[Child of the 7th Age]

Belin -- Great topic. I am cramped for time right now and won't be back till Sunday. But I did want to mention one thing.

I particularly see Galadriel acting as a "mother figure" for Frodo on his quest. It is mothers who give children what they need to light their path in life, and it is Galadriel who gives Frodo the phial, with its splinter of light from the Silmarils.

In the Road Goes Ever On, Tolkien discusses the song which Galadriel sings to the departing company. There is one part at the end where it says: "Farewell. Maybe thou shalt find Valimar. Maybe even thou shalt find it." Tolkien tells us that Galadriel addressed this specifically to Frodo. (I never knew that till I read these notes.) TThe author says: "The last lines express a wish (or hope) that though she(i.e. Galadriel) could not go, Frodo might perhaps be allowed to do so." This, again, is the good mother, singling out "her son" for something very special, even when she can not have it.

Finally, in the Letters themselves, there are hints that Galdriel, as well as Gandalf and Arwen, were involved in arranging Frodo's passage to the West.

All these to me are "motherly" functions. I have indeed sometimes imagined that she countinued to fill this "motherly function" for the hobbit after his passage to the Blessed Lands.