And Remain Galadriel

Does Galadriel need a sword?

Galadriel is stronger without a sword than with one. 

Tolkien knew that the world needs feminine strength as much as masculine strength, and he translated that into characters with unique abilities and temptations. Attempting to "empower" these female characters in a modern sense could have the unintended effect of making them just like the male characters. Galadriel is undeniably one of the greatest Elves to walk Middle-earth, but if we assume that her greatness can only be executed on the battlefield, and with a melee weapon, then perhaps Tolkien had a more expansive view of female strength than we do. In giving Galadriel a sword, as the new Rings of Power series does, one could accidentally discredit what she so beautifully typifies: the strength and triumph of laying down your strength to serve others. 

Now, it is possible that Galadriel wielded a sword. She is of the Noldor Elves, and the Noldor love crafting weapons and jewels. She certainly oversaw battles and helped defend Lothlórien and other lands. Also, though the text does not explicitly depict her bearing arms, Tolkien only published The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings. His son Christopher edited and annotated The Silmarillion and The Unfinished Tales after his father's death, and the various manuscripts that comprise these published works contain minor differences and outright contradictions. 

Galadriel's origin story as it appears in The Silmarillion differs from her origin story in The Unfinished Tales, which contained later manuscripts. In The Unfinished Tales, she fights against the Sons of Feanor to try to stop the kin-slaying at Alqualondë, whereas the Silmarillion is silent about what Galadriel and her brothers were doing while their kin were dying. Normally, when an author has different drafts of a character, only the published one matters. But Christopher and not John Ronald published nearly all of these drafts under different titles; and fans, critics, and artists must exercise discretion in our interpretations of anything the author did not publish himself. For our purposes, I consider the J.R.R Tolkien-published Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings to be most reliable, followed by The Silmarillion as the most complete manuscript, and then the other manuscripts. Tolkien's published letters, though they provide excellent insight into his intentions, cannot be weighted equally with the actual stories. 

All of this is a preamble to the question, what sort of power did Galadriel wield? Would she, as the Rings of Power trailer implies, have fought with a sword, or would the nature and magnitude of her specific abilities render a sword unnecessary? This isn't just a minor, vestigial detail. Of all the forces at work on Middle-earth, brute strength matters least. Lúthien destroys Sauron's fortress with a song, not a battering ram. Tolkien is deliberately vague about what we would call "magic," but a lot of the real fighting in the books is not done with swords, bows, and axes. 

In this essay, we'll consider the strengths of Tolkien's female characters, examine what the difference between "power" and "strength" is in his works, and explore why Galadriel, alone of all the Noldor, neither falls in battle nor succumbs to evil desires, but ultimately returns to Valinor by ship, welcomed home by the Valar. 

Part 1: The Strength of Tolkien's Heroines

"...but she, born in the body of a maid, had a spirit and courage at least the match of yours...."

Tolkien's male characters outnumber his female roughly thirty to one. His description of a young Galadriel could apply to many of them:

"the only woman of the Noldor to stand that day tall and valiant among the contending princes..."

The only women who appear in Tolkien must stand tall and valiant. Many of them are noted for their wisdom and counsel; many are great political leaders; a few are military leaders; and several explicitly arm themselves for battle, sometimes acting more bravely than the male warriors around them. 

In each instance, though, they do this as women, never losing their identities, whether they are Valar, Maiar, Elves, or humans.

The most famous human woman to fight is Éowyn, Shieldmaiden of Rohan Éowyn does not kill the Witch King because she has a sword. She kills him because she is a woman. She comes to the battle because she loves Théoden; she brings Merry because she sympathizes with him more deeply than any of the men do; her beauty stirs Merry to action; the Witch-King is afraid of her once he sees she's a woman; and she kills Sauron's lieutenant with a single blow. 

Éowyn is the most obviously militant heroine, but there are no non-combatants in the cosmic warfare for Middle-earth. On a fundamental level, evil fears femininity. 

The great villain of the Silmarillion, Melkor, or Morgoth, is the only Valar to fall, and he fears Varda, Lady of the Stars, "more than all others whom Eru made." Even though Tulkas defeats him in battle and Manwë imprisons him, Varda terrifies him above all the rest. Evil fears what it cannot possess. Varda had rejected Morgoth before the world was created. He also covets her gift. Morgoth can mimic power, but Varda can make light. She does not busy herself with constant creation or with war, yet all the stars in the heavens are hers. She and Manwë, her husband and the high king of the Valar, mutually strengthen each other's powers, and she can hear anything in the world, even deep into Morgoth's dungeons. 

"Of all the Great Ones who dwell in this world the Elves hold Varda most in reverence and love."

Morgoth is utterly alone. He does not have a companion. The closest thing he has is Sauron, and they are not friends. 

Of the Maiar, a male Maia pulls the moon, but:

 "Arien the maiden was mightier than he, and she was chosen [to pull the sun] because she...was... from the beginning a spirit of fire, whom Morgoth had not deceived nor drawn to his service. Too bright were the eyes of Arien for even the Eldar to look on, and leaving Valinor she forsook the form and raiment which like the Valar she had worn there, and she was as a naked flame, terrible in the fullness of her splendour." 

When she first appears, Morgoth flees to his dungeons in terror. 

Even a lesser Maia like Melian, wife of Thingol, is the most effective ruler in the war against Morgoth. She does not take up arms, but she weaves a "girdle" that keeps all foes out of her land, including the monstrous spider Ungoliant, whom even Morgoth could not restrain. 

And finally, Melian's daughter Lúthien is the most terrifyingly powerful Elf to ever walk Middle-earth. To escape from her father's tower, she weaves an enchanted cloak and sings spells of sleep over her guards. She traps Sauron and destroys his fortress with her song. She disguises Beren as a werewolf and herself as a giant bat to penetrate Morgoth's fortress, and though he eventually sees through her disguise, she is "not daunted by his eyes," even though his gaze has made mighty male Elves go insane or turn traitor. She casts his entire court into an enchanted sleep and temporarily blinds him so that Beren can steal a Silmaril from Morgoth's crown.

Lúthien is not physically imposing. She relies on Huan the hound to carry her and to fight any physical battles. Much of her power is not innate: "suddenly some power, descended from of old from divine race, possessed Lúthien..." before she enters Morgoth's fortress. She does not carry, much less wield, a melee weapon, yet she accomplishes what all the sieging armies of the Noldor never could. 

Even wilder than her tremendous power, though, is her total lack of ambition. She doesn't desire to be a queen or a general. She unashamedly uses others' help and does all of this for love of Beren. She is never grasping, never proud, never boastful, never bitter. She is as unlike Morgoth as it is possible to be.

All of these heroines possess an undivided will that cannot be dominated by evil. Each, according to her abilities, is a willing vessel of greater power, acting out of love, not ambition. Tolkien's greatest characters forsake glory, renown, kingship, and even immortality. These sacrifices grant a unique, creational power. When evil cannot corrupt or dominate, it crumbles. 

Not all warriors use the same weapons. We understand why, in the trilogy, Legolas favors a bow and Gimli an axe, and we would have laughed if, for the sake of Elf representation, Legolas had started using the axe to show that he could. So why do we get so silly about female characters? Why do we want to prove that Galadriel can fight with a sword when she is powerful enough without one?

Part 2: Strength Versus Power 

So far in this essay, I have used the words strength and power interchangeably, but Tolkien did not. In a letter to his publisher, he said:

'power' is an ominous and sinister word in all these tales, except as applied to the gods. Power is more easily corrupted than strength, a lust for domination. 

The magical Elves of Middle-earth illustrate this difference. In that same letter, he said,

I have not used 'magic' consistently, and indeed the Elven-queen Galadriel is obliged to remonstrate the Hobbits on their confused use of the word both for the devices and operations of the Enemy, and for those of the Elves....there is not a word for the latter.... But the Elves are there...to demonstrate the difference. Their 'magic' is Art, delivered from many of its human limitations: more effortless, more quick, more complete.... And its object is Art not Power, sub-creation not domination and tyrannous reforming of Creation.

Art, not power. Sub-creation, not tyrannous reforming of Creation.

The Elves, male and female, are strongest as sub-creators, not warriors. Feanor is called the mightiest of the Noldor Elves because he is their greatest smith. He is skilled in battle, too, but no one else could have created the Silmarils. Before revenge consumes him, he loves the light of the Trees and wants to venerate it in jewel form, but Feanor loves the work of his hands more than the source of that light, distrusting the Valar and hoarding the jewels for himself. When Morgoth steals them, Feanor and his sons vow that they would rather lose their souls than let someone else possess the Silmarils. Shortly after that, he and his sons commit the first Elven murders. Even Art can so easily devolve into tyranny. 

Tolkien used the words Doom and Gift interchangeably to describe a settled, unavoidable fate. The Doom or Gift of the Elves is immortality, of Men, mortality. 

The Elves cannot die of natural causes. When they are humble, content with their place in the created order and devoted to their Art, this immortality is a great gift. Valinor is peaceful, joyful, and glorious, and the Vanyar are content to remain there, vassals of the Valar and Maiar. The Noldor wish for greater prestige, to rule on Middle-earth rather than serve in Valinor. Once in Middle-earth, though, immortality becomes a grief to them, for everything else in Middle-earth changes and dies. Unless slain in battle, the Elves linger on and on. Tolkien writes,

"The doom of the Elves is to be immortal, to love the beauty of the world, to bring it to full flower with their gifts of delicacy and perfection, to last while it lasts.... The Doom (or the Gift) of Men is mortality, freedom from the circles of the world....a grief and an envy to the immortal Elves." 

When immortality becomes a burden, the original vocation of "the adornment of the earth and the healing of its hurts" becomes a grief, a "long defeat," as Galadriel tells Frodo many years later. Men build things that outlast them; the Elves must watch all of their works and kingdoms crumble into nothing, and still they cannot die. 

Thus, the Elves are tempted to abandon sub-creation and seek power and domination, bickering over who owns what land. The Sons of Feanor neither defeat Morgoth nor reclaim the Silmarils. Gradually, all of the Noldor die in battle, in dungeons, and in massacres.

Except one. 

Part 3: How Galadriel Remains Galadriel

"I will diminish and go into the West and remain Galadriel."

Galadriel is Feanor's niece, and the Valar banish her with the other Noldor. Before they leave Valinor, Galadriel is a footnote. Thousands of years later, she is one of the greatest Elves in the history of Middle-earth. In 'The History of Galadriel and Celeborn," Tolkien calls her

 "the greatest of the Noldor, except Feanor maybe, though she was wiser than he, and her wisdom increased with the long years."

 In The Lord of the Rings she alone of the Noldor remains on Middle-earth, having neither fallen in battle or succumbed to evil desires. Galadriel is unlike her kin. 

As a quick refresher, when Ilúvatar created the Elves, he put them on Middle-earth, and only three clans made the long journey to Valinor: the Vanyar, the Noldor, and the Teleri. Galadriel was born in Valinor, Noldor on her father's side and Teleri on her mother's side. Before leaving Valinor, Galadriel was taught by the Valar Yavanna and Aulë-- essentially the forest goddess and the smith god. 

All of the Noldor, including Galadriel, leave Valinor without the Valar's blessing and are forbidden to return, but Galadriel's family escapes the greatest sins of Feanor and his sons: they do not make the damning vow to recover the Silmarils nor take part in the kin-slaying of the Teleri -- though they would have been willing to use the ships stolen from the murdered Teleri. But Feanor betrays them, and so Galadriel's family comes to Middle-earth over the frozen northern ocean, where many of their number perish. 

Though Galadriel had sought Middle-earth because she wished "to rule there a realm at her own will," she does not immediately take a realm for herself. She lives first at Doriath, then at Nargothrond, and so on. She is the permanent houseguest, learning from the wisdom of Melian and others, offering counsel but not issuing commands. Eventually, she and Celeborn establish the fiefdoms in Lindon and Eregion under the High King Gil-galad, and they pass the latter to Celebrimbor. Even when we meet her in Lothlórien in The Fellowship of the Ring, she is the Lady of the Golden Wood, not its queen. She and Celeborn are essentially stewards or regents for the lost Elven king Amroth, a parallel to the stewards in Gondor. 

Though she did not approve of making the Rings of Power, she took Nenya, the Ring of Adamant, to guard it from Sauron, but did not use it until his first defeat. Repeatedly, Galadriel lays down power instead of grasping it, and I would argue that she does this because she is a woman. 

Let me hasten to say that I don't think women are naturally humble or good at putting others first. We're not, but we often find ourselves in circumstances that present the dichotomy between selfishness and service very clearly. 

It is the Doom or Gift of women to be physically weaker and smaller than men, physically attractive to men, able to bear children, and often responsible for rearing them. These can be liabilities, and we all know of occasions when they have had devastating effects on women. Go far enough back in your genealogy, and eventually you will find an ancestor born from a union without protection or even consent. Whether from good intentions or bad, people exist. Given these physical realities, women possess qualities that help them nurture and tend and renew. Masculine qualities help with individual survival; feminine qualities are necessary for the group's survival. Of course, they work best when they are paired together.

We are in a sense civilization-makers, culture-makers, life-makers, but it comes with great personal sacrifice. To carry a child is to surrender autonomy. It's incredibly courageous. Strength lays itself down not as a doormat, but as a bridge over a chasm, as a foundation for a citadel. You see the child's lifetime stretching beyond your sight, affecting people who will live after you, rippling into eternity, and you know that this is not just a privilege, but a charge. You know that you must seek wise counsel if you are to care for this child well - both in the minutiae that feels like drudgery, and in the grand sweep of the child's character and education.

It's not a stretch to say sovereignty is like parenthood and a country is like a child. The wisest and best rulers of Middle-earth, from Melian and Thingol to Goldberry and Tom Bombadil, know how hard it is to nurture and protect a small kingdom well, so they never seek to build an empire. This may be why Galadriel, unlike her brothers and cousins, does not immediately establish a kingdom when she reaches Middle-earth. Though Galadriel had "yearned to see the wide unguarded lands and to rule there a realm at her own will," subsequent events make her view sovereignty less simplistically. The murder of the Teleri reveals how quickly dominion can turn to domination. The ice-hills of Helcaraxë prove that even without foes, leading people requires great valor and sad loss; her cousin's wife Elenwë died there. And then, when she sees the beautiful, twilit lands of Middle-earth, sees the first sunrise stretch across such wild beauty, she seeks counsel for how best to care for it. 

Under Melian's guidance, Galadriel develops her wisdom and piercing insight. "The History of Galadriel and Celeborn" says, 

"From her earliest years she had a marvellous gift of insight into the minds of others, but judged them with mercy and understanding, and she withheld her goodwill from none save only Feanor. In him she perceived a darkness that she hated and feared." 

This ultimately becomes her greatest weapon. She distrusts Sauron when he's disguised as Annatar because she suspects his motives. Later, with the enhancing power of the Ring Nenya, Galadriel can "perceive [Sauron] and know his mind," but though "he gropes ever to see [her] and [her] thought...still the door is closed." 

Great insight and influence on others are not intrinsically good qualities. Sauron treasures this gift as well, and he poured it into his Ring, so that few can resist putting it on and being known to him. Galadriel could use her gift to manipulate people and break their wills. 

In her youth,

"she did not perceive that the shadow of the same evil had fallen upon the minds of all the Noldor, and upon her own."

So she does not tell Melian and Thingol that the Noldor have come against the will of the Valar, or that Feanor and his sons murdered their own kin. She is ashamed and naïve, not realizing that honesty would be best, even if Melian and Thingol rejected her for it. 

She cannot trust herself to only will the good. Power tempts her heart, too, and sometimes in surprising ways: the power that comes of being loved and respected.

Two ages later, when the Fellowship comes to Lothlórien, she perceives each character's inmost desires and fears. She draws forth the temptations lurking in their hearts, forcing them to examine their motives and make their choices. As Sam says, "folk takes their peril with them into Lórien, and finds it there because they’ve brought it."

Yet a few nights later, Galadriel's own heart is tested when Frodo offers her the One Ring. When Galadriel says that "her heart has greatly desired" the Ring, remember that she is immortal. She has had thousands of years to contemplate what she could do with the Ring of Power. She could set herself up as the most terrible ruler that Middle-earth has ever seen, adored as Morgoth never was, but with a cruel indifference to her worshippers. But, for thousands of years, has she let this desire consume her, or has she practiced submitting it to the wish "that what should be shall be"? 

You know the answer. For a terrible moment, it seems like she might take the Ring:

"She lifted up her hand and from the ring that she wore there issued a great light that illumined her alone and left all else dark. She stood before Frodo seeming now tall beyond measurement, and beautiful beyond enduring, terrible and worshipful. Then she let her hand fall, and the light faded, and suddenly she laughed again, and lo! she was shrunken: a slender elf-woman, clad in simple white, whose gentle voice was soft and sad." 

I love every detail of that description. Galadriel sacrifices the opportunity to glorify herself. She could be a great light that illumines nothing else, a destructive beauty that drives everyone to despair. Everyone would know her unapproachable power. 

But she shrinks. She laughs - at herself, or at the Enemy, or just in relief, we cannot say - and she appears once again as she is: non-threatening, simple, gentle, and sad. 

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

She looked into her own heart and saw her choice. She will never fulfill her Noldorin desire for a great realm subject to her will. She has given Middle-earth all that she ought, blessing it with her wisdom and art, but now it is time to go home. 

At last, Galadriel can submit to the will of the Valar and return, humbly, into the West. 

Oh, ye makers of films both now and forever, give Galadriel a sword if you must, but let her remain Galadriel. 

Note: I did not include in-text citations or footnotes because I find them distracting in a newsletter format. If you are wondering about a citation, please comment or email, and I will share the book, chapter, and page number.