I think you've shown the problem in its complexity very well -- and thanks very much for quoting The Shoddy Lands -- it and other stories in the Dark Tower collection are very telling for this subject.
I'm not really in agreement with JKR on the matter, and I'd hardly consider myself an expert on feminine sexuality, but I might mention explicitly, in connection with your Shoddy Lands quote, that vanity is considered a prominent feature of misogynistic views of feminine sexuality. It is not so much a question of having sex, or even having inappropriate sex -- it's much more a matter of sexuality, of having and/or exerting sexual power. That power, for women, inheres mainly in attraction, and (so the theory goes) that power must therefore be illicit or at least suspect -- and considering how very little exertion of that power it takes to elicit scathing accusations of slutdom (cf Ginny Weasley), I'd say that this little Gordian knot of associations is well and thriving in everyday discourse at least. Lewis, who like Keats was at least a self-aware misogynist (I say self-aware because as you point out he did not try to publish his more vulgar expressions of those sentiments), was probably not making a direct jab at feminine sexuality, but the oblique shot does hit that mark at least a little -- and doubtless that's what JKR is reacting to.
That said, I have no objections to Lewis's ending the story with the defection of one of the main characters as such, and considering Susan's milieu it's possible but hardly likely that she'd choose another avenue of self-delusion and greed. A story about me defecting from a Narnia, of course, would probably focus on how pleased I was with my essays and blogs on faerie (the Scholar-Ghost in The Great Divorce would be my chilling analogue) -- but Susan isn't that. My own irritation with Lewis's handling of Susan centers more around his faint dismissal of her lack of cleverness or a valiant mindset rather than his fussy condemnation of Modern Woman stereotypes. But that's just the nature of writing characters; you get out of a frying pan and very often wind up in a fire.
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Date: 2005-08-30 06:33 pm (UTC)I'm not really in agreement with JKR on the matter, and I'd hardly consider myself an expert on feminine sexuality, but I might mention explicitly, in connection with your Shoddy Lands quote, that vanity is considered a prominent feature of misogynistic views of feminine sexuality. It is not so much a question of having sex, or even having inappropriate sex -- it's much more a matter of sexuality, of having and/or exerting sexual power. That power, for women, inheres mainly in attraction, and (so the theory goes) that power must therefore be illicit or at least suspect -- and considering how very little exertion of that power it takes to elicit scathing accusations of slutdom (cf Ginny Weasley), I'd say that this little Gordian knot of associations is well and thriving in everyday discourse at least. Lewis, who like Keats was at least a self-aware misogynist (I say self-aware because as you point out he did not try to publish his more vulgar expressions of those sentiments), was probably not making a direct jab at feminine sexuality, but the oblique shot does hit that mark at least a little -- and doubtless that's what JKR is reacting to.
That said, I have no objections to Lewis's ending the story with the defection of one of the main characters as such, and considering Susan's milieu it's possible but hardly likely that she'd choose another avenue of self-delusion and greed. A story about me defecting from a Narnia, of course, would probably focus on how pleased I was with my essays and blogs on faerie (the Scholar-Ghost in The Great Divorce would be my chilling analogue) -- but Susan isn't that. My own irritation with Lewis's handling of Susan centers more around his faint dismissal of her lack of cleverness or a valiant mindset rather than his fussy condemnation of Modern Woman stereotypes. But that's just the nature of writing characters; you get out of a frying pan and very often wind up in a fire.