What if SMAUG had gotten The One Ring?

[Alcuin]

Perhaps we need a separate thread on maidens in The Hobbit…

In a “simpler� society (i.e., before the late 1950s), it is likely most young, unmarried female youth – “maidens� – would be untouched because of the adverse results (pregnancy, shame, etc) now absent in “modern� society.

In any case, surely Tolkien is using “maidens� in the plain sense of young, unmarried girls and women. As Joseph Pearce points out,

Continuing his exposition on the nature of dragons, Thorin tells Bilbo that dragons also “carry away people, especially maidens, to eat.� Once again, the fullness of applicable meaning transcends the literal eating of the flesh of maidens. Dragons are not merely hungry, they are wicked. They desire the defilement of the pure and undefiled, the destruction of the virgin. Their devouring is a deflowering. Parallels with human “dragons� in the world beyond Middle-earth and closer to the home of the reader are not difficult to discern. The war against the dragon is not, therefore, a war against a physical monster, like a dinosaur, but a battle against the wickedness we encounter in our everyday lives. We all face our daily dragons and we must all defend ourselves from them and hopefully slay them. The sobering reality is that we must either fight the dragons that we encounter in life or become dragons ourselves. There is no “comfortable� alternative.