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Originally Posted by Bęthberry
Yet this seems to be contradicted by Tolkien's statement of "consciously so in the revision", as that would suggest he only late in his long writerly thought came to see that.
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So much in SoWM seems to reflect a kind of post-Reformation Catholic yearning for 'Merrie England'.
Once upon a time England had been Catholic, there was dancing & singing (&
faeries) in the Greenwood & Morris Men & a Maypole on the Green. But then things changed & the wonder went away. Its so close to what happened in the Shire. Things had been perfect - before the Lotho's & Sharkeys came along, & made everything dull & bleak. The Elves were, in a roundabout way, responsible for the Shire's renaissance through Galadriel's gift to Sam, as they were in SoWM.
Tolkien's own 'allegorical' interpretation of SoWM makes this pretty blatant. Wooton Major has suffered its own reformation.
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Well, we do know that Tolkien insisted that Edith convert to Catholicism from Anglicanism to marry him at a time when the Church itself (herself?) never required that of Catholic spouses. The only requirement was to agree to raise the children Catholic. And according to Carpenter, Tolkien apparently had little sympathy for or was unable to appreciate the difficulties Edith faced because of that decision.
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I wonder whether Tolkien saw Edith's conversion as
necesary in order to confirm her 'committment to the cause'. Certainly he seemed to consider Catholicism to be, if not the
only, then definitely the best & purest form of Christianity (cf his disappointment when Lewis went back to the Anglicanism of his childhood rather than Catholicism - of course, he didn't have the same leverage with Jack as he had had with Edith
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