Ooh la la, Lúthien...

[Lush]

I have a feeling that this has not been discussed here before. If I am wrong, I will stand corrected.

I want to bring to your attention a couple of simple facts. What interests me is how these facts relate to each other.

First of all, Tolkien was a Catholic. And we all end up making a big deal about that on numerous threads, some very interesting, some not so much, but nevertheless, its presence looms large on this board, for better or for worse. The Catholic Church is generally known for its continuous frowning upon pre-marital sex, and its harsh stance on birth control, though that's completely unrelated. In general, we all know how conservative the Catholics were in Tolkien's time, and how conservative Catholics are today, especially when it comes to sex.

Still with me so far?

Now, as it has been discussed ad nauseum, Tolkien did not overtly stick his religion into his works. At the same time, I think we can all agree that to a certain extent, the union of Aragorn and Arwen embodies the Catholic ideal. I mean, when you read about them, you do end up assuming that they did not get it on until after they were married.

Ok, so here is what I am really getting at: if the union of Aragorn and Arwen is supposed to reflect the union of Beren and Lúthien, there is a marked difference in the way Tolkien treats the latter pair. I am hinting, of course, at pre-marital sex.

Truth be told, I am not so much a total nymphomaniac not to notice the simple fact that Tolkien was completely un-interested in writing about sex. Nevethless, I think it's appropriate to point out that he is far more ambiguous about the nature of Beren and Lúthien's relationship.

The Silmarillion is not the end-all, be-all of truth in regards to Tolkien's writing, but I have read up on Beren and Lúthien in other works (I think it was the Lost Tales, but I don't have a copy with me, so I am beat), and found his writing to be equally ambiguous there as well, even more so, when it came to Daeron. But nevermind Daeron, here is what the Silmarillion says in regards to Beren first meeting Lúthien:

Then she halted in wonder and fled no more, and Beren came to her. But as she looked on him, doom fell upon her, and she loved him; yet she slipped from his arms and vanished from his sight even as the day was breaking.

(I did the bolding)

One can assume anything one wants from this statement, but doesn't it strike you as being at least pretty darn vague? If the Lost Tales say something different, please let me know, because I don't have a copy here, and I can't recall what it said exactly.

Further on, after some vaguely "joyful" times, and a not-so-vague comment from Thingol on the whole thing, Lúthien runs away and accompanies Beren on his quest, unattended, if I may note, by her daddy, or any other authority figure. And after everything is over and done with, and Lúthien is a mortal, nowhere is it mentioned that her parents bless her union with Beren, or that there even was an official wedding.

In general, Lúthien strikes the reader as being a character that is, in general, free-wheeling, and, in stark contrast to Arwen, ready to drop everything in an instant for true love (the situations of these two girls are, of course, different, but I think they are meant to be compared to a certain degree, especially when one remembers Aragorn singing about Lúthien to the Hobbits, and other such diversions).

I wouldn't be making such a big deal out of this if it wasn't for the way that some people treat Tolkien's work. They like it because it's "clean," and "moral," and "upstanding," and so on and so forth. And it is, for the most part, exactly that. A nice distraction from out otherwise dirty lives.

Buuut, for my part, I wanted to point out Tolkien's treatment of Lúthien to get you thinking. Not in stark terms, and not about pre-marital sex per se (I'm trying hard not to be obtuse), but about the general vagueness that surrounds her relationship with Beren, and stemming from that vagueness, whether it is appropriate to make a big deal out of Tolkien's Catholicism in regards to sexual innuendo or lack therof in his work and in literature in general (nevermind everything else his Catholicism gets linked to).

A reasonable question would be, if this vagueness means that Tolkien simply didn't care, then why should we? And further on, this vagueness could also be the simple main difference between the LOTR and the Sil, in which one is more detailed than the other.

Having taken all that into account, I still say that this ambiguity is worth pondering, and not just because Lúthien was the greatest of the Eldar, and so on and so forth. I'm talking here about romantic passion, something rarely touched upon in Tolkien's works. Here it is, in the story of Beren and Lúthien, and it makes this particular section all the more interesting.

This reading of the relationship of Beren and Lúthien (erroneous as it may be), does not change my personal view on Tolkien's work en masse. Which is to say that I still view it as being sexually innocent, clean, and upstanding. But, for someone who thinks otherwise of pre-marital sex (or even subsequent lack of an official marriage ceremony), what does my reading of Beren and Lúthien's relationship mean?

And what do you think about this in general? Is it reasonable to view Beren and Lúthien this way? Or has college corrupted me beyond all reason and repair? [img]smilies/wink.gif[/img]