Arwen vs. Galadriel

[jallanite]

Tolkien in writing The Lord of the Rings was consciously writing a romance, in the traditional sense, in which female beauty is very, very, very important, far more important than male beauty. Compare Tom Bombadil with his wife Goldberry.

But in reality, even in our world and time people have different standards of beauty. I have found that someone whom one person thinks is extraordinarily beautiful another person thinks is only so-so or even worse, and vice-versa. But in a story each reader or listener can insert his or her own ideas of physical perfection. But not in a dramatic representation.

To make it worse, in The Lord of the Rings, female beauty is directly related to a person’s position in the class system. There seems to be no such thing as dirt-poor and powerless, but insanely beautiful. And apparently a female’s moral and spiritual stature is directly related to that female’s beauty and hereditary class position.

This is quite suitable to the genre of romance of course. Things are quite different in the anti-romance Father Giles of Ham.