Goldberry

Goldberry

Goldberry is a character from the works of the author J. R. R. Tolkien. She first appeared in print in a 1934 poem, The Adventures of Tom Bombadil, where she appears as the wife of Tom Bombadil. Also known as the "River-woman's daughter", she is described as a beautiful, youthful woman with golden hair. She is best known from her appearance as a supporting character in Tolkien's high fantasy epic The Lord of the Rings, first published in 1954 and 1955. Like her husband, Goldberry's role and origins are enigmatic and have been debated by scholars. On her possible origins, scholars have compared her with a character in George MacDonald's 1867 fairy tale The Golden Key, and with the eponymous character in the late-medieval lyric poem The Maid of the Moor. Her characterisation has been described as a mixture of the domestic and the supernatural, connected in some way with the river Withywindle in the Old Forest of Middle-earth. Some have suggested that she may be a divine being in Tolkien's mythology; others, that she recalls the biblical Eve, a token of the unfallen creation; and an embodiment of joy, serving with Tom Bombadil as a model of the Catholic Catholic sacrament of marriage. Both Bombadil and Goldberry were omitted from Peter Jackson's film trilogy; they were however included in the 1991 Russian television play Khraniteli.

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