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Originally Posted by Bb
So readers dare not go where only authors care to tread? Well, well. What are readers to do who see imagery and symbolism of the Virgin Mary in Galadriel, which was 'put there' "consciously so in the revision" by Tolkien's own statement? Are they to discount it as irrelevant intrusion of primary world? Why one and not the other? (oh dear, have reached my smilie limit.)
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I think while we are reading the story we should try & leave behind primary world ideas & symbols - otherwise we risk having the spell broken. While reading the story Shelob should only be 'an evil thing in spider form' & Sam's method of dispatching her bring to mind things like the Turin/Glaurung & Earendel/Ungoliant battles.
Once we step outside the secondary world we can analyse it all as much as we want - though in that case we are doing what Tolkien condemned - breaking a thing to find out what it is made of, dismantling the tower to find out wherre the stones originally came from.
This is the real 'Freudian' approach which we're all (myself as much as, or even more than, others, I sometimes feel) in danger of falling into. The Freudian approach is essentially backward looking, asking 'what
caused this, what is this made of?' The alternative, which I suppose we can call the 'Jungian' approach, is to ask 'What is this
for? 'Where is this
going?' rather than 'Where did this come
from?'
As for the Galadriel/Mary connection, it is in there - quite blatantly some would say in the later writings - but its not there so strongly that it can't be ignored by those who want to, & its not necessary to know anything about the Virgin Mary
in order to understand the character & role of Galadriel. We may learn a lot about Tolkien by bringing Mary into our reading, but we won't learn much about Middle earth. We won't actually learn that much about Galadriel, either.
Letter 144:
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Myth & fairy story must, as all art, reflect & contain in solution elements of moral & religious truth (or error), but not explicit, not in the known form of the primary 'real' world.
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Having said all that, its difficult to seperate the creator from his creation, & Lilith may have been in the back (or even the front) of his mind when he was writing this passage - we'll probably never know.