We might as well get this out of the way: C.S. Lewis would hate this article. No doubt he would have many entertaining quips and responses that would have the crowd roaring in approval at my folly. He’d ask us to focus on the story and not get sidelined by critical analysis (thereby missing the true meaning of the novel). But part of what I’m hoping for in this series is to dive into some of my own experience as a reader, as someone who grew up reading and loving Lewis, and who is now reading those same beloved books as an adult.
And the fact is, as an adult, I can’t help but notice that there is only one adult human woman who appears in The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe. Others are mentioned (Ivy, Margaret, and Betty, who are only referred to as “the servants” who “do not come into the story much” and are never mentioned again). One character who appears to be a woman is not even human (we’ll get to that). The only adult female in the entire book who has any sort of positive character is a beaver. Lewis appears not to know how to deal with adult human females. In this novel, female characters fall into one of three categories: matrons, monsters, or children.
A few notes before we begin:
- Yes, Lewis is a product of his own culture and time, and so is this novel. However, we are reading it today, not in 1950, and it is a legitimate exercise for us to critique and explore his thoughts about femininity from our own viewpoint.
- Like all of us, Lewis’s thoughts and opinions were not static. As we look at his novels, we’ll see a shift in the way he thinks about and treats female characters over the years.
- Since this is a personal exploration, it’s only fair to reveal my personal point of view. I am both a devout Christian (and gladly affirm the orthodox creeds of the faith, just as Lewis did), and a staunch feminist (I’m an advocate for social, political, legal, and economic rights for women equal to those of men). Both of these things no doubt color my reading.
With that in mind, let’s take a look at these three general categories and how the female characters of Lewis’s novel fit in.
MATRONS
Mrs. Macready is our only “true woman” in The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe. She’s a solid, no-nonsense housekeeper who “was not fond of children” and doesn’t say much to the kids other than “keep out of the way.” The kids call her “The Macready” and do their best to hide from her…in fact, they jump into the wardrobe trying to avoid her. She’s a minor antagonist, and all we know about her is that she is married, she works for the professor, she dislikes children, and children don’t much like her, either. I’ll point out again: this is the only human woman who has a speaking role in this book.
The Pevensies’ mother is mentioned, but only in the sense that she is absent (plus occasional statements about Susan acting like her). Likewise, there are multiple mentions of mother Eve—the mother of all humanity—and we see that female children are referred to as “Daughters of Eve” while the males are “Sons of Adam.” She (and, to be fair, this applies to Adam as well) is known only as a progenitor of the human race. Both Eve and Mrs. Pevensie exist in the text as absent mother and nothing else.
Then we have dear Mrs. Beaver. We first meet her as she sits sewing in the corner of the beaver lodge. She already has food for the children cooking on the stove. She takes on all the stereotypical behavior of a generic 1950s housewife. Mr. Beaver and Peter set out to get some fish, and “[m]eanwhile the girls were helping Mrs. Beaver to fill the kettle and lay the table and cut the bread and put the plates in the oven to heat and draw a huge jug of beer for Mr. Beaver from a barrel which stood in one corner of the house and to put on the frying pan and get the dripping hot.” (What was Edmund doing this whole time? Lewis doesn’t tell us. Peter is in charge of getting fish, the girls drain the potatoes and set the table. I guess Edmund sits around and tries to remain masculine.)
Mrs. Beaver doesn’t do much of the explaining about Aslan that comes in chapter 8. She says it will be hard to save Tumnus from the White Witch, and she says that anyone who can face Aslan “without their knees knocking” is either “braver than most” or silly. She does offer an interjection about the White Witch, reinforcing that she’s “bad all through”—but overall Mr. Beaver does the talking. Oh yes, and she points out when Mr. Beaver is painting with too broad a brush when it comes to dwarves (She’s known some good ones, she says, and he agrees he has, too).
Overall, Mrs. Beaver is a solid, dependable, practical person. She points out that they need to leave the house if Edmund has gone to the Witch. She makes everyone pack up food and supplies instead of panicking, and when she asks if she can bring her sewing machine it seems to be a wistful half-joke. She already knows it’s too heavy. Overall, she’s a female who gets full approval in the narrative: kind-hearted, a hard worker who cooks and sews for her husband and their guests; a practical thinker who corrects her husband or gives him advice in a self-assured way that never belittles him, and she lets him do most of the talking when it comes to telling the kids about Aslan, Narnia, and the white witch.
When Father Christmas comes, he gives Mrs. Beaver a new sewing machine and her husband gets his dam all fixed up and a new sluice gate (because in the Narnian beaver-world, the men-folk are in charge of fishing and building things while the ladies are inside cooking and sewing… though it’s unclear what, exactly, requires so much needlework). Our final view of Mrs. Beaver specifically occurs in the last pages of the book, while she tends to the gravely wounded Edmund.
Notice that Mr. and Mrs. Beaver don’t have kits—no baby beavers running around. They aren’t taking on special roles because of the needs of their offspring, they are taking them on because of their gender. Males build and fish, females cook and sew (Mr. Beaver does all the “natural” beaver work and Mrs. Beaver performs the “human” tasks of unnecessary housework). Yes, I know this is a fantasy, but Earth beavers work together to build dams, fish, and raise their kits. Narnian beaver gender roles are a complete invention of Lewis’s, and one of the clearer examples of Lewis’s own gender role expectations.
MONSTERS
In Narnia, human beings are “the Sons and Daughters of Adam and Eve.” Proper respect should be given to the parents of humanity—Mr. Beaver bows once when mentioning Adam’s name. But Jadis, the Queen of Narnia, the White Witch, is neither a daughter of Eve nor a child of Adam. Her mother is Lilith, Adam’s first wife(!), and her father was a giant (much like Loki).
Before we dive into Jadis, let’s talk a little bit about her mom. There are a lot of different myths, commentaries, and stories about Lilith, and they vary pretty widely. It’s all guesswork as to which parts of the Lilith story Lewis found most compelling, though it’s interesting to note that one of the oldest references we have to her is from the seventh century BCE, on a tablet we found in a place with a name of particular interest for us as friends of Narnia… Arslan Tash (which translates as “Stone Lion”).
Lilith was Adam’s first wife. She was cast out of Eden for refusing to submit to Adam (more on this in a moment…the story is even worse than it sounds). Once out of the garden she became the mother of monsters and evil spirits (Jinn in Muslim and Arabic traditions, demons and unclean spirits in Judaism). She was also responsible for stillborn births, sudden deaths of infants, and men were warned not to sleep in a house alone because if you had a wet dream she would come take your sperm and use it to birth hundreds of demons. No, really.
Lilith’s origins are complicated (there are linguistic origins and Jewish midrash that eventually became conflated) and she doesn’t appear in the Bible or any text that Jewish or Christian adherents consider scripture. Here’s the short version of where she comes from: Jewish theologians were trying to explain some conflicting details in Genesis 1 and 2. The key one being that in Genesis 1:26-27 God appears to make man and woman at the same time and in the same way, and in Genesis 2:20-22 he makes the man out of clay and then later makes a woman out of Adam’s rib when “no suitable helper was found for him.” So one theory was, well, there’s a different woman in chapter 1, and Eve is Adam’s second wife.
A key telling of the Lilith story (and one I believe Lewis references in the ultimate battle between Aslan and Jadis in a very strange way) is in the Alphabet of ben Sira, a medieval collection of proverbs, fables, and legends. In one (possibly satirical) tale, Adam and Lilith get in a fight over who should be on top when they are having sex. Adam says he should, because he’s superior. Lilith says, “The two of us are equal, since we are both from the earth.” Then Lilith runs (well, she flies) away and never returns. So then God makes Eve and we pick up with the good wife who does what she is told and lies underneath for sex and okay maybe she has a weakness for exotic fruit but still Adam really likes the new wife best. The important point is this: Lilith, mother of monsters, liked to be on top and didn’t submit to Adam’s authority.
Which, more or less, describes the monstrous Jadis as well. She may look like a woman, but she has taken on decidedly masculine qualities in Lewis’s gender economy: she is strong, taller than a normal human, warlike, and (literally) cold. Her main servant is a male dwarf, a masculine creature with a giant beard, who is shrunken in her presence. She is inhuman.
Mr. Beaver tells us that Jadis doesn’t “have a drop of human blood in her” since she’s a child of Lilith (who ceased to be human once she disobeyed her husband and now can only give birth to evil creatures) and a giant. Mr. Beaver says that humans can go one way or another; if you meet something “that’s going to be Human and isn’t yet” or used to be human or should be human but isn’t then you should “feel for your hatchet.” She’s unredeemable. “Bad all through,” as Mrs. Beaver says.
Jadis has taken on authority that is not hers. She does not know her proper place. As Lucy says, “she calls herself the Queen of Narnia though she has no right to be called queen at all.” Jadis is literally unnatural… she has stopped the seasons to give herself greater power (and the return to the Natural Order begins to weaken her).
Now, let’s look at how the evil monster is defeated. I’m no Freudian, but the source of much of Jadis’s power is her wand. She uses it to turn her enemies into unfeeling stone. The forces of Narnia are struggling to defeat her until Edmund thinks of smashing her wand with his (I’m sure non-phallic) sword. Then Aslan arrives with reinforcements and Jadis looks up to him with “terror and amazement.” The entire fight between Aslan and the White Witch is literally this sentence: “The Lion and the Witch had rolled over together, but with the Witch underneath” (emphasis mine). Then, at the same moment, there’s a burst of allies who flood over the enemy and it’s all cheers and roars and squeals and gibbering. In the next chapter we are told that the Witch is dead.
So Lilith, the monstrous divorcée, has her daughter brought back into line. The masculine authority of Narnia is re-established, with the Emperor-Over-The-Sea and Aslan the Lion (note that he was humiliated in death by the removal of his mane, a key masculine signifier for the lion) back in charge. When Aslan puts the children in charge, it’s made very clear that the oldest male is the highest authority, as Peter ascends to High King.
CHILDREN
Children are, in many ways, the heroes of the Narnia books—as well they should be. Which means that things get complicated, here…
Lucy is the closest thing to a single protagonist in The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, and we’re definitely meant to feel strong feelings of affection for her. She appears in five of the seven Narnia books, and in the end will spend more time in Narnia than any of the others. In this book she’s meant to be eight years old.
She’s consistently disregarded and dismissed by her siblings, with Edmund saying things about how it’s “just like a girl” to get all upset with him over his legitimately terrible actions (this is meant to be read this way as near as I can tell, and is Lewis commenting on Lucy being treated unfairly). A large part of the narrative—Professor Kirk says this straight out—is that Lucy should be judged by her character and track record, not by the fact that she’s young (or, presumably, a girl).
Lucy is the most naturally insightful about what’s happening in Narnia. She’s brave, quick to forgive, and compassionate. I suspect that part of the reason Lucy is so nearly without fault is that she is based on an actual young girl who was a friend (and godchild) of Lewis’s: Owen Barfield’s daughter Lucy (the same Lucy Barfield to whom he dedicates the book). Lucy makes a mistake now and then, but the narrative is always leaning toward giving her the benefit of the doubt, and in the end she’s universally beloved by the Narnians, who call her “Queen Lucy the Valiant.”
We do of course see that Lucy is expected to help with the housework, and when Father Christmas comes he gives her a vial of healing cordial and a dagger, because she’s not to be in the battle, and should only use the dagger to defend herself “at great need.” This is not because she is not brave or because she is eight years old, but rather because “battles are ugly when women fight.” So Lucy is put into the traditional fantasy role of woman as healer, not warrior.
Then we come to Susan. I’d like to look at her in some detail, because it will save us some work in about six books when we get to the “problem of Susan” in The Last Battle. I’ll say this: it seems to me Susan is the person most well suited to Narnia, out of all of the children.
We see from the first pages that Susan is a natural in wanting to take care of her siblings. She’s working hard to keep people positive, says that she thinks Professor Kirk is an “old dear” and, in the absence of their mother, tries to keep the family on track. She tells Edmund when he should get in bed (which he doesn’t do) and tries to keep them optimistic and focused on having adventures (she tells Ed not to complain about the weather and insists that, all told, they’re “pretty well off” with plenty of books and a radio to entertain themselves). She’s quick to break up an argument between Peter and Edmund, and though she thinks Lucy is telling tales about Narnia she’s good-natured about it, and genuinely concerned for Lucy when her sister keeps insisting that it’s all true.
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She’s a clever thinker (she’s the one who says they should take some coats—even though the coats aren’t theirs—with them as they enter the winter wood because “we shan’t take them even out of the wardrobe”). When they find the wreckage of Mr. Tumnus’s home, it’s Susan who says they must do something to help him.
And, perhaps most importantly, it is Susan who asks for permission to accompany Aslan on his sorrowful journey to the Stone Table. Notice also, that after they become the Kings and Queens of Narnia, and they decide in later years to go hunting the white stag, all three of her siblings want to follow the white stag, and it is Susan who holds back and counsels that they follow the white stag no further. It is Susan who realizes on some level what is happening. It is Susan—Queen Susan the Gentle—who tries to get them to stay in Narnia.
Lucy and Susan are the only ones to accompany Aslan to his death, and the only witnesses to his resurrection. They are the fortunate two who get to go with him to save all the creatures in the Witch’s castle. Aslan takes them into his confidence. He allows them to comfort him. And when he is resurrected, there is a scene where they play tag and wrestle and he shares clear, deep affection for them.
This is clearly part of the parallelism Lewis is drawing between Aslan and the Christ narrative. Women were present at Jesus’s death (Mark 15:40, Matthew 27:55-56, John 19:25, and Luke 23:49). It’s important enough that all four of the gospel authors include this detail. It is women who first see the resurrected Christ (Matthew 28:8-10, Mark 16:9-11, John 20:11-18…in Luke the women see an angel and run back to tell Jesus’s followers, Luke 24:1-12). Women are the first to preach the good news of the resurrection to others.
It seems to me that this is a place where Lewis’s cultural values of gender roles for women is overturned by his understanding of the story of Christianity. Susan and Lucy are given access to Aslan in a way that their brothers are not…they are closer, they have a deeper friendship with him, they are allowed into his emotional world in a way that no one else is. It may well be that Lewis saw this as a result of their “emotional wiring” as women (Lucy and Susan can’t sleep because they’re worried about Aslan, while Peter and Edmund are presumably snoring somewhere nearby). But the fact remains that Lewis depicts them, like the earliest female followers of Jesus, not only as peers but as people given special privileges and considerations by Aslan/Jesus.
Then, at the end of the novel, we come to one of the weirder bits, where the four children grow into adults as Kings and Queens. You might be thinking, “Aha! So both Susan and Lucy are grown human women in this book.” Which is, in a way, true. It’s wonderful for our purposes, because although there’s a suspiciously “make believe” quality to their adulthood, it’s also Lewis’s picture of the idealized adult human women.
Susan and Lucy don’t marry or have consorts (Which, okay, yes, would be worse given how the story ends and I am not suggesting they should. And yes, Lewis dances around this, as other countries begin to send ambassadors seeking Susan’s hand in marriage. The point is that Lewis’s characters remain virginal in every sense of the word), and though we’re told they had adventures and made alliances and so on, the one thing we actually see them do as “adults” is play, more-or-less, hide and seek with the stag…the same game they were playing when this whole thing started.
All of which to say, it’s complicated. Susan and Lucy become Queens, not princesses, and they are peers with Edmund, though Peter is High King. Susan and Lucy aren’t setting tables in the castle, they’re hunting alongside the kings and setting up alliances and ruling and much of “their time” (not just the boys) was spent hunting down the remnants of Jadis’s army and destroying them. Of course, in addition, Susan is fending off marriage proposals and many of the princes nearby “desired (Lucy) to be their Queen.”
Lewis’s idealized women are child-like, virginal, and embrace their place under male authority with grace, happiness, and no complaints. “A woman knows her place and is happy with it” would not be a poor summary…though Lewis would no doubt add “And she should be properly cherished for it.” For a woman to walk away from these expectations is to walk away from her own humanity…like Lilith or Jadis. A woman’s only available choices are to be the matronly homemaker or housekeeper, a child (or at the very most, a child-like Queen), or a monster. Lewis doesn’t provide space for other expressions of femininity, whether from ignorance, lack of experience, or philosophical opposition, or some combination of the three. But as we will see, some of this changes in his later life….
And so we come to the end of the tale, when a happy ending requires that women be turned into girls again, and men into boys. Aslan has assured them, though, that “Once a king or queen in Narnia, always a king or queen.”
Unless, of course, you are Jadis.
Matt Mikalatos is the author of the YA fantasy The Crescent Stone. You can follow him on Twitter or connect on Facebook.
“there is only one adult human woman who appears in The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe.”
There’s also only one adult human man, unless you’re counting Father Christmas, but somehow I doubt we’ll get an article exploring that…
@1 Yeah, I haven’t read it in decades but I was pretty sure there weren’t any adult humans around in Narnia in the first book.
The lack of humans of any kind was rather central to the plot, in fact.
@1 Right, there are two adult human males: Professor Kirk and Father Christmas. Both of whom are platformed as strong authority figures who have deep insights into what is going on, and both of whom are good guys.
And if you want an article looking at masculinity in The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe I can certainly provide that.
@@.-@ — I find this series fascinating and would certainly read any other article added to the list.
So.. Susan and Lucy are specially privileged by Aslan and are co-equals with their brothers in the government of Narnia, including the imposition of justice and warfare but it’s still not Good Enough. I give up.
BTW there’s no indication Peter or Edmund have a sex life either.
Lewis lost his mother when he was very young. He went to an all boy schools and was tutored by a bachelor (I think). He went to all boys college, he went off to war. He taught at an all male college. Women were absent from his life.
Until he met his future wife, I can only think of two women (aside from his long-missed mother) that had an impact on his life. The first was a teacher (or nurse?–sorry its been a while since I read his bio) at one of his early schools that promoted his conversion to atheism as a teenager. The second was the widowed mother of one his friends who died in the war. He took care of her and lived with her for years, but by all accounts, she was singularly unpleasant lady.
So taking all those factors into account–it’s amazing his female characters are as good as they are!
@5 Thank you! In two weeks we’ll have a full article about Father Christmas, which should be the last one for LWW.
@6 Ah, well… they’re not co-equals with their brothers. They’re co-equals with Edmund, though. There’s no indication (in this book) that they’re involved in warfare as such, though in one of the later books it’s talked about (it’s implied, as I mention, that they may help hunt down hags and werewolves and such). You’ll notice in LWW Susan never draws her bow… though she blows her horn for help as instructed. And it’s not really an issue of whether it’s “good enough” it’s just a description of what Lewis lays out for us. And it’s true that neither Peter or Edmund have a sex life. But notice that unlike Susan and Lucy, we don’t get comments about the many princesses and queens who are desiring a marital union with them, either. Lewis goes out of his way to draw our attention to Susan and Lucy’s status in this sense.
@7 You’re absolutely right. Comparing how Lewis talks about femininity here with ‘Till We Have Faces (which was written post-Joy and possibly *with* Joy) and you have a pretty big difference… one of the reasons I wanted to be sure to mention that Lewis’s views weren’t static. Depending on which of his books we’re reading we could come to really different conclusions.
“Lewis appears not to know how to deal with adult human females.”
Could be worse, he could have tried to write them anyway. God knows enough other male authors have.
@9 wiredog
That is actually an excellent point.
In a previous life, I wrote a lot about biblical stories and Lillith is one of them that I covered. If anyone is interested, I traced Lillith through her references in Genesis, Isaiah, into the Jewish legends (Genesis rabbah), the Dead Sea Scrolls, and a bit onward.
Did you know: The King James bible originally translated “lillith” as “screech owl”!
https://coatofmanycolors.net/2013/10/30/lillith-bible/
@11 Great overview, Joe! Thanks for sharing.
I am coming from a similar POV (as a both self identified Christian and feminist) – one other point about women as portrayed in the Gospel; Mary is also the first to hear the good news, and even in the parable of Martha and Mary (yet another Mary, lol) is given Jesus’ blessing to sit at his feet and learn, which at the time would be restricted to men.
I’ve heard the Lilith myth before (although not well into adulthood – definitely was not a concept I was raised with). Interesting, some of my own studies/meditations on the story of Adam and Eve as well as things like gender/feminnity involve looking at how Eve was created as an equal to Adam, not a suboordinate, although that was twisted over time.
That said I feel like we could probably quibble over some of these analyses – a few of the things, especially your critique of the adult queens as juvenlie could possibly also apply to the adult Kings; do we hear of Peter or Edmund marrying?
While there are definitely some things that make me cringe or roll my eyes, I think sometimes it’s easy to get to a point where things get picked over with a fine toothed comb and reasonable human choices/traits become overly significant when they might not have intended to symbolize anything. However, I think it’s worth looking at if portrays of Mrs. Beaver or Susan, for example, do represent a kind of unquestioned acceptance of the status quo as it was at the time. Jadis is also an interesting case – I hadn’t really thought of her as a character who is portrayed as somebody who ‘doesn’t know her [womanly] place’ but rather a run of the mill tyrant. That said, my first exposure to Narnia was the animated film and I don’t think you learn that Jadis was the daughter of Lilith and the implications that would have. I wonder if Lewis was intending to make that point, or if it was just an example of his hodgepodge mythology. That said, he would have been presumably educated enough to know the implications.
@8 one interesting thing about Lewis calling out Susan/Lucy’s romantic prospects is that in some ways it’s almost counter cultural – he’s perhaps going out of his way to point it out in a way he doesn’t with Peter and Edmund, but one of the things that stands out is that they are rejecting them (and the narrative does not judge them negatively for that). Given the context he is writing in, it would be pretty normal for the women to be courted and expected to marry, so perhaps Lews is pointing it out to call out that they’re not going that path.
That’s just my own reading though :)
@Lisamarie I think that’s totally a possible reading, although the fact that Peter and Edmund’s romantic possibilities aren’t mentioned at all argues that it’s rooted in something specific about Lewis’s ideas of femininity, and it’s *definitely* complicated regardless with the idea that he’s about to turn them back into children in a few pages. I agree that there are things here that were not intended by Lewis as a specific point, but they are indicators of his worldview regardless.
I was trying to stick pretty closely to LWW, but Lewis’s portrayal of Susan here (including the not marrying bit) become more interesting when we get to her (dis)inclusion in The Last Battle, and part of what I’m doing here is laying some groundwork for when we get to that book some day a million years from now.
Yeah, my idea is just that, generally, for men, bachelorhood is more acceptable anyway so it’s not quite as ‘out of the ordinary’ that they wouldn’t have married.
Granted, I think it’s totally possible that given his unconscious bias he just didn’t even think about it. Women are typically viewed as ‘more relational’, etc. But in some ways it’s a litlte similar to how, back in the day, from a certain point of view, the existence of nuns, consecrated religious/virgin women, etc was in a way, a progressive thing as it was actually a path for women to have their own spiritual life and calling that was not centered around marriage/motherhood and there are historic sants who fled arranged marriages to live in convents/what not. I’m not saying it’s always a perfect thing, and of course that whole vocation can be pushed or inordinately exalted in problematic ways, but I will say that as I’ve spent a lot of time talking about this stuff in other circles, there definitely is something refreshing about that idea, as opposed to some of my friends who are in a mileau where really, wife/motherhood is their sole calling. (Which, of course I’m not knocking either, I am also a wife and mother :) and there has also been more awareness and recognition of married women saints.)
@14 Resisting and rejecting marriage is also a big thing for female saints.
@17 – jinx :)
As with most writers, Lewis is at his best when he writes hat he knows. He knows bachelors and professors, he has a fondness for mice and and he has an excellent recollection of how children view their world. In all of the Narnia books, the children are always referred to as children despite their growing older. Peter and Susan, Shasta and Aravis, Jill and Eustace are all well into their teens by their later adventures, but they all seem to exist in a preadolescent world. This is useful as one wonders if Lewis eve talked to a teenage girl in his life!
@19 at some point in his life, one of Lewis’ close friends, JRRT, had a teenage daughter. So possibly there was interaction. I haven’t been interested in Inkling stuff, but have a hazy impression there was more interaction between CSL & JRRT than just at that pub, including dinner parties at the Tolkien’s house and such like.
My interpretation is that Peter was High King as the oldest and their is no indication his being male is the driving factor.
@16-20 All fair points!
@21 Definitely a possibility. Of course Lewis did choose the ages of his characters so there is a sense in which High King vs High Queen was Lewis’s to decide (also of course it could be that “High King Peter” has theological resonance with the Apostle Peter).
Certainly Peter in the Last Battle holds the Keys to the Kingdom.
Peter’s role as High King seems to be more of a tie-breaker power most of the time. There are four thrones and they seem to share power equally despite Narnia being a patriarchy. Lewis’s view of marriage was similar–equal partners in all things with the husband being the ultimate decider in a stalemate.
Lewis had an older brother who he was close to all his life. Peter is the classic good older brother –not above flaws and mistakes, but inherently decent and good. He made Edmund, the little brother much like himself, the sneaky little traitor, the one most in need of redemption.
Lewis published one short story, “The Shoddy Lands”, in which he comments on the interior life of a young woman (as he imagined it). Ursula LeGuin had some very pungent things to say about it – unfortunately I can’t remember where, it was in one of her earlier books of criticism.
Thought that this might be of interest to those looking at Lewis’s views on women.
Two notes on this:
1. Is Mrs. Macready really married, I don’t remember that point. After all if you’re a Downton Abbey fan or know anything about servitude in Pre-1950s England, all head housekeepers and head cooks, regardless of their marital status, were given the honorific of Mrs. to denote their exalted status below stairs. Mrs. Patmore and Mrs. Hughes weren’t married during much of the run of the show (and in the film Mrs. Patmore remains a spinster while Mrs. Hughes is now Mrs. Carson, but that’s beyond the point).
2. Yes, we can say that Lewis was a product of his time, but, at the same time and in the same social circle of friends, he had Tolkien who though there aren’t many women in his books either. His quality certainly made up for lack of quantity. I’m sure that Tolkien (creator of Luthien, Eowyn, Galadriel, etc.) had something to say about Lewis’s female roles in his books. Or at least, I hope the Good Professor gave a nice lecture to his fellow Inkling about certain things!
@24 oooo if you find that definitely link it back!
@25 Okay, I did not know that! So, no guarantee she’s married, as I was just going off the “Mrs.” signifier.
“The Shoddy Lands” is offensive. There really isn’t any spin you can put on it. I usually group it under the Curmudgeonly Chronicles of C.S. Lewis along with his essay about how he hates Christmas carolers at his door.
In the short story, Lewis is trapped inside the mind of a young lady. So everything is seen from her “warped” perspective–cut flowers in a shop window are more beautiful than those found in nature, etc. While Lewis does hint that the inside of his own brain is just as screwed up, he really doesn’t have anything nice to say about young women. The whole essay seems to be penned to his former pupils–warning them from bringing any lady friends along for a visit as Lewis doesn’t want to meet them.
Something tells me that Tolkien lecturing Lewis about women would be the awkwardest speech given in the English tongue. They were both great writers and by all accounts, very good men. But women–not their specialty.
@26 Matt M –
found an online PDF of the original story, to my surprise – https://www.ele.uri.edu/faculty/vetter/Other-stuff/The-Shoddy-Lands.pdf
On quick scan it looks as though a bit of Christianity slips in towards the end.
Google Books gives access to at least some of what Le Guin had to say about Lewis and women at https://books.google.ca/books?id=QK6TYg32CocC&pg=PA243&lpg=PA243&dq=the+shoddy+lands+lewis+%22le+guin%22&source=bl&ots=9DuUvWYhXB&sig=ACfU3U1S2bduDeiqDw4FH1ttMVQI6Pu0hA&hl=en&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwiL4KnBnJ3mAhXiNX0KHR09BNEQ6AEwA3oECAoQAQ#v=onepage&q=the%20shoddy%20lands%20lewis%20%22le%20guin%22&f=false
An interesting piece. I’d be interested in discussion of female characters beyond TLLW, such as Aravis and Jill, who are some of Lewis’ more dynamic and heroic-yet-flawed female characters in the Narnia books.
As far as “wars are ugly when women fight”, I’m willing to completely give Lewis a pass on that. He’s a veteran of World War I. A man who looks at the Somme and Ypres and thinks “no woman should have to go through this” is only wrong in accepting that it’s something any man should have had to go through. It was hell on earth and no one should have had to experience it. That’s not men denigrating women, that’s men shortchanging themselves.
@27/28 Thank you! Looking forward to reading this. I think I read Shoddy Lands a million years ago but I do not remember it at all.
@29 I agree with you 100% on the war paragraph. “Wars are ugly” is a good sentence on its own.
I’ve been trying to keep the focus narrow to the book we’re reading, because otherwise we’d be bouncing around all over the Lewis canon… but I think it would be interesting to dissect some of this as we move through the Narniad. His views really do shift over time in some interesting ways.
In another book (the first one in the in-world chronology), Jadis is the last inhabitant of a dying world that comes to Narnia through a portal. Is that compatible with the Lilith story?
Then in a later story there is the Green Witch who is implied to be her sister in some sense.
@20 – An adult interacting with a teenager is still an adult interacting with a child – there is (quite properly) a level of distance and an understanding of the fundamental inequality and power imbalance. And the occasional interaction with the child of a friend/colleague does not (and should not) lend itself to familiarity.
The critical point is that Lewis never interacted with women/girls as peers or equals. Not as children or teenagers of the same age, not as colleagues. His female characters are archetypes, his male characters are far more rounded. Female characters are not given the chance for growth and transformation that Edmund or Eustice gets.
@29: this seems exactly right to me. Thanks.
Getting back to dwarfs, in Lewis’ The Pilgrim’s Regress, characters devolve into dwarfs as they get wrapped up in different kinds of extremism. I think some of this carries over into the Narnia books. They often represent a kind of stunted humanity.
A couple points about Susan. I think we see some signs of her eventual fall in this book. Susan is the one who says they shouldn’t tell Edmund what happened to Aslan. On one level, this seems logical–spare Edmund the trauma and guilt. On another level, she’s a witness to the crucifixion and resurrection saying they shouldn’t tell the people who’ve benefited from Christ’s sacrifice because it will make them feel bad.
She’s also the one who is most likely to give into fear. She wants to go back home when she begins to realize how dangerous Narnia can be. Following the white stag may be dangerous but it’s also part of their destiny. Susan’s argument to turn back may be sensible but it’s still the wrong choice (being the sensible, let’s-not-get-ourselves-killed-doing-something-stupid type, I have a hard time getting passionate about that point, but Susan is still the one who sees “Call to Adventure” on the phone and lets it leave a message).
When Lewis talks about women and battles, that may be his sexism. OK, not “maybe.” It is. But, it’s also a statement by someone who lived through the horrors of World War I. When he says battles are “terrible” when women take part, I can’t help wondering what firsthand nightmares he’s reliving (other than, obviously, the kind you fight off by making sure your fictional eight-year olds are armed and ready to defend themselves).
As I get older, my impression is that the LWW was very much informed by Lewis’s complicated homelife – he and his brother shared their house with a much older woman and her daughter. Lewis and the older woman – ‘Minto’ – were definitely an item at one stage.
What has this to do with the LWW? Well –
(1) The White Witch vs Aslan. We tend to see Lewis as a pipe-smoking old don – the product of a typically patriarchal milieu – but his relationship with Minto was characterised by dominance on her part and submissiveness on his. Whatever floats your boat, eh? Minto was also a virulent atheist, something that became more and more of an issue after Lewis’s conversion. Lewis was in a predicament – the addictive nature of his relationship with Minto vs his rediscovered Christianity. What to do? In the LWW, Lewis casts himself in the role of Edmund, the central thesis being that his beliefs (in the form of Aslan) helped him banish what was dysfunctional in his life. This was just so much wishful thinking, btw. He wrote LWW while Minto was dying in a nursing home. Like most of us, he didn’t resolve his issues – the natural course of events resolved his issues for him.
(2) Susan. Lewis’s domestic set-up mimics the Pevensies as a unit – especially if you see Edmund as a self-portrait. There were four people living in that house – two men and two woman. Minto’s daughter was easily the youngest, the baby of the group (much as Lucy is in the book). I reckon this is an interesting example of a real person being the basis for two separate characters inhabiting the same fictional universe. Minto is Susan chiefly because that is the place Minto occupied within the household hierarchy – but she’s also the White Witch. I think this dual role is one reason why Lewis is so ambivalent about Susan as a character.
I’m so glad to see a post about this! I could give LWW a pass, but taking everything of his I’ve read into account, he does seem to have a problem with women or at least the way he writes about them. It comes up in The Silver Chair and The Last Battle, in The Screwtape Letters and Mere Christianity, and especially in Perelandra and That Hideous Strength. I can believe that his home life and later experiences had a lot to do with it, as well as being a man of his time, place, and social situation. I think he also had philosophical ideas about gender, as he did about many things, and didn’t always do a great job of separating his philosophy from his faith (which is fine in one’s own head but sort of a problem when you’re trying to teach others about Christianity). On the other hand, according to “A Sword Between the Sexes?”, by Mary Steward Van Leeuwen, the way he actually acted towards women in his life was much more egalitarian.
@31 This is such a good question, and I think we’re going to have to look at it when we get to The Magician’s Nephew. My feeling is that he didn’t know all the backstory for Jadis when he wrote LWW and it will be interesting to see if he’s consistent here.
@34 All great points and interesting thoughts. Thanks for sharing your insights.
@35 That’s SUPER interesting and a really fascinating read. I’ve never been completely convinced that the sexual relationship with Mrs. Moore actually happened… but I agree there are plenty of weird complicated things happening there regardless.
@36 I was originally going to start this series with the Space trilogy, and I agree with you… honestly LWW may seem like a softening of his ideas about women in comparison to those novels.
@37 I really hope this reread lasts long enough to get to the Space Trilogy! And The Great Divorce and The Screwtape Letters! I understand why we’re doing Narnia first and I’m down for it, but his other stuff is more interesting to me.
Lewis was also an admirer of the author George MacDonald who (among other works) wrote a fantasy novel called Lilith: A Romance. Lewis wrote of MacDonald that, “I have never concealed the fact that I regarded George MacDonald as my master; indeed, I fancy I have never written a book in which I did not quote from him.” There is even at least one edition of Lilith with an introduction by Lewis (see https://www.eerdmans.com/Mobile/Products/6061/lilith.aspx). Sadly, I have not read MacDonald’s novel nor Lewis’s introduction. Perhaps someone who has could let us know if MacDonald’s novel influences the development or characterization of Jadis.
@38 That’s the plan! We’ll be doing this for a long while. :)
@@@@@ 39 I read some MacDonald after learning that about Lewis. I could take or leave his stories, but his sermons are wonderful!
@31:
Jadis is the last inhabitant of a dying world. Is Jadis (the White Witch) a Melnibonean?
Also, if her sister was the Green Witch, why didn’t our heroes drop a house on Jadis to finish her off?
‘The Snow Queen’ must have been a big influence (especially given how Kai falls under the Snow Queen’s spell, just like Edmund succumbs to the White Witch). Another lesser known influence (given Lewis’s Ulster background) is more than likely the Cailleach:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cailleach
@39 I haven’t read Lilith in a long time, but as I recall in that particular telling Lilith is an angel who is given to Adam as his wife, but she isn’t content to submit to Adam and instead orders him to bow down and worship her. In this story she has a daughter with Adam, who Lilith subsequently murders in the course of the novel. It’s a very intense, dream-like allegorical novel, and definitely worth your time if you like heavy symbolism and some weird, weird stuff. As I recall the main character does enter another world through a mirror in that one.
@41 I can’t put my hands on it right at the moment, but I have a memory that Lewis specifically mentions the Snow Queen connection in his letters.
@24 & 26
I’m late to the dance, but Le Guin’s criticism is indeed in Dancing at the Edge of the World. I recently reread it, had forgotten how good the whole book is.
One of the things I liked about Narnia as a child was how active the girl characters are: not just Lucy, especially Jill and Aravis. And LWW has my favorite sequence in all the books, “And when he is resurrected, there is a scene where they play tag and wrestle”. Aslan literally being unable to contain his returned vitality is a thrilling and marvelous contrast with his previous surrender and death, and an interesting contrast to “Noli me tangere” in the Bible.
I didn’t think much about Jadis’ gender until I hit the witch in The Silver Chair, and isn’t there an evil woman/witch in The Magician’s Nephew? Well, once is a coincidence; twice is a fluke and thrice is a pattern. Like Dickens, Lewis is fine with initiative and agency in a girl, but puberty ends all that. And an adult female under no male’s control is a witch and a villain as a matter of course. Finally, the Sons of Adam/Daughters of Eve stuff gets really old, really fast. One could refer to all of them as “humans”, but Lewis occasionally thinks that men and women are different species.
Yes, Lewis was a man of his time, but Virginia Woolf had written A Room of One’s Own, Three Guineas (which refers to Oxbridge) and all her novels before her death in the 1940s; Dorothy Sayers, also a devout Christian, wrote serious feminist essays in the ‘30s; and there was lots of fiction, even fantasy, with a more balanced view of gender (e.g. by Naomi Mitchison) well before the 1950s. This is a real negative when I return to the Narnia books; those less interested in the issue may hardly notice it.
Thanks, Matt, for a thoughtful essay.
Actually it’s only two evil witches. Jadis is the White Witch. We also have an evil magician in Uncle Andrew. And a murderous usurping uncle in Miraz. Did Lewis also have a problem with adult men too?
Some people have theorized that Jadis/the White Witch is also the Green Witch. In Prince Caspian, they talk about bringing her back from the dead. Green, as Lewis would have known, was the Celtic color of death. There are hints that she’s dead (or undead) and can only appear above ground for limited periods under limited conditions. In this theory, Rillian is not just her key to becoming queen but to returning to life.
That’s an interesting idea. The witch isn’t human, maybe she can’t simply be killed.
@@@@@ 46
Yes, there are male villains in Narnia, who are more than overbalanced by strings of virtuous male kings, not to mention (male) Aslan and the (presumably male) Emperor-across the Sea. All the powerful female figures not under male control are evil and, by their opposition to Aslan/Jesus, ungodly as well. One may not want to see this, but that doesn’t erase it.
Ursula Le Guin had rather similar problems with gender in the early Earthsea books, but she developed her thinking through energetic discussion with a robust feminist community, and changed her approach in the last books. She wrote an excellent essay about her evolving thinking, in relation to The Left Hand of Darkness, that’s also in Dancing on the Edge of the World.
P.S. while I’m here, I misspoke/mistyped above: I intended to say that Lewis sometimes writes as if he thinks men and women are different species, not that he actually thought so, which of course I can’t know.
There’s the adult Queens Susan and Lucy, Queen Helen, Ramadu’s daughter, the adult Polly Plumber, a happy and successful older single woman, Diggory’s much loved mother who is his motivation for many of his actions.
@50
all “properly” under control of a “superior” male, no? If the Star’s Daughter is such a powerful character, why not give her name, rather than her father’s. That looks like trying to prove my point.
@52
I’m not sure I’d like to say that Aravis in The Horse and His Boy is under male control – proper control or otherwise. In fact, she is explicitly rebelling against her fathers attempt to marry her off to the Tisrocs’ Grand Vizier.
I’m not sure how you could get a more perfect defiance of patriarchy.
@51, an alternate explanation is her namelessness is supposed to imply her numinous nature. But of course if you’re desperate to be offended…. By the way, what man controlled Miss Plumber?
@50 Queen Helen and Polly Plummer are great examples of Lewis’s thoughts about women changing over time and we’ll certainly get to that… but one of the big clues is that Helen is named after Helen Joy Davidman!
@@@@@ 51
ah, the gentle whoosh of the goalposts shifting …
As to Miss Plummer, wasn’t it Uncle Andrew?
You and I are strangers to each other. You have no basis for making assumptions about reasons why I might say something you don’t agree with.
No it wasn’t. Polly is a successful and happy single woman in The Last Battle.
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There has been a lot of work done discussing Lewis’s attitudes towards women. The biases we see playing out in the stories are mere hints of his attitudes – he’s far more explicit in his actual theological work, and a lot of it is very distasteful. He’s very much a gender essentialist, and also does an awful lot of using the analogy of gender to understand human’s relationship with god – with god as masculine, and humanity as feminine, with the feminine being very much defined as being limited and subordinate to the masculine.
If you look only at these children’s stories, in isolation, it’s easy to make excuses for Lewis, but when you look at his work as a whole, it is very clear that his understanding of women was very limited, and he tended to let what he thought was theologically correct override any observations of what actually was in the world, particularly observations by women about how women are.
I’ve linked to a pretty good article below – not too long, and if you can access JSTOR through your library, you can read it for free.
Bartels, Gretchen. “OF MEN AND MICE: C. S. LEWIS ON MALE-FEMALE INTERACTIONS.” Literature and Theology, vol. 22, no. 3, 2008, pp. 324–338. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/23926893
There’s an interesting bit in ‘That Hideous Strength’; Ransom explains to Jane Stoddard why she must at all costs keep her husband from accepting an offer from NICE. Jane replies her husband won’t believe any of that. Ransom replies that she must ‘- put it as your own wishes. You are his wife.’. What’s fascinating here is Lewis’s clear implication that a wife’s wishes regarding a man’s career decisions should have considerable, even decisive weight.
@58, I mean, that’s not an uncommon interpretation of femininity and masculinity as spiritual realities and something beyond physical gender that humanity is only a mirror of. I’ve personally not found it distasteful or limiting (obviously ymmv) in my own study or experience. Although I tend to prefer St. Edith Stein’s writings on the topic, especially her emphasis on individuality first, and general traits second, as well as the idea that the perfect person (Jesus) unites both. (Chesterton, on the other hand, drives me up a freaking wall, and what you mention kind of sounds like he probably takes the same tack…)
And I’m definitely able to believe, at least early in his life, his exposure to women and knowledge of them as actual, individual human beings instead of archetypes, would be quite limited.
Lewis’ attitudes towards women also shifted over time. His late marriage also impacted how he portrayed women. Orual in “Till We Have Faces” is an amazing creation. The desire of the main character to be beautiful, for example, isn’t the shallow thing it is in his other books. In this book, Lewis seems fully aware that beauty isn’t a superficial standard women embrace, it’s a superficial standard many women feel their worth is judged by. But, that beauty is a two-edged sword. Orual’s sister, Redival, is even more isolated than Orual, but it takes Orual years to see that Redival’s beauty doesn’t make life easier for her. Their sister, Psyche, suffers even more harshly. People make assumptions about her because of her beauty than blame her for their assumptions (see “rape culture” and “victim blaming” for details). But, beauty is also a metaphor for the things associated with it: worth acceptance, even divinity.
At the end of his life, Lewis was working on a book about Helen of Troy told from Menelaus’ point of view. Lewis was inspired by a tradition that said Helen had, in fact, never been in Troy. The woman Paris ran off with and that the Greeks fought over for ten years was an illusion. Menelaus finds the real Helen in Egypt.
The original story was sending an anti-war message. Lewis, however, did it the other way around. The Greeks find the woman they have been fighting and dying over for a decade is middle-aged and no longer beautiful. Menelaus was going to be given a choice between a beautiful illusion and the flawed but human reality. Where stories like “The Shoddy Lands” showed beauty as an obsession of shallow women, this story showed it as Menelaus’ problem that was keeping him from rebuilding his relationship with Helen and from seeing his part in why that relationship had fallen apart (gotta love the bit where Menelaus’ is justifying things he did by thinking that Agamemnon did it, and it’s not like he and his wife have any problems. . . .)
@58
many thanks. I didn’t even know about Gaiman’s story “The problem of Susan”, so the first page has already put me ahead.
@59 My issue with Lewis’ writing is less about whether women have or should have power of some sort as much as whether they have the type of agency I’d actually want. I don’t particularly want the power or responsibility of trying to get my husband to change his career because some other man has told me that’s what needs to happen. I want the agency to pursue my own passions, to partner with someone else as I choose, to bear children or not as my partner and I choose, to work and play with others without concern for their gender, and to use my own reason when discerning the will of God in my life. In much of writing, Lewis seems to consider that kind of woman as the exception rather than the rule.
@62 Susan-fic is its whole sub-subgenre :-) I was looking for a wonderful story about Susan falling in love after LWW and then having to leave and then being called back in Prince Caspian and how that affected her. I didn’t find it, but I did find this, by Jo Walton:
“The worst of it was that she’d quarrelled with them
And now they were dead, all dead, her parents too,
Nobody left but her awful aunt and uncle,
Their faces collapsed like their future.
Still she stood at the graveside, calm, composed,
Pale-faced, with folded hands, her shoulders back,
She’d been a queen once-in-a-dream,
She might be bereft but she knew how to behave.
If only they’d not quarrelled in these last few years…
They’d called her shallow and she’d called them babes,
They had not wanted to grow up: they never would.
She, more than ever, knew she had no choice.
The service droned, but something — she looked up
Saw cassock, surplice, and a lion’s eyes. “
— Jo Walton
As I keep saying there’s no ‘Problem of Susan’. Lewis himself said she was intended to show how it’s possible to reject Grace. Susan has done the rejecting, for whatever reason. She is young and very beautiful and her temptations are many. But she is still a Queen, even if she’s trying to forget it, and Aslan still loves her. All she has to do is let herself remember.
@65 It’s totally fine that it’s not a problem for you. That doesn’t change the fact that enough readers have wrestled with it for it to have spawned several derivative works. Lewis may have been trying to show one thing, but we’ve all been in situations where what we wanted to say and the way it came across didn’t match, and if one looks at his writing, the idea that he didn’t think much of women is definitely defensible. Of course you don’t have to agree with those interpretations, but it sounds like you don’t want anyone to have interpretations different from yours.
I beg your pardon, that wasn’t my intent at all. I happily concede your right of interpretation as you do mine. Agree to disagree.
@67 No worries, it’s hard to work with tone online! Looking forward to more discussions in the future!
It is hard to convey tone, isn’t it? Hence emojis
Austin Grossman (yeah, Lev’s brother) had a book out years ago – Soon I Will Be Invincible’ – one chapter of which is a riff on Susan and what it must have been like to be left behind. It would make a neat little short story in its own right, and I’d actually rate it over ‘The Magicians’.
@@@@@ 59 – Did you even read the article I linked to in @@@@@58? Because it has an entire section on ” Reforming the New Woman: Jane Studdock in That Hideous Strength.” Basically, the story focuses on the transformation of Jane from an emancipated, non-religious woman to a Christian woman who has given up her intellectual pursuits for the domestic.
And look at your example. There are reasonable, rational reasons for the husband not to take the job. In an equal relationship, discussion of something as important as a new job would happen between husband and wife as equals. The husband would listen to the wife’s ideas and respect her intellect. But Jane says her husband won’t do that, won’t listen to the reasons not to take the job. And Ransom says that’s okay. Because even if he won’t listen to her ideas or respect her intellect, her husband should cater to her feelings. Which is condescending. And puts her in a subordinate position – he’ll cater to her feelings if he’s a nice guy, but he doesn’t have to listen to or respect her ideas.
And very firmly rooted in Lewis’s theology that intellectual pursuit is masculine, and, with a few specific exceptions, intellectual connection isn’t possible between men and women.
Lewis did come to see some intellectual value in some women towards the end of his life. But it didn’t change his theology or worldview. Rather, he seemed to see these women as exceptional, with masculine qualities and virtues, without rethinking his basic premise that the feminine was to the masculine as mortals are to god.
Another case of different interpretation. Agree to disagree. Personally I just find the idea a wife should have that degree of influence over a professional choice by her husband interesting. I’m not sure I agree with it.
@63
yep. Very well put.
@64
thanks!
This series is SO GOOD. Just popping up out of lurkdom to say so!
@74 THANK YOU so much!
Everybody else: I am enjoying your comments so much, I’m reading all the links you’re sharing, and learning along with you and from you. It’s so wonderful to have such an engaged, thoughtful, and kind-hearted group of folks together on this journey through Lewis’s work.
Oooh, I found the Susan fic I was looking for earlier: https://ursulav.livejournal.com/1510426.html
kaci, you might take a look at this series, especially the final piece:
@77 This is so poignant! Thank you!
I’m so excited for you to get to The Last Battle and the Problem of Susan.
People have mentioned Jane in the planetary series, but the aspect of Jane’s story that I find crushing is the way the text censures her for not yet bearing children. She has not merely refused her personal feminine role; by preventing a second Incarnation, she damages Creation. (As Merlin says to Ransom late in That Hideous Strength.)
@79 Yes, I found that very upsetting too. How was she supposed to know?
@79 I am excited for that too! I want to build all the pieces as we’re going through all seven books. I feel like most of the defenses and accusations about Susan are built on a pretty casual read or half-remembered childhood responses to it. I’m honestly not sure what that conversation is going to look like, but I’m excited to get there!
Fascinating article and intriguing comments. My thoughts on 2 key female characters:
1-Susan … in rereading the series as an adult I likewise wondered why Susan was kept out of Narnia in The Last Battle. So when I read again, I looked for hints. The main point Lewis kept making was how beautiful Susan was. This may have condemned her, or excluded her (at least for time being) from Narnian heaven. The fear that men exhibit about the power of women’s beauty may be why Lewis ‘condemned’ Susan. A beautiful woman is selfish and shallow (and often a manipulator or ridiculer of men!). Being a beautiful young woman, undoubtedly pursued by many young men, it’s no surprise that Susan would rather dismiss the events in Narnia as those ‘childish games’ she played with her siblings. By Lewis’s assumptions of what young women were like, especially beautiful young women, Susan would be fulfilling her natural role of attracting and manipulating young male admirers. However, there’s undoubtedly a window open to Narnia – as Susan aged and lost her looks, she might merit the Narnian heaven again. Nonetheless I think there’s more enigma to Susan than any other character. (I’ve not read all the other commentary, so maybe there’s more enlightenment awaiting me!)
2 – Lucy is a very typical little girl, and (Lewis makes clear) not the ‘looker’ that Susan is. That is probably a good thing, in Lewis’s view! As youngest not just of Pevensie children, but of all the children who enter Narnia, she’s the most innocent. Women throughout Christianity have drawn respect from men for their greater faith and humility. Lucy represents all the “Christian” qualities, including faith and humility, that women and young children are admired for in the Christian tradition (especially Catholicism).
@82 Although interestingly, in That Hideous Strength (part of the Space Trilogy), Lewis has a character reading/remembering that “the beauty of a woman is the source of her husband’s joy and her own” or something to that effect, and it’s presented as a true statement.
@82 Although interestingly, in That Hideous Strength (part of the Space Trilogy), Lewis has a character reading/remembering that “the beauty of a woman is the source of her husband’s joy and her own” or something to that effect, and it’s presented as a true statement.
I think it’s worth noting (and I apologize if anyone has already made this point, I’ve not the time to read all responses at this time) that although CSL does mention that Susan and Lucy are courted and don’t choose to marry, it’s entirely possible that Peter and Edmund DO accomplish some sort of courting “behind the scenes” etc, and it’s not worth mentioning because marriage was not acknowledged to in any way change a man – his identity/core, etc, while a woman – when wed, and subsequently de-virginized, is meant to change into a person not wholly her Self, but someone belonging to her husband. I believe I read somewhere that I can’t recall that “virgin” was originally defined as a person belonging wholly to themselves.
I’m sorry for not providing a reference to that recall – I’m full of traditional womanly duties today and am using this to avoid all the housecleaning I need to do “P
@85: There’s probably a reason the celebrated “virgin martyrs” of the early Christian church are all female. You don’t see a man getting canonized for refusing an arranged marriage.
I read somewhere that the issue for all those ladies is not so much sex as sex; it was being able to choose for themselves NOT to have sex, not to sleep with whatever man wanted them, not to marry to oblige their fathers. Whether or not they were actual physical virgins was less important than their claim to belong to themselves and therefore to be free to dedicate themselves to Jesus rather than to a husband.
The story of a lot of the female ‘virgin martyrs’ has, in my opinion, been sadly watered down and turned into kind of a soppy, ‘purity’ thing about women avoding that icky sex and thus being more “pure”. A lot of these women (such as St. Lucy) were defying expectations and social comfort in order to do things like serve the poor and pursue a spiritual life which was basically unheard of (think Jesus affirming Mary of Bethany’s right to learn at His feet).
I’d have to look it up but I do know there are some male saints who did go against family wishes to marry and instead became priests and monks. They weren’t martyred but that’s likely more due to the societal influences at the time; unfortunately it was just more ‘acceptable’ to kill women for not wanting to be a part of a marriage where she was basically property.
Just wondering why this Dec 4 article is on Dec 17th’s “New in Series List.” Was the actual new article mistakenly omitted?
@88 If I follow that link, a whole much of the recent comments don’t show up either. Maybe it’s an older link?
@88/89 I’m not 100% sure, but when this first posted it wasn’t connected correctly to the series, so it just may be when it was updated to be correctly connected.
The next article posts tomorrow!
@82: Then again, Narnia had Queen Swanwhite, not said to be “bad” in any way but allegedly “so beautiful that when her face was reflected in a pool, its image remained for a year and a day.” (Possibly misremembered/paraphrased). The star-woman in Voyage of the Dawn Treader was also very beautiful, and “good,” winning the heart of much-lauded King Caspian after he rejected a prospective marriage to the Duke of Galma’s daughter because she (pitiably to Lucy) “squints and has freckles.” I haven’t read any of Lewis’s non-Narnia writings, but going just by Narnia, I would guess that he passes judgement less on a woman’s ‘natural’ beauty or lack thereof than on her ‘vanity’ or ‘manipulation’ or whatever he would call it when she’s conscious of her appearance and seeks to beguile/influence people with it and/or alter it with lipstick, magic spells, or suchlike. An attitude shared by many writers new and older, and many non-writers too.
@91 and they all seriously need to get over it or else stop equating beauty with goodness. Actually both ;-)
I always thought that susan didn’t show up in The Last Battle because she wasn’t dead yet. She had grown up and moved on from Narnia (possibly having a boyfriend/husband, it’s not stated either way, IIRC). Maybe not being a Serious Christian results in me interpreting it differently.
@93 It’s true that she wasn’t dead, but they also say that Susan is no longer a friend of Narnia, and it seems to be implied that that’s why she wasn’t with her siblings.
Wonderful thread to stumble across although as a Vicar did I really need to be this distracted 6 days before Christmas?
There are clearly problems with both racism and sexism in Lewis’s stories but compared with the other staple of my childhood, Enid Blyton, who was contemporary with Lewis, they are much less offensive. Just try comparing Lucy and Susan with Anne and George from the Famous Five. This doesn’t justify Lewis but I do think people need to be read in their own context.
@52
I’m not sure I’d like to say that Aravis in The Horse and His Boy is under male control – proper control or otherwise. In fact, she is explicitly rebelling against her fathers attempt to marry her off to the Tisrocs’ Grand Vizier.
I’m not sure how you could get a more perfect defiance of patriarchy.
Except for the part where Aslan catches her, punishes her by clawing her, and lectures her on the error of her ways. All of which converts her to following and being obedient to him.
On the converse in that book, I love the picture Lewis gives of Aravis and Shasta’s eventual marriage, where they argue and make up so often that they decide to get married so they can do it more conveniently. But Aravis may be an example of Lewis’s evolving views that we’ll get to down the line since it’s the 5th book in publication order.
@94: Right, that’s explicitly the case. The Friends of Narnia were killed in the train wreck because they were gathering for an attempted trip to Narnia by magic ring — Peter and Edmund had just retrieved the rings from Digory’s old home and were at the train station when and where the train carrying the others got wrecked — after they saw a vision of King Tirian asking for their help.
@97: So wait, were Peter and Edmund not in the train wreck then? How did they die?
*checks the book* The train got wrecked when it arrived at the station. Somehow, Peter and Edmund apparently got hit by it in the process. Their parents also happened to be on the train, and died in the wreck, but Susan was absent. And Tirian didn’t actually ask the Friends of Narnia for help. Well, sort of. He desperately called out for their help, and then appeared to a gathering of them as a phantom (in a dream, at his end) and tried to ask for help but couldn’t speak. They nonetheless decided that they needed to go to Narnia, and knew of no way but the rings.
I was sorry a bit for Susan…But have no sympathy for lipstick wearers
Still, she is free to reject Narnia if she pleases (sketchy kind of place; I fully understand Edgars Calormen sympathies)
Aravis is my Narnia heroine…or her friend who though different, is a heroine in a different way.
Is Housework and Heroism incompatable? Look at the Typical Hobbit.
“Still, she is free to reject Narnia if she pleases”
As a fic pointed out: Narnia rejected *her*.
@100 Why on earth would someone wearing lipstick make you unsympathetic to them?
@@@@@ 101,. Susan and Peter are told they cannot return by Aslan. If he wasn’t rejected how was she? Later Edmund and Lucy get the same treatment yet they don’t feel rejected either.
103: whether someone else feels rejected is irrelevant. The fact is that Aslan is high-handed and arbitrary. Lots of good fics explore the horror of aging into adults in Narnia (separated from their parents, though that’s not explored much) and then being forced back into child bodies for a second puberty. Then being yanked back 1000 years into the future (everyone you knew is now *dead*), and then being told “that’s it!”
@104 I love so many of those fics, but at the same time, I don’t think Lewis intended his audience to be thinking through those sorts of implications. I don’t think it’s wrong to do so, of course, but I feel like judging Aslan by the standards of what the Narnia experience would be like for real people isn’t supported by the text because it’s more of a fairy tale. Though there are definitely other things Aslan does that make me wonder a bit about Lewis’ idea of Christ.
Another late party arrival…
This is a great discussion. As I recall, I read the books at about age 10 when my mother was taking a children’s literature class as part of her master’s degree. (I read a lot of good books that year!) In this case, she gave me the books as an example of allegory (Lewis would have been unhappy about that, I suppose) and I read them like everything else. We weren’t a strongly Christian family. I wasn’t expected to take any particular “message” from the books. I actually read SC and HB last, because they didn’t have any Pevensies in them. Dawntreader is my favorite, as a story, but I was most affected by the story of the young Calormene soldier in The Last Battle, and the idea that the name of one’s god is not as important as the nature of that god. As I got older and read more of Lewis, I found many concepts that helped form my (still evolving) ideas about religion and spirituality. Ultimately my theory of redemption is “moral influence” (Jesus as boddhisattva).
Those interested in Lilith might find this study page interesting, especially the story at the end by Judith Plaskow: https://jwa.org/teach/golearn/sep07
I agree in general with the criticism of Lewis’ writing about women, but I find I can still enjoy his work. Nothing in this world is perfect. Sometimes we just acknowledge the flaws and try to find the best we can from a work.
Looking forward to the rest of this series!
@106 I definitely want to talk about that scene with the Calormene soldier when we get to The Last Battle!
It’s really not at all true that Lewis had little contact with women. He had quite a lot of women as friends and acquaintances, and his early journals and his letters make it plain that his life with Mrs. Moore included a very wide acquaintance with all sorts of people (including paying guests, evacuees, lots of neighbors, etc.). His attitudes are 100% his own fault.
Great analyses and comments, but a little disappointed that this isn’t an actual reread of the entire Narnia series as presented.
Also, I can’t talk about Susan without recommending a superb short story by T. Kingfisher (“Elegant and Fine”). The rage and betrayal Susan feels in it has stayed with me ever since I read it, and I absolutely love that. I love that Susan never got over growing up in a position of power — and then being sent back to childhood and helplessness. She had a right to her anger, and Kingfisher embraces it:
https://ursulav.livejournal.com/1510426.html
@109 Oh my goodness, yes, I love that story!
LOVE this series so many plot twists but it is sad that Lucy died only at the age 17
Eh… this post seems to be reaching a bit. More problematic is that Lewis is even bringing the apocryphal Lillith into the mix to begin with, rather than focusing on her origin as a Djinn, aka demon.
Another thing: these are books for children. And one of their axioms is that it is children who in some mysterious way have the power to save and rule the world (Narnia in this case) in accordance with Aslan’s will. “A little child shall lead them.” Lewis has accomplished a literary miracle in making his child protagonists both believable as modern (vintage 1950) children and believable as having the potential for heroism, sacrifice and leadership.
When it comes to rivalry between boys and girls, brothers and sisters, among the child characters in the Narnia books, Lewis consistently sympathizes deeply with the feelings of both, and, on the whole, defends the girls from the stereotyped (“just like a girl”) meanness and arrogance of sense of entitlement of the boys, while showing the girls as equally brave and strong and often a good deal more sensible as well as more in tune with the spiritual world. As a girl reading these books (in England, in the late 1950’s), I particularly noticed this.
It’s true that Lewis had issues with adult women and with what spunky pre-pubescent girls may turn into as they become teenagers. But guess what? A lot of parents of teenagers find themselves missing the lively, curious, un-self-conscious, affectionate nine- or ten-year-old and wondering how they became the sullen, moody, self-absorbed adolescent, subject to peer pressure and making stupid choices. Many are the ten- and eleven-year-olds who themselves are disgusted by the behavior of older kids who have crossed that mysterious bridge of puberty.
Some children’s literature focuses on making that journey enticing, or disarming the child’s fears along the way. Other children’s authors prefer to affirm: you are fully human right now, as a child. There is no hurry: hang on to your child self, don’t lose it to peer pressure and the allures of the “grown-up” world which is really not as glamorous as it wants you to think it is.
It’s clear from the dedication to Lucy Barfield that Lewis believed profoundly that we should become like either “little children” or like the wise and mature, and that a great deal of spiritual peril lies in between. There’s little doubt, also, that his early loss of his mother, his formative years spent in a world almost entirely male; his bizarre domestic relationship with the mother of his dead comrade, and his lack of experience of healthy sexual intimacy until late in life, warped his attitude towards women, and that this distortion of his vision of human nature is particularly distracting for readers today, obsessed as we are with gender dynamic.
I think the big picture, though, is about childhood and adulthood, not about male and female. I think for him the most important part of writing for children was that he hoped his young readers — before they were “too old” to return to Narnia, — would form a deep imaginative vision of what he believed were the true values of the Kingdom of God.
I think another reason Lewis avoids mature women beyond childlike, virginal ones is because he avoids the adult world in general in these books. He regularly dismisses adult concerns as not fit for his story, and depicts them as boring or silly or too serious when they do pop up.
Lewis is one of those authors who concerns himself very much with the world of children, and their perception of adults, not with actual adults. This is why the adult kings and queens rather come off as a child’s understanding of being an adult, rather than actual adults.
The problem with applying our standards to Lewis is that we may be judging, not Lewis, but his time. To take an extreme example: the statement that only men should fight in wars. Perhaps I’m showing my age but this was very widely held until quite recently. Check the dates of when armies let women take combat roles. The exceptions like Soviet 2nd WW snipers were seen as, well, exceptional. We can critique it but to analyse it as a view of Lewis only tells us that his view was conventional.
However, even in context Lewis sometimes doesn’t look so good. He got better over time.
@11 The King James translation actually wasn’t far off – Lilith in hebrew is the Tawny Owl. Layla in hebrew means Night, and Lilith is called Lilith – “of the night” – because it does it’s hunting in the night. Being a predator (it kills and eats small animals) and a night creature, it is a natural name for a feminine demon, isn’t it? But actually, in the old testament (the Jewish Bible, plus some contemporary additions) Lilith is only mentioned once, and there (Isaiah 34,14) the reference is to the bird. Some translations make it “night bird” or “night creature”, but Screech Owl is pretty close to the proper definition.