However, in his biography, Carpenter also documents some of the ebbs and flows of their relationship. He describes Edith as being happiest when they lived a quieter life when Tolkien was teaching in Leeds, and less so when they returned to Oxford, while Tolkien himself flourished as an academic and author, and with his budding friendships with C.S. Lewis and the Inklings. Carpenter asserts that "Edith began to feel that she was being ignored by Ronald” and that while he "was very loving and considerate to her [..] she could see that one side of him only came alive when he was in the company of men of his own kind.”

The passages about Elwing and Eärendil are not autobiographical per se, but they are strikingly depicted because an author's own life tends to be the one most available for close observation, and their own emotions are usually the easiest to mine, even (or perhaps particularly) when it is done without the author's own conscious volition.

Similarly, when the sons of Feanor demand the Silmaril from the community at the mouth of the Sirion, "Elwing and the folk of Sirion would not yield that jewel which Beren had won and Lúthien had worn, and for which Dior the Fair was slain; and least of all while Eärendel their lord was in the sea, for them seemed that in that jewel lay the gift of bliss and healing that had come upon their houses and their ships."