LotR -- Book 2 - Chapter 07 - The Mirror of Galadriel

[Aiwendil]

Fordim wrote:

Of course not…how about this as well: Galadriel as ‘sorceress’. I’m thinking here of the figure as we find her in the Homeric tradition, specifically Kirke and Kalypso from the Odyssey.

I must admit that this view makes me a bit uneasy. Or perhaps not specifically this view but a more general attitude that has emerged. Maybe I'm just too much of a feminist to look at this clearly - but the view of Galadriel as a feminine threat to a masculine quest disagrees with me. I think that perhaps we are all overstating the "perilous" aspect of Lorien and of Galadriel. Kirke and Kalypso (and Dido, while we're at it) are not at all on Odysseus's (or Aeneas's) side. None of them has any reason to desire the success of the male hero's quest. None of them is "good". Galadriel is most certainly good. She is part of the same group of authority figures as Gandalf and Elrond. She is unambiguously an ally (unlike, say, Denethor or Gollum). Yes, there is peril in Lorien. Yes, Galadriel is tempted by the Ring. But it is not an adventure, like the encounters with Kirke and Kalypso. It is perhaps a bit more like Aeneas's stop in Carthage - and yet that's fundamentally different as well. Dido opposed Aeneas's quest and actively sought to dissuade him from it. Here, it is Frodo who asks Galadriel to take the Ring, and she that refuses.

[Fordim Hedgethistle]

Kirke and Kalypso (and Dido, while we're at it) are not at all on Odysseus's (or Aeneas's) side. None of them has any reason to desire the success of the male hero's quest. None of them is "good".

Ah yes, but then again, none of them is really "evil" -- it was Medieval and Renaissance commentators who couched the "witches" as being wicked women trying to defeat the noble men. In the original context (and in our own modern readings, I would suggest) these women come across far more as alternatives to the hero's quest. The danger they represent to the male hero is not one of restraint ("I won't let you go") but of making the hero so comfortable and happy that he will forsake his quest ("I don't want to go").

davem has already pointed out how this is the real danger of Lorien and Galadriel; that the hero, Frodo, will give way to the appealing nature of this realm and allow himself to be overwhelmed by it. He does in fact do this when he offers Galadriel the Ring, and you make an excellent point Aiwendil when you point out how it is up to Galadriel herself to deny her own desires.

The real usefulness of linking Galadriel to the Homeric context is not, as I said above, to try to use that to 'supplant' the other contexts suggested, but to highlight how Galadriel, in this moment of her choosing, truly is "perilous" insofar as she is a good woman with incredible power, tempted to do an evil thing.