Woman of the Month: Lúthien Tinúviel

Art by Elena Kukanova

Lúthien Tinúviel from The Silmarillion

There is a scene in the extended cut of The Fellowship of the Ring in which Frodo overhears Aragorn singing softly to himself, and on being asked what woman he sings of, is told: “Tis the ley of Lúthien, the Elf Maiden who gave her love to Beren ... a mortal.” “What happened to her?” “She died.” Although this scene didn’t make the theatrical cut, it’s interesting to me that it’s one of the few times characters of The Silmarillion are directly referenced in Peter Jackson’s films.

In this case, it’s to provide a parallel and precursor to Aragorn and Arwen’s similar love story, that of an Elven woman falling in love with a mortal and giving up her immortality for his sake. Arwen herself was greatly expanded in Jackson’s films; a wise decision given that her role in Tolkien’s trilogy is to be the Standard Hero Reward: a largely off-page non-entity who is the motivation and prize for Aragorn should he successfully reclaim the throne of Gondor.

I believe that at one point Tolkien explicitly regretted not being able to delve more into Arwen’s story, which is told predominantly in the trilogy’s appendixes, and yet in many ways it had already been told by her predecessor (quite literally, Lúthien is Arwen’s great, great grandmother).

I said in my last reading log that Lúthien Tinúviel is perhaps the most significant female character in the entirety of Tolkien’s work, embodying so many of his themes, concepts, philosophies and narrative arcs. And yet – as with Arwen – she in many ways remains a cypher; held at a distance due to the nature of the story and the way in which it’s told.

In any other context than a mythic epic with deliberate Romantic and fairy tale underpinnings, Lúthien would be derided as a Mary Sue. She has unique ancestry (her father is an Elf, her mother a Maiar), is considered the most beautiful creature in all existence, has magical abilities that do whatever is necessary to move the plot forward, can boast a talking dog as a companion and/or steed, and is able to temporarily lull Morgoth himself into an enchanted sleep with the power of her voice.  

After her beloved dies, she becomes a gender-flipped Orpheus and traverses into death itself in order to retrieve the man she loves, moving Mandos, the Valar of Death, to pity and granting herself and Beren a second chance at life. Yes, she defeats Death itself, the first and most inexorable of all nature’s laws. She returns to a mortal life with Beren, ends up wearing one of the legendary Silmarils around her neck, and kickstarts a bloodline of kings that has not yet ended at the conclusion of The Lord of the Rings.

That she sits at the center of Tolkien’s work is undeniable. The religious subtext, his desire to create a mythology for England, the theme of the humble and weak achieving what the powerful cannot... you could take any of the story’s key underpinnings and affix them to Lúthien in some way, for ultimately her story is one of death. First she transcends it, then she embraces it – the first of all the Elves to do so, and for the sake of love.  

That she was dear to Tolkien’s heart is apparent in the fact that her name is carved beneath that of his wife’s on their shared gravestone, and she remains the only female character whose name appears in the title of a published work. Beren first chanced upon her while she danced in a hemlock grove, a scene based upon the real-life occurrence of Edith Tolkien doing the same for her husband after he returned home from the front. As he said years later, after her death:

“I never called Edith Lúthien – but she was the source of the story that in time became the chief part of The Silmarillion. It was first conceived in a small woodland glade filled with hemlocks at Roos in Yorkshire (where I was for a brief time in command of an outpost of the Humber Garrison in 1917, and she was able to live with me for a while). In those days her hair was raven, her skin clear, her eyes brighter than you have seen them, and she could sing – and dance.”

And yet... despite the deep and abiding love Tolkien had for these women, it somehow feels significant that they remain voiceless. We know so little about Edith Tolkien beyond what her husband had to say about her, and as far as I know (and please correct me if I’m wrong) there are no letters, memoirs or interviews from Edith herself – at least none that are easily accessible. Granted, the woman had a right to privacy during her lifetime, and perhaps she valued that. Yet we know little about her beyond her role as Tolkien's wife and muse.

Similarly, neither is any internal perspective or dialogue afforded to Lúthien throughout her story. We know she’s motivated by love, but only ever get a detached recap of the feats she achieves. What were her thoughts and feelings when she first saw Beren? Entered the heart of Morgoth’s fortress? Decided to defy death and seek out Beren’s departed spirit?

This is a criticism that’s tempered by my awareness that The Silmarillion simply wasn’t written to accommodate any level of deep characterization. I know this. Lúthien makes choices and has agency, but like most characters in The Silmarillion, she remains at arm's length from the reader. But my point remains that our only insights into both these women come through Tolkien’s eyes and words. It’s part of the reason I’m a little disappointed that Amazon’s take on the material won’t delve into anything further back than Third Age, as it denies the chance for others to flesh out these female characters.

Sifting deeper into Lúthien’s story – how it might feel to go from eternal life to mortality, why she loved Beren to such an extent, how she moved Mandos to break the laws of nature for her sake, what she thought and felt throughout all of this – is up to each individual reader to ponder. Tolkien only gave us a surface-level understanding of her character (which is not a criticism, just a fact) and left the rest for us to imagine. Like the woman who inspired her, she remains something of a mystery.