The Deep Places of the World

Nerdanel
Feanor beat his wife. The first point in this argument is Feanor's personality as a whole. He is a man who resorts to violence almost every time something goes wrong. He threatened his half-brother at swordpoint over an imagined slight. He and his sons threatened 'fierce vengeance' on anyone who should so much as find a Silmaril by the roadside and not return it - and his sons demonstrated multiple times that this was no idle threat. Feanor rallied the Noldor to form a military expidition to find Morgoth - and when the Teleri refused to help, he attacked them without mercy. Even when abandoning the host of Fingolfin, he chose to utterly destroy the ships, rather than keeping them for potential later use. Secondly, we have Feanor's attitude towards women. His mother died when he was young, which led to one of the messiest breakups in history: first Finwe spent an age pestering Miriel to come back to life, and then, when she refused to do so in what he considered good time, he found a new bride, and switched to convincing Miriel to never come back. In all of Finwe's actions - the efforts Feanor would have been watching closely - there was no consideration of Miriel's desires. To Finwe - at least as seen by young Feanor - she was an object to be possessed, or discarded when she could be replaced. It didn't help that Finwe's new wife, Indis, was of the Vanyar. Unlike the craft-working Noldor, the Vanyar spent their time singing, dancing - or as Feanor might have put it, looking pretty and doing nothing of value. To his eyes, although he didn't have the phrase available, Finwe's second bride was a trophy wife. Feanor, naturally, shunned her. We also see Feanor's opinion of his own wife, Nerdanel. "Were you a true wife, as you had been till cozened by Aule," he tells her, "you would keep all of [our children], for you would come with us." A 'true wife', in Feanor's eyes, is one who obediently does everything her husband desires. He goes on to make this even more abundandly clear: "If you desert me, you desert also all of our children." Not 'if you choose not to travel to Middle-earth' - no, to Feanor, Nerdanel's options were between being a proper wife (and doing what he said), or being a bad wife (and going off by herself). He didn't even consider she might have opinions beyond himself. And like father, like sons. In the story of Luthien, we meet Celegorm and Curufin, who - despite Curufin being married himself (and we never hear anything about his wife) - attempt to claim Luthien as a prize. Regardless of her wishes, they want to marry her to Celegorm, and thereby claim kinship to her father. When it becomes clear that they can't have the object they desire - when their second abduction fails - they switch to trying to flat-out kill her, with only Beren and Huan stopping them from succeeding. These are not elves with the faintest degree of respect for women - and in this, they follow their father. This lack of respect also comes out in another way. Feanor and Nerdanel had seven sons, a massive number unequalled among the Eldar. Tolkien explains that elves saw conceiving a child as something of a craft project, with the result being a person who was a being in his or her own right, but also a product of their craftsmanship. While Nerdanel was also a crafter - as all the Noldor were - Feanor was the perfectionist. He is the one who would insist on having more and more sons, in order to ensure he had created the best possible product - just as he continued to craft gemstones until he had perfected the Silmarils. We know Nerdanel wasn't actively unwilling - in Valinor, that degree of coercion would never fly - but it seems unlikely she was as eager as Feanor to just keep popping out kids. The third, and strongest, argument lies in Nerdanel's own reactions to her husband. We know she loved him at first, when he was learning smithying from Mahtan, her father. We know that for a time, she tried to moderate his temper with wisdom. But we also know that, by the time their last two sons were born, Nerdanel had completely shut herself off, emotionally, from her husband: The two twins were both red-haired. Nerdanel gave them both the name Amburassa - for they were much alike and remained so while they lived. When Feanor begged that their names should at least be different Nerdanel looked strange, and after a while said: ‘Then let one be Umbarto, but which, time will decide.’ Feanor was disturbed by this ominous name (‘Fated’), and changed it to Ambarto (‘Exalted head’). But Nerdanel said: ‘Umbarto I spoke; yet do as you wish. It will make no difference.’ That is Nerdanel saying 'One of these children is going to die; if you don't care, then fine, leave me alone.' She is still trying to reason with Feanor - but she refuses to allow him to touch her emotions. Later, after the death of the Trees, this becomes even more abundantly clear: She retired to her father’s house; but when it became clear that Feanor and his sons would leave Valinor for ever, she came to him before the host started on its northward march, and begged that Feanor should leave her the two youngest, the twins, or at least one of them. He replied: ‘Were you a true wife, as you had been till cozened by Aule, you would keep all of them, for you would come with us. If you desert me, you desert also all of our children. For they are determined to go with their father.’ Then Nerdanel was angry and she answered: ‘You will not keep all of them. One at least will never set foot on Middle-earth.’ Nerdanel does show her emotions here, perhaps in a final effort to get Feanor to listen - but at the same time she cuts herself off entirely from her family. Tolkien said that the Eldar would never speak of 'having' children - they would say 'two children are added to my house', for instance - but here Nerdanel reduces her sons to the status of objects: 'You will not keep all of them', she tells Feanor, and even as she pronounces a sentence of death on one of the twins, we hear her unspoken words: 'Just as you cannot keep me.' Nerdanel was abused by her husband, who saw her as little more than a tool - or, later, an obstacle. Is it certain that the abuse was physical? No - but knowing what we do of Feanor, it seems a safe, if tragic, bet.
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