The Fellowship comes to Caras Galadhon — the city of Lothlórien — where lights twinkle like stars in trees as tall as skyscrapers. After climbing to a high a and enormous flet they are greeted by Middle-earth’s #1 power couple: Lord Celeborn and Lady Galadriel. Celeborn’s welcome is warm at first, but cools when he learns the Company awoke something very warm (and wingless) in Moria. But when the Lady comes to their defense, even Gimli starts to feel all gooey inside. All this, and a sidebar illustrates the dangers of research in the murky waters of Tolkien’s unfinished material.
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Recommended Reading:
Tolkien, J. R. R. The Fellowship of the Ring: Being the First Part of The Lord of the Rings (Mariner Books, paperback) pp. 344-48, “The Mirror of Galadriel”
Tolkien, J. R. R. (Christopher Tolkien, ed.) The Silmarillion (Mariner Books, paperback)
Carpenter, Humphrey, ed. The Letters of J.R.R. Tolkien (Mariner Books, paperback)
One of the main reasons – if not THE main reason – why Galadriel’s story got so scrambled is that Tolkien was under constant attack from a certain socio-political movement (which shall go nameless, since I’m a nice guy) over his female characters and/or lack thereof. I’m sure for a devout Catholic like the Professor, who revered women almost every bit as much as the faith prompted him to revere the Virgin Mother herself, this unfair criticism truly rankled. So, to prove his misguided detractors wrong, which he did not need to do, because, as mentioned, they were misguided, he embarked on a fairly hopeless quest of elevating Galadriel’s greatness to one on par with Feanor’s. And by “greatness,” I of course mean influence and power, not some measure of how swell or neato (“They’re GREAT!”) everyone thought they were. There is simply no way to make ANY ELF, let alone Galadriel, as significant and dominant as Feanor without undermining and dismantling the most critical themes of The Silmarillion, which is of course named after HIS creations, not Galadriel’s or anyone else’s.