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  • "Justice is not Healing":J. R. R. Tolkien's Pauline Constructs in "Finwë and Míriel"
  • Amelia A. Rutledge (bio)

...none of the Dead will be permitted to be re-born until and unless they desire to take up their former life and continue it. Indeed they cannot escape it, for the re-born soon recover full memory of all their past.

(Morgoth 227)

Now therefore there is utterly a fault among you, because ye go to law one with another. Why do ye not rather take wrong? Why do ye not rather suffer yourselves to be defrauded?"

(I Corinthians 6:7)

The second marriage of Fëanor's father, Finwë, is presented in The Silmarillion as the occasion for Fëanor's animus toward his half-brothers (S 65), but the philosophical ramifications of the death of Míriel, Finwë's first wife, are not discussed at that time.1 In the scheme of the Quenta Silmarillion, the story of Finwë and Míriel is significant primarily as the source of the tension between Fëanor and his half-brothers. The Judgment of Manwë, the conclusion of a quasi-legal debate in the absence of precedents, permitted Finwë's second marriage, the rivalry among his sons, and the disastrous oath sworn by Fëanor that embroiled all of the Eldar in the fatal dissension resoundingly foretold in the Doom of Mandos ("Tears unnumbered shall ye shed...").2

The full significance of the story of Finwë and Míriel emerges in Morgoth's Ring. As Christopher Tolkien notes regarding his father's work:

Among the chief 'structural' conceptions of the mythology that he pondered in those years were the myth of Light; the nature of Aman; the immortality (and death) of the Elves; the mode of their rebirth; the Fall of Men and the length of their early history; the origin of the Orcs; and above all, the power and significance of Melkor-Morgoth, which was enlarged to become the ground and source of the corruption of Arda.

(Morgoth ix)

He further states, "in these writings is seen my father's preoccupation in the years following the publication of The Lord of the Rings with the philosophical aspects of the mythology and its systematisation" [End Page 59] (Morgoth 271). In Tolkien's multiple versions of the tale, Finwë requests permission to remarry when his spouse, Míriel, withdraws to Aman in exhaustion after the birth of Fëanor; she prefers this equivalent to death to continuing her life as an Eldalié. After lengthy deliberations, the Valar grant Finwë's request once they determine that Míriel has no intention of resuming bodily existence.

The present study will focus on "Finwë and Míriel" as Tolkien's specific case within the larger concept of theodicy, the study of justice and of the nature of evil, and the central concern of Morgoth's Ring, in the same way that cosmogony was central in the Ainulindalë. The Valar rule in favor of Finwë's petition, but the most telling statement of the Valar's dilemma is Manwë's own: "Justice is not Healing" (Morgoth 239, Tolkien's emphasis). Manwë does not question the Judgment itself, but his ambivalence attests to his awareness that the law's inadequacies have been laid bare. Manwë states further that justice meted out in granting the wishes of both spouses is a product of Arda Marred, since Míriel's hopeless exhaustion and Finwë's disordered desire for remarriage3 demonstrate the imbalance between order and disorder that has persisted despite the efforts of the Valar to stabilize Arda in the face of Melkor's disruptions. Although the Judgment of Manwë addresses the plight of the bereaved Finwë, the larger question of the meaning of death for de facto immortal beings is inescapably present in the deliberations of the Valar when they must face the consequences of yielding to Míriel's petition never to be reborn.

Both Elizabeth Whittingham and Douglas Charles Kane discuss the Finwë and Míriel story, but with special emphasis on eschatology: Whittingham in her chapter on "Death and Immortality,"4 and Kane in his discussion of the scant textual presence of M...

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