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Doug, you responded to my posts, I'm responding to yours.
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Apparently, it doesn't matter whether I respond or not, since I explicitly made a point of NOT responding to your last post (with difficulty, because my general policy is to always respond to people who address me, out of common courtesy), and yet you still came back with more criticism.
Now you are complaining that I included a minor point in a footnote rather than in the main text, and didn't elaborate on sufficiently for your taste. Certainly I could have included that information in the main text, and I could have elaborated further, but I felt that the information provided was sufficient to make the point that I was making, and that it was sufficiently minor that it belonged in a footnote. My editor agreed. I could have explicitly pointed out that the uncertainty of the names and even number of the daughters could have been a reason why Christopher did not include them, but I felt that the reader could certainly make that conclusion themselves. And, of course, the truth of the matter is that there are many characters included in the published
Silmarillion whose names were uncertain, and that Christopher was perfectly willing to decide what name to use, so I don't really think that is a likely reason. Still, that discussion could have been more explicitly included in the book, and it is fair to point it out.
However, what I don't think is fair is this continued over the top harping on one point, with no leavening by any discussion of anything that you think might be valuable in the book. In my view, there is a certain point where this type of thing leaves the realm of valuable criticism and enters a realm of being ... something else. Clearly we have a different point of view of where that line is.
Galin, I generally like you. We have had some very interesting and stimulating discussions about Tolkien over the years on several different boards, and I value that. I just don't understand why you feel necessary to poke this particularly hornet's nest so incessantly. You have long since made the point that you feel that my point about the lessening of the female characters in the published work is neither accurate nor fair. I get it. Others have made that point too. However (with the notable exception of Carl, and even he didn't go on and on nearly as much as you have), all of the others that have made the point have also discussed other aspects of the book that they have found have made significant contributions to Tolkien scholarship (see, for instance, Merlin deTardo's and David Bratman's comments in the latest volume of
Tolkien Studies). It is the fact that you just keep belaboring this same point over and over in every different way that you can possibly think of that I find tiresome. That having been said, you are certainly welcome to continue if that is what you feel compelled to do. I will respond if I feel it has any value to do so, and won't if I don't.