Eowyn: was Golden Compass

[pippin_999]

> 
> Kemper now:
> Then, based on your quoted canon, you must have a problem with Farmir.
> Or with JRRT, as it's his writings that suggest it.
> This person isn't assuming, he's inferring based on what JRRT is implying.

Pippin:
She wanted to die because she'd been rejected. But she wanted to fight
to win renown and recognition for her valor as well as to protect her
people. "But I am of the House of Eorl and not a serving-woman. 
I can ride and wield blade, and I do not fear either pain or death. " 
She's already learned to ride and wield a blade, things she did not 
learn to do because of a man but because there was a tradition of 
shield maidens. 

Aragorn tells her it's needless for her to go to battle, but the slaying
of the witch-king proves he is wrong.

Later she seems to want to self-medicate her depression by continuing
to fight: "To health? It may be so. At least while there is an empty
saddle of some fallen Rider that I can fill, and there are deeds to
do. But to hope? I do not know."

IIRC, Tolkien invented the character at the request of his daughter who
wanted to see a woman fighter in the book.

> Kemper now:
> I would need more canon to address the clinical depression.  As I'm
> not into LotR, I'm disinclined to seek it myself.
> But even if so, doesn't it make woman, as Eowyn, weak due to emotional
> problem (abuse of Wormtongue/rejection of Aragon).
> Does JRRT show Man (not a Hobbit, Dwarf, Elf) as possibly clinically
> depressed?  I don't know.

Pippin:
Oh yeah. Denethor commits suicide because of it. "[T]he vision of the
great might of Mordor that was shown to him fed the despair of
his heart until it overthrew his mind."

Pippin