Editing Shelob (section)

=== Insatiable evil ===

[[File:Hylestad I, right - Fafnir and Sigurd.jpg|thumb|upright|The Hobbits' fight with Shelob derives from multiple myths. Panel in [[Hylestad Stave Church]] showing [[Sigurd]]'s sword penetrating [[Fafnir]].<ref>{{cite book |last=Nordanskog |first=Gunnar |title=Föreställd hedendom: tidigmedeltida skandinaviska kyrkportar i forskning och historia |trans-title=Imagined Heathendom: Medieval Scandinavian Church Doors in Research and History |publisher=Nordic Academic Press |place=Lund |year=2006 |page=241 |language=Swedish |isbn=978-91-89116-85-6}}</ref>]]

[[Jane Chance]] compares Shelob with the wizard [[Saruman]], stating that both are "monsters" that live in "towers"; they have similarly structured books in ''Lord of the Rings'', one ending in a military attack on Saruman's tower, [[Orthanc]]; the other, in the hobbits' venturing into Shelob's lair in Cirith Ungol. On the other hand, she writes, while Saruman's evil is in his mind, Shelob's is in her body.<ref name="Chance 1980">{{cite book |last=Chance |first=Jane |author-link=Jane Chance |title=[[Tolkien's Art: 'A Mythology for England']] |date=1980 |orig-year=1979 |publisher=[[Papermac]] |isbn=978-0-333-29034-7 |pages=111–113}}</ref>

Chance stresses Shelob's "[[gluttony]]",  one of the traditional [[seven deadly sins]], consisting of an "insatiable appetite"; her laziness, since the Orcs bring her food; and her "lechery" with many bastard offspring. Chance compares Shelob with the guardian of the gateway to [[Hell]], noting that in [[John Milton]]'s ''[[Paradise Lost]]'', [[Satan]] mated with his daughter, [[Sin]], their offspring being Death, constantly lustful for his mother:<ref name="Chance 1980"/><ref name="Partridge 2008"/> but Tolkien in one place describes Shelob as Sauron's cat rather than his daughter.<ref name="Chance 1980"/> The scholar of literature George H. Thomson similarly compares Shelob to Milton's Sin and Death, noting that they "serve neither God nor Satan but look solely to their own interests", as Shelob does; she is "the Death and Chaos that would overcome all".<ref name="Thomson 1967"/>