Of This and Other Worlds

The problem with using an extreme example, in this case, is that Lewis is not an extreme example. He isn't saying all women are useless except for one, or even just one or two. Personally I find his portrayals of women quite sufficiently diverse and balanced for my tastes: any author who can come up with an Aravis Tarkheena or a Grace Ironwood may be forgiven the occasional Peggy, I think. Particularly since I don't believe Lewis ever intended Peggy (or the grown-up Susan) to be indicative of his opinion or attitude toward women in general, only toward a certain type of woman whose thinking is dominated by selfish vanity. (And as I've mentioned before, Uncle Andrew shows the same sort of extreme, foolish vanity in a male form, and as dr_c pointed out, Lewis admitted to having fallen prey to that kind of vanity himself in his youth, which is probably why he was so het up about it. Elsewhere Lewis deplored the attitude of people who criticize things of which they personally have no experience -- "eunuchs boasting of their chastity ... Who wants to hear a particular woman abused by a misogynist? Or a particular claret by a teetotaler?")

The objections to That Hideous Strength seem to me to have more to do with Lewis's perceived comments on the role of women in relation to men than they do with his actual portrayal of the women characters in the book (with the possible exception of the "Fairy" Hardcastle, who is a pretty stereotypical butch lesbian, but I think that says more about Lewis's view of lesbians than it does about his attitude to women in general).