[Bêthberry]

Originally Posted by Guinevere

I can’t say anything to the discussion above (never having heard about Lilith) but in general I agree very much with what Lalwendë wrote:

Guinevere, I enjoyed your thoughts about this chapter very much, particularly your thoughtful comments on Sam. It doesn't really matter that you don't know anything about Lilith. You can enjoy the chapter very much as it is without that layering of possibilities; in fact, you provide other, equally rich possibilities.

However, in case you are interested in other fantasy writers and in the legend of Lilith, you might want to take a look at George MacDonald's book, Lilith. MacDonald was a powerful influence on C.S. Lewis, less so on Tolkien himself, although Tolkien acknowledged him. MacDonald's interest in the imagination and fantasy anticipates that of Tolkien and Lewis. In many ways, he was a precursor. Readers don't have to know MacDonald's ideas to appreciate Tolkien's, but knowing MacDonald's thoughts on how our imagination creates meaning provides a wonderful context in which to consider Tolkien.

Tolkien mentions both MacDonald and Lilith in his famous essay, "On Fairy-Stories".

Even fairy-stories as a whole have three faces: the Mystical towards the Supernatural; the Magical towards Nature; and the Mirror of scorn and pity towards Man. The essential face of Faërie is the middle one, the Magical. But the degree in which the others appear (if at all) is variable, and may be decided by the individual story-teller. The Magical, the fairy-story, may be used as a Mirour de l'Ommen; and it may (but not so easily) be made a vehicle of Mystery. This at least is what George MacDonald attempted, achieving stories of power and beauty when he succeeded; as in The Golden Kay (which he called a fairy-tale); and even when he partly failed, as in Lilith (which he called a romance).

Just for the sake of historical accuracy, Tolkien also refers to MacDonald in his Letters. The first is in Tolkien's reply to a Letter published in the Observer and signed by "Habit".

Letter #25

As for the rest of the tale, it is, as the Habit suggests, derived from (previously digested) epic, mythology, and fairy-story -- not, however, Victorian in authorship, as a rule to which George MacDonald is the chief exception. Beowulf is among my most valued sources; though it was not consciously present to the mind in the process of writing, ....

The second is from Tolkien's long letter to Naomi Mitchison who had sent him questions as she read over page-proofs of LotR.

Letter #144

Orcs (the word is as far as I am concerned actually derived from Old English orc 'demon', but only because of its phonetic suitability) are nowhere clearly stated to be of any particular origin. But since they are servants of the Dark Power, and later of Sauron, neither of whom could, or would, produce living things, they must be 'corruptions'. They are not based on direct experience of mine; but owe, I suppose, a good deal to the goblin tradition (goblin is used as a translation in The Hobbit, where orc only occurs once, I think), especially as it appears in George MacDonald, except for the soft feet which I never believed in.

So there is Tolkien's statement on one of the imaginative influences of MacDonald, which Tolkien was later to repeat in Letter #151 to Hugh Brogan.

Your preference of goblins to orcs involves a large question and a matter of taste, and perhaps historical pedantry on my part. Personally I prefer Orcs (since these creatures are not 'goblins', not even the goblins of George MacDonald, which they do to some extent resemble).

Later, Tolkien was asked by Pantheon Books to write a preface to their edition of MacDonald's The Golden Key. According to Carpenter, Tolkien never did write the preface but "the result of his beginning work on the preface was the composition of Smith of Wootton Major, which began as a very short story to be contained within the preface". Now, there's a very tantalising bit of imaginative stimulation, particularly since it involves the question of why Tolkien wrote an allegory, a genre he did not like!

Letter #262

I should like to write a short preface to a separate edition of The Golden Key. I am not as warm an admirer of George MacDonald as C.S. Lewis was; but I do think well of this story of his. I mentioned it in my essay On Fairy-Stories...

I am not at all confident that I can produce anything worthy of the honorarium that you offer. I am not naturally attracted (in fact much the reverse) by allegory, mystical or moral. But I will do my best...

This is all by way of preface to my thoughts about Shelob. I think these passages from the Letters show that MacDonald was for Tolkien some kind of imaginative spice that went into Tolkien's own cauldron of story-soup. And that Tolkien was at least familiar with the Lilith legend as MacDonald had explored it.

I will begin by pointing out that dragons are absent from LotR, but that for Tolkien, dragons were formidable creatures of great evil. In fact, Tolkien's ground-breaking essay on Beowulf owed much to his insistence upon the profound importance of dragons in our imaginative lives. Here's a passage that bears some thinking about in terms of Shelob.

Beowulf's dragon, if one wishes really to criticize, is not to be blamed for being a dragon, but rather for not being dragon enough, plain pure fairy-story dragon. There are in the poem some vivid touches of the right kind... in which the dragon is the real worm, with a bestial life and thought of his own, but the conception, none the less, approaches draconitas rather than draco: a personification of malice, greed, destruction (the evil side of heroic life), ... Something more significant than a standard hero, a man faced with a foe more evil than any human enemy of house or realm, is before us, ...

Tolkien even reminds us of Shelob's difference from dragons and of his earlier tales of dragons, that she is even more terrible and less vulnerable than they were. Only by herself can she be beaten--as, in fact, is MacDonald's wicked Lilith overcome: she herself must open her hand to accept her death. So I think in part Shelob's attributes derive from this concept of the worm of great evil. But that concept is made much more original and unique by clothing it in traditionally conoted female attributes.

Those attributes derive from a long history of misogyny, a history which is predominate in literature of the middle ages, but not limited to that time. Most of the attributes refer to bodily functions in their most repellant aspects, such as the stench, the uncontrolled appetite, the vast breeding, the voracious feeding upon others, the despicable way they uspet man's self-control. The Lilith legend is part of this, (although, as I say, MacDonald's Lilith is not given the extensive sensory imagery which Tolkien gives Shelob, even though MacDonald's Lilith has a fearful animal form. MacDonald's Lilith is Victorian, which Tolkien's is not. The Angel in the House cast a long shadow). Tolkien I think was brilliant in clothing this legendary aspect of early literature in animal form and not in human female form, but the tradition of fear of the female body is nonetheless made available in his story.

I'm not by any means saying that Tolkien's Shelob = MacDonald's Lilith. There are great differences! Yet the concept of the loathsome, self-loving and self-serving female who describes all manner of evil self-indulgence and threat to lawful order links the two.

Why does this matter to me? What does it add to my understanding of Tolkien? It allows me to see how his ideological framework works its way out in LotR. In that ideology, the pure, beautiful, and muse-like female, worshipped on the pedastle, counterbalances the disgusting, fearful female of chaotic impulse. Does Tolkien's Shelob have to be read this way? By no means! Yet for me this supplies another layer of wonder to the richness of Tolkien's imaginative creation. This is, to me, thoroughly in keeping with Tolkien's thoughts about how the imagination gathers, chooses, combines material to bring forth new revelation.