn is described as looking “queenly,” just as Elbereth and Mary have their own queenly titles. The mantle belonged to Faramir’s mother, and so there is a maternal connection there as well, evoking Mary’s status as not only the Mother of Jesus, but (as Catholics believe) the spiritual mother of all Christians. In evoking the image of Elbereth as the Queen of the Stars, and in turn of Mary, we may also recall that Mary is associated not just with the stars, but also with the moon in Revelation (‘the moon under her feet”). And in Christian art, Mary is often represented with the moon, which derives its light from the sun (representative of Jesus). Faramir is the Captain of Ithilien and soon to be Prince of Ithilien, the “Land of the Moon.” The mantle of stars on a “deep summer-night” is thus connected to the moon’s realm, the night sky, and foreshadows both her union with Faramir, Prince of the Land of the Moon, and also their future abode in Ithilien.

So what is meaningful about a potential connection between Mary and Eowyn? Tolkien writes that Faramir believed the robe seemed “fitting for the beauty and sadness” of Eowyn. Here, the Marian connection reminds us that Tolkien wrote that upon Mary “all my own small perception of beauty both in majesty and simplicity is founded” (Letter 142). But Mary’s beauty is deeply connected to sorrow. Marian devotion in Catholic tradition is closely associated with her sorrow over the suffering and death of Christ. A popular Lenten hymn about Mary that Tolkien would have known is the Stabat Mater, which recounts Mary’s suffering during the Crucifixion of Christ. For those unfamiliar, some lines will give you an idea:

At the Cross her station keeping,
Stood the mournful Mother weeping,
…
Through her heart, his sorrow sharing,
All his bitter anguish bearing,
Now at length the sword has pass’d.
…
Oh, how sad and sore distress’d
Was that Mother highly blest
…
Is there one who would not weep,
Whelm’d in miseries so deep,
Christ’s dear Mother to behold?

Can the human heart refrain
From partaking in her pain,
In that Mother’s pain untold?

Undoubtedly, the sorrow of Mary and of Eowyn are very different in these two scenes. Eowyn’s sorrow relates to her own situation, whereas Mary’s is grief for her son. But Mary’s sorrow for the Crucifixion is tied to her eventual joy in the Resurrection, the eucatastrophic plan of God from the beginning. And Tolkien explicitly ties Eowyn’s “beauty and sadness” together. This calls to mind a connection to the Third Theme of Iluvatar in The Silmarillion, which vies with the “music” of Melkor and ultimately overcomes it:

Then again Ilúvatar arose, and the Ainur perceived that his countenance was stern; and he lifted up his right hand, and behold! a third theme grew amid the confusion, and it was unlike the others. For it seemed at first soft and sweet, a mere rippling of gentle sounds in delicate melodies; but it could not be quenched, and it took to itself power and profundity. And it seemed at last that there were two musics progressing at one time before the seat of Ilúvatar, and they were utterly at variance. The one was deep and wide and beautiful, but slow and blended with an immeasurable sorrow, from which its beauty chiefly came. The other had now achieved a unity of its own; but it was loud, and vain, and endlessly repeated; and it had little harmony, but rather a clamorous unison as of many trumpets braying upon a few notes. And it essayed to drown the other music by the violence of its voice, but it seemed that its most triumphant notes were taken by the other and woven into its own solemn pattern.

The Third Theme of Iluvatar, before the Creation of the World, is “beautiful…but slow and blended with an immeasurable sorrow, from which its beauty chiefly came.” Beautiful and blended with immeasurable sorrow might be a good description of Eowyn in the scene on the walls of Minas Tirith.

Tolkien makes several allusions to the Third Theme of Iluvatar throughout The Lord of the Rings. For example, Haldir in Lothlorien says: “The world is indeed full of peril, and in it there are many dark places; but still there is much that is fair, and though in all lands love is now mingled with grief, it grows perhaps the greater.” It is not just that love is growing alongside grief, but that love may actually grow greater because it is mingled with grief. That is a lesson with which Faramir and Eowyn might agree – having come to their great love for each other through much sorrow and grief. 

On the Field of Cormallen, Tolkien writes that the minstrel of Gondor sang “until their hearts, wounded with sweet words, overflowed, and their joy was like swords, and they passed in thought out to regions where pain and delight flow together and tears are the very wine of blessedness.” Here, the listeners are being transported into the Music of the Third Theme, where “pain and delight flow together” and where tears are blessed. And in Eowyn’s case, her pain and delight will also soon flow together, rejoicing in the new life she has found, while also mourning for her uncle Theoden, and grieving over the sadness that she has experienced throughout her life. 

It is no accident that Faramir is part of this scene. He is one of the characters most closely attuned to the will of Iluvatar and the Valar throughout The Lord of the Rings. Faramir is the one who receives the dream about the Council of Elrond first and repeatedly, not Boromir, who only receives it later and once. Faramir is the one character in the book for whom Tolkien writes a scene of liturgical living: the “grace before meat” in Ithilien. And it is to Faramir, that Tolkien gives his own dream of the “ineluctable wave” destroying Numenor, as a reminder of the evil of the past when Men transgressed the rules of the Valar and were destroyed by Iluvatar himself. Indeed, in this very scene, as Eowyn wears this mantle, Faramir looks at the ruin of Mordor and says, “It reminds me of Numenor.” 

I would be remiss if I did not also connect Eowyn’s mantle to another mantle we see mentioned in The Lord of the Rings. Early in the book, Aragorn sings part of the Tale of Tinuviel to the hobbits:

There Beren came from mountains cold, 
And lost he wandered under leaves, 
And where the Elven-river rolled 
He walked alone and sorrowing. 
He peered between the hemlock-leaves 
And saw in wonder flowers of gold 
Upon her mantle and her sleeves, 
And her hair like shadow following

In “The Gest of Beren and Luthien” in The Lays of Beleriand, we read that Luthien’s mantle was blue:

Her robe was blue as summer skies,
but grey as evening were her eyes;
‘twas sewn with golden lilies fair,
but dark as shadow was her hair.

So Luthien had a mantle “blue as summer skies” with “golden lilies” sewn on it, while Eowyn had a “blue mantle of the colour of deep summer-night” set with “silver stars.” Both are blue and connected with summer, but Luthien’s reminds us of a summer morning with golden flowers, whereas Eowyn’s reminds of an evening with silver stars. It is a reminder of how Middle-earth has aged and the glory of the world is passing into evening. As Gimli tells Eomer: “You have chosen the Evening; but my love is given to the Morning. And my heart forebodes that soon it will pass away for ever.”

But we should not overlook this connection between the mantles of Eowyn and Luthien. Luthien’s story is the “The Lay of Leithian” and “leithian” means “release from bondage.” The Lay tells the story of how Beren and Luthien seek a Silmaril from the Crown of Morgoth. Luthien uses her cloak to cast a spell of sleep upon Morgoth: “Then Lúthien catching up her winged robe sprang into the air…She cast her cloak before his eyes, and set upon him a dream… Suddenly he fell.” As Beren cuts the Silmaril from Morgoth’s crown, Tolkien writes:

Behold! the hope of Elvenland
the fire of Fëanor, Light of Morn
before the sun and moon were born,
thus out of bondage came at last,
from iron to mortal hand it passed.

Tom Hillman, in his new book, Pity, Power, and Tolkien’s Ring, notes that when Sam mentions to Frodo that they are in the same tale as Beren and Luthien (because of the light of the Silmaril being present in the Phial of Galadriel), Sam is right in more ways than one. Hillman writes about how Sauron wants to use the Ring “to bind” the peoples of Middle-earth, to subjugate them to his will. The Quest to destroy the Ring is a quest to end the domination of Sauron. Thus, in Hillman’s words, “It is this release from bondage…that puts Frodo and Sam in the same tale as Beren and Luthien and suggests that such a release through joy and sorrow has been–and perhaps always will be–part of the story of the Children of Iluvatar.”

If Frodo and Sam are part of this same story, then Eowyn is as well. Just as the Silmaril is released from the bondage of Morgoth’s oppressive crown, Eowyn is released from the bondage and oppression of the Black Breath, which preyed upon her own sadness and grief, causing her to view herself as standing “upon some dreadful brink” before an “utterly dark…abyss.”

In the mantle of Faramir’s mother, all of these connections are woven together: the Elven hope in Elbereth, Marian sorrow at the foot of the Cross, the “beautiful and immeasurable sorrow” of the Third Theme, the love between Beren and Luthien and the quest for “release from bondage.” Eowyn’s choice to accept the starry mantle foreshadows her own release from bondage, from the despair and darkness of her past, to a future of shimmering starlight in the twilight of Middle-earth.