Still thinking about a discussion from earlier in the week where this is how Tolkien summarized the story of Beren and LĂșthien (in his famous letter to Milton Waldman):
âIt is Beren the outlawed mortal who succeeds (with the help of LĂșthien, a mere maiden even if an elf of royalty) where all the armies and warriors have failed: he penetrates the stronghold of the Enemy and wrests one of the Silmarilli from the Iron Crown.â
Iâm not sure Iâve ever seen a more effective argument for why authorial intent doesnât matter! What book was he reading??? Is it the same one he wrote and that I read??? How wild is it that he wrote a character who is a first-of-her-kind union of elven royalty and literal divinity, who was brave and active and knew her own mind, who mastered enchantments and healing and threw down enemies (including both Sauron and Carcharoth!), who stood before Morgoth himself in her own undisguised form and got the better of him in the exchange, who convinced the gods to change the very rules of existence to suit her wants, and⊠Tolkien just thought of her as Berenâs little helper?
In just one sentence, he stripped LĂșthien of pretty much all her agency and efficacy and reduced her to a brief aside â a literal parenthetical! Sheâs no longer a legendary hero but Berenâs sidekick. Sheâs no longer the half-divine heir of Ardaâs most enduring elven kingdom but a âmere maiden.â It is Beren who succeeds, who penetrates, who wrests. Sheâs just along for the ride. Itâs like he invented a Swiss Army knife but only understood that it had a nail file.
Maybe this was just a sloppy shorthanding of the story by him, but I feel like it still speaks to how he viewed the characters in some fundamental way. And if thatâs how he read his own work (and by extension, how he hoped or expected that we would read it as well), no thank you. Iâll keep the better character and be all the happier for it.
