First of all, anyone who wants to read the essay I mentioned:Warm beds are good can download it as a PDF here:
http://www.ansereg.com/warm_beds_are_good.htm
I wonder about the 'marriage' of Sauron & Shelob - it is ultimately dead - it cannot produce offspring. Though Shelob, we have to remember, is not (as the movie presents her) simply a giant spider, but 'an evil thing in spider form' (don't think Tolkien was promoting bestiality there!). True marriage for Tolkien must produce children - which is why the other pairings - ie Frodo/Sam are not ideals, but stages in the process. They are 'reflections' of different aspects of a hypothetical 'single' being, showing alternative responses to external situatuations.
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Originally Posted by Fordim
If I’m getting this right, then Eowyn’s ability to recover from this mistake when the others do not bears attention…
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I suppose the 'pairing' in this case is of two different responses to the same thing. The Witch King is a 'Shadow of despair' - Eowyn faces it & slays it, Denethor faces it & succumbs, & is ultimately swallowed up by it. Eowyn, as Denethor, faces the loss of the one person she trully loves, but is not destroyed by despair - yet she is not one in whom the blood of Numenor runs almost true - she is one of the 'middle' people - we could also perhaps pair up Denethor/Frodo & Eowyn/Sam here - the 'upper class', higher beings cannot return from the mythic to the everyday world & are swallowed up in despair, & depart from the world alone, while the 'middle people' are able to live on in the everday world in peace & happiness. It all makes wonder how much Frodo ever really was an ordinary hobbit, & whether he wasn't really an 'outsider', like Galahad, sent into the world to perform his supernatural task & then depart. Though if he symbolises Sam's own spiritual side, then that begs a number of questions.
Tolkien seems to be saying that however overwhelming an eneny or a situation may seem there is always a choice, & he takes us down the two roads which those choices open up - & as you say, Gollum takes both those roads himself. So does Sam for a while, & ultimately chooses Rosie over Frodo, so we have the Frodo/Sam pairing & the Sam/Rosie pairing both co-existing in Sam from the begining - the spiritual path symbolised by his Frodo side, & the homely, hobbit path symbolised by Rosie - he takes the spiritual path as far as he can (or wishes to) & then, in the end, chooses to remain a hobbit. We could take the end of LotR as symbolising the two choices of this 'archetypal' Sam - the spiritual part goes into the West, 'dies', as does the world of magic & myth, & the hobbit side goes home to his family. The 'magic' goes away in the end, & leaves us with the everyday, & Tolkien seems to be saying that, for all the loss of wonder, that's actually for the best.