Quote:
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It is part of the essential malady of such days— producing the desire to escape, not indeed from life, but from our present time and self-made misery— that we are acutely conscious both of the ugliness of our works, and of their evil. So that to us evil and ugliness seem indissolubly allied. We find it difficult to conceive of evil and beauty together. The fear of the beautiful fay that ran through the elder ages almost eludes our grasp. Even more alarming: goodness is itself bereft of its proper beauty. In Faerie one can indeed conceive of an ogre who possesses a castle hideous as a nightmare (for the evil of the ogre wills it so), but one cannot conceive of a house built with a good purpose—an inn, a hostel for travellers, the hall of a virtuous and noble king—that is yet sickeningly ugly. At the present day it would be rash to hope to see one that was not—unless it was built before our time. On Fairy Stories
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So Tolkien lectures us. And yet, doesn't he fall into the same trap himself - allying ugliness almost solely with evil & beauty with goodness. Yes, there are examples of evil having a beautiful face (Annatar), & good having an ugly one (the Woses), yet in reality these are exceptions that prove the rule. In M-e not only do "evil and ugliness
seem indissolubly allied" they are so. If we do find it "difficult to conceive of evil and beauty together" Tolkien himself could be said to have exacerbated that problem.
Or perhaps its simply because LotR, indeed the Legendarium as a whoie, is not actually a 'Fairy Story' at all?