Motherhood is a cage.
Femininity is weakness.
Marriage is oppression.
Children will ruin your life.
You’ve heard these words before. In a college seminar. In a radical feminist journal. On TikTok or Instagram. They echo everywhere in modern culture.
But these words did not come from a college seminar or a radical feminist journal. They are the words — or a simulacrum of words — from Gríma Wormtongue, a character in Tolkien’s “Lord of the Rings” trilogy. Tolkien did not live through the feminist revolution, but he already saw these lies being told to women. He put them in the mouth of a villain, a wretch who readily betrayed his own king and people so that he could control a woman for whom he lusted.
This part of Tolkien’s story was not just about Éowyn. It was about us. The same poison still seeps into women’s ears, only today it comes dressed as empowerment.
You can’t trust a man to take care of you.
Abortion is safe and effective, and it’s just a clump of cells anyway.
Being a stay-at-home mom is a trap.
Men only want to use you.
Children will destroy your dreams.
If you’re not having casual sex, you’re repressed.
If you stay home, you’re wasting your education.
Tradition is just patriarchy keeping you down.
I heard many of these words growing up. Girls and young women still hear them every day — in classrooms, in sitcom punchlines, in “empowerment” ads from the very corporations that sell the pills. They are not truths discovered; they are lies whispered long enough that they start to sound like common sense.
Wormtongue’s whispers worked: Éowyn came to believe she was trapped, doomed never to love or bear children, bound forever to duty. “I fear a cage,” she said — not her own thought, but his, repeated until it became hers. And so she sought glory in death, nearly proving him right when she rode to the Pelennor Fields and was terribly wounded in battle.
Similarly, these words work when whispered into the ears of girls and young women today. And while mothers and aunts and leaders may think this is a good thing, it is not. The cultural results are plain to see:
- Childless women show higher rates of mental illness.
- Married mothers report lower rates of depression and psychological distress than single childless women.
- The career-first path, enabled by birth control, correlates with more despair.
- The family-first path, even with its stresses, seems protective.
The Pellinor Fields was not the end of Éowyn’s story, though her triumph with the sword did not undo the lie. Her salvation came in the Houses of Healing, when she finally heard a different voice.
Faramir did not echo Wormtongue’s poison, nor did he flatter her battle skills or urge her back to the sword. He spoke instead of peace, of hope, of green things that grow. He saw her not as a tool or a warrior to be used, but as a person worth cherishing. In his words, she found the first breath of freedom — and of true love, a love very unlike what she had felt for Aragorn.
That is what broke the spell. Not glory. Not death. Not even her own great victory on the battlefield. Truth spoken gently but firmly was the antidote to Wormtongue’s lies.
And that is what women need now. Not louder mantras. Not more slogans. Not another set of “empowerment” ads from corporations that profit from their despair. They need the same thing Éowyn needed: a voice that names their strength without denying their femininity, that calls motherhood and nurture honorable, that tells them their future is not a cage but a promise.
The task before us is not complicated, but it is urgent. Women today do not need more Wormtongues. They need Faramirs. That means fathers who praise their daughters for gentleness as much as for achievement. Mothers who tell their girls the truth about the joys of family and children. Teachers and mentors who show that nurture and strength are not opposites but allies. Pastors who name femininity as a glory, not a weakness. Friends who remind one another that marriage and motherhood are not cages but callings.
The lies will not stop. The slogans will keep echoing. But we can speak louder—not with more slogans, but with truth. We can give the next generation of Éowyns something better than despair: the breath of freedom, and the hope of a future where their strength as women is honored, not erased.
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