SWG 30-day Character Study - Galadriel
Jan. 1st, 2025 12:05 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
polutroposTo inaugurate their 20th year, the Silmarillion Writers' Guild is doing a Jubilee Challenge... which means I get to go back and do the 30-day Character Study! I have, with on-brand hubris, chosen Galadriel as my character. I'll be posting thoughts on the daily challenges here and sharing any fanworks I created over on my SWG.
Day 1: Drop Everything and Read, Part One. Take at least a half-hour to read what the texts say about your chosen character.
I took the time to re-read the chapter ‘The History of Celeborn and Galadriel’ (calling this HCG going forward) in Unfinished Tales, the most lengthy text (or rather, collection of texts) focussing on her. It is also terribly convoluted and I found it took me most of an afternoon, having to go back over passages (even though I’ve read this many times) to fully absorb it. Wait, where is she? Which Amroth is this? Wait, Celebrimbor said what now (he said he loved her)? But which Celebrimbor? And then, of course, one must always take a moment to regroup after each occurrence of the name Teleporno.
I am fascinated by the way Tolkien’s characters evolve over time. As a fanfic author, this is both a source of frustration (“Who even is this character!?”) and creativity (“How can I make this character work as a cohesive individual?”). Galadriel is a particularly good example of this tension. My understanding is that, when she first appears in Lothlorien in The Lord of the Rings, Tolkien… didn’t really know who she was. And then he spent the rest of his life trying to (among other things, of course) ret-con her into the legendarium. And, of course, he never did finish the job. Christopher was left to do that. And, frankly, it kind of shows! But isn’t that fun?
After re-reading the HCG, I’ve decided I’m going to focus this character study on Galadriel on the published Silmarillion. I’m not going to attempt to study the Galadriel who married her Telerin lover Teleporno in Aman and sailed to Middle-earth independently. Sorry, Christopher, I know you think your father would “doubtless” have rewritten the narrative to accommodate this reconception of her history but (thankfully, in my opinion) neither he nor you did that. I’m also going to focus, probably, on the “youth” of Galadriel in Aman and Beleriand, primarily because this is the period of the legendarium I am most interested in.
I do plan, however, to also re-read some of her appearances in The Lord of the Rings since I’ve always found that Galadriel difficult to connect with any of the Galadriel’s described in ‘The History’ or the Silmarillion. Having been introduced to Galadriel via Cate Blanchett’s performance in the Jackson movies, and more recently being influenced by Morfydd Clarke in The Rings of Power I’d also like to go some way toward peeling away the layers of those influences – not because I reject them, but because I am curious about how they colour and, at times, constrain my own imagination when it comes to Galadriel.
Update:
Being a completionist, I went off and re-read Galadriel’s appearances in the The Lord of the Rings and went through all her index entries in The Nature of Middle-earth and Tolkien’s letters (I’ll have to find time for reviewing some of HoMe at another point in this study).
Takeaways:
Day 1: Drop Everything and Read, Part One. Take at least a half-hour to read what the texts say about your chosen character.
I took the time to re-read the chapter ‘The History of Celeborn and Galadriel’ (calling this HCG going forward) in Unfinished Tales, the most lengthy text (or rather, collection of texts) focussing on her. It is also terribly convoluted and I found it took me most of an afternoon, having to go back over passages (even though I’ve read this many times) to fully absorb it. Wait, where is she? Which Amroth is this? Wait, Celebrimbor said what now (he said he loved her)? But which Celebrimbor? And then, of course, one must always take a moment to regroup after each occurrence of the name Teleporno.
I am fascinated by the way Tolkien’s characters evolve over time. As a fanfic author, this is both a source of frustration (“Who even is this character!?”) and creativity (“How can I make this character work as a cohesive individual?”). Galadriel is a particularly good example of this tension. My understanding is that, when she first appears in Lothlorien in The Lord of the Rings, Tolkien… didn’t really know who she was. And then he spent the rest of his life trying to (among other things, of course) ret-con her into the legendarium. And, of course, he never did finish the job. Christopher was left to do that. And, frankly, it kind of shows! But isn’t that fun?
After re-reading the HCG, I’ve decided I’m going to focus this character study on Galadriel on the published Silmarillion. I’m not going to attempt to study the Galadriel who married her Telerin lover Teleporno in Aman and sailed to Middle-earth independently. Sorry, Christopher, I know you think your father would “doubtless” have rewritten the narrative to accommodate this reconception of her history but (thankfully, in my opinion) neither he nor you did that. I’m also going to focus, probably, on the “youth” of Galadriel in Aman and Beleriand, primarily because this is the period of the legendarium I am most interested in.
I do plan, however, to also re-read some of her appearances in The Lord of the Rings since I’ve always found that Galadriel difficult to connect with any of the Galadriel’s described in ‘The History’ or the Silmarillion. Having been introduced to Galadriel via Cate Blanchett’s performance in the Jackson movies, and more recently being influenced by Morfydd Clarke in The Rings of Power I’d also like to go some way toward peeling away the layers of those influences – not because I reject them, but because I am curious about how they colour and, at times, constrain my own imagination when it comes to Galadriel.
Update:
Being a completionist, I went off and re-read Galadriel’s appearances in the The Lord of the Rings and went through all her index entries in The Nature of Middle-earth and Tolkien’s letters (I’ll have to find time for reviewing some of HoMe at another point in this study).
Takeaways:
- I was reminded how much lighter Galadriel is in the book LotR vs the film LotR (sidenote: I haven’t watched the Jackson Hobbit films). She laughs, she smiles, she’s kind. I think they captured more of this in the extended cut on FotR than in the theatrical release, but still the impression I came away from after seeing FotR (at the impressionable age of 14) was of an austere, frightening elf-queen… whereas in the book I think she starts this way but is revealed over the Fellowship’s stay in Lothlorien to be the compassionate, perceptive woman Tolkien talks about in HCG.
- I was also reminded that it is only in one sentences in the Appendices to LotR that Tolkien mentions her familial connection to the House of Finarfin (!?).
- A couple of Tolkien’s letters mention similarities between Galadriel and the Virgin Mary. Having no background in Christian religion (spiritual, culture, or academic) this perplexed me. I know Mary from nativity scenes and Christmas carols and… I don’t get it. Bookmarking this as something to read up on on the meta/scholarship day of this challenge.
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Date: 2025-01-01 08:28 pm (UTC)This made me laugh!
And yes, Jackson tends to make his Elves so austere! I came from the book and much as I love Cate's Galadriel now, it was rather jarring for me at my first viewing. She feels so much more faery-queen-like to me, in the book, with this kind of youthful zen-like side to her.
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Date: 2025-01-01 08:34 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2025-01-02 07:51 pm (UTC)It's so interesting how powerful imagery is. Even though I had my own pre-movie vision, I find it difficult to recall them now and can only do it with effort.
Although interestingly a similar thing happened with my personal Silm imagery, or interpretations, after reading so much fanfic. So, I guess our ideas/ imagery is just strongly influenced by other external sources.
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Date: 2025-01-01 08:57 pm (UTC)I can't unpack the Virgin Mary comparison fully either, but I do seem to have a bit more context for this than you do.
In medieval and other traditions of Catholicism, Mary is an intercessor and mediator: more accessible and human in situations where direct appeal is impossible (and the Valar and Eru seem even more removed from direct appeal in LOTR than in other parts of the Legendarium). She can help and save on her own initiative. So, to the degree that G. extends protection to the members of the Fellowship, especially Frodo with the Star Glass, but the others also, the comparison works, as long as you ignore some other aspects. Light and guidance are associated with both M. and G.
A more tenuous comparison, I suppose, might be between the Assumption and G's return to Aman, but that seems rather dubious.
But above all, Mary is emotionally important and it is pretty clear that Galadriel became emotionally important to Tolkien as soon as he invented her.
(Hope this makes sense, I'm not really braining well enough right now for lucid contributions!)
ETA: Tolkien writes poems to Mary (including in Elvish). You can see some of the shared imagery of light and assistance there, I feel.
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Date: 2025-01-03 12:47 am (UTC)