actualmermaid:

actualmermaid:

highkey ready for someone to challenge me on the “blaming tragedies on the closest named female character” thing because I have the BEST meta up my sleeve

NICE CHOICE. A CLASSIC.

The more I thought about this tendency of fandom to blame every tragedy on the closest female character, the more I noticed that these women technically could have prevented whatever the tragedy was. Technically. Idril could have given Maeglin a chance, or whatever. Elwing could have surrendered the Silmaril. Melian could have stayed in Doriath to protect it.

I’m going to focus on Idril, Melian, and Elwing as women who tend to take a lot of heat for this, but you can apply this “could have” expectation to a lot of things people hold female characters disproportionately responsible for. Miriel could have tried harder to not die of elvish PPD, therefore preventing Fëanor from becoming embittered and vengeful toward the Valar and his stepfamily. Nerdanel could have tried harder to keep Fëanor’s darker impulses in check. Indis could have minded her own business and not married Finwë, I guess, and none of the story with its cascading tragedies would have ever happened.

We want someone to blame, and it’s easy to blame the women, both because we’re socialized to blame women for everything and because these could-haves seem so simple. If there was one thing you could do (even if that thing came as an intense personal sacrifice) to prevent a tragedy like the Fall of Gondolin, why wouldn’t you do it? These selfish bitches need to think about the greater good!

Each “critical female” functions narratively as a keystone in an arch. The keystone makes it possible for the arch to hold its shape, and if the keystone is removed, the arch will collapse.

(This analogy doesn’t hold up very far, but bear with me.) We tend to think of the women and their tragedies as existing in a vacuum, ignoring everything else that happened up until the Third Kinslaying, for example, that made Elwing’s “choice” so critical. In all of these cases, the “footers” of the tragedy were already in place, and the escalating pride and greed of men built the arch until the keystone woman becomes the deciding factor in the arch collapsing. However, they’re all important parts of the same arch, and the keystone woman is only the last stone placed before something happens to cause the tragedy she “could have” prevented. It’s only “her fault” because other people’s terrible choices put her in the position to make a choice between two or more awful options.

In all of these cases, the keystone woman’s tragedy is actually triggered by a man’s folly. Thingol got hilariously murdered because he and the dwarves tried to double-cross each other over jewels, and Melian (who is even less human than the elves already are) floated away in grief. Maeglin (poster child for the generational pattern of male entitlement and abuse) betrayed Gondolin because he wished to possess Idril, and the chorus of “why didn’t she give him a chance? Why couldn’t she just have been nice to him?” is WAY TOO REAL in our age of incels and mass shootings. And, of course, the sons of Fëanor perpetrated the Third Kinslaying. That’s not even a question.

Interestingly, the fate of the keystone woman seems to symbolize the fate of the people affected by their shared tragedy. Idril endures the Fall of Gondolin through her courage and resourcefulness, and her legacy is felt throughout the ages to come even if she (after going West) is only a “memory” of more glorious days. Melian departs Doriath in her grief, leaving it unprotected, just as the refugees of Doriath scattered across Beleriand when its last elven stronghold could no longer protect them. Elwing and her people choose death over the humiliation of surrendering the Silmaril, but in their death (literal or symbolic) they are lifted up (literally or morally) over their circumstances.

I’ve written before about how Tolkien treats his female characters better than people are often willing to give him credit for. These women have agency and dignity in the midst of men fucking everything up for them, and he treats them with sympathy (Melian) or as heroes (Elwing and Idril) for doing their best with bad situations. Can you imagine Idril’s story in the hands of a different (cough GRRM cough) writer? Tolkien recognizes that these women are critical parts of complex stories, and if they “could have” done something to prevent their tragedy, he does not fault them for not doing it. He knows better than to place that responsibility on one person’s shoulders. After he spent so long carefully detailing how and why all the male characters dug their own graves, he knows better than to expect their women to fix it for them.