This is a very thought provoking and well written essay, and you bring up some very good points, particularly in regards to Lewis's attitudes about sex and vanity. I, too, never saw Susan's decision to abandon Narnia as having anything to do with sex. I saw her absence in The Last Battle not as Aslan's rejection of her, but as her rejection of Narnia. For me it was her, "Fancy your still thinking about all those funny games we used to play when we were children." that was the significant sentence. Her relegation of Narnia to a silly childhood game implied to me that, while she might have fond memories of it, she no longer truly understood Aslan, Narnia, or her own siblings, and was even somewhat ashamed of her own participation in the whole thing.
On the other hand, while the idea made me sad, I never blamed Susan for it. All of the adults (and other children, too) who knew the Pevensie children would naturally have assumed that Narnia was part of some complicated game of pretend any time they heard them discussing it, and would have told them so ("You children have such wonderful imaginations! Now let's talk about real things, please."). It only made sense that one of the kids, at least, wold start believing that, once they'd been told Narnia wasn't real (and that it was time to grow up and think about other things) often enough.
Granted, I read all the books in elementary school, when I was young and inocent and had only the vaguest notion that they were a Christian allegory. I knew Alsan was supposed to be like Christ from the Stone Table sequence onward, but I never really thought about what that might imply about the nature of Narnia. Instead, I related what happened in them to my own experiences. Edmund, Peter, and Lucy were the "geek" or "fangirl" children, the ones who kept the abilty to live in their own imaginary world beyond childhood. Susan was the normal one--and therefore was probably just as happy outside of Narnia as she would have been inside it. I did always feel sad that she had to lose the whole rest of her family, though.
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Date: 2005-09-01 06:05 pm (UTC)On the other hand, while the idea made me sad, I never blamed Susan for it. All of the adults (and other children, too) who knew the Pevensie children would naturally have assumed that Narnia was part of some complicated game of pretend any time they heard them discussing it, and would have told them so ("You children have such wonderful imaginations! Now let's talk about real things, please."). It only made sense that one of the kids, at least, wold start believing that, once they'd been told Narnia wasn't real (and that it was time to grow up and think about other things) often enough.
Granted, I read all the books in elementary school, when I was young and inocent and had only the vaguest notion that they were a Christian allegory. I knew Alsan was supposed to be like Christ from the Stone Table sequence onward, but I never really thought about what that might imply about the nature of Narnia. Instead, I related what happened in them to my own experiences. Edmund, Peter, and Lucy were the "geek" or "fangirl" children, the ones who kept the abilty to live in their own imaginary world beyond childhood. Susan was the normal one--and therefore was probably just as happy outside of Narnia as she would have been inside it. I did always feel sad that she had to lose the whole rest of her family, though.