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drigel: That Galadriel's methods included Art based upon the Technology of the Ring, shows how far she has fallen in her pride. So yes, it's most deeply the pride that she repents from, but also the method, for by not taking the Ring from Frodo, she places herself at the mercy of chance ('if chance you call it').
It occurs to me that Galadriel, for all her wisdom and power, has not seen certain things until Frodo shows them to her in his more intuitive wisdom. I call it intuitive because he was not entirely aware of what he was doing by offering her the Ring. For example, I doubt that Galadriel realized how far she had fallen until she was forced to examine herself in response to Frodo's offer.
Bęthberry: Galadriel's Art/Technology is not the only instance of this nostalgia in LotR. Other examples of it are Treebeard and the Ents, and indeed the entirety of the Rohirrim story-line, which is (in part) a 'might-have-been' but for the Norman conquest.
In our reading? Are you suggesting that we tend to read LotR according to late 20th century lenses and need to let it speak to us in a new 21st century way? And that Tolkien suggests this very thing in the course of the story? The end of the War of the Ring ushers in a completely new Age of Man (read Humanity). But the social norms don't change, only the demise (or diminishing) of Art (magic). Somehow I don't find in Tolkien an acceptance of this without much regret and mourning.
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