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Old 10-10-2002, 12:55 PM   #60
Nar
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Join Date: Apr 2002
Posts: 228
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Bethberry: That is terrible! Very rude... they shook your husband's hand and not yours-- who was having this baby, anyway? Who just won her doctorate, anyway? Maybe there was some stupid tradition/ superstition-- handshaking too soon thought to bring bad luck on the prospects of scholarship-- oh, never mind, they were under-socialized and possibly feeling defensive and guilty for mistaking you, and they buckled under pressure. I say again, very rude! I would very much like to know who the 'female author' you were comparing to Augustine and Coleridge was and, if it can be summarized, what the points of comparison were.

Yes, those 'no gurlz' theories were based on a large dash of ignorance about girls and women, combined with the effects of undereducating a population -- well, they're not going to seem thoughtful if you under-educate them, are they? Thus the neatly sealed prejudices become self-fulfilling.

Davem-- I would not compare Bombadil to Herne, as you say, there's nothing of Lord of the Fauna in him. Lord of the Flora, yes, I think so. And he does say 'Tom he is the master,' while neatly turning that phrase around to mean 'nothing has caught him (Tom)...' not what we mean by 'master' at all! So who's wrong about what 'mastery' means? Bombadil or us? Suppose 'mastery' means yielding and elusiveness so that nothing catches us? To have dominion -- is it the same as domination? Or is it something Ghandi or Martin Luther King would understand?

Joy, jokes, elusiveness -- isn't that the definiton of a trickster? Robin Hood's an example, or Brer rabbit, -- myself, I like Bugs Bunny. Call Bombadil a trickster, master of flora. I see the Green Man the same way, but what's modern new-age projection onto the Green Man, and what's (I'll take your word for it, although I don't know that we know enough to distinguish such things) 'pre-Celtic' Green man, I don't know. I do see Bombadil as a Green Man figure. I don't see him as a Herne the Hunter figure. I can't imagine him hunting anything other than mushrooms, if that. Now Beorn, him I could see as a Herne the Hunter figure (vegetarian pony-lover though he be). Bombadil's not a force for chaos or evil, true, but he's pre-law, and I'm not talking about a college program! My intuition (although I think you know more on the subject) says that the evil, overtly disordered aspect of those giants comes from them being pre-law figures carried over into a time they no longer belong in. Bombadil, like Galadriel, comes from an earlier time held over in an island of almost unstained past time and space --Galadriel's domain is of the first age and the Noldor when they were vital and young and Bombadil's and Goldberry's is of the time before the arrival of the Noldor ... it holds in memory the time before even the entry of Morgoth and the Valar and the passing of Arda from stillness into story ... the time when the dark was fearless.

Another question ... in honor of Bethberry's worries about Goldberry. I would say that as clever and elusive and bright-spirited as Tom is, he would not have been able to maintain his little world if he hadn't found Goldberry. Think of how Joyce's wife (Nora, was that her name? blast, I'm forgetting everything. What's my name again?) was his 'Ireland' wherever he was, or --back to Tolkien! -- how Sam was Frodo's Shire wherever HE was. (And Sam's pans were HIS Shire!) Tom might not have been able to maintain his island of the 'old no-rule rule' without Goldberry -- then he'd have been a pre-law figure wandering in a time that requires, depends and insists on laws-- he'd have been lawless and disordered instead of the master that slips by laws, that nothing has caught under stars, sky ... like those giants, he'd have been a 'rogue male' as with elephants --oh, I mean oliphaunts.

'Tom has his house to mind, and Goldberry is waiting.' He is time and she is place and together they are a holdover from the fearless dark and the new earth.

Oh, TolkienGurl, we're glad you're with us. Thanks for the compliments, but don't neglect to post with us! And keep reading the Sil! Now I've got to remember which is Roverandom -- is that in the Tolkien reader? Or did I miss it? What's in it?

[ October 10, 2002: Message edited by: Nar ]
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