[Belin]

It came back!

My notion of her as mother, Birdland, was partly your own fault for raising the issue of mothers in the first place [img]smilies/wink.gif[/img] , and partly due to the awe and respect they felt toward her, and the way she seems to be watching over them both in Lothlorien and later on (by sending messages and by simply remaining in their minds), as well as her insight into them (surely this is a motherly feature if anything is!) and her provider role (she keeps a safe space, she gives them gifts, lembas), as well as a kind of "coattail motherhood" that comes from her association with other characters, and that last is probably not much of a reason.. I rather like the alternative Tirned Tinnu has provided. Galadriel as patroness....yes, I see that. There's definitely a status difference there, and a foreignness, that tempers the caretaking and does make it that of a leader.

Of course, it's easy enough to confuse these roles, if you want to get patriarchal (erm, matriarchal) about it. Hm... I'm still thinking about this. Whatever she's doing, she seems to be very good at it.

Birdie, is your non-unconditional-love impression perhaps related to the way she seems to test the Fellowship when she meets them originally? I saw that as part of the mother's ability to understand things that are hidden, but perhaps after all that too fits better as a quality of a patroness.

As to Aredhel and Maeglin... I definitely see a lot of her in him, perhaps imprinted upon him by Aredhel herself. She passes on to him her recklessness and her desire for independence, which is inconvenient as he moves from one highly constricted situation to another. She also allowed him to make the decision to go back to Gondolin, thus essentially giving up the good influence of any wisdom she may have gained in the meantime (or maybe she hadn't?). She certainly loved him, and in another situation her mothering might have turned out quite well, but she seems ill-suited to the life she's in. Some of what Estelyn said about Erendis seems to apply here as well--Aredhel basically taught her son to be her.

Then again, she did die for him, that's got to count for something.

But it's odd, how we have mothers at both of these extremes--absent ones like Miriel and clingy ones like Erendis. I suppose the secret would be in striking some kind of balance?

--Belin Ibaimendi

[ September 19, 2002: Message edited by: Belin ]