 Milbank notes further that Shelob symbolises "an ancient maternal power that swallows up masculine identity and autonomy", threatening a "castrating hold [which] is precisely what the sexual fetishist fears, and seeks to control".Milbank comments that it is fitting that another ancient female character, the elf-queen Galadriel, who both chooses not to be the "" by renouncing the One Ring that Frodo offers her, and gives Frodo her light (the Phial of Galadriel) with which the hobbits will defeat Shelob.The critic Jane Chance Nitzsche mentions "[the hobbit] Sam's penetration of her belly with his sword", noting that this may be an appropriate and symbolic way of ending her production of "bastards".