What is a feminine heroine like? If we let modern media guide us, the courageous woman is a man in disguise, felling armies with the brute force of her (seductively clad) 140-pound frame. The feminist heroine never tires to assert, to any and every man, “Anything you can do, I can do better.” The “heroine” turns out to be little more than an undersized hero.
But if that is the case, most women — or perhaps all women — are excluded from the category. But surely, we can agree that any vision of the heroine that rules out our wives and mothers, our daughters and sisters, is like a cup with no bottom or a fork with no tines — useless. Like the women of Marvel, these “heroines” are a myth.
Wise taletellers know a real heroine. J.R.R. Tolkien knew. In the story of Beren and Lúthien, the Professor presents a compelling picture of the fiercely feminine heroine. Not surprisingly, Lúthien offers a sharp contrast to the masculine heroines of modernity.
Tolkien’s Favorite Tale
Though the “fair tale” of Beren and Lúthien appears in The Lord of the Rings on the lips of Aragorn, their distant descendant (192–93), we find the fuller story in The Silmarillion. This tale set in the early ages of Middle-earth was Tolkien’s favorite because it illustrated a principle he loved: The weak and seemingly insignificant often move the great wheels of the world. He takes pains to stress that Lúthien is “a mere maiden even if an elf of royalty” (The Letters of J.R.R. Tolkien, 171). Her powers may be magical and her world fictional, but her virtues are simply feminine — those shared by all heroines. In Lúthien, Tolkien embodies many of the traits of the Proverbs 31 woman.
So, on this Mother’s Day weekend when we celebrate the beauty, grace, and strength of those most formidable of feminine heroines, what might we glean from Tolkien and Lúthien that we can turn to their praise?
1. She inspires courage.
To begin, Lúthien inspires masculine strength and daring. When Beren first encounters Lúthien, he is fleeing from the wrath of the Dark Lord Morgoth. Beren is sole survivor of a terrible war, son of a slain father, leader of a massacred army. Yet when he hears Lúthien sing and dance upon unfading grass under moonlight, “All memory of his pain departed from him” (The Silmarillion, 155). She puts steel in his spine again.
We witness the real strength of Lúthien’s influence when she brings Beren before her father, King Thingol. The king threatens to kill Beren for trespassing on his lands. But when Beren looks at Lúthien, “Fear left him” (156), and in a moment of breathtaking audacity, he asks for Lúthien’s hand in marriage. For that boldness, Thingol sentences Beren to death, but he shortly reconsiders and leverages the situation to his advantage. He promises Lúthien if Beren can bring him a Silmaril.
The Silmarils were the most valuable (and coveted) objects in all Middle-earth — gems crafted to house the light of the trees of paradise. Morgoth had stolen them, and all the power of the Elves had not availed to see them again. Retrieving the jewels was beyond impossible. “For they were set in the Iron Crown, and treasured in Angband above all wealth; and Balrogs were about them, and countless swords, and strong bars, and unassailable walls, and the dark majesty of Morgoth” (158). Like infiltrating Morder millennia later, entering this labyrinth of foes and fire was all but hopeless.
But Lúthien enflames Beren’s boldness, leading him to laugh at Thingol’s offer: “For little price do Elven-kings sell their daughters; for gems, and things made by craft. But if this be your will, Thingol, I will perform it” (158). Lúthien was indeed “far more precious than jewels” (Proverbs 31:10).
This pattern of kindling male courage attends Lúthien throughout the tale. Like all genuine heroines, she inspires his strength. Like wives who hone their husband’s mission, like mothers who nurture the holy ambition of their children, she galvanizes courage.
2. She does good.
Yet Lúthien is no passive flower. An inactive heroine would be a contradiction in terms. Instead, Lúthien does good. Sometimes simple good. Sometimes stunning good.
After sealing the deal with Thingol, Beren sets out on his impossible task. But he soon finds himself locked in a dungeon by none other than Sauron (at that time a servant of Morgoth). One by one, Sauron strips Beren of his companions, feeding them to his fell wolves. Beren is left bereft of light, friends, and hope.
Upon learning this news, Lúthien beseeches her father to help Beren, but he refuses. So this mere maiden, “perceiving that no help would come from any other on earth, resolved to fly . . . and come herself to him” (162). However, like all wise heroines, Lúthien knows the limits of her strength, and so she recruits Huan, the hound of the gods, to aid her.
Together, they dare Sauron’s stronghold. Lúthien first offers herself as bait and then assails the darkness with the power of her voice, singing a song “that no walls of stone could hinder” (164). Huan handles the physical battle, slaying wolf after wolf and finally battling Sauron himself. In the end, Sauron is defeated, his tower thrown down, and Beren is saved from a fate worse than death.
Like Lúthien, the heroine does good, big or small, however she can, no matter the cost. That’s what makes her a heroine. And this is not the realm of some mythic few but of every godly woman. She does good (Proverbs 31:12).
3. She opens her mouth with wisdom.
But it’s worth asking, how does the heroine do good? Does she wield sword and shield? Does she rely on primal strength? Are her fists her greatest asset? No. She knows, as Father Christmas said, “Battles are ugly when women fight” (The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, 160). She has not been deceived by the propaganda.
Thus, Lúthien’s great weapons are her wit and her words. She never so much as touches a sword or hefts an axe. Instead, “She opens her mouth with wisdom” (Proverbs 31:26). And when she does, her foes flee, and her friends find new strength. Tolkien represents this verbal power with Lúthien’s singing, but even her bare words are a terror to evil.
At one point, Beren and Lúthien are confronted by Carcharoth, the Red Maw, a massive wolf — “a devouring spirit, tormented, terrible, and strong.” Beren’s force is useless, yet Lúthien remains undaunted. “She stood forth, small before the might of Carcharoth, but radiant and terrible.” She speaks one little word of sleep, and the great wolf drops “as though lightning had smitten him” (170).
As every real heroine knows, “Death and life are in the power of the tongue” (Proverbs 18:21). How many of our mothers have broken hard hearts with one little word? How many of their songs have imparted life to us? How often have our wives armed themselves with godly speech? What a tragedy if these heroines, our heroines, stopped opening their mouths with wisdom! Lúthien would not surrender her strength so easily.
4. She fearlessly follows.
After escaping from Sauron, Beren, for a time, despairs of his quest and urges Lúthien to return to the safety of her father. But, echoing the adamant resolve of Jonathan’s shield-bearer (1 Samuel 14:7), Lúthien avows,
You must choose, Beren, between these two: to relinquish the quest and your oath and seek a life of wandering upon the face of the earth; or to hold to your word and challenge the power of darkness upon its throne. But on either road, I shall go with you, and our doom shall be alike. (167)
Glad submission, fearless following — here are feminine virtues the modern “heroine” knows not. But oh, how Lúthien does! She clarifies the choice that lies before Beren, surrenders that decision into his hands, and then freely submits to follow wherever he leads. Like that ancient heroine Ruth, she says, “Where you go I will go. . . . May the Lord do so to me and more also if anything but death parts me from you” (Ruth 1:16–17).
Here we see the beating heart of the heroine. She knows how to give counsel, and she knows the time for taking orders. She sees submission not as a kind of weakness but as a doubling, a fortifying, a glorifying of the strength of others. She fearlessly follows. And with joy.
5. She clothes herself in strength.
With Lúthien’s support, Beren sets his face to challenge Morgoth for the Silmaril. Footsore and harried by Morgoth’s minions, the couple arrives at Angband, the Dark Lord’s fortress. By cunning and disguise, they manage to infiltrate the throne room.
In that black pit — lit with fire, filled with instruments of death, upheld by hate — before the dark throne and his legions of evil, Lúthien throws away her disguise, names her own name, and offers her minstrelsy to Morgoth. The Great Foe glares at her, but “she [is] not daunted by his eyes” (170). And even as he plots to possess her beauty, she begins a song of surpassing loveliness.
One by one, Morgoth’s court, orc and wyrm and balrog, are cast into an enchanted slumber. And finally, the evil eye of Morgoth shuts under a heavy lid as he slumps down, a mountain crashing into the sea. The Silmarils on the Iron Crown fall like stars to the floor. Beren emerges from hiding and cuts one of those luminous gems from the crown. And they flee from that horrible place. Thus, Beren and Lúthien “together wrought the greatest deed that has been dared by Elves or Men” (The Silmarillion, 170).
This is a feminine heroine indeed! Song, beauty, and daring adorn her. She fears nothing fearful. She has dressed herself in strength; she laughs before the throne of darkness (Proverbs 31:17, 25). Yet her strength is not his strength. She does what he cannot so he can do what she cannot. Both are needed to complete the mission.
Again, though Lúthien’s deeds are mythical, her virtues are mortal. Our heroines are clothed in this same strength. They are dressed in song, beauty, and boldness. They dare awesome deeds — bearing children, rearing them, braving foreign mission fields, helping imperfect men, educating unwilling toddlers and teens, cleaning and cooking and cultivating and praying and building and going. They dare awesome deeds because they fear an awesome God (Proverbs 31:30).
Worthy of Honor
For Tolkien, Lúthien was far more than mere fiction. On the grave of his wife Edith, Tolkien had the name “Lúthien” engraved, “which says for me more than a multitude of words: for she was (and knew she was) my Lúthien.” He went on to tell his son, “Edith . . . was the source of the story that in time became the chief pan of the Silmarillion” (Letters, 463).
The entire tale of Beren and Lúthien is, in a sense, an ovation to the feminine heroine. But she is not some distant ideal, some never-before-seen phantom. For Tolkien, she is Edith. She is a wife and a mother, a daughter and a sister. She lives among us. And is that not fitting? Are not the real heroines the ones whose glory Hollywood cannot bear, the ones whose radiance will one day outshine the sun? Are they not our wives and our mothers? Are those not the ones whose children should rise up and call them blessed, whose husbands should praise them?
They are our Lúthiens.
