LotR -- Book 2 - Chapter 07 - The Mirror of Galadriel

[Fordim Hedgethistle]

Gosh – I wanted to post last night but it took me all evening just to read through the posts. I had originally wanted to address specific points by specific posters, but I got overwhelmed by it all and can longer readily remember who precisely said what. So I will just post away, with apologies to those whom I refer to without naming.

Galadriel as Mary, Galadriel as genderless, Galadriel as prophet, Galadriel as satan – can I just say “yes, wahoo” to all these and leave it at that? Of course not…how about this as well: Galadriel as ‘sorceress’. I’m thinking here of the figure as we find her in the Homeric tradition, specifically Kirke and Kalypso from the Odyssey. These two women (rather incorrectly translated as being ‘witches’ in most modern English texts) bear a lot of fascinating similarities to Galadriel. They rule their own lands which they protect from the outside world with magic. They welcome the male hero (Odysseus) but they are extremely dangerous to his quest – one might almost say perilous . Kirke actually enchants Odysseus’ followers, turning them into pigs, but she does finally relent and return them to their human form so that Odysseus can continue his quest to return home. Both of them give the hero advice and counsel, as well as gifts (Kalypso even gives Odysseus a cloak that she has woven herself, and a special kind of provision for the trip home); they also tell the hero about the perils that lie ahead enabling him to navigate past the monsters (as the Phial will help Frodo and Sam get past Shelob).

These are rather circumstantial similarities, however. What I think is the most substantial point of comparison between these Homeric sorceresses and Galadriel is in the peril that they all pose to the male quest: each of them is motivated by a ‘feminine’ desire for self-fulfillment. The Homeric figures both fall in love with Odysseus (after their own fashion) and desire him to stay. In both cases, this desire is overcome and the hero is allowed to continue on his quest for the wife and land that he loves. As with Galadriel, who also must conquer her desire, the women who are left behind dwindle and become much less powerful than they were. I think that when looked at in this light, we can see the source of the strange ambiguity that surrounds Galadriel and gender. She is feminine, powerfully so, insofar as she is closely tied to her land (the Homeric ideal of the omphalos, the hearthside, comes to mind; closer to Tolkien, the Victorian ideal of the ‘angel in the house’), but like Kirke and Kalypso she is also independent – yes, she’s married to Celeborn, but, well, it’s already been said… I would just add that when it comes to the scene at the Mirror, Celeborn is absent: Galadriel’s greatest display of her power, and her triumphing over the gravest test, is done wholly on her own without the support of ‘her man’.

All that having been said, I don’t think that I would want to argue for my Homeric-Galadriel ‘over’ the other views of her. I think that what we have here is a figure that just crops up in mythological/symbolic systems: the powerful woman, independent of male authority in her own land, motivated by a selfish desire that must be overcome by love of or for others. I think that Tolkien, being the Catholic that he was, had the easiest time approaching this figure through the system he was most familiar with: the cult of Mary. But she is clearly not an exact replica of Mary – instead, Galadriel inhabits the ‘place’ in Middle-Earth that Mary inhabits in Catholic theology, prophets in Hebrew literature (what a neat idea!) and ‘witches’ in Homeric epic.

But to turn more specifically to the chapter at hand: I do realise that I am beginning to sound like a broken record, but I cannot let the point go about the connection between Lorien and the Shire, particularly given davem’s eloquent (and convincing) arguments for Lorien as an utterly ‘other’ realm of faerie. Sam says at one point:

‘I reckon there’s Elves and Elves. They’re all elvish enough, but they’re not all the same. Now these folk aren’t wanderers or homeless, and it seems a bit nearer to the likes of us: they seem to belong here, more even than the Hobbits do in the Shire. Whether they’ve made the land, or the land’s made them, it’s hard to say, if you take my meaning. It’s wonderfully quiet here. Nothing seems to be going on, and nobody seems to want it to. If there’s any magic about, it’s right down deep, where I can’t lay my hands on it, in a manner of speaking.’

There’s an interesting juxtaposition here. On the one hand, Sam seems to be reacting to Lorien and the Lorien Elves as being utterly familiar, and even Shire-like. Even his description of Lorien (‘It’s wonderfully quiet here. Nothing seems to be going on, and nobody seems to want it to’) seems to be equally applicable to the Shire – at least from the point of view of outsiders. At the same time, he responds to the wondrous and even miraculous ‘otherness’ of this place insofar as he entertains the idea of the place’s “magic”. But this is fascinating how he approaches the magic: “‘if there’s any magic about’” he says. Why the doubt? I think it’s because Sam is beginning to realise that the magic of Lorien is like the magic of the Shire – it’s not about the imposition of will or power by a people, but about their close connection to and with nature: “‘Whether they’ve made the land, or the land’s made them, it’s hard to say’”. I believe it was Encaitare who made the nice distinction between Elf magic as ‘natural’ and evil magic as ‘supernatural’: what I would like to say in extension of this is that the magic of Lorien is, in this way, remarkably similar to the magic of the Shire, in the close, almost definitive bonds that exist between the land and the people who dwell in it. And perhaps I can link this idea back to my Homeric-Galadriel, insofar as Odysseus must choose between not just two women (his wife Penelope or the sorceress Kalypso) but between two lands (his homeland of Ithaca and the island of Kalypso – Kalypso, by the by, means “to have one’s head in a bag” or, more colloquially, “end of a bag: Bad End”).

I guess then that my ‘take’ on Galadriel is most like Bêthberry’s insofar as I see her as an obstacle rather than as an enemy; an obstacle that tests the heroes; unlike Satan, however, she is an obstacle that overcomes herself – an important point. She both tests and is tested, and this, I think, is testimony to the overwhelming power of the Ring. It presents to her the same kind of desire that she presented to the members of the Fellowship. Boromir88 briefly made the point above that Galadriel is like the Ring in her temptation of the Fellowship, and I would like to say ‘hear hear!’ to that excellent point. The big difference between good and evil, in this chapter, would seem to lie in the fact that the good is able to deny the same desire for control that motivates evil. That is, Sauron’s desires (as embodied by the Ring) and Galadriel’s are similar, and what makes the latter good is that she is able to recognize the perilous nature of her desire and to overcome it – which is interesting, as we normally think of evil as the negation of good, but in this case we are seeing good as the negation of evil (Galadriel’s goodness = saying “no” to the Ring; Frodo’s goodness = destroying the Ring).

One last point that I would like to make is about the all important distinction between “will” and “shall.”

Tolkien at several points in LotR uses the inherent ambiguity of the word “will” to great effect, and nowhere does he do this more so than in the present chapter. When Galadriel invites Sam and Frodo to look in the mirror she says:

‘I have brought you here so that you may look in it¸if you will.’

Sam looks in and receives his remarkably ambivalent vision. When Frodo, seeing this, feels doubt about what he should do and asks the Lady for guidance she says:

‘Yet I think, Frodo, that you have courage and wisdom enough for the venture, or I would not have brought you here. Do as you will!’

In both instances, it would appear that the ‘magic’ of the mirror is in the purview of the person looking in, rather than with Galadriel. Each time she emphasises that all she has done is to bring the viewer to the mirror, and it is up to the viewer to decide if he will look in it – rather, to decide of his own free will what he will do. It’s already been pointed out how much Galadriel has to do with desire (both her own, and with tempting others with their desires) – but here she is subtly different, challenging Sam’s and Frodo’s “wills”: she challenges Frodo to make a choice: “Do as you will!”

When Galadriel goes off on her grand moment (my favourite part of the book, and the one that still raises hackles on the back of my neck) she uses quite a different word altogether, at least in relation to herself:

‘And now at last it comes. You will give me the Ring freely! In place of the Dark Lord you will set up a Queen. And I shall not be dark, but beautiful and terrible as the Morning and the Night! Fair as the Sea and the Sun and the Snow upon the MOutnain! Dreadful as the Storm and the Lightning! Stronger than the foundations of the earth. All shall love me and despair!’

See the shift? If Frodo “will” give the Ring to Galadriel, she “shall” become a terrible new force, and all “shall love her.” The difference between these words is crucial at this point: “will” means that something is going to happen in the future through the exercise of one’s choice on one’s self (“I will go to the store; I will give you the Ring”); “shall,” however, is different insofar as it (turning once more to my beloved Oxford English Dictionary) is used when:

expressing the speaker's determination to bring about (or, with negative, to prevent) some action, event, or state of things in the future

The ‘good’ magic of the mirror, and the ‘good’ actions of Frodo in offering the Ring, and of Galadriel in refusing it, are motivated by acts of the will, as the self operates on the self – decides what is ‘best’ or proper for the self to do in the future. The potential ‘evil’ of Galadriel’s taking the Ring is motivated by the desire to command others, or to determine for others, what they “shall” do – there’s all the difference in the world between “all WILL love me and despair” (a statement of fact) and “all SHALL love me and despair (a command). I don’t think it’s going too far to say that Galadriel’s choice in this chapter, maybe the story of the quest as a whole, can be understood in terms of what people “will” or “shall” do with the Ring – on the one hand is the free will of the free peoples, which motivates ‘good’ magic and which leads them to choose love (“I will love you”); and on the other is the Ring, which commands people to desire it (“you shall love me”). Galadriel, in this moment, is confronted with the desire to command love, born of Frodo’s willing offer of love.

Of course, she passes the test (shivers up my back as I approach this moment again):

‘I pass the test,’ she said. ‘I will diminish, and go into the West, and remain Galadriel.’

The battle here, that she has won, is between choosing for other people what they “shall” do and choosing for herself what she “will” do.

Postscript: don't blame me for the length of this post, but the posters above this who inspired it!