Oxonmoot 2024

In a Legendarium with proportionally few female characters, only a subset of whom are mothers, it is perhaps unsurprising that motherhood in Middle-earth has not emerged as a subject of much discussion. In this paper, I consider how Tolkien depicts the experience of mothers, and how this evolved over the course of his writing career. The focus is on Morwen, the mother of Túrin, Lalaith and Nienor, whose identity as a mother is central to her character, from the Book of Lost Tales through to Tolkien’s late writings. Here I ponder the Húrin’s final epithet for Morwen ‘She was not conquered’ in the light of her story as a mother and what it means in Tolkien’s work for a mother to be ‘conquered’ or otherwise.