Here's the actual quote (thanks to a Google search on "Jill Eustace Calormene shy" while waiting for my next meeting here at work):
Jill, besides being disgusted with the Dwarfs, was very impressed with Eustace's victory over the Calormene and felt almost shy.
Perhaps a bit open to interpretation, but the phrases "very impressed" and "almost shy" struck me as at least slightly proto-romantic.
The same text search also brought up the following page (http://www.heartless-bitches.com/culture/kidsbooks.shtml), which (if you'll pardon the site name) credits Lewis for having "evened out the playing field" and gives high marks for feminine independence to Polly, Aravis, Jill, and Lucy-- and that from a source which scarcely seems vulnerable to accusations of "patriarchal" bias! (They also mention Aravis' high-society counterpart Lasaraleen Tarkheena, whom I had forgotten in my post of last night, and who provides a much worse example of "the wrong sort of femininity" than Susan could ever have been.)
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Re: Jill and Eustace
Date: 2003-05-07 08:38 am (UTC)Jill, besides being disgusted with the Dwarfs, was very impressed with Eustace's victory over the Calormene and felt almost shy.
Perhaps a bit open to interpretation, but the phrases "very impressed" and "almost shy" struck me as at least slightly proto-romantic.
The same text search also brought up the following page (http://www.heartless-bitches.com/culture/kidsbooks.shtml), which (if you'll pardon the site name) credits Lewis for having "evened out the playing field" and gives high marks for feminine independence to Polly, Aravis, Jill, and Lucy-- and that from a source which scarcely seems vulnerable to accusations of "patriarchal" bias! (They also mention Aravis' high-society counterpart Lasaraleen Tarkheena, whom I had forgotten in my post of last night, and who provides a much worse example of "the wrong sort of femininity" than Susan could ever have been.)