Fair Lady Goldberry, Daughter of the River (Critical Essay‪)‬

"Come, dear folk!" she said, taking Frodo by the hand. "Laugh and be merry! I am Goldberry, daughter of the River." (Tolkien, Lord of the Rings [LotR] I:7, 121) CRITICS HAVE TAKEN J.R.R. TOLKIEN TO TASK for the paucity of female characters in The Lord of the Rings, with some analysts even going so far as to charge him with misogyny. Catherine Stimpson asserts that Tolkien's women are built upon "the most hackneyed of stereotypes" (18), and Edith L. Crowe maintains, "The most problematic aspect of Tolkien is indeed the disappointingly low percentage of females that appear in his best-known and best-loved works, The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings" (272). Close analysis of the text, however, reveals a roster of women whose characters are rich and diverse, well drawn, and worthy of respect. In fact, as Lisa Hopkins notes, "their very scarcity seems to invest them with an air of uniqueness and of almost talismanic status" (365). Tolkien creates two kinds of women: the noble woman of elevated stature--Galadriel, Arwen, Eowyn--and the rustic, down-to-earth women, typified by female hobbits, such as Rosie Cotton. All of the female characters in the novel can be neatly divided between these two categories, with one exception: Goldberry, Tom Bombadil's "pretty lady," daughter of the river. Although Goldberry appears only briefly in the novel, both her character and her actions are thematically significant, providing symmetry with later events and characters, bridging the gap between the Anglo-Saxon, noble women and the rustic women of the Shire, and providing an Eve figure who parallels the Mary figure Galadriel.