There are some fascinating speculations going on here in this thread, but perhaps we need to think about the rationale for accepting associations here.
When we see similarities and correspondences, what do we do with them? How do we know which might be reasonable and which might be unsuitable?
I would suggest several things. First of all, we can check through Tolkien's
Letters to see what ideas he might have had. We do not have a definitive, completely reliable, edition of his letters, and there are certainly many occasions when an author's statements about things can be shown to be in error. (Sorry, this is not an attack on Tolkien, but a reminder that, when people discuss literature these days, they often say that authors are dead--meaning that meaning in a published text is beyond the control of the author.)
We can go back to the text in question and consider the points of similarity, either literally or symbolically.
When we do this, I think it can be seen that the idea of the River Woman being related to the ancient mythological river figure has some merit or possibility. There is some consistency of characteristics between the woman identified as Goldberry's mother in
Perilous Realms and the figure described in davem's link. Clearly the river is a dangerous place and Tom has his troubles with it. The river is also a safe place for Goldberry and it is only when she places herself on the boundary between the river and the land--on the rushes--that Tom is able to 'catch' her.(Boundaries are always dangerous places.) There is some suggestion that this is not a mutual decision, some suggestion that Tom is the active instigator here, with some similarities to Persephone's abduction:
Quote:
He caught her, held her fast! Water-rats went scuttering
reeds hissed, herons cried, and her heart was fluttering....
Never mind your mother
in her deep weedy pool: there you'll find no lover.
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Yet the imagery here is not from the upper world to the underworld, but from below waterworld to the upperworld. There are no clear descriptions of the River-woman, so it is not possible to find many similarities here, yet the possibility is suggestive, very suggestive, of a figure from mythology who stimulated Tolkien's imagination.
For the similarities to Persephone, we have Tolkien's letter (again, not an unassailable position) and the behaviours of Goldberry, dancing in the rain on her 'washing day', a link between the character and at least changes in the weather. There is some sense that Tom has taken Goldberry away from her mother's domain and also that Goldberry remains associated with some element important to her mother--water.
With the suggestion that the River-woman is the female principle and the willow the male, I would comment only on a general similarity here of images and figures, although the actual identification of symbols is notoriously slippery. On the surface, it does not seem improbable, but whether Tolkien's text clearly suggest this--or wheather it is rather an extrapolation--can be argued, I think.
As for the suggestion that Goldberry is Venus, I would point to the very, very different contexts in which the classical Venus is placed. Is Goldberry a female figure of sexual desire, of lust? It is true that Frodo is very moved by her--we could almost say enamoured--but the desire and the relationship is so lightly developed that the suggestion of similarity to the goddess of sexual desire sounds untenable. Clearly there is an attraction for Frodo, but whether Goldberry herself has any of the characteristics of the classical Venus is, I think, unlikely.
There is a playfulness in the Old Forest, playfulness of both good and evil, which is important. Yet the Old Forest clearly is not a place of the underworld, of Hades, of hell. The frights and horrors of it are not devilish enough. something else is going on, here, I think, in Tolkien's sense of just what the Old Forest is. Is it Eden? Well, we know enough to understand that it is a place which is not permanently nor supremely perfect and without harm. And we know enough to understand that the person who rules it has a very certain degree of self-control.