In Season 2, Galadriel's autonomy is consistently undermined. Her voice is silenced, she is mansplained, and choices are removed from her hands. Her authority is diminished by being demoted from leadership roles and by giving up Nenya, which forces Adar to bargain with Elrond instead of her. When Adar tells her to be silent while he deals with Elrond, it shows her reduced autonomy. The men in the room bargain over her and over her ring. She is a bargaining piece, no different from the ring she gave up.
In Season 1, Galadriel was exiled because she was seen as irrational, broken. A ‘mad woman’ whose defiance could no longer be tolerated by the elves. As noted in feminist literary criticism, Madwoman in the Attic, women who step outside societal norms are framed as unstable and cast out.
When Galadriel was exiled, she defied male authority when she leapt from the ship.
In Season 2, she obeys because her previous defiance of male authority was the root of her mistake. Madwoman in the Attic notes women who challenge authority must either be tamed/retrained or erased. Galadriel’s autonomy is restricted until she admits her mistakes and accepts the role the narrative gives her. She must be humbled and self-reflective, aligning with the male authority she once defied. Only then can she confront and resist Sauron.
Galadriel is allowed to defy Sauron because he falls outside the bounds of legitimate male authority. As the villain, he is an external threat to the social order. But when she challenges men who represent the accepted order, her defiance is framed as transgressive, something that must be corrected. Feminist critique notes women’s agency is only valued when it aligns with what male authority approves of, and their power is only admired when it fits within those boundaries.
The shift from Galadriel’s exile to her submission in Season 2 highlights how narratives often force women to ‘learn their place.’ She reenters the fold after she is no longer a threat to the social order.
It’s easy to challenge Sauron’s views because the narrative opposes him, but what the narrative frames as 'right' shouldn’t be beyond scrutiny. Cultural biases shape storytelling. When stories about women are written by men, their internalized biases shape those narratives.
Galadriel is the only female character in this storyline and the focus on her mistake and how it reflects on her person is disproportionate. While Galadriel is made to reflect on her character flaws that led to Sauron’s rise, Celebrimbor is spared similar narrative condemnation of his person. He dies, but it is triumphant. Morfydd Clark once said she loved that Galadriel didn’t know shame. But Galadriel in S2 was shamed for who she was.
Throughout history, stories have often reinforced the idea that women must know their place in society—subdued, obedient, and in harmony with male authority. In works like Shakespeare's The Taming of the Shrew, defiant women were 'tamed' to conform to societal expectations.
In Game of Thrones, Daenerys Targaryen’s defiance of male advisors like Tyrion and Jon Snow coincides with her descent into 'Mad Dany,' framed as uncontrollable and ultimately killed by Jon. When she aligned with their expectations, her power was admired. But once she stepped outside their approval, the narrative eliminated her. She went mad so her death was justified.
With a new season, I hope Galadriel’s autonomy is intact, regardless of whether she aligns with the expectations of others.
“a life of feminine submission, of “contemplative purity,” is a life of silence, a life that has no pen and no story, while a life of female rebellion, of “significant action,” is a life that must be silenced, a life whose monstrous pen tells a terrible story.” - The Madwoman in the Attic: The Woman Writer and the Nineteenth-Century Literary Imagination by Sandra Gilbert and Susan Gubar
