Child of the Seventh Age wrote:
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We often speak of Galadriel as the prime example of a powerful female character in LotR. Yet sometimes I wonder about this. To me, at times, she seems almost genderless, if such a thing is possible. (Perhaps this ties in with the Virgin Mary, an issue that others can better address?)
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And Bethberry:
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We get into many kinds of problems here. Galadriel had a daughter and grandchildren. She has a husband, but as Estelyn and Aiwendil suggest, his depiction is mixed
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Bethberry has also pointed out the problems with bringing Silmarillion material into a discussion of LotR. But it should be noted that, if we do consider those writings, their evolution has considerable bearing on this issue. Interestingly, in the late text where she refuses the pardon of the Valar, her mother-name is "Nerwen" - "man-maiden". Here she is (obviously) represented as being initially rather proud, and only at the end of the Third Age has she gained in wisdom sufficiently to let go of her pride and return into the West. In this and the earlier version where the ban upon her is not lifted, she certainly has the fierce independent spirit of many of the Noldor, and she is "stained" in that she participated in the rebellion of Feanor (though not in the kin-slaying at Alqualonde, according to the later text).
But it seems likely that the motivation behind the latest story (and late it is, dating from the last month or so of his life) - the one where she and Celeborn leave Valinor together, independently of Feanor - may have been specifically to make her more "pure". In this version, Galadriel's dislike for and opposition to Feanor (which is mentioned in one of the earlier texts) is very much emphasized. She is later pardoned by the Valar and rejects the invitation to return to Valinor, but it is not said that this is done out of pride.
The implication may be that Galadriel was not thought to bear much of a relation to Mary at the time when LotR was written, but that later Tolkien considered any suggestion of moral failure on her part a problem. However, it ought to be noted that all three texts referred to above come from the late sixties or early seventies, so any inference concerning the time of the writing of LotR is suspect.
While I'm on the subject of these texts, I ought to amend what I said in my previous post. I neglected to mention the earliest story concerning Celeborn (preceding the version in which he is a Sinda and a relation of Thingol) - that he was a Silvan Elf who dwelt in Lorien from the outset. This may well have been the intention when the chapter was written, though the Sinda story had replaced it by the time the appendices were written in the early 1950s.