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Source: (consider it)
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Thread: Purgatory: The Problem of Susan, and of Narnia, and of CS Lewis
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Trudy Scrumptious
BBE Shieldmaiden
# 5647
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Posted
Just to avoid further derailment of the Golden Compass thread, and because a few people said they'd like it, I'm opening this thread to discuss the "problem of Susan" in the Narnia chronicles, possibly with special reference to the Neil Gaiman story about Susan, and possible broader issues related to Lewis's work in general and his depiction of women characters in general.
A few general questions to start it off: Is Susan treated unfairly in the Narnia chronicles generally, and in Last Battle in particular? Is her fate a reflection of Lewis's attitude towards adulthood (as Philip Pullman seems to suggest) or to adult women specifically (as many readers have suggested)?
Does the Neil Gaiman story (if you've read it) deal with the "Susan problem" in a way you find interesting, or revelatory, or does it further muddy the waters?
[ 06. June 2008, 09:55: Message edited by: Alan Cresswell ]
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Books and things.
I lied. There are no things. Just books.
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Hiro's Leap
Shipmate
# 12470
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Trudy Scrumptious:
Does the Neil Gaiman story (if you've read it) deal with the "Susan problem" in a way you find interesting, or revelatory, or does it further muddy the waters?
So far it's left me confused and a bit disappointed - I'm a real fan of some of Gaiman's work, but not this piece.
Probably a dumb question, but is the Professor meant to be Susan in some sense? Or is she someone else, bitter from reading about Narnia after having a similar experience to Susan (e.g. losing her siblings in a train crash as an evacuee)?
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The Lad Himself
Accidental stowaway
# 2073
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Posted
I think the story reminds us (fairly gently) of what we have against God. Whatever comes after, this further up and further in, is going to have to be awfully good to make up for having to find my brother's body. Or for Susan, left behind as a rebuke, to have to identify the others. I personally feel I have rather a strong case against Him. I remain angry and if His answer will be perfect, I've yet to imagine it. Presumably I won't be disappointed, but it'll be the first time.
Neil Gaiman is the best thing ever.
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Trudy Scrumptious
BBE Shieldmaiden
# 5647
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Posted
Hiro's Leap, I read it that the professor was Susan, grown up and having lived her life and still not "believing" in Narnia in the sense that Lewis would have wanted her to believe. And thinking that God had given her rather a raw deal. (Of course, that doesn't explain the literary problem of how the real Susan can exist in a world where the Narnia books also exist, but I think that's outside the scope of the story).
To address the broader question: I think Susan's experience in Last Battle ties in very nicely with what Lewis said about himself and people generally in Surprised by Joy -- which is (paraphrasing from memory here) that people go through a sort of false "growing up" in adolescence during which they are very concerned about superficialities and appearances, and consider it a sign of maturity not to believe in the magic and wonder and fairy tales of their childhood. He believed that wise people eventually find their way back to the wonder of childhood, which is what Susan, by the time of LB, had failed to do.
I tend to agree with him there and that's how I'd always read Susan's fate, but I think the Gaiman story (as The Lad Himself pointed out so well for us) does a good job of showing the other side of the picture, how it might have appeared from Susan's point of view. I didn't really get the whole significance of the interviewer's final dream about the Aslan and the witch. Of course it was weird and disturbing, but the little I've read of Gaiman has been weird and disturbing so I sort of expected that.
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Books and things.
I lied. There are no things. Just books.
Posts: 7428 | From: Closer to Paris than I am to Vancouver | Registered: Mar 2004
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Lamb Chopped
Ship's kebab
# 5528
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Posted
Um, wait a minute. Wasn't Susan in America at that time? She couldn't have identified anybody's body, unless they managed to keep them on ice for quite a long while. Which I rather doubt in those days.
What Susan would have against God (if that's the way to look at it) would be losing her whole nuclear family in one go. Which is horrible. But not completely unparalleled during those years (or indeed, since). From a human standpoint, she would be considered the "lucky" one, not to have been there.
Susan--Lewis' Susan--doesn't, humanly speaking, sin too badly. She's just got her priorities screwed up. There's every chance that she will get them unscrewed at some point later in life, even if she misses the... train (cringe) here.
* * * * *
As for the creepy stuff at the end of Gaiman's story, I believe he's attempting to show God "in bed" with the devil, meaning that no matter what you choose, you're still screwed. Or something.
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Er, this is what I've been up to (book).
Oh, that you would rend the heavens and come down!
Posts: 20059 | From: off in left field somewhere | Registered: Feb 2004
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Arabella Purity Winterbottom
Trumpeting hope
# 3434
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Posted
I've always felt that Susan had the least agency of any of the children: Peter is the High King, Lucy is the discoverer and explorer, Edmund has the whole traitor/redemption thing going, but Susan is just beautiful and good at shooting a bow. She's largely a background character, even while being ostensibly one of the main characters.
As a child (and even now) I thought she had a raw deal, having to watch while the other children did marvellous deeds or became known as "the Just" and so on.
When I read the Neil Gaiman story, the dream at the end seemed to me to fit in with what I felt. The head, unable to move (no agency) has to watch an act that runs directly counter to the narrative as established by Lewis. This act suggests that from the head's perspective the good/evil anthropomorphic characters are not only in league, but are very little different from each other. The head has no way of sharing this with the rest of the characters, because then the lion eats it.
From a Susan POV, this makes quite a bit of sense. Susan is cast out by CS Lewis with no further voice in The Last Battle. For Susan there is no redemption, which, if you take it as "Christian" theology, is a load of nonsense for a girl who is only 19 at the beginning of that book. Why shouldn't a character feel as though good and evil were in cahoots under those circumstances? Any God that wrote people off utterly and completely in the way that Susan is dismissed is a very cruel God indeed, and runs directly counter to rather a lot of theology. To put the dream in the reporter's mind, rather than in Susan's own dream, means that Susan has finally managed to communicate just before she gets her head eaten (dies).
I didn't like the Gaiman story, but it worked for me.
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Hell is full of the talented and Heaven is full of the energetic. St Jane Frances de Chantal
Posts: 3702 | From: Aotearoa, New Zealand | Registered: Oct 2002
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Peppone
Marine
# 3855
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Posted
I feel the same way- Susan was 'sacrificed'. I get the feeling that Lewis felt compelled to show that there could be negative consequences; in other words, he subordinated the story to the message, (which is exactly why Pullman's books are so dreary in the end). You might argue that the Narnia books are all like that, but I wouldn't agree.
Having said that, the part that stands out most for me in Last Battle is at the almost very end, when the stream of people and creatures pass through the door; all see Aslan and are afraid; some are afraid and hateful, some are afraid and love him; and one of the latter, Lucy sees, is one of the 'bad' dwarfs. Again, Lewis trying to make a point that even peopel who seem like the very worst may love Christ when they meet him. It's a tuny thing in the book, but for me it feels like a really authentic 'Lewis' detail; whereas what happens with Susan strikes a false note.
But possibly all this comes from me, rather than the writing itself.
[ 07. January 2008, 01:22: Message edited by: Peppone ]
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bush baptist
Shipmate
# 12306
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Posted
POssibly someone had to be sacificed, but I think it was too much of a set-up for it to be Susan. (Though I guess you could say the same about Boromir, in LOTR.)
Apart from the first book, The Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe, where Susan is sensible and motherly (see her argument about using the fur coats), but also bold enough, stepping-out-in-faith enough, to speak up for taking a chance on a messenger (the robin, if I remember right), apart from that, Lewis doesn't really play fair by her, painting her as 'grousing' and too wedded to 'grown-up' logic as opposed to faith. The pits is in the Dawn Treader book, where quite without cause (in terms of the story), Lewis remarks that she was 'no good at school work'. So Susan doesn't have anything going for her at all -- even her beauty and sexuality are mishandled (by her) leading to the international political crises hinted at in The Horse and His Boy.
I like the books, and they were very important to me in childhood, but I think the general discomfort about how Lewis handled Susan is well-founded. (There is a barrage of mostly rotten Susan-finds-salvation fanfiction out there. And wasn't there a full-length novel written about her some years back?)
Posts: 1784 | From: drought-stricken land | Registered: Jan 2007
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Golden Key
Shipmate
# 1468
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Posted
I haven't read the short story, so I'm skipping most of this thread.
But I don't think CSL treated Susan badly in "The Last Battle". We don't know how she ultimately turned out. We just know some of what was going on with her at that point in time. She doesn't have a fate, per se. We don't know how she may have grown and changed in the rest of her life.
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Blessed Gator, pray for us!
--"Oh bat bladders, do you have to bring common sense into this?" (Dragon, "Jane & the Dragon")
--"Oh, Peace Train, save this country!" (Yusuf/Cat Stevens, "Peace Train")
Posts: 18601 | From: Chilling out in an undisclosed, sincere pumpkin patch. | Registered: Oct 2001
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Golden Key
Shipmate
# 1468
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Posted
**MAJOR SPOILERS**
quote:
Originally posted by Gwai:
I remember that in other books also I would note that for the story line to work someone would have to die and I was pretty good at picking which character was important enough but not too important. That character would be sacrificed.
Susan was sacrificed.
No no no. She didn't die. She wasn't on the train or at the station. She wasn't there, because she felt she was too grown-up to play the Narnia "game" any more.
She's in the horrible position of having lost her entire family. But she's still alive.
/END SPOILERS
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Blessed Gator, pray for us!
--"Oh bat bladders, do you have to bring common sense into this?" (Dragon, "Jane & the Dragon")
--"Oh, Peace Train, save this country!" (Yusuf/Cat Stevens, "Peace Train")
Posts: 18601 | From: Chilling out in an undisclosed, sincere pumpkin patch. | Registered: Oct 2001
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Eutychus
From the edge
# 3081
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Posted
Thanks Trudy for taking up my suggestion!
quote:
Originally posted by Trudy Scrumptious:
I think Susan's experience in Last Battle ties in very nicely with what Lewis said about himself and people generally in Surprised by Joy -- which is (paraphrasing from memory here) that people go through a sort of false "growing up" in adolescence during which they are very concerned about superficialities and appearances, and consider it a sign of maturity not to believe in the magic and wonder and fairy tales of their childhood. He believed that wise people eventually find their way back to the wonder of childhood, which is what Susan, by the time of LB, had failed to do.
For a contemporary take on this same problem, see this heart-rending "last ever" Calvin and Hobbes cartoon (NB this is a fake, but heart-rending nonetheless).
As Golden Key also points out, at the time of The Last Battle it's by no means certain that this world has ended or that Susan has died, so there is presumably still room for her to repent.
A couple of things about the Gaiman story:
In the version Scot has pointed us to, I have no first letter of the first line; it begins "he". I'm guessing that there should have been an 'illuminated' "S" immediately to the left of that, and I'm wondering if this is a subsequent glitch or whether it's further deliberate obfuscation by Gaiman.
Similarly, on p398 the name "Susan" (the only place in the story her name appears, I think) has a box round it as if it's been pasted in. What's going on here?
The final scene didn't seem to be much more than slashfic to me.
And finally, to further confuse literary universes, it's clear to me that Gaiman's Susan wa living in Oxford under the assumed name of Connie Sachs (who, it turns out, was in turn based on the real life character Millicent Bagot).
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Let's remember that we are to build the Kingdom of God, not drive people away - pastor Frank Pomeroy
Posts: 17944 | From: 528491 | Registered: Jul 2002
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Peppone
Marine
# 3855
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Eutychus:
For a contemporary take on this same problem, see this heart-rending "last ever" Calvin and Hobbes cartoon (NB this is a fake, but heart-rending nonetheless).
Uhhh. That's horrible. Awful. The last panel is like being hit on the head with a hammer. I actually felt my ears buzz. Perhaps i have too much invested in Calvin and Hobbes. The real last C&H makes me cry, but I guess in a good way.
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I looked at the wa's o' Glasgow Cathedral, where vandals and angels painted their names,
I was clutching at straws and wrote your initials, while parish officials were safe in their hames.
Posts: 3020 | From: Hong Kong | Registered: Dec 2002
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Anglican_Brat
Shipmate
# 12349
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Posted
Susan was the least developed of the 4 characters. Peter is the High King, and the leader of the pack. Edmund and Eustace both go through redemption story lines. And Jill and Lucy both play heroines.
Susan, it always seemed to be, was more the background character. She was there, but I felt Lewis probably saw her as an after thought.
I do see Susan as a metaphor for our modern age, in which many moderns see religion, faith, and spirituality as superstition, and so gets wrapped up in the concerns of this world. However, remember Aslan's oath "Once a King or Queen of Narnia, always a King or Queen of Narnia!" I do believe that Lewis leaves the final state of Susan unresolved, because ultimately Aslan, or in the final state of things, Jesus, is the one who makes the decision.
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It's Reformation Day! Do your part to promote Christian unity and brotherly love and hug a schismatic.
Posts: 4332 | From: Vancouver | Registered: Feb 2007
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Peppone
Marine
# 3855
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by bc_anglican:
Susan was the least developed of the 4 characters. Peter is the High King, and the leader of the pack. Edmund and Eustace both go through redemption story lines. And Jill and Lucy both play heroines.
Susan, it always seemed to be, was more the background character. She was there, but I felt Lewis probably saw her as an after thought.
I do see Susan as a metaphor for our modern age, in which many moderns see religion, faith, and spirituality as superstition, and so gets wrapped up in the concerns of this world. However, remember Aslan's oath "Once a King or Queen of Narnia, always a King or Queen of Narnia!" I do believe that Lewis leaves the final state of Susan unresolved, because ultimately Aslan, or in the final state of things, Jesus, is the one who makes the decision.
True, actually. There's plenty other scenes where disbeliving characters are confronted by a very real, growling Aslan and hauled back, chastened. Can Susan expect to make him go away just by calling him silly?
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I looked at the wa's o' Glasgow Cathedral, where vandals and angels painted their names,
I was clutching at straws and wrote your initials, while parish officials were safe in their hames.
Posts: 3020 | From: Hong Kong | Registered: Dec 2002
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Melon
Ship's desserter
# 4038
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Posted
I still feel bad for Puff the Magic Dragon.
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French Whine
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Jack o' the Green
Shipmate
# 11091
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Posted
I can remember being very disapointed as a young teenager finding out that Susan stopped being a "friend of Narnia". I also thought that it was deeply unrealistic psychologically to have someone experience all those things and then deny them - especially if you look at how people look on Near Death Experiences they've had for example. I wonder if Lewis was trying to say (a) the child sees and preceives things the adult doesn't, and (b) there is great danger in denying what experience has taught us is true, and the most important truth at that. It has become so deeply engrained into us that by denying it, we end up denying the deepest part of ourselves (a Narnian version of the unforgivable sin?)
Posts: 3121 | From: Lancashire, England | Registered: Feb 2006
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Mrs Shrew
Ship's Mother
# 8635
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Posted
The way I have always read the Last Battle was that EVERYONE dies, but Susan is not in heaven. Because in her effort to "grow up" she discarded her experiences and turned away from Narnia.
Now I think about it, it bothers me that I didn't pick up on that being rather unpleasant as a child. I will have to go back and reread it now: I guess you are all right that she didn't die - somehow that is even more unpleasant!
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"The goal of life is not to make other people in your own image, it is to understand that they, too, are in God's image" (Orfeo)
Was "mummyfrances".
Posts: 703 | From: York, England | Registered: Oct 2004
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Athrawes
Ship's parrot
# 9594
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Posted
Unpleasant/repugnant to our mindset, certainly, but not uncommon in Lewis' time. It's been a while since I read it, but from what I remember, I always assumed that Susan's exclusion was temporary - that she could change her mind if she wanted to, and was being given the chance to do so. It made me sad at the time, but I remember thinking that she had a chance to become a friend of Narnia again.
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Explaining why is going to need a moment, since along the way we must take in the Ancient Greeks, the study of birds, witchcraft, 19thC Vaudeville and the history of baseball. Michael Quinion.
Posts: 2966 | From: somewhere with a book shop | Registered: Jun 2005
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Yerevan
Shipmate
# 10383
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Posted
quote:
Is her fate a reflection of Lewis's attitude towards adulthood (as Philip Pullman seems to suggest) or to adult women specifically (as many readers have suggested)?
To go back a bit, I think alot of Lewis's attitude to women stemmed from the fact that he grew up before WWI and spent most of his life as a bachelor Oxford don.
Posts: 3758 | From: In the middle | Registered: Sep 2005
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Eutychus
From the edge
# 3081
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Yerevan:
To go back a bit, I think alot of Lewis's attitude to women stemmed from the fact that he grew up before WWI and spent most of his life as a bachelor Oxford don.
Yes, I think that considering the context, Jane Studdock comes across as a lot stronger than her husband in That Hideous Strength.
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Let's remember that we are to build the Kingdom of God, not drive people away - pastor Frank Pomeroy
Posts: 17944 | From: 528491 | Registered: Jul 2002
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Robert Armin
All licens'd fool
# 182
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Posted
Was Susan in America during TLB? I'm pretty sure she was during VOTDT, and I didn't think she was later on, but I haven't got the book to check. However, the strongest part of Gaiman's story, for me, was the spelling out of what it would be like to lose your entire family (parents as well as siblings) at a stroke. Anyone who went through that would have serious issues with God and Life, and would do well if they pulled themselves back together.
However, the ending (suggesting Aslan/good and the witch/evil are two sides of the same coin) does serious violence to Lewis' ideas as expressed in TLB and eslewhere. To me that doesn't fit at all (whereas the loss of life seemed a justified extrapolation).
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Keeping fit was an obsession with Fr Moity .... He did chin ups in the vestry, calisthenics in the pulpit, and had developed a series of Tai-Chi exercises to correspond with ritual movements of the Mass. The Antipope Robert Rankin
Posts: 8927 | From: In the pack | Registered: May 2001
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Edward Green
Review Editor
# 46
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Yerevan:
quote:
Is her fate a reflection of Lewis's attitude towards adulthood (as Philip Pullman seems to suggest) or to adult women specifically (as many readers have suggested)?
To go back a bit, I think alot of Lewis's attitude to women stemmed from the fact that he grew up before WWI and spent most of his life as a bachelor Oxford don.
Absolutley. An attitude which was tempered in later life through love and loss. The message about women's role in That Hideous Strength is also rather odd.
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Posts: 4893 | Registered: May 2001
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Eutychus
From the edge
# 3081
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Edward::Green:
The message about women's role in That Hideous Strength is also rather odd.
Yes, but I think it has more to do with his ideas on submission in general (ChastMastr, where are you??) than with women in particular - he applies the same reasoning to mankind's relationship to the eldils and God: IIRC "that masculine in comparison to which we are all feminine" or some such.
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Let's remember that we are to build the Kingdom of God, not drive people away - pastor Frank Pomeroy
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Jonathan Strange
Shipmate
# 11001
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Arabella Purity Winterbottom:
I've always felt that Susan had the least agency of any of the children: Peter is the High King, Lucy is the discoverer and explorer, Edmund has the whole traitor/redemption thing going, but Susan is just beautiful and good at shooting a bow. She's largely a background character, even while being ostensibly one of the main characters.
I have always felt that nearly without exception* the human characters are kind of sub-sections of a larger Everyman. On one level, we can identify with the one we like best – e.g. am I a Peter, or am I more like Edmund or Lucy? But I think the most helpful way of looking at it is that we are all of them. There are bits of Peter and Lucy in me, some Edmund, a lot of Eustace and some Susan.
It is helpful to see Susan as a tendency within me to behave in a certain way, as was Edmund, Peter and Lucy, rather than as a whole character.
She remains a main character precisely because she is a ‘background’ character. Her growing up/falling away is a kind of character development and shows a kind of depth to her that the others avoid. I haven’t read Gaimen yet but I guess his story exists entirely because Susan’s story is the only one unresolved and therefore (in some ways) most interesting. It asks – how can we get back to Narnia (or rather Aslan) in this world, now that the last book about Narnia has been finished.
*The only one I can think of that I’m not like (I hope) is the Uncle Andrew.
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"Wrong will be right, when Aslan comes in sight,
At the sound of his roar, sorrows will be no more,
When he bears his teeth, winter meets its death,
When he shakes his mane, we shall have spring again"
Posts: 1327 | From: Wessex | Registered: Feb 2006
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Jonathan Strange
Shipmate
# 11001
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Jon J:
I can remember being very disapointed as a young teenager finding out that Susan stopped being a "friend of Narnia". I also thought that it was deeply unrealistic psychologically to have someone experience all those things and then deny them - especially if you look at how people look on Near Death Experiences they've had for example.
I don’t think it is unrealistic to ‘do a Susan’ – the moderately famous UK athlete-turned-presenter Jonathan Edwards is often held up as an example of someone 100% committed (or 110% as we’re talking sport) to God but then stepped back to question and never came back. You don’t have to go far in the New Testament to see people who have seen the physical reality of the miraculous and have ‘fallen away’ for a time.
For me Susan’s story isn’t over.
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"Wrong will be right, when Aslan comes in sight,
At the sound of his roar, sorrows will be no more,
When he bears his teeth, winter meets its death,
When he shakes his mane, we shall have spring again"
Posts: 1327 | From: Wessex | Registered: Feb 2006
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dj_ordinaire
Host
# 4643
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Posted
Nah. He just realised too late that he'd introduced 8 children, which isn't such a nice mystical number as 7. So he jettisoned the one he liked least.
(what would Jung have said?)
[ 07. January 2008, 10:23: Message edited by: dj_ordinaire ]
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Flinging wide the gates...
Posts: 10335 | From: Hanging in the balance of the reality of man | Registered: Jun 2003
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sanityman
Shipmate
# 11598
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by PeaceFeet:
quote:
Originally posted by Jon J:
I can remember being very disapointed as a young teenager finding out that Susan stopped being a "friend of Narnia". I also thought that it was deeply unrealistic psychologically to have someone experience all those things and then deny them - especially if you look at how people look on Near Death Experiences they've had for example.
I don’t think it is unrealistic to ‘do a Susan’ – the moderately famous UK athlete-turned-presenter Jonathan Edwards is often held up as an example of someone 100% committed (or 110% as we’re talking sport) to God but then stepped back to question and never came back. You don’t have to go far in the New Testament to see people who have seen the physical reality of the miraculous and have ‘fallen away’ for a time.
I'm not sure that the experiences of people in this day and age are at all similar to Susan. To deny something you once held on faith is one thing, but she hadn't just "believed in Narnia. She had been there, had seen, smelt and experienced it all in a physical sense. She had met Aslan, not as you might "meet" God in prayer or the sacraments (no disrespect intended), but in the flesh.
To deny all of that, and say that it never existed, is to deny not just your former beliefs but all 5 of your senses. I think CSL intended this to be the analogy you describe, but I don't think it stands up to scrutiny.
- Chris.
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Prophesy to the wind, to the wind only for only the wind will listen - TS Eliot
Posts: 1453 | From: London, UK | Registered: Jun 2006
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Hiro's Leap
Shipmate
# 12470
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by The Wanderer:
However, the ending (suggesting Aslan/good and the witch/evil are two sides of the same coin) does serious violence to Lewis' ideas as expressed in TLB and eslewhere. To me that doesn't fit at all (whereas the loss of life seemed a justified extrapolation).
Yes, that was the bit that most left me thinking "wtf??".
My problem with The Last Battle is probably an objection to Christianity though, or at least Christianity as I perceived it as an evangelical. If people are going to be divided into sheep and goats and most will suffer for eternity, then the stakes are mind-bogglingly high. In that context it's genuinely a good thing for the train to crash and the children to die...better that than aging and risking apostacy.
C. S. Lewis puts a similar view forward in The Screwtape Letters. The last thing Screwtape wants is for their client to die in the war as a Christian; and so conversely that's the best thing that could happen from his perspective.
Assuming Lewis' views on salvation and damnation are correct, killing off Christian characters is merciful. ISTM it's just a logical conclusion from his premise, which is one reason I diagree with his faith.
Posts: 3418 | From: UK, OK | Registered: Mar 2007
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Jack o' the Green
Shipmate
# 11091
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by PeaceFeet:
quote:
Originally posted by Jon J:
I can remember being very disapointed as a young teenager finding out that Susan stopped being a "friend of Narnia". I also thought that it was deeply unrealistic psychologically to have someone experience all those things and then deny them - especially if you look at how people look on Near Death Experiences they've had for example.
I don’t think it is unrealistic to ‘do a Susan’ – the moderately famous UK athlete-turned-presenter Jonathan Edwards is often held up as an example of someone 100% committed (or 110% as we’re talking sport) to God but then stepped back to question and never came back. You don’t have to go far in the New Testament to see people who have seen the physical reality of the miraculous and have ‘fallen away’ for a time.
For me Susan’s story isn’t over.
I hope not for her sake! I think the point I was making was to do with how much Susan had experienced with Aslan - it's a lot to deny and fall away from - far more than any of us have experienced - more like Peter saying "bugger that - I'm off to purchase the latest fisherman's smock to woo the ladies" than Jonathan Edwards bringing intellectual doubts to his faith 2000 years after the initial events.
Posts: 3121 | From: Lancashire, England | Registered: Feb 2006
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Paul.
Shipmate
# 37
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by sanityman:
I'm not sure that the experiences of people in this day and age are at all similar to Susan. To deny something you once held on faith is one thing, but she hadn't just "believed in Narnia. She had been there, had seen, smelt and experienced it all in a physical sense. She had met Aslan, not as you might "meet" God in prayer or the sacraments (no disrespect intended), but in the flesh.
To deny all of that, and say that it never existed, is to deny not just your former beliefs but all 5 of your senses. I think CSL intended this to be the analogy you describe, but I don't think it stands up to scrutiny.
All analogies, even Jesus' parables, only work with some, not all of the available details, otherwise they wouldn't be analogies. I think the important thing is not that she experienced things with her own senses but that there's no tangible proof of those experiences once you're back in our world. That's analogous to experience a spiritual reality that you can only apprehend by faith IMO.
Back in my charismatic days I had some pretty intense experiences that I would have sworn were just as real and direct as anything I experienced through my normal senses. That hasn't stopped me, as time and changing beliefs create distance, re-evaluating those experiences.
I guess that makes me Susan ![[Big Grin]](biggrin.gif)
Posts: 3689 | From: UK | Registered: Jun 2004
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ken
Ship's Roundhead
# 2460
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Eutychus:
considering the context, Jane Studdock comes across as a lot stronger than her husband in That Hideous Strength.
It would be hard to imagine a context in which Jane is not stronger than her husband in that book! Not to mention cleverer, and a nicer person as well. She's clearly the protagonist. He's the cipher if anyone is.
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Ken
L’amor che move il sole e l’altre stelle.
Posts: 39579 | From: London | Registered: Mar 2002
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Eutychus
From the edge
# 3081
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by ken:
quote:
Originally posted by Eutychus:
considering the context, Jane Studdock comes across as a lot stronger than her husband in That Hideous Strength.
It would be hard to imagine a context in which Jane is not stronger than her husband in that book!
What I meant was the context in which she fulfils a "traditional" and "submitted" role in her couple, while Mark is the breadwinner - a role which she embraces afresh after their brief estrangement, most notably because she needs to go in and tidy his shirt up.
[ 07. January 2008, 12:36: Message edited by: Eutychus ]
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Let's remember that we are to build the Kingdom of God, not drive people away - pastor Frank Pomeroy
Posts: 17944 | From: 528491 | Registered: Jul 2002
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dyfrig
Blue Scarfed Menace
# 15
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Posted
There's a short story - I think it's in "The Dark Tower" collection - called "The Shoddy Lands" (not sure if that's Lewis' title, or Walter Must-Publish-Everything Hooper's attempt at a pun) in which the main character - a university don - is meeting an old pupil and his fiancee. Somehow the don is given an insight into the woman's mental processes - full of facile things like clothes and entertainments - and laments the entrapment of his pupil's potentially great mind by this seeming idiot.
I think Lewis developed a much healthier view of women when he actually met one who was cleverer than him.......
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"He was wrong in the long run, but then, who isn't?" - Tony Judt
Posts: 6917 | From: pob dydd Iau, am hanner dydd | Registered: Apr 2001
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Doc Tor
Deepest Red
# 9748
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Posted
*I Am Not A Lewis Scholar
But I have read a lot of his work, and a lot about him, too. It seems to me that levelling the criticism at Lewis about poorly developed female characters could be applied - not universally, but very widely - to a great many F/SF writers today, who haven't led the male-dominated life that Lewis had.
He was close to his brother and father, attended single-sex schools, and loved life being a don at Oxford, then later at Cambridge. He also lived with his brother for very many years after he came out of the army.
He did have female friends - Dorothy Sayers amongst them - but there were none in his immediate circle until Joy Davidson.
You could argue (probably successfully, too) that Lewis' female characters aren't his strong point: especially his girls, because he never actually came into contact with any of them. Compare him with say, Dodgson or JM Barrie, and they come out looking just a little thin.
You could again suggest that this was also due to a failure of imagination: an author is supposed to be able to make up stuff so well you can't see the seams. I don't know - it might be that Lewis just didn't regard girls as good protagonists.
He and Tolkien talked about writing more of the stories that they would enjoy reading: out of that conversation, Out of the Silent Planet was born.
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Forward the New Republic
Posts: 9131 | From: Ultima Thule | Registered: Jul 2005
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CrookedCucumber
Shipmate
# 10792
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Doc Tor:
I don't know - it might be that Lewis just didn't regard girls as good protagonists.
I think that's right and, in general, I agree with your assessment of Lewis's `problem' concerning the female of the species.
But I don't think that fully accounts for the Susan problem. For polemical reasons Lewis needed to have one of the main characters backslide into vapid, worldly concerns. Had he chosen a male character for this role, I doubt anybody would have batted a whatnot. As it is, I think he deliberately chose a female because he genuinely believed that young women were particularly likely to be vapid and worldly.
To be honest, I think he might have been right -- at least in the society in which he was working. England of the early-ish 20th century had profoundly low expectations of women. Even had Lewis had more social contact with young women, I don't think Susans would have been under-represented.
Posts: 2718 | From: East Dogpatch | Registered: Dec 2005
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Gwai
Shipmate
# 11076
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Golden Key:
**MAJOR SPOILERS**
quote:
Originally posted by Gwai:
I remember that in other books also I would note that for the story line to work someone would have to die and I was pretty good at picking which character was important enough but not too important. That character would be sacrificed.
Susan was sacrificed.
No no no. She didn't die. She wasn't on the train or at the station. She wasn't there, because she felt she was too grown-up to play the Narnia "game" any more.
She's in the horrible position of having lost her entire family. But she's still alive.
/END SPOILERS
However, in context, that's a sacrifice. It is made clear that the rest of her family dies and goes to heaven while she is left behind and probably damned.
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A master of men was the Goodly Fere,
A mate of the wind and sea.
If they think they ha’ slain our Goodly Fere
They are fools eternally.
Posts: 11914 | From: Chicago | Registered: Feb 2006
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Jonathan Strange
Shipmate
# 11001
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Posted
I think that we’re being a little harsh on Lewis with his female characters. It isn’t as if all his female characters are worldly or vapid. They’re all different: Polly, Jill, Aravis, Lucy and Susan are very different from each other and all interesting. The only one who is completely two-dimensional is Lasaraleen, the Tarqeena in Tashbaan.
As to having female protagonists, in many ways Lucy is the central human character and Aslan’s favourite. We see Narnia over her shoulder more than any one else.
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"Wrong will be right, when Aslan comes in sight,
At the sound of his roar, sorrows will be no more,
When he bears his teeth, winter meets its death,
When he shakes his mane, we shall have spring again"
Posts: 1327 | From: Wessex | Registered: Feb 2006
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Moo
Ship's tough old bird
# 107
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Posted
I think Lewis's portrayal of Susan has a lot to do with the women he had known. He lived for years with Mrs. Moore, a widow who was the mother of Lewis's WW1 friend who had been killed. The excerpts I have read from Lewis's diaries indicate that both women (according to episodes Lewis describes in his diary or letters) came across as empty-headed.
The younger one had presumably been born around 1900; the older about twenty or thirty years earlier. In those days middle-class girls were under enormous pressure to be docile and adapt their behavior to the prevailing norms of female behavior. I am sure I would not have enjoyed the company of anyone like that.
It is a terrible pity that Lewis's mother died when he was ten. From all accounts she was a capable woman who was an original thinker.
I think Lewis's portrayal of women reflects the narrowness of his own experience.
Moo
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Kerygmania host
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See you later, alligator.
Posts: 20365 | From: Alleghany Mountains of Virginia | Registered: May 2001
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Trudy Scrumptious
BBE Shieldmaiden
# 5647
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Posted
Given Lewis's general sort of under-informed misogynism, I think he doesn't get enough credit for creating strong, believable female characters. I think Lucy, Jill, Aravis, and Orual are all great characters, just as fully realized as the men in any of those stories. I can't really comment on Jane because I don't like That Hideous Strength very much so Jane is sort of the least of my worries. But I think any poor treatment of Susan is far more because he was using her to illustrate a specific point that was important to him (about people in general, not just women) than because he couldn't write strong female protagonists.
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Books and things.
I lied. There are no things. Just books.
Posts: 7428 | From: Closer to Paris than I am to Vancouver | Registered: Mar 2004
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mousethief
Ship's Thieving Rodent
# 953
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Gwai:
It is made clear that the rest of her family dies and goes to heaven while she is left behind and probably damned.
And probably damned? I never read that out of it. Clearly not everybody here has, either. I think a lot has been read into Lewis that he never wrote, and this is a chief case in point.
I think it's amazing how everybody is psychoanalyzing Lewis based on a character in a children's book. Is nothing allowed to be fiction anymore?
And I'm gobsmacked that in a discussion of Lewis's portrayal of women, nobody has mentioned Till We Have Faces. I believe it was written after he had known Joy Davidman for some time, but it is one of the strongest and most positive portrayals of a woman in a work of fiction written by a man I can think of.
PS: Add to Trudy's list, Polly, who is clearly every bit as brave as, and several notches smarter than, Digory.
[ 07. January 2008, 15:25: Message edited by: MouseThief ]
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This is the last sig I'll ever write for you...
Posts: 63536 | From: Washington | Registered: Jul 2001
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Peppone
Marine
# 3855
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Posted
How about that freakish, sadistic blackshirted policewoman from That Hideous Strength, and the husband's admitted sexual fascination with her; and the torture scene with the cigarette burns? Can we read something into Lewis's bringing that stuff into the story?
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I looked at the wa's o' Glasgow Cathedral, where vandals and angels painted their names,
I was clutching at straws and wrote your initials, while parish officials were safe in their hames.
Posts: 3020 | From: Hong Kong | Registered: Dec 2002
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mousethief
Ship's Thieving Rodent
# 953
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Peppone:
How about that freakish, sadistic blackshirted policewoman from That Hideous Strength, and the husband's admitted sexual fascination with her; and the torture scene with the cigarette burns? Can we read something into Lewis's bringing that stuff into the story?
That if the character had been male we wouldn't be having this discussion? In short, that it is impossible to have a negative character that isn't a well-educated, heterosexual, not-too-lower-class white male without bringing all the armchair psychologists to their feet in ire?
Bears thought.
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This is the last sig I'll ever write for you...
Posts: 63536 | From: Washington | Registered: Jul 2001
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Jack o' the Green
Shipmate
# 11091
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Peppone:
How about that freakish, sadistic blackshirted policewoman from That Hideous Strength, and the husband's admitted sexual fascination with her; and the torture scene with the cigarette burns? Can we read something into Lewis's bringing that stuff into the story?
From the wkipedia article on Lewis:
"There is some speculation by biographer Alan Jacobs that the atmosphere at Wynyard greatly traumatized Lewis and was responsible for the development of "mildly sadomasochistic fantasies". (Gopnik 2005) Four of the letters that the adolescent Lewis wrote to his life-long friend Arthur Greeves (out of an overall correspondence of nearly 300 letters) were signed "Philomastix" ("whip-lover"), and two of those also detailed women he would like to spank."
Posts: 3121 | From: Lancashire, England | Registered: Feb 2006
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Nicolemr
Shipmate
# 28
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Posted
Dyfrig, thanks for mentioning The Shoddy Lands (or whatever it was called), I was trying to remember the details of that story. I remember reading it and being quite dismayed by it, the total difference between the character's "experience" and my own as a female.
I remember reading The Final Battle for the first time, (unlike the rest of the series, which I've read repetedly, I think I've only read that one twice) and fully expecting Susan to show up at the same time as the children's parents did, and, like the dwarves and Calorman soldiers who repented and were saved when they saw Aslan, for her to recognize him and repent. It was a great shock to me when she didn't.
edit to add, when she didn't show up, I mean.
[ 07. January 2008, 15:41: Message edited by: Nicolemrw ]
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On pilgrimage in the endless realms of Cyberia, currently traveling by ship. Now with live journal!
Posts: 11803 | From: New York City "The City Carries On" | Registered: May 2001
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ken
Ship's Roundhead
# 2460
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Doc Tor:
You could argue (probably successfully, too) that Lewis' female characters aren't his strong point: especially his girls, because he never actually came into contact with any of them.
He taught women students at Oxford.
quote:
Originally posted by Eutychus:
What I meant was the context in which she fulfils a "traditional" and "submitted" role in her couple, while Mark is the breadwinner - a role which she embraces afresh after their brief estrangement
Well, that's the polemical point, isn't it? He believed that men and women were spiritually different from each other and that gender is one of the basic spiritual categories. So he's trying to depict "headship" in marriage for us. Even though Jane is more competant and intelligent and effectual than Mark, even though she is the more able scholar and had she been single would have been more deserving (in Lewis's eyes) of the College Fellowship than he is, despite all that, within a properly ordered marriage the man must have some sort of spiritual headship over the woman.
Just as in church the priest is a priest and the layman a layman, even if the layman is a devout professor of theology who knows and loves the liturgy twenty times better than an ignorant and cynical priest. Or just as parents remain parents and are owed honour as parents even when their children are independent, grown-up, and wiser than they are.
(In his opinion - I might think the whole headship business is a neo-Platonic Gnostic heresy that the Church should be rid of, but there you go)
quote:
Originally posted by Moo:
It is a terrible pity that Lewis's mother died when he was ten. From all accounts she was a capable woman who was an original thinker.
She had a maths degree. Hardly normal for Irish women in the 1880s.
quote:
Originally posted by Peppone:
How about that freakish, sadistic blackshirted policewoman from That Hideous Strength, and the husband's admitted sexual fascination with her; and the torture scene with the cigarette burns? Can we read something into Lewis's bringing that stuff into the story?
Maybe that it was written in 1945. We'd just beaten Hitler, Stalin was still in power in Russia and busy taking over Eastern Europe, Spain and Portugal and assorted Latin American coutnries were run by a variety of tinpot torturers. The blackshirted sadistic secret police(wo)man was a reality, as well as a staple of popular fiction. They were still putting them on TV all through the 1960s and 70s. Heck, Spitting Image showed Margaret Thatcher in bleack leather and a whip. A stereotype but not just Lewis's.
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Ken
L’amor che move il sole e l’altre stelle.
Posts: 39579 | From: London | Registered: Mar 2002
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Eutychus
From the edge
# 3081
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by MouseThief:
And I'm gobsmacked that in a discussion of Lewis's portrayal of women, nobody has mentioned Till We Have Faces.
They have; scroll up.
quote:
I believe it was written after he had known Joy Davidman for some time
As has been said, I think the first draft of TWHF was written before Lewis became a Christian but not published until after he met Joy. This is the book of his I'd most like to get my hands on (it was out of print in the UK for quite some time). When I last read it I also found it had rather a stifling atmosphere, but then again I felt that was somewhat inherent to the plot.
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Let's remember that we are to build the Kingdom of God, not drive people away - pastor Frank Pomeroy
Posts: 17944 | From: 528491 | Registered: Jul 2002
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Eutychus
From the edge
# 3081
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by ken:
quote:
Originally posted by Eutychus:
What I meant was the context in which she fulfils a "traditional" and "submitted" role in her couple, while Mark is the breadwinner - a role which she embraces afresh after their brief estrangement
Well, that's the polemical point, isn't it?
Indeed. I think what I originally meant to say was that despite (rather than "given") all that context and her acceptance of it, she still comes across as the stronger character.
(And yes, let's add in Orual, Jill, Polly, Aravis et al. Jill is one of my favourite characters, I think - though it would be difficult not to outshine Eustace!)
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Let's remember that we are to build the Kingdom of God, not drive people away - pastor Frank Pomeroy
Posts: 17944 | From: 528491 | Registered: Jul 2002
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Doc Tor
Deepest Red
# 9748
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by ken:
quote:
Originally posted by Doc Tor:
You could argue (probably successfully, too) that Lewis' female characters aren't his strong point: especially his girls, because he never actually came into contact with any of them.
He taught women students at Oxford.
I'm not so terribly old fashioned as to call females aged 18+ girls.
My point being, all Lewis' knowledge regarding girls up to university age was academic.
Another thing to throw into the mix: Aravis and Polly are brave and capable and don't blub, either. A bit like boys are supposed to be?
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Forward the New Republic
Posts: 9131 | From: Ultima Thule | Registered: Jul 2005
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Eutychus
From the edge
# 3081
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Eutychus:
quote:
Originally posted by MouseThief:
And I'm gobsmacked that in a discussion of Lewis's portrayal of women, nobody has mentioned Till We Have Faces.
They have; scroll up.
Sorry, my mistake. You'll have to scroll up, over and down: it was mentioned on the other thread, here.
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Let's remember that we are to build the Kingdom of God, not drive people away - pastor Frank Pomeroy
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