Ooh la la, Lúthien...

[skip spence]

Originally Posted by Lindale

Luckily Beren just happens to be a good guy.

But don't you think she fell in love in Beren because he was a good guy, not to mention a strapping young lad? She certainly had little love for Celegorm and he was a looker... Besides, would you not do something you normally considered wrong to protect your lover? Would you turn your lover over to the coppers or would you tell a lie and look the other way?

[Lindale]

Originally Posted by skip spence

But don't you think she fell in love in Beren because he was a good guy, not to mention a strapping young lad?

What was her idea of good and evil? Evil, a foreign word, what Mummy Melian kept away with her Girdle? She could have battled, say, Finrod, if she thought he was standing in her way to Beren. And given what she did to Sauron and even Morgoth, she could win. But I don't even think Luthien knows too much about Elvish politics at that time. When the Noldorin messengers arrived at Doriath, Melian and Galadriel are the only women we hear who talk. Do we then assume Luthien was busy dancing and not heeding these tidings? Or she was too much of a little girl in this sense that she thought politics was a sort of "grown-up" thing she couldn't nose into? And when Beren comes into the picture, she suddenly has an epiphany, she just has to save him no matter what? It strikes me as that, from the very beginning, the whole point of Beren and Luthien is love-conquers-all.

She had little love for Celegorm, I believe, because by the time she met him she had already fallen deeply for Beren. And when Celegorm made the wrong move, imprisoning her, what kind of woman would love him back?

To protect a lover, that is a delicate issue, a very relative one. As it happens Beren is the type who would follow his duty. So off Luthien with him goes, because of great love. Do you suppose then that if Beren was a bad guy who told her to lie to Daddy Thingol, she would have done it? Now that is something I cannot answer readily: on one hand, she actually might, considering she escaped from Hirilorn and all that because of her overwhelming passion, no thoughts of the Silmarils and the fate of Arda; on the other, she may think that it is too much--lying to Thingol for someone evil will cause evil, escaping to help a good lover and escaping to help a bad lover are two different things.

[alatar]

That whole lovesick/infatuation/craziness is just Nature's way of getting the process started. One cannot know if one truly loves another unless one has lived at least 50 or so years with the other - every other statement is just conjecture. Love isn't just when you're dating and on the wedding day or even when you've ridden off into the sunset, but all of those days thereafter. So Luthien gets a little crazy for Beren, and they get together, but after a time life shows up and they have to deal with Daddy and Morgoth and the mortgage payment and buying nappies for Dior. Both could have run away from life, but each knew that it was his/her job to help the other when things got tough. Beren - "No, we're not going to live in the woods." Luthien - "No, I'm not going to let you die after telling all of my friends that I was dating a human." That's love.

Though I have no proof to show or statistics to muddle, I would guess that just as many marriages fail when the couple has had time beforehand to check things out as for those that just show up and get hitched that day.

And what's wrong with idealization? I can see where it can be taken too far, when you get married to something so completely divergent from reality that you cannot see the obvious, (She says, "I HATE you with my entire soul, with every cell of my body, and from now until everlasting!" He hears, "She has strong feelings for me. Bliss!"), but on the other hand, I still see my wife at times as the girl that I used to carpool with, back before kids and minivans and houses and wrinkles.

And who better that Tolkien to write one's last words?