.. but mostly, it avoids conflicts with material Tolkien published during his lifetime, particularly regarding
Galadrielâs situation vis-Ă -vis her potentially returning to Valinor.
Ah! You've brought up my lovely Galadriel so I'm interested in what you mean here. If it helps, late texts have weight in my opinion, but yet I think they must bow to already published (by author) material. Then again, what is the already published material in question, and will the experienced Tolkien reader always interpret a given statement on its own -- meaning, by trying to block out other materials he or she might know only through posthumously published works?
Researching
my answer in the thread âArwen's spot on the boatâ, I came across what I had been looking for without success since your question.
In the draft that is
Letter 297, written sometime around August 1967, Tolkien writes,
The attempt of
EĂ€rendil to cross
Ăar was against the Ban of the Valar prohibiting all Men to attempt to set foot on
Aman, and against the later special ban prohibiting the Exiled
Elves, followers of the rebellious FĂ«anor, from returning: referred to in Galadrielâs lament. The Valar listened to the pleading of
EĂ€rendil on behalf of Elves and Men (both his kin), and sent a great host to their aid. ⊠The Exiles were allowed to return â save for a few chief actors in the rebellion of whom at the time of the
L[ord of the ]R[ings] only
Galadriel remained. âŠ
This is followed immediately by a footnote (Tolkienâs ninth in the letter, if I have counted correctly), which reads,
At the time of her lament in LĂłrien [Galadriel] believed this to be perennial, as long as Earth endured. Hence she concludes her lament with a wish or prayer that
Frodo may as a special grace be granted a purgatorial (but not penal) sojourn in
Eressëa, the Solitary Isle in sight of
Aman, though for her the way is closed. ⊠Her prayer was granted â but also her personal ban was lifted, in reward for her services against
Sauron, and above all for her rejection of the temptation to take the Ring when offered to her. So at the end we see her taking ship.
In
The Road Goes Ever On, Tolkien wrote,
After the overthrow of Morgoth at the end of the
First Age a ban was set upon [Galadrielâs] return, and she had replied proudly that she had no wish to do so.
This position is canon: It was published by Tolkien during his lifetime with his approval. This is no mistake: it was Tolkienâs position when he published
The Fellowship of the Ring in 1954, and it was Tolkienâs position when he published
The Road Goes Ever On first in the US in October 1967 and then in the UK in March 1968.
If we turn to
Unfinished Tales and the section âThe History of Galadriel and Celebornâ, Christopher Tolkien writes,
[W]hen Frodo offered the One Ring to Galadriel [in LothlĂłrien, she replied]: "And now at last it comes. You will give me the Ring freely! In place of the Dark Lord you will set up a Queen.â
In The Silmarillion it is told ⊠that at the time of the rebellion of the Noldor in Valinor Galadriel
was eager to be gone. No oaths she swore, but the words of Fëanor concerning Middle-earth kindled her heart, for she longed to see the wide unguarded lands and to rule there a realm at her own will.
Two paragraphs later, Christopher Tolkien writes,
A wholly different story, adumbrated but never told, of Galadrielâs conduct at the time of the rebellion of the Noldor appears in a very late and partly illegible note: the last writing of my father's on the subject of Galadriel and Celeborn, and probably the last on Middle-earth and Valinor, set down in the last month of his life.
Sometime between August 1967 and his death in September 1973, a mere six years, Tolkienâs view of Galadriel took an astonishing turn. Galadriel becomes less proud, less aggressive, less willful. She becomes almost an Elven saint, a very model of the Virgin Mary.
Iâm sorry, but I canât reconcile this telling of Galadriel with the story thatâs told in
The Lord of the Rings. Galadriel was the only exiled Ăoldo specifically and uniquely
barred from returning to the West. She says so in her lament when the Company of the Ring leaves LĂłrien. Tolkien says so in
The Road Goes Ever On.
To me, we cannot simply accept whatever Tolkien wrote last as the âfinal wordâ on a subject. Christopher Tolkien writes in the Introduction to
Unfinished Tales that,
When the author has ceased to publish his works himself, after subjecting them to his own detailed criticism and comparison, the further knowledge of Middle-earth to be found in his unpublished writings will often conflict with what is already âknownâ; and new elements set into the existing edifice will in such cases tend to contribute less to the history of the invented world itself than to the history of its invention.
I think this is
clearly one such case: Galadriel was
barred by the Valar from returning to the West because of her part in the Rebellion of the Noldor. Exactly what part she played, I donât know: thatâs not clear, except that she definitely was
not in league with her uncle, Fëanor, and she definitely did
not participate in the Kin-Slaying at Alqualondë, unless it was to protect her kinsmen, the Teleri, from the assault of Fëanor and his bloody-minded followers; but she was nevertheless instrumental in the Rebellion of the Noldor and their departure from Valinor, and so was forbidden to return home.