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Originally Posted by Raynor
I am not sure, to what problems of Galadriel are you reffering to? If you mean whether her staying in ME in the Third Age is self-choice or a valar ban, then this isn't related to our issue. As for the later part of your statement, I agree; what started initially subconsiously as Christian, he would later emboss in his work even more evidently, should he had had the time.
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The problems over her motivation, over why she chose to do what she did. Tolkien's tinkerings with her in letters and later notes, adding elements of the Mary myth to her persona only serve to make her seem flat and one-dimensional, and deeply un-womanly, as though she is reduced to a mere cipher or symbol than a real character. Yet if we simply take the Galadriel we see in LotR she becomes a much more fascinating character, imbued with power and a desire for power. She has
failings. What's more she has a more fascinating back story, with Celebrimbor's love for her, the idea of her rebellion etc.
It's not only Galadriel who got him into knots though, it was the Orcs too. He later agonised over whether it was 'moral' to have slaughtered so many Orcs. And he seems to have become alarmed when people saw the huge amount of pagan symbolism in the work (inevitable to me, that a Catholic writer's work would come across in such a way when deliberately
avoiding religious allegory, considering that Christianity was built on the foundations of paganism); as a result he used his letters to explore the Christian side of the work and often muddled issues which were established in the secondary world he had created.
Tolkien was the God of Arda, he was the only one who could create it and give it life, and that is what he did. With the letters, it's as though on the 8th day he opened the door and let some other God from another part of the void in, and we know what they say about too many cooks.