The Problem of Susan

[rj_anderson]

This essay has been brewing in my mind for a couple of years now, and since I was recently reminded of it during a discussion on lizbee's journal, I figured I might as well bite the bullet and put it down on paper. Comments are welcomed, but as I'm due to have my third child on (or before, or around) this coming Saturday, I'm sure you'll appreciate that I can't guarantee a timely response.

Anyway, here it is:

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THE PROBLEM OF SUSAN

Over the last few years I have heard many indignant complaints about the treatment of Susan in the Narnia books, specifically in The Last Battle. Numerous LiveJournal rants have been written on it, Philip Pullman (author of the His Dark Materials trilogy) has deplored it, Neil Gaiman has written a story about it (with the same title as this essay), and most recently it was brought up by J.K. Rowling in an interview with Time Magazine:

"There comes a point where Susan, who was the older girl, is lost to Narnia because she becomes interested in lipstick. She's become irreligious basically because she found sex," Rowling says. "I have a big problem with that."

Well, I have a problem with it too -- albeit for different reasons. I have a problem with it because Lewis nowhere says or implies, and in other books of the series quite directly refutes, that being part of Narnia has anything to do with one's attitude to sex. Or "growing up", for that matter, which is the other accusation lobbed about by those who feel that Susan was Done Wrong by her author. Still, it is to some people quite "obvious" that Lewis despised the whole business of growing up, discovery of sex very much included, and thought that it was better to be a child, in mind if not in body, one's whole life. Thus he "rewards" his characters who remain in an immature state by allowing them to remain in Narnia (or at least come back to it, in the end) while those who grow up, especially in the sexual realm, are rejected as spiritual lepers.

On the surface the argument certainly sounds convincing. After all, weren't we told that Susan's reason for not being in Narnia at the end of The Last Battle was that she was "interested in nothing but nylons and lipstick and invitations" and that "she always was a jolly sight too keen on growing up"? And aren't all the characters from our world who make it to the glorified Narnia -- Peter, Edmund, Lucy, Digory, Polly, Eustace and Jill -- suspiciously single? Eustace and Jill were pre-pubescent at the time, but surely Digory and Polly, who have lived into old age, might have got their sexual act together, even if not with each other? And the Pevensies apart from Susan are positively in their prime, but if they've had any romantic interest or entanglement whatsoever we don't hear anything about it. So the whole thing looks rather damning at first glance.

Let's examine the details, however. First, the idea that Susan's absence from Narnia has to do with her discovery of sex. Here's the actual passage from The Last Battle that gives the reason for her absence:

... "Sir," said Tirian when he had greeted all these. "If I have read the chronicle aright, there should be another. Has not your Majesty two sisters? Where is Queen Susan?"

"My sister Susan," answered Peter shortly and gravely, "is no longer a friend of Narnia."

"Yes," said Eustace, "and whenever you've tried to get her to come and talk about Narnia or do anything about Narnia, she says, 'What wonderful memories you have! Fancy your still thinking about all those funny games we used to play when we were children.'"

"Oh Susan!" said Jill. "She's interested in nothing nowadays except nylons and lipstick and invitations. She always was a jolly sight too keen on growing up."

"Grown-up, indeed," said the Lady Polly. "I wish she would grow up. She wasted all her school time wanting to be the age she is now, and she'll waste all the rest of her life trying to stay that age. Her whole idea is to race onto the silliest time of one's life as quick as she can and stop there as long as she can."

"Well, don't let's talk about that now," said Peter. ...

Those who argue for Susan's absence from Narnia being a kind of punishment for discovering sex usually zero in on Jill's words: "nylons and lipstick and invitations". But if Lewis had meant that Susan was obsessed with her romantic life and conquests, why didn't he simply tell us as much, which he could have done without any controversy whatsoever -- "she's interested in nothing nowadays except dressing up and having boys come to call on her"? Instead he chooses to zero in on material superficialities: nylons, lipstick, and invitations. And the suggestion that comes through most strongly here, especially when one looks at the speech of the very grown-up (indeed elderly) Polly which comes next, is not of sexuality but of vanity.

In other words, Susan is focused on her appearance. She's obsessed with clothes and cosmetics, with the idea of making herself look beautiful and sophisticated -- for whatever reason. Of course winning the attention of young men would be part and parcel of this, but the way Lewis phrases it puts the focus on Susan's own self-image, not her relationships with others. One is immediately struck with the idea of Susan gazing at herself in the mirror, painting on her lipstick, engrossed in artificially enhancing her physical beauty. We're also told that she is interested in "invitations", which suggests large special events of the sort for which a written invite would be issued. Susan is concerned with social status, with being invited to the right parties with the right people and having the right sort of "grown-up" good time. But the elderly Polly tells us that the life Susan is leading and the ambitions she harbors are foolish and superficial: indeed that she is living through "the silliest time of one's life" and that Susan is bound to waste her life trying to cling to a stage she ought to grow out of. In other words, Susan's problem is not that she has grown up into a woman but that that she is not "grown-up" enough (which is, again, precisely what Polly tells us) -- she is immature enough to mistake glitter and gloss and popularity for the things that make life worth living, and imagine that the vain trappings of cosmetics and fashion are what adulthood is about.

However, even this would not bar Susan from Narnia if she had any interest in coming there. The reason for her absence is not that Aslan (or Lewis) has harshly banished her for losing her childlike innocence, but rather that she has willfully chosen to put Narnia and Aslan aside in order to pursue her own interests, and as a result has gradually lost all interest -- and even memory -- of the spiritual realities that Narnia and Aslan represent. It is not that the Friends of Narnia have shunned Susan: as Eustace says, they have tried multiple times to encourage her to rejoin them. But Susan's response has habitually been to dismiss the whole idea as "funny games we used to play when we were children", and the Friends simply cannot get through to her any longer.

As a result, Susan is not on the fatal train that brings Eustace, Jill, and the rest (including the Pevensies' own father and mother, who are not only grown-up but have most certainly discovered sex -- it would be rather difficult for them to have had four children otherwise) to Narnia, and therefore we are left with no information as to whether she will eventually come to Narnia or not. The prospect may not look very promising at the moment, but there is always the chance that she will indeed "grow up" in the way Polly suggests, and discover for herself that beauty and clothing and popularity are not the things that make life worth living after all. One might well imagine, for instance, that the sudden deaths of her entire family would have a sobering effect on Susan, or at least interrupt her social whirlwind long enough to give her time to think about bigger issues. We don't know, because Lewis doesn't tell us, whether Susan can or will change; that is, as Aslan might say, "somebody else's story."

"So you say," some may object, "but that's all based on your interpretation of the 'nylons and lipstick and invitations' line, isn't it? I still think it really means sex, whatever Polly may have said afterward. After all, don't we know that Lewis was in the habit of banishing the kids from Narnia as soon as they hit puberty? It seems fairly obvious to me that he had a hang-up about the whole idea of his characters coming to sexual maturity."

Again, it seems like a reasonable argument, but only if you don't look too closely at Lewis's books. Particularly two books: The Horse and His Boy and The Voyage of the Dawn Treader. In the first, for instance, we are presented halfway through the book with a grown-up Susan, living in Narnia, who is not only stunningly beautiful and gorgeously dressed, but in the very process of being courted by a handsome Calormene prince. When Shasta (and the reader) first meets her, she is discussing with Edmund whether she will accept Rabadash's offer of marriage -- an offer she takes so seriously that she and Edmund have travelled a considerable distance to Tashbaan in order to get to know her would-be suitor better. And nowhere in the scene is the idea of Susan being grown-up, or beautiful, or considering a marriage proposal, treated as despicable for its own sake, or indeed anything out of the ordinary. The objection to Rabadash is not that Susan is coy of marriage or that Edmund thinks she ought not to marry -- if that were the case they would not have made the voyage to Tashbaan in the first place. Rather, it is that now that they have seen Susan's "dark-faced lover" in his natural element, Susan has finally realized that in spite of his winsome manner and pleasing proofs of manliness when he visited them in Narnia ("I take you all to witness what marvellous feats he did in that great tournament," says Susan, conjuring up for the reader an image of herself watching Rabadash from the stands with parted lips and shining eyes -- about as close to the idea of feminine lust as one is likely to get in a children's book), he is in truth "a most proud, bloody, luxurious, cruel, and self-pleasing tyrant". It is on account of Rabadash's evil character, not on account of some peculiar ideal of inviolate childhood and permanent celibacy, that Edmund tells Susan "I should have loved you the less if you had taken him," and Susan affirms that she would not marry Rabadash "for all the jewels in Tashbaan."

Further proof that Lewis was by no means against the idea of his characters growing up, falling in love, and even -- gasp -- having sex is found at the end of the very same book, where we are cheerfully informed that not only did Cor and Aravis get married when they grew up, but that they had a son who became the greatest of all the kings of Archenland. This being a children's book written in 1954, and Lewis being conscious that his young readership would not be particularly interested in the details of a romance, the whole thing is tossed off rather glibly; but there's no question that it is there.

So apparently growing up, or even being interested in sex, does not get one tossed out of Narnia -- not even if you're Susan Pevensie. So why were the children banished from Narnia when they reached a certain age? Isn't that a bit suspicious? It would be if the phenomenon were left unexplained, but as a matter of fact Aslan Himself explains it to Edmund and Lucy in the clearest possible terms:

"Dearest," said Aslan very gently, "you and your brother will never come back to Narnia."

"Oh, Aslan!!" said Edmund and Lucy both together in despairing voices.

"You are too old, children," said Aslan, "and you must begin to come close to your own world now."

"It isn't Narnia, you know," sobbed Lucy. "It's you. We shan't meet you there. And how can we live, never meeting you?"

"But you shall meet me, dear one," said Aslan.

"Are -- are you there too, Sir?" said Edmund.

"I am," said Aslan. "But there I have another name. You must learn to know me by that name. This is the very reason why you were brought to Narnia, that by knowing me here for a little, you may know me better there."

The "you are too old, children" might in itself seem to lend credence to the idea that Lewis had a horror of growing up, were the reasons for Lucy and Edmund's departure not so explicitly set out for us in the rest of Aslan's speech. Narnia, for all its beauty, is merely a spiritual object lesson, a childish crutch which the children must learn to do without if they are to grow into true faith and a deeper knowledge of Aslan. They are not being banished or punished -- they are in fact graduating to a higher, more challenging school of spiritual learning. They must learn to know Aslan in their own complicated and adult world, rather than relying on the simpler, childish symbolism available to them in Narnia.

Take note: in this whole passage there is not a whisper of an implication that sex, or sexual maturity, plays any role whatsoever. Sex is completely absent from the whole context of the conversation. This is not an issue of the body, but of the mind and soul. Edmund and Lucy are moving on, out of and away from Narnia, because they are ready, because it is time. Far from being punished, one might rather say that they are celebrating their Bar and Bat Mitzvah -- taking the step into personal spiritual responsibility and adult faith. The problem with Susan in The Last Battle, therefore, is not that she has too eagerly welcomed her physical adulthood, but that she has embraced the outward illusion of grown-up femininity without at the same time maturing into adult faith and knowledge of Aslan in her own world. That, not sex, keeps her from Narnia.

Now Lewis certainly did have some hang-ups about children and sex: he tells us in one of his essays, for instance, that he has a "horror of anything resembling a quasi love affair between two children" and that the idea "nauseates and sickens" him. However, he quickly goes on to qualify that this is purely a quirk of his own, rooted in some "childhood trauma" he does not describe, and that "such things... do happen in real life," so he even recognizes his phobia as being somewhat extreme and unreasonable. (And, as already noted in regard to The Horse and His Boy, he certainly shows no objection to his boy and girl characters getting married and having sex once they have grown up.)

Another definite hang-up of Lewis's seems to have been female vanity, as witnessed especially by his short story The Shoddy Lands. If this story had not been published during Lewis's lifetime I would have a very hard time believing he could have written it, because it is one of the biggest pieces of vulgar, badly written tripe I have seen in my entire life. It is, basically, a heavy-handed sermon about a woman obsessed with her own body image and trivial selfish pleasures such as (here we go again) fashionable clothes: as the narrator says, "At the centre of that world is a swollen image of herself, remodelled to be as like the girls in the advertisements as possible." And, indeed, in spite of an effort to throw in a scrap of divine compassion toward the end, the picture Lewis paints is more than unsympathetic; it's nauseating. But the whole thing has very little to do with sex, for the narrator tells us that sex is in fact ultimately irrelevant to Peggy by comparison to her vanity:

...all her clothes and bath salts and two-piece swimsuits [sound anything like "nylons and lipstick and invitations", anyone? -- Ed.], and indeed the voluptuousness of her every look and gesture, had not, and never had had, the meaning which every man would read, and was intended to read, into them. They were a huge overture to an opera in which she had no interest at all; a coronation procession with no queen at the centre of it; gestures, gestures about nothing.

In other words, Peggy (and, it seems to me, Susan) are guilty not of craving male companionship and admiration, but rather of being obsessed with their own appearance and their own social status to the point that romantic and sexual relationships are rendered trivial or irrelevant. They are not, in that sense, sexually mature at all. That Lewis had no problem with the idea of sexual maturity, and indeed was prepared to celebrate it in a Christian context, is well established in both forms of his writing for adults, in books like The Four Loves (where among other things, he warns against making a tyrant or a dark god of erotic love, and recommends a spirit of playful enjoyment, of play-acting even -- far from the "sex as grim duty" notion that some associate with the Christian religion) and especially at the end of his SF novel That Hideous Strength, which positively drips with eros as all the characters dress up in luxurious, angelically provided attire that reveals their true natures and inner beauties (something Lewis seems to deliberately contrast to the superficial fashion and cosmetics he deplores elsewhere), and all the married ones go off to have sex with each other. The whole scenario is so voluptuously described as to be almost embarrassing: it certainly made me blush as a teenager, even though Lewis never actually takes us into his characters' beds. But in any case it ought to dispel any notion that Lewis was shy or disapproving of adult sexuality.

Finding our way at last back to Susan, there can be no question that her absence from Narnia, for whatever reason, is a sad and tragic thing, understandably upsetting to both the child and the adult reader. After all, hadn't Susan as a child witnessed first-hand the death of Aslan at the Stone Table, and been part of all kinds of glorious, seemingly unforgettable, adventures? Hadn't she proven faithful through all kinds of trials and difficulties? How could we possibly be expected to believe that when she grew up she would just forget Narnia?

But there are clues that Susan is strongly tempted to put selfish concerns above spiritual ones even in the earlier books. In Prince Caspian, for instance, she knows deep down that Lucy is right about seeing Aslan, but chooses to side against Lucy and go the wrong direction because "I just wanted to get out of the woods and -- and -- oh, I don't know." Even when Lucy is called by Aslan the second time, Susan is stubborn and even openly spiteful about it. The others are also described as having various degrees of bad attitude about the situation -- indeed, Lucy herself falters in her faith the first time -- so Lewis is by no means painting Susan all black, merely pointing out a weakness. But it is a weakness that foreshadows her eventual apostasy, so that when we learn of Susan's fate in The Last Battle it is not, as some have contended, a bit of character assassination coming completely out of left field. Earlier books have established Susan as "the beauty" of the family and conscious of that fact, as being inclined to see herself as grown-up while in some ways being rather naïve and immature (being dazzled by Rabadash's prowess as a warrior and his superficially courtly manners, for instance, while Edmund doubts his integrity from the start), and somewhat more concerned with her own comforts and desires than her siblings (who have different faults). As such, the "grown-up" Susan of Last Battle may be a disappointment and a shock, but she is not some entirely different and foreign character that Lewis dragged in at the last minute to make a moral point.

As for the distress that the reader naturally feels over being told that Susan is "no longer a friend of Narnia" -- I find it very difficult to believe that Lewis was not fully aware that this revelation would hurt, and indeed most likely felt badly about it himself. But the fact remains that people do become apostate, to their own grief and the grief of those around them, and not necessarily for lofty intellectual reasons either. As a student of Biblical theology, Lewis was likely to be thinking not merely of Judas Iscariot, the most extreme example, but of other New Testament characters such as Demas, Paul's companion who deserted in the middle of a missionary journey "because he loved this present world". He was very likely also wanting to evoke passages such as the one in Hebrews 6, which speaks of those who "have once been enlightened, who have tasted the heavenly gift, who have shared in the Holy Spirit, who have tasted the goodness of the word of God and the powers of the coming age," and yet ultimately "fall away" and reject Christ just as Susan rejects Narnia.

The point is, as Christ's own life and ministry showed, that people can see miracles done before their very eyes, and yet still discount them and refuse to believe. Just as Susan was, in time, able to dismiss Narnia as "funny games we used to play when we were children," so the unbelieving people of Jesus's day explained away Christ's miracles as trickery or even attributed them to the power of demons, rather than accept Him as divine and bow to His authority. As Jesus said, "...this is the condemnation, that light is come into the world, and men loved darkness rather than light, because their deeds were evil." As long as we have something else on our personal agenda that is higher than God, some beloved thing or philosophy or pastime (it might be quite innocuous in itself -- after all, there's nothing inherently evil about nylons or lipstick or invitations per se) that we value more than the knowledge of Him, it doesn't matter how much evidence is or has been presented to our eyes because we will not see.

In that respect, the description of Susan's fate given to us in The Last Battle may be painful and upsetting but it is far from being unrealistic or untrue. If anything it is too true to life, and therein lies the poignancy of it. We may see in Susan a reflection of ourselves, and resent her absence from Narnia on that account: surely one ought not to miss the beauties and pleasures of paradise on account of such harmless indulgences as nylons and lipstick! But it was not Aslan or the Friends of Narnia who kept Susan away from that final blessing, but Susan herself by her own free will -- and so it is with us.

ETA: Please also check out the brief follow-up post to this discussion, which brings up a very significant point raised by a commenter about the attitude of the Friends of Narnia to Susan.

ETA2: As of April 2013 I've been so inundated with spam replies to this entry that I've had to shut down Comments. Sorry to anyone who had further thoughts to add -- perhaps try the follow-up post instead.

Comments

[fernwithy.livejournal.com]

A very excellent essay--I think you've hit the nail on the head. It annoys me that JK decided to make a flip comment about this, especially one in the currently trendy "all sex is good and nothing that remotely might suggest otherwise shall be tolerated" mode of thought. (The one that also assumes that "growing up" is a synonym for sex. And that "being mature" is. And that eating a peanut butter and jelly sandwich or playing scrabble is. But that's another rant.) But JK gets asked a lot of questions, and I doubt she's thought through the implications of all of them carefully. I'm glad you've applied more thought to the subject.

[rj-anderson.livejournal.com]

The one that also assumes that "growing up" is a synonym for sex. And that "being mature" is. And that eating a peanut butter and jelly sandwich or playing scrabble is. But that's another rant.

Hee! So very, tragically true.

Our society is obsessed with sexuality as self-fulfillment, and this is especially unfortunate when modern people are reading books and essays from time periods where sex was not considered to be the be-all and end-all. All kinds of odd perspectives and interpretations tend to emerge when we try to impose a contemporary attitude to sex onto our predecessors. I bet Lewis would have been positively flabbergasted to hear that anybody thought "nylons and lipstick and invitations" was a euphemism for sex, just as Tolkien was astonished by how many people were convinced that the Ring was a metaphor for the atomic bomb...

[owl]

Can I just quickly say a giant WORD to that. I thought I was the only person in the world who thought it was vanity and wilful blindness that kept Susan from Narnia.

[penwiper26.livejournal.com]

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.

[dr-c.livejournal.com]

Excellent essay, synaesthete7-- thanks for posting it!

This past weekend I was flipping back through Surprised by Joy, and noted some of Lewis' comments on his own youthful "apostasy" (his term; I'd use the word slightly differently). He views the Flesh as having been somewhat damaging to him during those years, but the World much more so (this comes up especially in his discussion of a youthful schoolmaster nicknamed "Pogo," who had taught him to desire to be sophisticated). Indeed, Lewis' consistent view of sin in general was one of viewing Lust as definitely sinful and damaging, but other things like Pride and Vanity as much more deeply corrupting to the soul.

The fact that Lewis wrote plenty of nonfiction works is handy for the scholar wishing to know what views his fiction works were, and were not, reflecting-- lest we be "attributing to [him] views which [he had] explicitly contradicted in the plainest possible English," as he complained of one scholar doing. Readers who know him only by his fiction stories will find it easy to make mistakes like that. (I agree with fernwithy that this probably isn't something about which JKR has thought deeply-- it's her job to write stories, not to comment on others'.)

So anyway, yes, I agree-- JKR's criticism of Lewis here tells us considerably more about JKR than it does about Lewis. JKR is certainly not the only person to have interpreted Susan this way, of course; I imagine that it must be easy for a young woman with a fondness for makeup and fashion too see herself in Susan, and to wish to react fiercely against Lewis' presentation. But the criticism would only be valid if the quest for popularity were inseparable from the hope of finding romantic love.

The odd thing about JKR being the one to say this is that her own stories seem (am I wrong?!) to show plenty of consciousness of the difference between a shallow young woman and a mature one. ("Three dementor attacks in a week, and all Romilda Vane does is ask me if it's true you've got a Hippogriff tattooed across your chest.") The most admirable young women in JKR's stories (Hermione, Ginny, and Luna) are not the budding Susan Pevensies of Hogwarts, but those (each in her own way) who retain a sense of adventure-- more to the point, the ability to be committed to something beyond herself-- as Lucy and Jill did. And an important step in Harry's maturation as a young man was when he got beyond the stage of "going for looks alone"-- when he realized that "wanting to impress Cho seemed to belong to a past that was no longer quite connected with him," when he matured to the point where he could start liking a girl because he actually enjoyed her company. (Notice that HBP never tells us that Harry thought Ginny was pretty or beautiful or anything like that-- of course he does think so, but that's no longer where the emphasis lies. Her attractiveness is only made known to us through the comments of others.)

And so I don't think the stories JKR and CSL have told are really all that much different in their handling of young adulthood after all. There are some differences, of course-- but mostly on the surface.

[cesario.livejournal.com]

You make an excellent point. I myself had always considered Susan's absence in the last book to a willful defection, rather than a banishment. But as you point out, The Shoddy Lands and other pieces of Lewis' writing make clear what I consider to be something far more problematic about Lewis' characterization of the women in his stories. He is very critical of women in general, and very precise in his standards for them. He seems to obsessed with women's vanity, and not terribly comfortable with independent "modern" women. I'd have to do some rereading to come up with specific examples, but there was something about his treatment of Jane Tudor in That Hideous Strength that made me uncomfortable even as a young teenager, when I still religious and believed for the most part that women were meant, to a certain point, to be submissive. I think it's that when he deals with female characters, he goes to some lengths to define what is proper for them as women, where with male characters its not so much about the demands of their gender role as about the demands of whatever challenge they face in the story.

One thing I will say about The Shoddy Lands, though, is that it has one awesome line of description that I find hilarious: "She was so free to talk about things her grandmother could not mention that one wondered if she were free to talk about anything else."

Now I need a Narnia icon...

[rilina.livejournal.com]

I've mentioned on several occasions that I have difficulty rereading the Narnia books with pleasure. I think you're right in arguing that it's too simple to say the problem of Susan is sex--that Christianity and sexuality aren't compatible.

However, I do still find Lewis's treatment of Susan and of other women in the Narnia series deeply problematic. Yes, vanity certainly is problematic, and it can be indicative of larger issues that might lead someone away from Christianity. I don't have an issue with that; clearly it's all too true. Here's my problem: why, of all the things that could lead a woman away from her faith, does Lewis choose vanity? I've known a number of people who have turned their back on the church, and it hasn't been something they've done lightly or painlessly. Sometimes it's because they've come out, and they don't believe there's a place for queers in Christianity. Sometimes it's because they've fallen in love with someone of a different faith, and they don't want religion to separate them from their beloved. Sometimes they just find themselves unable to continue to reconcile Christianity's account of the world with what they see around them. Yes, sometimes silliness and shallowness can drive people away from the church, but more oft than not, at least from the people I've known, there's been a lot more behind the choice to leave. This is not to say I necessarily approve of their choices to leave, but I recognize that the choice is often very hard and only made after serious consideration.

Perhaps it does say something about JKR and co. that they have to reduce the problem of Susan to "Christianity thinks sex is bad." But it does say something about Lewis that when he decided to write about a young woman losing her faith, he chose to show her losing her faith out of vanity and shallowness. That's a straw man argument too.

And I'd also observe that Susan is hardly the only place where we see problematic portrayals of women in Narnia. I don't have a copy of The Silver Chair on hand for reference, but some of the comments that Lewis makes about the incompetent female Head of Eustace's and Jill's progressive school are, IIRC, distinctly mean-spirited. Clearly Lewis had a low opinion of progressive education methods, and when he decided to skewer it--complete with incompetent Head--he made the Head a woman.

So perhaps the problem of Susan isn't always what other people make it out to be. But I still think there's a problem.

[hedda62.livejournal.com]

But that's just the nature of writing characters; you get out of a frying pan and very often wind up in a fire.

How very true. ;)

I have to say I never saw the Susan problem in terms of sex, probably because in the context of the Narnia books I didn't see Lewis dealing with sex at all. It seems clear enough that he was talking about vanity, and about wilful dismissal of a dear and shared experience with her family, and this seems consistent with Susan's character the way he set it up from the beginning. The only problem I have with the whole thing is that he chose Susan as the demonstration model, rather than, say, Peter (Edmund and Lucy are unlikely choices for other reasons). Is he picking on her because she's female - or just because she's easy? (Easy in the sense of unchallenging, I mean, not sexually available.)

Of course, if he'd used Peter there would probably be much complaining (in a rather different tone) about why a young man's obsession for cricket and fast cars should be so damning. But he didn't use Peter, so we'll never know. This is the problem with fiction; you so seldom get alternate endings.

[rj-anderson.livejournal.com]

why, of all the things that could lead a woman away from her faith, does Lewis choose vanity?

Well, it's not just feminine vanity that Lewis disparages; you can see him skewering male vanity in The Magician's Nephew, for instance, in the form of Uncle Andrew. And I think dr_c makes a good point when he observes that Lewis himself admitted to having been corrupted and led astray by vanity in his youth, to his own spiritual detriment -- in other words, he wasn't talking about a sin he hadn't committed himself.

As for why Lewis would choose this rather than some loftier or more altruistic-seeming reason for Susan to reject Narnia, I think it's because, while many of us do justify our rejection of Christ (or a particular teaching of Christ) on those kinds of higher philosophical or emotional grounds, ultimately it does boil down to wanting our own way. Having been a youth group leader for over ten years, I watched far too many young people walk away from spiritual things for precisely the kind of vain and shallow reasons Lewis does describe -- not because they were genuinely struggling with the reliability of the Christian faith or had suffered some profound emotional and spiritual shock, but because they wanted to party and be "cool" and they felt that the church was cramping their style.

As for Lewis making the Head of Experiment House a woman and this being evidence of misogyny, what about Uncle Andrew, the all-around fool and butt of endless jokes (some of them based firmly in the traditional concept of the male ego -- as when Lewis remarks that "the foolish old man actually thought the witch would fall in love with him") in The Magician's Nephew? It seems to me that Lewis was pretty equal-opportunity when it came to portraying shallow and foolish characters. Eustace Scrubb is remarkably silly in the beginning of Dawn Treader, for instance, and in much the same way as the Head seeing as he comes from a "progressive" family.

I think Lewis was less a misogynist than a product of his generation. If you want to see some truly eye-popping sexism and downright weirdness, for instance, try reading Margery Allingham's The Fashion in Shrouds. Every one of the criticisms that have been made of Lewis's portrayal of women in this thread could be levied at Allingham, and then some. Yet Allingham herself was a woman, and not a particularly religious one (or even, that I can recall from her biography, religious at all).

[sinick.livejournal.com]

why should one take a Christian-hating brute like Philip Pullman seriously?

I would have thought that one ought to approach his works exactly as one approaches other works of popular fiction: from the standpoint of rational literary critique.

But then, apparently I'm being naïve; I certainly wasn't aware that, in order to qualify for serious consideration, all literature must first pass a test for theological correctness.

[persephone-kore.livejournal.com]

The idea of Jadis falling for Uncle Andrew really is incredibly mind-boggling, isn't it?

Actually, thinking of The Magician's Nephew, my mind wandered off to consider whether there are in fact two "forbidden fruit" episodes there. The bell isn't presented with the dearest desire/becoming immortal/etc. business -- but it's cast explicitly in terms of knowledge, as well as being a dare.

...I'm way off topic now, aren't I.

[sreya.livejournal.com]

Oh, thank you so much for this essay. I just read the Narnia books this summer, and was very disappointed in The Last Battle when Susan was no longer a Friend, because she had been one of my favorite characters. But I had always been baffled by the claims that she was "excluded because she discovered sex", not only because it didn't read that way to me, but it just didn't seem to fit with the tone. I hadn't taken the time to really sit and think about it though, so it's nice to see such a well reasoned essay.

Good luck with your new child, what an exciting time, and you still took the time to write this essay!

[hedda62.livejournal.com]

Every one of the criticisms that have been made of Lewis's portrayal of women in this thread could be levied at Allingham, and then some.

It is perhaps worth pointing out that none of Allingham's characters is being excluded from Heaven while the rest of her family gets to go.

[rj-anderson.livejournal.com]

You are, but I like where you're going. And I think you're quite right. The first temptation appeals particularly and personally to Digory, the boy who would grow up to be a Professor: the idea of intellectual suffering on account of not fully exploring the scientific possibilities ("or wonder, till it drives you mad / what would have followed if you had"). Polly, on the other hand, is of a more practical bent, and can't see the point of taking such a foolish risk just to satisfy one's intellectual vanity: and of course she's the one who proves to be right in the end. Actually, Polly (like Lucy after her) is usually right, as I recall...

[rj-anderson.livejournal.com]

And it's also worth pointing out, as I did in the essay, that Susan is not being excluded, she is excluding herself. At least for the moment: as I said, we know nothing of what happens to her afterward.

[hedda62.livejournal.com]

Um - except that Susan doesn't really exist except inside the brain of C.S. Lewis...

[sannalim.livejournal.com]

Peter would also cause problems because he is the eldest of the children, I think.

[hedda62.livejournal.com]

I'm not sure exactly why that would be a problem - but the world does seem to discriminate against middle children.

[sannalim.livejournal.com]

I was always most disturbed and saddened by this bit of it:
"Yes," said Eustace, "and whenever you've tried to get her to come and talk about Narnia or do anything about Narnia, she says, 'What wonderful memories you have! Fancy your still thinking about all those funny games we used to play when we were children.'"
How can Susan have forgotten what Narnia was really like, and what she really experienced there, so much as to dismiss it as a "funny game we used to play when we were children"? That always really boggled me.

Having been a youth group leader for over ten years, I watched far too many young people walk away from spiritual things for precisely the kind of vain and shallow reasons Lewis does describe -- not because they were genuinely struggling with the reliability of the Christian faith or had suffered some profound emotional and spiritual shock, but because they wanted to party and be "cool" and they felt that the church was cramping their style.

Maybe they don't even deliberately turn their backs on it, they just... drift away. They decide that something that might be classed with "nylons and lipstick and invitations" is worth choosing over church "just once" and look back on the experience and say "that wasn't so bad, really" and do it again... and pretty soon they've stopped attending altogether and have forgotten the feelings they had when they did attend and were touched by the Spirit.

Perhaps that's part of what happened to Susan.

[rj-anderson.livejournal.com]

Of course not, but I don't see how that changes anything. If you mean that Lewis deliberately chose to have Susan turn apostate as part of the story in order to make a particular point, of course you're right; but as I've said, there's nothing unrealistic or untrue to reality about either the fact that she does so or her motives for doing so. We may say to ourselves, "I wouldn't have written that," or "I would have written it differently," but that's a different issue, a matter of subjective taste and opinion. Not the same as alleging that Susan's abandonment of Narnia proves that Lewis was against sex and/or a dreadful misogynist.

[rj-anderson.livejournal.com]

How can Susan have forgotten what Narnia was really like, and what she really experienced there, so much as to dismiss it as a "funny game we used to play when we were children"? That always really boggled me.

Well, in Romans 1 Paul says that all of us are guilty of the same thing: we all have the knowledge of God ("His eternal power and divine nature") given to us through natural revelation, but we willfully suppress it (literally "put a lid on it", as one does with a boiling pot to hold in the steam) in order to pursue idols (literal and figurative) that are more appealing to us. In that respect I find Susan's abandonment of Narnia all too realistic: no doubt it happened (as you say later in your comment) little by little, as she put her memories of Aslan and Narnia out of her mind more and more in order to concentrate on the things she most wanted out of her earthly life.

[dr-c.livejournal.com]

By the way, here's CSL's own explanation:

The books don't tell us what happened to Susan. She is left alive in this world at the end, having by then turned into a rather silly, conceited young woman. But there is plenty of time for her to mend, and perhaps she will get to Aslan's country in the end--in her own way. I think that whatever she had seen in Narnia she could (if she was the sort that wanted to) persuade herself, as she grew up, that it was "all nonsense."

Letters to Children (http://yourdailycslewis.blogspot.com/2004_12_01_yourdailycslewis_archive.html), 1/22/57

I once pondered the possibility of a fanfic about Susan eventually getting to Aslan's country, "in her own way." It would have involved two children (probably a boy of six and a girl of four). As the story starts, the children (whose Daddy left home and isn't coming back) are wondering why Mummy (who always seems sad) doesn't like animals, and especially lions (even in picture books). Then they discover a toybox that turns out to be magical... but the planning for the first chapter got too depressing, and I abandoned the idea.

[rj-anderson.livejournal.com]

Thanks, dr_c -- that's really interesting.

[sannalim.livejournal.com]

Is he picking on her because she's female - or just because she's easy? (Easy in the sense of unchallenging, I mean, not sexually available.)

I guess it's that I think Lewis chose Susan to defect because her reasons for defection are the least challenging.
I have this nebulous idea that since Peter is the eldest of the children, because his gifts from Aslan were the sword and the shield and he killed Fenris Ulf with them, and because he was the senior of the High Kings of Narnia, Peter is also to a small degree a Christ-figure. Thus, while Susan can just drift away from Narnia because she allows worldly concerns to dominate her thoughts, for Peter to no longer be a friend of Narnia would more strongly imply a deliberate apostacy, a calculated choice to turn his back on Aslan and what he learned in Narnia.

[rilina.livejournal.com]

Well, it's not just feminine vanity that Lewis disparages; you can see him skewering male vanity in The Magician's Nephew, for instance, in the form of Uncle Andrew.
Yes, but as penwiper26 noted above, vanity is "a prominent feature of misogynistic views of feminine sexuality." Vanity (especially the sort associated with nylons) is so often presented as an example of female frippery. In other words, it's a loaded choice. In an ideal world, where we didn't have the backdrop of male and female stereotypes, an author could choose to have a female character behave in a vain manner, and it wouldn't mean any more or any less than having a male character behave in a vain manner. But we don't live in that world, and neither did Lewis.

I think we can agree that people can reject Christ for both shallow reasons and and serious ones. It's probably unfair for either of us to argue which type of reasons is more common, since we're both only drawing on our limited personal experience. But Lewis's choice to only show the shallow reasons? That still feels like a straw man argument: How stupid is Susan for rejecting Aslan and Narnia for lipsticks and nylons? But of course--none of the reasons that people use to reject Christ could ever be the least bit persuasive to smart people or moral people. It's only the weak ones who leave.

Perhaps it's because I'm not so far removed from the youth group crew, but I guess I tend to feel more sorrowful than scornful of peers who I see leaving the church, for whatever reason. We see both sorrow and scorn in the scene about Susan in The Last Battle, but for me it's the scorn that lingers. And it leaves a bad taste in my mouth.

I think Lewis was less a misogynist than a product of his generation. If you want to see some truly eye-popping sexism and downright weirdness, for instance, try reading Margery Allingham's The Fashion in Shrouds. Every one of the criticisms that have been made of Lewis's portrayal of women in this thread could be levied at Allingham, and then some.
Oh, sure, but I don't see how that's really relevant. The Philip Pullmans of the world aside, I don't think people are really arguing that Lewis's gender issues weren't a product of his times, or that he's the only author of that era with gender issues, or that women writers have never written cruel things about their own sex. Certainly Lewis's society gives a context to what he writes, but the "product of his generation" line doesn't make his gender portrayals less problematic. Sexism is still sexism--just as the anti-Semitism in a certain Georgette Heyer novels is still anti-Semitism and just as the classism in some Sayers novels is still classism.

Yet Allingham herself was a woman, and not a particularly religious one (or even, that I can recall from her biography, religious at all).
I realize this isn't always the case among Lewis's critics, but I don't blame Lewis's faith for what I see as his problematic portrayals of women. If anything, Lewis's faith makes me think he should have known better; for a Christian, the "product of one's generation" line is even less an excuse, since they're held to standards that transcend generations and cultures.

I can't help but think that he should have at least had more pity than scorn for someone who knowingly turned their back on Christ.