LotR -- Book 1 - Chapter 07 - In the House of Tom Bombadil

[Estelyn Telcontar]

This is Tom Bombadil’s chapter! It contains the bulk of the information Tolkien gives us about him and Goldberry and has therefore sparked many, many discussions on our favorite enigma. The hobbits’ stay in their house is filled with dreams, story-telling, and singing.

How does this chapter affect you? What do you think it does for the story? Which parts do you like most or least?

[davem]

Originally Posted by Esty

This is tom Bombadil's Chapter!

Well that's as may be, but lets not forget his 'pretty lady'!

I suppose the major character here, at least the one whose presence dominates this chapter, is Tom, but while a great deal has been written about him, his wife, Goldberry seems to have been pushed into second place. She is perhaps too mysterious, yet her presence runs through this chapter like an undercurrent - no pun intended (ok, who am I kidding, it was a pun,, & it was intended!).

Goldberry is the first person we meet in this chapter:

In a chair, at the far side of the room facinng the outer door, sat a woman. Her long yellow hair riippled down her shoulders, her gown was green, green as young reeds, shot with silver like beads of dew, & her belt was of gold, shaped like a chain of flag-lillies set with thee pale blue eyes of forget-me-nots. About her feet in wide vessels of green & brown earthen ware, white water lillies were floating, so that she seemed to be enthroned in the midst of a pool’

It is Goldberry who welcomes the guests into the house, & closes the door, shutting the night, & its terrors, out It is also Goldberry who recognises Frodo as an ‘elf friend’ & assures the hobbits of their safety:

’Have peace now,’ she said, ‘until the morning! Heed no nightly noises! For nothing passes door & window here save moonlight & starlight & the wind off the hilltop. Good night!’ She passed out of the room with a glimmer & a rustle. the sound of her footsteps was like a stream falling gently away downhill over cool stones in the quiet of night.

Its also from Goldberry that we learn of Tom’s nature:

Tom Bombadil is the Master. No-one has ever causght old Tom walking in the forest, wading in the water, leaping on the hilltops under light & shadow. He has no fear. Tom Bombadil is master.

Goldberry is so beautiful that Frodo is overwhelmed, & finds himself repeating Tom’s own song about her. She seems to have control of the elements - the hobbits are forced to remain a full day in Tom & Goldberry’s house, because of the torrential rain, which Tom explains is due to it’s being ‘Goldberry’s washing day, & her autumn cleaning.

Yet, if we look for accounts of Goldberry, attempts to understand her nature, we find very few. Tolkien himself, in letter 210 says of her: ‘Goldberry represents the actual seasonal changes in such lands.’ Not much insight there, though.

In their scholarly study, The Uncharted Realms of Tolkien, Alex Lewis & Elizabeth Currie offer an explanation of her as a ‘River lady’ like the dangerous figures of English folkore, Jenny Greenteeth & Peg Powler, who seek to drag the unwary traveller underwater & drown them. Yet, in a book which expends a fulll fifty pages on ‘Tolkien & the Woman Question, analysing the characters of Galadriel, Eowyn & Erendis, all they can manage to say about Goldberry (in a chapter dedicated to Tom, by the way!) is:

Tom captures & marries Goldberry (I’ve given quotes from the relevant verses of The Adventures of Tom Bombadil in the last thread, where she first attempts to drown Tom, & then is captured & married by him, but I’ll repeat them at the end of this post, for the sake of ‘completism’), in a clear & ingenious transformation of the ‘fairy bride’ stories so widespread in the British Isles. Once removed from the river, Goldberry is literally domesticated; dwelling in a house, part of a family (however unconventional) she is tamed & becomes as beautiful & useful as clean, safe water from a well or a tap, far removed from the unpredictable, wild & murky waters outside. It is her mother who is left the spirit of the river, mourning her bereavement, as untamed & dangerous as ever. Goldberry, on the other hand, is treated here more as if she was one of the ‘Lake Maidens’ of Welsh tradition. The poem is not explicit, but it sounds as if Goldberry never returns to the wild water she was dragged from, which would fit the ‘fairy bride’ motif.

Leaving aside the question of exactly how ‘safe’ & ‘domesticated’ Goldberry really is - which personally I would question, as I wouldn’t feel happy getting on the wrong side of her, & of whether the writers are correct in their assumption that ‘Goldberry never returns to the wild water she was dragged from’ - Tom tells the hobbits:

...for now I shall no longer
go down deep again along the forest water,
not while the year is old. Nor shall I be passing
Old Man Willow’s house this side of spring-time,
not till the merry spring, when the River-Daughter
dances down the withy-path to bathe in the water.

This still doesn’t take us much farther in understanding what she ‘means’ as a character. However, I have managed to find an essay, by Deirdre Green, Higher Argument: Tolkien & the Tradition of Vision, Epic & Prophecy, in the Proceedings of the 1992 Centenary Conference collection:

The dwelling has low roofs, indicating simple humility; it is filled with light, suggesting spiritual good; the furnishings & the candles are of natural materials, connoting rural closeness to nature. Goldberry’s chair, far opposite the door, suggests a throne in a reception hall. Her yellow hair, suggests innocence & goodness; it is yellow rather than gold, emphasising her unassuming nature. Her gown associates her with lush, young vegitation. Her belt is the gold of purity & sovereignty, but it celebrates in iits floral design the eternal, cyclical triumph of nature. She is encircled by water & flowers, symbols of purity & fertility. As a whole, the image asserts Goldberry as a queen or a local deity, whose power derives from nature; she is associated with water, morning, & spring, & so belongs to the germinating, birthing, & burgeoning segment of the nature cycle. The reader is left with the impression that her power is so fundamental that there is no need for any display of sovereignty; Goldberry’s power is that of earth, water & warmth. Tolkien has combined the complex symbolism od the elaborate pictorial images of Spenser & Milton with observation of real things found in this world to produce a plausible image of great illustrative significance; again he has taken the effects of older literature & shaped them to more modern literary taste

Yet she seems more than all that, because, while all those quotes can give us some insight into her ‘symbolism’, they don’t account for her character, her loving, welcoming, protective nature, her concern for the hobbits, which she displays at he beginning of the next chapter, when she sees them off on their journey.

If anyone knows of a study of Goldberry I’d be interested. She has been overshadowed by Tom (but who wouldn’t be?) for too long.


(Relevant verses about Golberry from The Adventures of Tom Bombadil:
Old Tom in summertime walked about the meadows
gathering the buttercups, running after shadows,
tickling the bumblebees that buzzed among the flowers,
sitting by the waterside for hours upon hours.

There his beard dangled long down into the water:
up came Goldberry, the River-woman's daughter;
pulled Tom's hanging hair. In he went a-wallowing
under the water-lilies, bubbling and a-swallowing.

'Hey, Tom Bombadil! Whither are you going?'
said fair Goldberry. 'Bubbles you are blowing,
frightening the finny fish and the brown water-rat,
startling the dabchicks, and drowning your feather-hat!'

'You bring it back again, there's a pretty maiden!'
said Tom Bombadil. 'I do not care for wading.
Go down! Sleep again where the pools are shady
far below willow-roots, little water-lady!'

Back to her mother's house in the deepest hollow
swam young Goldberry. But Tom, he would not follow;
on knotted willow-roots he sat in sunny weather,
drying his yellow boots and his draggled feather.

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

Wise old Bombadil, he was a wary fellow;
bright blue his jacket was, and his boots were yellow.
None ever caught old Tom in upland or in dingle,
walking the forest-paths, or by the Withywindle,
or out on the lily-pools in boat upon the water.
But one day Tom, he went and caught the River-daughter,
in green gown, flowing hair, sitting in the rushes,
singing old water-songs to birds upon the bushes.

He caught her, held her fast! Water-rats went scuttering
reeds hissed, herons cried, and her heart was fluttering.
Said Tom Bombadil: 'Here's my pretty maiden!
You shall come home with me! The table is all laden:
yellow cream, honeycomb, white bread and butter;
roses at the window-sill and peeping round the shutter.
You shall come under Hill! Never mind your mother
in her deep weedy pool: there you'll find no lover!'

Old Tom Bombadil had a merry wedding,
crowned all with buttercups, hat and feather shedding;
his bride with forgetmenots and flag-lilies for garland
was robed all in silver-green. He sang like a starling,
hummed like a honey-bee, lilted to the fiddle,
clasping his river-maid round her slender middle.

Lamps gleamed within his house, and white was the bedding;
in the bright honey-moon Badger-folk came treading,
danced down under Hill, and Old Man Willow
tapped, tapped at window-pane, as they slept on the pillow,
on the bank in the reeds River-woman sighing
heard old Barrow-wight in his mound crying.

Old Tom Bombadil heeded not the voices,
taps, knocks, dancing feet, all the nightly noises;
slept till the sun arose, then sang like a starling:
'Hey! Come derry-dol, merry-dol, my darling!'
sitting on the door-step chopping sticks of willow,
while fair Goldberry combed her tresses yellow.

[Estelyn Telcontar]

Excellent thoughts on Goldberry, davem! In this context, I remembered an article by Michael Martinez about Tom and Goldberry's marriage - here it is: Love in the Trees. I find this sentence of his very interesting:

The only creature who masters Bombadil, other than Bombadil himself, is Goldberry.

He suggests that it is not Bombadil who chooses the River-daughter. Of their meeting, told in the TB poem davem quotes above, he says:

This is a classic courtship ritual. The woman does the choosing, and she tests the man to see if she can dominate him. If she can, he fails her test and she's not interested in him. Tom won't play any girlish games, though, and he goes on about his business, dismissing Goldberry as if she doesn't matter to him. So, he passes the test, and later on, at the end of the poem, when Tom comes to take her away, Goldberry is ready to be his wife.

Martinez also emphasizes that Goldberry is Tom's "number one priority", and goes on to show her autonomous power. They have an unusually modern combination of deep affection and strong independence, with not a shadow of subservience on Goldberry's part. This is a high ideal of marriage and a wonderful example!

[Bêthberry]

They have an unusually modern combination of deep affection and strong independence, with not a shadow of subservience on Goldberry's part. This is a high ideal of marriage and a wonderful example!

Possibly, Estelyn, but let's not forget that this is a childless marriage.

I have to say that Martinez's words about the classic courtship ritual mirror my suggestion in the discussion last week on "The Old Forest" chapter that their relationship in the Bombadil poem represented "frisky play". (How about that. Quoting myself.) davem, your analysis of Goldberry is eloquent and very attractive and you are quite right to point out that she is often ignored in discussions of Tolkien's women. I think it is to the good to see the mythological predecesors for the River-Daughter and Goldberry in the

the dangerous figures of English folkore, Jenny Greenteeth & Peg Powler, who seek to drag the unwary traveller underwater & drown them.

However, I think we also need to recognise the specific tenor of Tolkien's use of the figures. The danger is very much softened. There is in the Bombadil poem play and comedy rather than terror and I see nothing to suggest Goldberry's wish to drown Tom; she wishes merely to get his attention.

The other mythological legend which Goldberry suggests is that of Persephone and Demeter, the daughter stolen by the god of the underworld, leaving the mother so disconsolate that the fecundity of the natural world is disrupted. Here, it is the daughter, Goldberry, who controls weather, not her mother the River-Goddess. And here there is no sense that Goldberry, having eaten those three or four pomegranate seeds, is become the queen of the underworld. Instead, she becomes the woman who keeps the black dogs of night at bay--"Heed no nightly noises." Again, Goldberry is very powerful, but the connotations of darkness are removed from the literary archetypes to produce her.

This change reflects, I think, Tolkien's view of his art. His focus is upon how good triumphs over evil rather than upon evil itself. We do not see how Saruman became enmeshed with his studies; his fall is simply a "given" in the story. So, too, is the fall of the Black Riders. We do not know how they became ensnared, simply that they were.
It seems to me that Tolkien tames the legends, domesticates them, leaving us with, as davem has described, an elemental safe haven from which the Hobbits must face the quest before them.

This is looking far ahead, but what I have always regretted is that, when Gandalf says at the conclusion of the book that he wishes to visit Tom, there is no mention of Goldberry. This was likely Tolkien the author attempting to weave the Old Forest chapters back into his story, but his omission of Goldberry stands to me similar to the omission of Goldberry from the after-dinner talks with the Hobbits. Had Tolkien included Goldberry in Gandalf's final remarks, I would have been more inclined to accept unreservedly davem's reading of her.

Unless of course, this is where Fordim's idea, in last week's discussion, comes into play, that we ought always to speak and think of TomandGoldberry (no, no, not Tom and Jerry) rather than just Tom.

[davem]

First of all, let me say how glad I am that we've begun with a proper discussion of Goldberry!

I have to say I found Martinez's essay to display a slightly 'political' bias - Goldberry starts out as a young woman looking for a man, & ends up a mother figure (without, as Bethberry points out, any children).

This, for me, is simply another version of the TomandGoldberry scenario. Goldberry is only 'complete' when she has Tom. I see her marriage to Tom as 'enhancing' her nature rather than 'fixing' her.

Another thing I don't get is this desire for the young Goldberry to be 'nice' & playful. Goldberry is the daughter of the Withywindle, a powerful, magical force. The incident with Tom is depicted in a light hearted, playful fashion, but so are the other encounters, with OMW & the Barrow Wight. Tom's response is exactly the same with all of them - he commands them to go back to sleep. It seems I'm alone in preferring an empowered, dangerous, feminine force of nature, while everyone else is wanting a safe nurturing housewifely type!

I think its essential to realise that we are not dealing with human beings here, but with powers of nature in human form. This is an extreme form of anthropomorphism on Tolkien's part.

Anyway, to jump to Tom, an observation: when he is telling them of his own history:

When they caught his words again they found that he had now wandered into strange regions beyond their memory & beyond their waking thought, into times when the world was wider, & the seas flowed straight to the Western Shore; & still on & back Tom went singing out into ancient starlight, when only the Elf-sires were awake. Then suddenly he stopped, & they saw that he nodded as if he was falling asleep.

Its almost as if he is moving back in time, back through his own existence, & as he approaches the point in time when he first awoke, he moves back towards unconsciousness - does anybody get what I mean?

[Aiwendil]

Some very insightful analysis from everyone so far. I agree that Goldberry is a supremely enigmatic character - more so even than Bombadil.

Forgive me if I bring the discussion down from the high and literary to the mundane and literal. But Tom and Goldberry are, I think enigmas in two distinct ways. First, there is the question of how they fit into The Lord of the Rings as a literary work - i.e., what do they "mean", what's the point of their inclusion. An equally interesting question, I think, is how they fit into Tolkien's mythology in a literal sense - i.e. what is Tom Bombadil?

This is probably the single most controversial point among Tolkien fans (the Balrog issue being a close second). The solutions commonly offered are:

1. Tom is Iluvatar. Tolkien explicitly denies this in a letter (I can't recall which one).

2. Tom is a Vala. There's an essay floating around somewhere on the internet proposing that Tom is in fact Aule. I've always found this quite preposterous. Aule is associated not with nature but with smith-work, skill, craft, metal. Not to mention that the idea that a Vala would take up residence incognito in Middle-earth is itself absurd.

3. Tom is a Maia. This is one of the most commonly made assertions. But neither Tom nor Goldberry acts very much like any other Maiar in the mythology. What would a couple of Maiar be doing living in the Old Forest? How can this be reconciled with Goldberry's description of Tom as the "Eldest"?

4. Tom is a human - perhaps the first human - who has taken a "vow of poverty". This makes sense of "Eldest". But humans are mortal, and Tom does not seem to be. Also, it seems unlikely that taking a vow of poverty is enough to ward off the power of the Ring.

5. Tom is an earth-spirit, or the spirit of Arda. I think that this is probably the most interesting view: Tom is simply part of the world, the same as the mountains or the sea. This explains "Eldest". It also explains the Ring's failure to affect him. But - and I don't recall ever seeing this question posed before - does this mean that Tom has a "Melkorian element" in him (cf. Myths Transformed)?

6. There is no intra-Middle-earth explanation for Tom and Goldberry; they can be analyzed in a literary sense but not in a literal one. But it is incredibly uncharacteristic of Tolkien to violate the reality of his own creation in such a way.

I'm certainly not trying to turn this thread into a repeat of the old debate - but I thought it would be interesting to list the major theories; for as old as it is, it is an interesting question. Tom and Goldberry are just about the only things that simply don't seem to fit into Tolkien's otherwise meticulously crafted world.

All right, sorry for the interruption - you may continue with your astute analyses, which I will continue to read with interest.

[Firefoot]

I was able to *force* myself to read this chapter. Yes, I hate Tom Bombadil.

Something that should be considered, I think, for people trying to decide who Tom is (and like Aiwendil, I do not want to really go into it...) is this quote:

When the Elves passed westward, Tom was here already, before the seas were bent. He knew the dark under the stars when it was fearless - before the Dark Lord came from Outside.

This isn't the entire paragraph, but it grows progressively earlier. This is the end, and I was thinking the Dark Lord is probably Morgoth, not Sauron. If he was there before Morgoth (and in turn, the other Ainur) I think this would discount the theories of him being mortal or Ainu. Just some speculation.

Now I will try not to make the rest of this a rant on Tom... but I think one of the reasons that I find him so annoying is because he takes everything so lightly. I think it would be good for him to have some fears, or something that could overcome him... but nothing really can. Because the Ring has no effect on him, he doesn't really take it seriously. He takes everything lightly. For example, OMW: the hobbits are in trouble, and he comes along and basically says "Him? He's no big deal. I'll just do this and everything will be fine." It's not - or it shouldn't be - that simple. Okay, my rant is done.

Interesting points on Tom and Goldberry everybody!