[Bêthberry]

Interesting that many here name Tom Bombadill. The Old Forest holds yet another character, one more obscure than he. Goldberry.

I suppose my frustrations with her arise from two points. I find some of the qualities Tolkien ascribes to her embarassing. (Some I like, I hasten to add.) And I dislike the way she is simply dropped, from the post dinner conversations with the hobbits and from the book's conclusion, where Tolkien attempts to tie Tom into the story's end but completely omits any mention of Goldberry.

It seems to me that Tolkien clothes the Persephone myth with all the sumptuous accoutrements of a Martha Stewart refining the art of dinner presentation. I don't think it is the concept of her, a character pointing clearly to fantasy and mythology, that bothers me so much as it is the actual practice of describing her.

And lest I be criticised, let me say I think the idea of a couple creating convivial dinners is not the fault. I enjoy Ann and George Edwards tremendously in Mary Russell's The Sparrow. Now there's a host and hostess who create supurb conditions for the enjoyment and exercise of human social intercourse--warm, witty, charming, endearing, neither sentimental nor perfect--the stuff that molds kindness and friendship and fellowship. Maybe it is the oxymoron of "so fair was the grace of Goldberry and so merry and odd the caperings of Tom." Maybe it is that I wish there was something more perilous to her character, something grounding her more thoroughly in the realm of true fairy.

Yet though, this could simply be the effect of an embarassment of riches. A fertile imagination, playing with so many materials, and needing yet more story to bind them.