All Shall Love Me and Despair: Galadriel's Importance to the Mythos of Middle Earth

One of the most important characters in the tales of Middle Earth is Galadriel. Her significance in the first book of The Lord of the Rings (LotR) trilogy, The Fellowship of the Ring, extends beyond her actual participation in the tale with the unexpectedly important gifts she bestows upon Legolas, Peregrin (Pippin) Took, Frodo Baggins, and the rest of the party.  Galadriel has far more importance to her people than her lord, Celeborn, in that she possesses one of the Elven rings of power.  She was one of the bearers of the three rings of power entrusted to the Elves, Nenya, Ring of Adamant.  Her power to govern the Elves was contained within this ring.  

 She is, however, not immune to the temptation of possessing the One Ring.  Galadriel faced a test of will when Frodo offers the Ring to her.  She spoke of the power and rule that would occur is she was to give into temptation and take the One Ring:

‘In place of the Dark Lord you will set up a Queen.  And I shall not be dark, but beautiful and terrible as the Morning and the Night!  Fair as the Sea and the Sun and the Snow upon the Mountain!  Dreadful as the Storm and the Lightning! Stronger than the foundations of the earth.  All shall love me and despair.’ … She stood before Frodo now tall beyond measurement, and beautiful beyond enduring, terrible and worshipful.

Galadriel passed her test and feels as if she has fulfilled all she must do when she bestows gifts upon the Fellowship before she passes into the West.

However, Galadriel’s importance extends far beyond what we see in LotR. She was the only daughter and youngest child of Finarfin, prince of the Noldor, and Eärwen, cousin to Lúthien and born in Valinor. She was the only female to participate in the rebellion of the Noldor and flight from Valinor during the First Age. However, she did not participate in the Kinslaying incident at Alqualondë. In fact, Galadriel in one version of this tale found in The Unfinished Tales actively fought against the Noldorin princes who killed their fellow Elves, the Teleri. Despite this, she left Valinor without permission from the Valar and was forbidden to ever return. This is in part of why she stays so long in Middle Earth while the rest of her kin sailed to the Undying Lands during the events of LotR in the Third Age. Ultimately, it was her refusal of the One Ring that caused her banishment to be lifted.

During the Second Age, Galadriel received some Mallorn (mellyrn) seeds as a gift from Gil-galad which did not take root in his own kingdom. Under her power, these seeds sprouted in Lothlórien. It was during this time as well that the Rings of Power were forged. Unlike her male counterparts, Galadriel mistrusted Annatar who taught Celebrimbor and the other Noldor of Eregion the craft of the Rings. She was proven right as Annatar was Sauron in disguise who would eventually attack Eregion. It was during this attack that Celebrimbor bestowed Nenya on her. She would refuse to use this ring until the Third Age after Sauron had lost the One Ring. It was then that she would establish Lothlórien as a refuge.

Galadriel was also a member of the White Council. This collective of wizards (Istari) and Elves also included Saruman the White, Radagast the Brown, Gandalf the Grey, Elrond of Rivendell, and Círdan of the Grey Havens. Its main purpose was to counter the growing threat in Dol Goldur. Galadriel and the rest of the White Council forced Sauron, who had been posing as the Necromancer, out of Dol Goldur and into Mordor.

After the fall of Sauron with the destruction of the One Ring, Celeborn led a contingent from Lórien to capture Dol Goldur. Like her cousin Lúthien had done to Tol Sirion in the First Age, Galadriel felled the stronghold and “threw down its walls and laid bare its pits.” It was then that she would sail from the Grey Havens to the Undying Lands.

Galadriel’s story within the tales of Middle Earth is rich and deep. She held much importance among her people and was renowned for both her strength and beauty. Her kingdom of Lórien survived multiple attacks by the armies of Dol Goldur because of Galadriel’s power was too great to be overcome. 

Bad Ass Women of History: Margaret Sanger

Margaret Sanger (1879-1966) is a controversial figure to many as one of the founders of what would become Planned Parenthood. She is often associated with abortion and negative eugenics because of her role in the birth control movement. Much of this is conflation of her position on these topics, yet she remains a problematic figure in the women’s movement. With the current attacks on the federal funding for Planned Parenthood, it’s time that we pull back the curtain and begin to really delve into the story of Margaret Sanger. Perhaps this will allow us to better understand why she is so important to understanding the mission of Planned Parenthood.

I first become aware of Sanger while in my undergrad when her autobiography was assigned reading in and interdisciplinary course: Private Lives in Public Forms. Margaret Higgins Sanger was the daughter of Irish Catholic immigrants. Her father, Michael Hennessy Higgins, was a Catholic, though he would later become an atheist, activist in the women’s suffrage movement, and proponent of free public education. While he studied medicine and phrenology, he would ultimately earn his living as stonecutter. Her mother, Anne, died at an early age (49) after 18 pregnancies in 22 years. Only 11 of these pregnancies would result in live birth. It was Margaret’s belief that her mother’s death was a result of the numerous pregnancies she endured.

Sanger would see this situation continually play out as a nurse working with working-class immigrant women. These women were often suffering the results of frequent pregnancies, miscarriages, and self-induced abortions simply because there was not adequate access to information regarding contraception. Access to information of this kind was prohibited under obscenity laws such as the 1873 federal Comstock law. 

The story that Sanger would often relate in her speeches about the necessity of access to contraceptives was that of Sadie Sachs. This perhaps fictional account of an encounter or conglomeration of multiple encounters with a variety of women would become the bedrock of her campaign to provide women with accurate and adequate access to means by which to prevent pregnancy. Sadie Sachs was a 28 year old mother of three, a Russian Jewish immigrant, whose husband, Jake, came home to find her three children crying and Sadie unconscious from the effects of a self-induced abortion. After three weeks of treatment for septicemia, Sadie would recover. When she asked about what she could do to prevent future pregnancies, the doctor jokingly remarked that she should ask her husband to sleep on the roof as there was nothing to be done to prevent pregnancy but abstinence. The doctor likened her request to “wanting her cake and eating it too.” Sanger would relate that she was again called to the Sachs’ home three months later under similar circumstances of a comatose Sadie who would die within 10 minutes of Margaret’s arrival. It was this moment that Sanger said motivated her to no longer simply keep people alive in these circumstances but instead to solve the root cause: lack of adequate access to effective contraceptive methods.

Thus began Sanger’s crusade for access to contraceptives. One of the common misconceptions is that Sanger advocated for women getting abortions. Margaret was opposed to abortions as a societal ill and public health danger. She believed that the practice would disappear if women were given adequate access to other methods of avoiding unwanted pregnancies to begin with, something that supporters of Planned Parenthood continue to argue today. The access to contraceptives was also, in her view, a form of working-class empowerment as well as female liberation. The liberation of women from the fear of unwanted pregnancies would lead to fundamental social change regarding gender equality.

Sanger would begin publishing columns and pamphlets regarding sex education in 1911. While some objected to her frank and open discussion of sex, many praised her candor in addressing the subject. This would lead to her monthly newsletter in 1914, aptly titled The Woman Rebel, for which she would be charged with violating the Comstock law regarding obscenity as this was distributed through the postal service. She would later be arrested along with her sister, Ethel Byrne, for distributing contraceptives in 1916 after opening a family planning and birth control clinic in the Brownsville neighborhood of Brooklyn. She was convicted of illegal distribution of contraceptive and running a public nuisance. Her trial judge held that “the right to copulate with a feeling of security that there will be no resulting conception” was one not granted to women. Sanger was defiant when the judge offered her leniency stating that she was unable to obey the law as it existed. For this, she was sentenced to 30 days in a workhouse.

There is often a charge that Margaret Sanger was a notorious racist. Much of this stems from a misunderstanding of her position and misinterpretation of her work with the African-American community. In 1929, at the behest of prominent African American leaders including James H Hubert, leader of the New York Urban League, Margaret opened a birth control clinic in Harlem. This clinic would receive the endorsement of W.E.B. Dubois due to Sanger’s refusal to allow bigotry by her staff either in their treatment of patients, hiring processes, or collaboration on interracial projects. This would lead to her involvement with the Negro Project, an effort to deliver birth control to poor African American people. As part of this project, she believed that they should hire black ministers to try and help alleviate the notion that the distribution of birth control was meant to eliminate the African-American population. Her work with this community was even praised by Martin Luther King Jr. 

 What Margaret Sanger Really Said about Eugenics and Race

Perhaps one of the most controversial aspects of Sanger’s legacy is her involvement with eugenics. In America, this practice of limiting procreation of the unfit often took on racist overtones. She soundly rejected that birth limitation should be determined by racial and ethnic factors. Instead, she believed that this distinction should be made based on economic factors and the ability to adequately care for the children. In personal letters, Sanger expressed anger and sadness over the aggressive and lethal Nazi eugenics program, even donating to the American Council Against Nazi Propaganda.

However, while not racist, she did support the unethical and morally reprehensible practice of sterilization for the profoundly retarded. This certainly darkens her legacy in the advancement of women’s productive rights. This does make her a problematic figure despite all of the positive contributions she made to the cause of the American women’s rights movement.

For further reading:

The Autobiography of Margaret Sanger

Woman and the New Race by Margaret Sanger

The Pivot of Civilization by Margaret Sanger

A Celebration of Diversity in Women's Literature Pt 3

This is the third piece in this weekly series.

Enjoy!

*********************************************************************************************************************************************

Charlotte Brontë's  Jane Eyre - by Kitty Israel

“I can live alone, if self-respect, and circumstances require me so to do.  I need not sell my soul to buy bliss.  I have an inward treasure born with me, which can keep me alive if all extraneous delights should be withheld, or offered only at a price I cannot afford to give.”

I should probably begin by explaining that I spent most of my early twenties believing that I wasn’t a feminist.  I couldn’t possibly be.  I was far more conservative than Dorothy Parker.  I didn’t smoke cigars or eschew dresses like Katharine Hepburn.  And I would definitely never put my own nudity on artistic display like Frida Kahlo.  Nope.  Not a feminist.  Couldn’t be.

I should probably also mention that Jane Eyre is my favorite novel.  Since reading it for the first time at fifteen, I felt a strong kinship with its titular heroine.  Her intelligence and strong sense of personal conviction immediately resonated with me.  I identified with her feelings of isolation amongst her peers and her desire for purpose beyond just what was expected of her.  I loved the complexity of her character.  But complex as she was, Jane wasn’t a feminist, either.  After all, she was a governess—not exactly a groundbreaking female profession.  And she refused the man she loved when she found out he was married to someone else—decidedly not Katharine Hepburnesque.  So not a feminist.  Nope.  Couldn’t be.

It wasn’t until shortly after I graduated from college that my perspective changed.  I read a piece by Adrienne Rich in which she described Jane Eyre as being Charlotte Brontë’s “feminist manifesto.”  That grabbed my attention.  Rich hailed Brontë’s heroine as an independent woman who forged her own path in life despite the demands placed upon her.  I suddenly realized that I hadn’t fully understood Jane, and I hadn’t understood feminism, either.

Until that moment, I had always viewed Jane Eyre purely as a bildungsroman, a “coming-of-age story,” but it was more than that.  It was, in fact, a feminist story.  It was the story of a woman who remained true to herself and her ideals, despite all else; a woman who believed all humans had equal worth.

Suddenly, it clicked with me.  I saw Jane as a young girl confronting her domineering aunt for her unjust treatment.  I saw Jane as a student at Lowood, determined to learn and excel in spite of her poor circumstances.  I saw her as a young woman, yearning for new experiences beyond the school where she grew up, and I felt her excitement mingled with trepidation when she said, “I remembered that the real world was wide, and that a varied field of hopes and fears, of sensations and excitements, awaited those who had courage to go forth into its expanse, to seek real knowledge of life amidst its perils.”  I saw Jane set out on her own to experience the world on her terms.  And as her notorious romance with Mr. Rochester unfolded, I was filled anew with admiration when she exerted her independence, refusing to be treated as his inferior: “I am no bird, and no net ensnares me; I am a free human being with an independent will, which I now exert to leave you.”

Perhaps most importantly, I saw her relationships with both Rochester and St. John with fresh eyes.  In a time when women were measured based upon the success of their marriages, Jane realized that no relationship was worth compromising her integrity.  She would not settle for being someone’s mistress, nor would she bind herself to a loveless marriage and a life of subservience as a missionary in India.  Throughout her journey, Jane is guided by one constant: Her own conscience.  Despite what others demand of her, she remains faithful to her own values.  In Brontë’s words: “Strong wind, earthquake-shock, and fire may pass by: but I shall follow the guiding of that still small voice which interprets the dictates of conscience.”

Jane Eyre taught me my greatest lesson in feminism: I may not be a Dorothy, Katharine, or a Frida, but I can be a me.  And that’s enough.