Susan and Narnia

[Evelyn]

Hum, maybe your right about not giving up on Narnia, but there is still something more to her than that she just didn't believe anymore.

Take her conversation with Lucy in PC. She really acts like she can't even enjoy being there since she knows she's going home again. "You're happy to be here, aren't you?" Lucy askes. "While it lasts." Susan answers.

Its hard to muddle out. I probably should read the books again and just focus on Susan and then try this again.

[Louloudi the Centaur]

Susan not believing in Narnia anymore reminds me of the Parable of the Sower in Matthew 13:22.

"22 The seed falling among the thorns refers to someone who hears the word, but the worries of this life and the deceitfulness of wealth choke the word, making it unfruitful."

Susan, in Narnia, is like the seed among the thorns to me.(In short) She believes in Aslan at first, or seems to. She acknowledges Him and the world of Narnia when she is young, in other words, she begins to grow on it. However, when she is too old for Narnia, she begins to become more worried about "nylons and invitations" than thinking about Narnia/Aslan. She is choked by the "thorns" (image and popularity) and suffers.

Though I've always thought Susan was a bit distrusting of Aslan/Narnia, she did at least seem to want to believe her siblings, as shown in Prince Caspian, that there is a Narnia, and a Lion. Unfortunately, she became like many others, worrying more about life than she should about her faith.

[Lilygloves]

That is a really good allusion, Louloudi the Centaur. It's a good illustration of how each of the Pevensies responded to Narnia. It's hard to imagine someone forgetting Narnia or trying to pretend it's all a game, but then again we Christians have difficulty imagining someone not being able to admit there is a god, not even Jesus Christ. Especially when you talk about a Creator of the universe. Could it all happen by accident? But people still put things away into their minds, even if they know it is true. Just like how Susan put it away into her mind, even though she probably knew in the back of her mind it was true.
It's easy to think that Lewis intended Susan to present the idea that people can lose their salvation, but then again, we don't know. It's not an allegory! Maybe he just wanted to add a plot twist and Susan seems the obvious choice to give that role to.

[Snowfaun]

One thing I thought while I read all the thoughtful posts--Susan was beautiful. In our world, that is a significant issue for a young woman. As a young woman she would be swamped with admirers, other girls would want to be like her, young men would want her attention. It was the forties, her world was a narrow one of marrying well--and she was a teenager. She'd be sought after, the belle of the school dance. In her ordinary world she was something of a princess, she was the head girl of the cool clique. That world held more interest for her than the world of Narnia. The pleasures of her ordinary life drew her away from Narnia.

Would she stay shallow as her life progressed? I don't think so because she did experience such serious and profound life and death issues in her youth, knew courage and love and family, sacrifice and Aslan. I think she would eventually waken.

[Graymouser]

Good point! After PC, Peter would have been studying intensively with Professor Kirke (Digory); they would not only have often discussed Narnia, but would have been delving into Classics, Literature, and Philosophy- following Lewis's own studies with the Great Knock- and also have been exploring Christianity - unlike Lewis.

Lucy and Edmund had their extra trip to on VDT- much longer than their experience in PC, which was only a few days (anybody know exactly how long?), plus they could have shared their memories with Eustace, who was closer to them in age.

And not only being the belle of the ball: after PC, Susan was 13; she was 14 when she went on her trip to America (as I pointed out before, in Summer 1942, the height of the U-boat campaign ), and would have been 17 in 1945.

That's two years younger than my mother, who also lived through the Blitz, as did my father's younger sisters who were the same age (Aunt Gladys the same as Susan), and a lot of their war stories were about how exciting it was to have the attention of, and go dancing with, all those American and Canadian soldiers, and of course that continued for a few years after. (two of my aunts were war brides who married American soldiers when they were 19).

We see a bit of this in the movie VDT when Lucy briefly becomes "Susan".

Another thought: Susan comes back from America, eager to tell all about her experiences, only to find that Edmund and Lucy, not to mention her horrid little cousin Eustace, have been on a much grander voyage, back to that wonderful place from which she has been banned (as she might see it). She might feel resentful at being reminded of that, and not getting all the attention, and turn away to the grown-up world, forcing herself to believe that it was all make-believe.

[Anhun]

To me, the Susan situation is an illustration of Lewis' proto-feminism. Women have the same potential for courage and virtue that men have, as we see in grown-up Lucy. But society in Lewis' day pressured and morphed many women into becoming inferior creatures whose only value was in their external beauty (hence nylons and lipstick ). Susan succumbed to this because, at the beginning of her Narnia experience, she was already on the threshold of adolescence, and would have started internalizing adult gender roles to some extent. Lucy on the other hand, was still a little girl when she entered Narnia. She did all of her growing up in Narnia, before she came back and did it again in England (REALLY weird when you think about it).

[waggawerewolf27]

Anhun, I think you have hit a bullseye in your analysis of Susan. And I think other points made by GM & Snowfaun are tremendous also. Maybe the main difference all along between Susan and Lucy is that Susan would not ask questions, preferring to accept the status quo, unlike Lucy. Susan was a follower, rather than the leader she sometimes thought she was.

When we first see them in LWW, whenever Susan had anything to say, it was usually 'is it safe'? 'I wish we'd stayed at home', or 'let us return back to home'. Or 'ugh'. When Father Christmas said that girls weren't to be in the battle, Susan accepted the status quo but Lucy considered whether she would be brave enough to try. And it was Susan who felt most threatened by the idea that Lucy had been telling the truth about her discovery of Narnia, or that Lucy had really seen Aslan at the gorge in PC.

Although she was young enough to run around in children's games, learn to excel at sport, and enjoy the delights of Narnia the first time around, Susan's idea of a satisfactory pastime at the beginning of LWW was to listen to the radio and read books. Although we learn that Susan had won prizes for swimming and was a skilled archer, she took little joy from her accomplishments. In fact even reading the book I wondered if Susan really enjoyed that second trip to Narnia. Perhaps it was too humiliating that it was her horn that was the means of summoning all the Pevensies to Narnia. There was only a week or so to stay there, with a rather sensational party at the end of it, before Susan returned back home for ever.

By VDT, even reading books was not contributing to either Susan's schoolwork, or her ambitions in life, and so she was able to accompany her parents to America, where she had her best chances of learning to socialise, just as we saw in the film VDT. No wonder that Susan fell by the wayside, when Narnia no longer matched her ideas of everyday reality and her ideas of what was expected of a grown lady. I wonder though if Susan learned anything from her experiences in Tashbaan.

Another thought: Susan comes back from America, eager to tell all about her experiences, only to find that Edmund and Lucy, not to mention her horrid little cousin Eustace, have been on a much grander voyage, back to that wonderful place from which she has been banned (as she might see it). She might feel resentful at being reminded of that, and not getting all the attention, and turn away to the grown-up world, forcing herself to believe that it was all make-believe

.

I wonder if Susan really did come back from America, mentally as well as physically. I liked the idea that Susan was a typical teenager of those pre-Women's liberation times - in a rush to get to her majority at 21 so that she could have a nice fancy wedding and domesticity at home. I doubt she had to force herself to do anything. Susan had merely grown away from her siblings, who had found other pursuits and interests more in keeping with both their personalities and with their memories of Aslan.

[Leah Betts]

Like a lot of people I believed that Lewis excluded Susan from Aslan's Country because she had the gall to mature and move on to "lipstick and boys". Lewis may have had many problems when writing the books - his sexism and misogyny, his fat hate in PC and his stereotyping of Islam etc. etc. but people are right that Susan didn't enter Aslan's Country because she didn't die. She's been given a chance to redeem herself with a long life.

[waggawerewolf27]

Like a lot of people I believed that Lewis excluded Susan from Aslan's Country because she had the gall to mature and move on to "lipstick and boys". Lewis may have had many problems when writing the books - his sexism and misogyny, his fat hate in PC and his stereotyping of Islam etc. etc. but people are right that Susan didn't enter Aslan's Country because she didn't die. She's been given a chance to redeem herself with a long life.

Welcome to NarniaWeb! Yes, Susan, and why she wasn't in the train smash, is a fascinating topic which has kept a lot of people entertained almost separately from the Narnia stories themselves.

Personally, I don't see C.S.Lewis as sexist, racist or stereotyping of Islam. I've heard he didn't like to study Sheharazade (Arabian Nights), a series of stories allegedly told by a princess, the latest of a series who had been married to some Persian prince or other who executed any new wife who displeased him. Also called 1001 nights, this collection of stories kept the murderous bridegroom entertained so that he kept putting off the inevitable execution. There is even a Sheharazade reference in HHB, where Aravis, a Calormene Tarkeena, has had good training in story telling. It is also clear from both HHB & LB that the religion practised in Calormen has nothing to do with Islam, being polytheistic and idolatrous in nature. And considering Women's Lib hadn't yet happened til after CSL died, in 1963, he did well to have even Lucy able to answer back so clearly and effectively any examples of sexism his male characters showed.

The more I read comments about the ending of Chapter 12 of Last Battle, the more I am beginning to think that there is something fishy about Peter's, Jill's, Eustace's and Polly's remarks about Susan. For it is not only what is said there, but what is not said that is bothering me. C.S.Lewis, himself, (Letters to Children, 1957) wrote:

“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’s plenty of time for her to mend and perhaps she will get to Aslan’s country in the end . . . in her own way.”

According to Doug Gresham commenting at the end of the Focus on the Family Last Battle CD's, C.S.L also felt he could not write any more Narnia stories without their being forced and that seven was a good number. Lewis almost invited people to write their own stories to fill any Narnian gaps, and plenty of fan-fiction writers have taken him at his word over Susan. He has also made many remarks throughout the Narnia series about eavesdropping, and Aslan's telling people only their own stories. Nevertheless, there has been much debate online over Whatever happened to Susan

One writer, Neil Gaiman, even wrote in 2004 a short story about Susan and her role in Children's Literature, called The Problem of Susan, part of his published anthology, Fragile Things, which has also been debated hotly online. This adult tale has a journalist, Greta Campion interviewing an elderly Professor of children's literature, Susan Hastings, whom the journalist believes is the same Susan Pevensie who lost her siblings in a train accident many years previously. Greta says (Gaiman, 2004 pp 193-4) in this story about a story about Susan:

"It's just that I remember that sequence so vividly. In the Last Battle. Where you learn there was a train crash on the way back to school, and everyone was killed. Except for Susan, of course. ....You know, that used to make me so angry...

All the other kids go off to Paradise, and Susan can't go. She's no longer a friend of Narnia because she is too fond of lipsticks and nylons and invitations to parties. I even talked to my English teacher about it, about the problem of Susan, when I was twelve....

She said that even though Susan had been refused Paradise then she still had time to repent while she lived."

Please note that in Gaiman's story, how inaccurately and sloppily both Greta the journalist and her English teacher quote both the relevant Last Battle incident and C.S.Lewis, himself. Now C.S.Lewis was a Professor of English literature at both Oxford and Cambridge and used to picking his words very carefully indeed. Including in the Last Battle.

A correspondent in this Problem of Susan discussion noted that right at the end of Last Battle, Lucy finds out that her Non-Narnian parents, who had, unbenownst to her, caught the same train to Bristol, and had therefore been in the train accident, had also gone to Aslan's Country, no doubt accompanied by unnamed fellow passengers.

It is worth noting that Susan wasn't at the 7 Friends of Narnia meeting that Tirian attended. And it cannot be emphasized more, that Susan wasn't killed in the train crash. Unlike Peter and Edmund, she was not on the station platform. Nor was she in the train, like the rest, when the train collided with the station. A real train crash, as Aslan, himself, pointed out, due to human error. Based on one that really did happen in UK at the time C.S.Lewis wrote Last Battle.

I'm finding it more and more ridiculous that this sloppy misreading of Last Battle has so many people, especially atheists like Phillip Pullman, expressing so much disapproval of a fictitional children's literature character like Susan being debarred from a Paradise they don't believe in anyway, even in real terms, let alone a children's novel. Apparently they think that Susan was debarred on account of her conforming to everyday materialist concerns, rather than her dismissing Narnia as children's games. However, what are atheists, themselves, saying when they argue that there is no world but this one? There is no life after death, there is no salvation, and that the central tenet of Easter and Christianity (John 3: 16) is a lie?

What did Peter actually mean when he said that Susan was no longer a friend of Narnia? And why would he be the one to say so? Why not one of the others? And why did each say what they were meant to?

P.S. I have highlighted CSL's own comment in red, and the quotation from Gaiman's short story in blue.

[Leah Betts]

I won't subject you to my paper, but my basic argument was that although Lewis was sexist in his portrayal of the human girl characters in the Narnia series (ie, Polly, Susan, Lucy, Jill and Aravis), he was less sexist than he might have been, and he improved greatly as the series went on.

But oh, yes, he was sexist: "women are not to fight"..."crying, just like a girl"...Polly always being interested in dresses , and it being her fault (not that it was, but it's written like that) that Jadis was raised. Although that last one I'll admit was based on Genesis, and Pandora's Box.

"you talk like an old woman" and the fat hate (both in PC) get to me as well.

(* - I will admit that girls didn't wear trousers often when Polly was living - it just grates from a modern perspective and Lewis could have easily shown Polly as a First Waver feminist who rejected what her society tried to force on her.)

[DawnTreader07]

and it being her fault (not that it was, but it's written like that) that Jadis was raised.

Really? I didn't see that at all! Not that you are wrong, of course. But I got the impression that Aslan held Digory alone responsible, since the only thing he really asked Polly was if she had forgiven Digory for "the violence he did you in the House of Charn" or whatever exactly it was.

[stardf29]

Certainly, Lewis's view on women has changed much over the time he was writing the Chronicles, and that can definitely be seen if you observe the books over their publication order and see the female characters in battle more often in later books.

That said...

But oh, yes, he was sexist: ...Polly always being interested in dresses...

(* - I will admit that girls didn't wear trousers often when Polly was living - it just grates from a modern perspective and Lewis could have easily shown Polly as a First Waver feminist who rejected what her society tried to force on her.)

This is a really odd assertion to make regarding Lewis being supposedly sexist. Is it particularly wrong for a girl to be interested in dresses? Is there any need to make sure that our female characters have absolutely no trace of any interest in "girly" things?

What if a girl character I wrote is one that really likes dresses, not because that's a sort of "default" for all my girl characters, but because, well, she likes dresses? Yes, it's one thing to write a bland female character who's all into all the usual "girly" things with no other notable traits, but what about female characters who perhaps like certain "girly" things, dislikes other such things, and likes some things girls aren't typically associated with?

Likewise, yes, Lewis could have easily written Polly as an outright feminist... but did he have to? Do you think there has to be at least one female lead character in every story who is a "First Waver feminist" that staunchly opposes what society expects her to be? Is a work necessarily "sexist" if there is no such character, even if the female characters that do exist are not complete, stereotypical "girly girls"?

Why does it "grate from a modern perspective", then, that these fictional girls aren't these avid feminists that you want them to be? Or perhaps, a better question: do the Chronicles of Narnia need to be a book series that supports (the good aspects of) feminism, or can it be a book about what Lewis wants it to be about, and leave the pro-feminism stuff to other books?

Regarding Susan's case, it is clear to me that the problem isn't that she got interested in makeup and boys, and that alone caused her to completely revoke her friendship with Narnia. Rather, she got obsessed with makeup and boys, made that kind of life her idol, and that meant there was no room for Narnia in her heart. As far as I see it, they could have said "she started playing professional tennis and is so obsessed with that that she doesn't care about Narnia anymore" and it would be the same thing (only there would be a bunch of angry letters and posts about Lewis's claiming that tennis is evil).

The key here is that it's not that she was interested in "nylons and lipstick and invitations" that caused her to fall away, but that (direct quote from the book, emphasis mine):

"She's interested in nothing nowadays except nylons and lipstick and invitations."

A bit of an exaggeration, but it definitely shows how she has allowed things that could be good in and of themselves if they don't rule your life to rule her life.

But yes, she's still alive at the end of LB, and so she still has time to repent.

[Ithilwen]

But oh, yes, he was sexist: ..."crying, just like a girl"...

As for a character saying "crying, just like a girl", that reflects the character's opinion; not necessarily the author's. The girls in the Chronicles have a few good shots of their own. Girls don't have a map in their heads "because our heads have something inside them." And don't forget Polly's comments of, "How very like a man!" every time Digory does something that irritates her.

Lewis didn't have boys running down girls -- Lewis had children of both genders running down both genders. Why? Because, that's basically what kids do. "Girls rule, boys drool!" "Ewww, girls have cooties!" It's a phase kids go through. And a realistic touch to a book series that definitely has a theme of childhood in mind.


~Riella

[Leah Betts]

In Polly's time a fashionable girl wore several pounds of clothing weighing over 30 pounds - in comparison the clothes of the average modern girl weigh less than two pounds.

It would have been much better for Lewis to acknowledge that someone in Polly's situation would have most likely hated the dress, petticoats, camisole and corset etc. that society forced upon her with the threat of punishment or social ridicule or even physical assault in the street if she disobeyed.

And I'm sorry but the way he has Miraz say "You talk like an old woman!" and the way that some characters are excluded from seeing Aslan for being "plump" (both of these are in PC) are sexist and fat-hating (respectively) no matter how you look at it.

[starkat]

Leah, you seem to be making the assumption that every single solitary female would hate their clothing no matter what. I'm going to go ahead and tie this back in to Christianity here.

Morals, laws, and guidance for behavior stems directly from the Bible in Western culture. But society of that era pulled their concept of modesty straight from the Bible.

This is just one of the verses I could use to argue my point.

The woman shall not wear that which pertaineth unto a man, neither shall a man put on a woman's garment: for all that do so are abomination unto the LORD thy God.

I'm well aware that there were specific garments for men and women at the time that the verse was mentioned, but the same holds true for this era as well.

Lewis was keeping within his era for style and his faith for writing Susan and the other women the way he did. He meant absolutely no disrespect to them individually or as a gender.

We have gotten waaaaay off course from the actual topic of this thread though. Time to get back to this:

So, why does Susan not enter Aslan's Country? Will she ever? And more importantly, what are the reasons for her faithlessness?

Discuss away!

Susan didn't enter Aslan's Country because she walked away from the faith of her childhood and didn't allow it to grow into the faith of an adult.

1 Corinthians 13:11
When I was a child, I spake as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child: but when I became a man, I put away childish things.

It doesn't mean that she wouldn't at some point in her life, but it was something she had done up until that point. She "rushed ahead to the silliest time in one's life" without remembering what she had been through to get there. Her priorities were placed on the wrong thing instead of on God where they should have been.

[Ithilwen]

And I'm sorry but the way he has Miraz say "You talk like an old woman!" and the way that some characters are excluded from seeing Aslan for being "plump" (both of these are in PC) are sexist and fat-hating (respectively) no matter how you look at it.

The "You talk like an old woman" bit certainly isn't sexist. For one thing, you have to keep in mind who is saying the line -- the villain of the story, who is both silly and temperamental. And for another thing, he is most likely referring to a stereotype concerning -- not women -- but just as it says, old women. The "grandma" image and the "old busybody neighbor" image has been well known in both stories and real life for as long as anyone can remember. Both of these images appear in stories without being accused of being sexist. And both of these images are a realistic thing to use as an insult by villainous characters who, in their hearts, honor strength and military warfare.

Same as the people above, I see nothing wrong with a character who likes dresses, and see no need for her to have to rebel against society in order to escape the sexist allegations.

And, personally, I have seen nothing in the Chronicles at all that indicate that C.S Lewis was sexist.

So, why does Susan not enter Aslan's Country? Will she ever? And more importantly, what are the reasons for her faithlessness?

I believe that Susan did not enter Aslan's Country because she is still alive. She will if she repents before she dies. And the reason for her faithlessness was idolatry -- letting worldly, material things push out her beliefs in the truth.


~Riella