#Eomer: WAIT I didn't know you had a child.

[thiswaycomessomethingwicked]

‘Other than the fact that Lady Éowyn didn’t sleep in her chambers and has run away with a man below her station?’ Cynbel asks, he peers up at Grima. An inspecting expression that Grima thinks to be stolen from him. ‘Who has said such things?’ ‘Cook. Also Hilja who does the charring.’ Cynbel grinds away at the fish paste. ‘My mam says you should take me under your wing and train me up. That you’re more useful if you can make me useful to the king.’ Grima sneers. Cynbel shrugs. ‘Tell me more about this char girl’s rumour-mongering,’ Grima orders.

Cynbel makes a return! The absolute mad-lad who looked at Grima and went "what if he was dad material?"

Grima disagrees, vehemently.

[torchwood-99]

Eowyn and Masking

This is pure projection, but I keep thinking about a neurodivergent Eowyn, and masking.

So masking is when a person conceals their personality as social camouflage, and it is very common with women with ADHD. The way ADHD presents in women and the social pressures for women to conform to a certain behaviour means that women often go undiagnosed. Masking has severe impacts on the mental health of women, and because they are going undiagnosed, they don't receive the support they need.

Eowyn, as a woman and Lady of Rohan, is expected to abide by certain standards of behaviour, and take on roles that don't fit her, yet she performs them to a high standard (until she no longer can), and conceals from her family just how much she is struggling. It is the dissonance between Eowyn's inner personality, and the image she presents to the world, that is reminiscent to me of masking.

Eomer, we know, had little knowledge of how much Eowyn was struggling. He knows she was unhappy during Grima's reign, but he didn't know how deep her misery went, or how dissatisfied she felt with her allotted role.

It seems that Eowyn's request to Aragorn at Dunharrow was the first time she let loose her struggles to someone, the first time she revealed her "true" self.

In the Two Towers, Eowyn is sent away and summoned, Eowyn waits and serves, Eowyn comes and goes, all at another's will.

Eowyn speaks only to say all the correct words and perform all the correct social ceremonies. Already we get hints that there is more going on underneath the service, that this image of herself is a performance, her lingering after she is sent from the hall, her looking to Aragorn when speaking to Theoden, but all of this is covered in a layer of outward conformity. The Eowyn we see is an Eowyn putting on a show for all around her.

Eowyn plays a role, every word she says in Two Towers is a courtesy. So when she lets loose to Aragorn in Return of the King, the first time we hear her speak as herself, this is the first time she takes that risk of letting her inner character show.

And she is rebuffed and chided and told to get back into her box. Aragorn tells her that it is her performance, the false image of herself, dutiful and silent, that she should be, and that she should continue as she had done before, stifling her true character, keeping silent on her true thoughts, putting on a performance for the benefit of others.

The devastation of that, of taking that risk, of opening herself up to another, only to be told, "no, this version of you is wrong, you need to be false version you playing before" must have gutteral.

I've gathered some quotes on some of the ways masking takes form, and some of the impacts of masking.

I do feel many of these are present in Eowyn's character, in the responsibilities she takes on for years tending Theoden, without letting Eomer or others know just how much she is suffering for it, her "stern" veneer which speaks of someone needing to seem in control, the fact she never tells Eomer or Theoden or anyone else that she is struggling because her " love for you, and her will still bent to her duty, had not restrained her lips," indicating shame at her feeling this way, acting as she is expected to, always performing some ceremonial role, and in her ensuing depression.

Although I am more looking at this as how Eowyn's experiences might mirror or resonate with women who mask, Tolkien's thing of applicability over analogy, the part about irritability when being asked to focus on something they have no interest in stands out to me, because we know that a lot of Eowyn's frustration and unhappiness comes from her being called on to be a "dry nurse", despite not being one by temperament. And when she meets Faramir, there is this line;

"She guessed that this tall man, both stern and gentle, might think her merely wayward, like a child that has not the firmness of mind to go on with a dull task to the end."

There is an insecurity there, a fear that her lack of focus might be observed and judged. If Eowyn has been masking, putting on a performance in order to fit with society's expectations, the fear of being perceived could be something she fears strongly. So here there might even be some in-canon indication that Eowyn could be read as having ADHD.