And, come to think about it, I could see Griffle, Trumpkin, and even Nikabrik, as representing the proletariat in the Narnian scheme of things, and maybe Lewis' best way of showing shades of opinion, rather than identifiable sociological traits like hair colour, which for people of Celtic origin can be anything, whether black, brown or ginger, the last of which are particularly prone to getting sunburn, melanomas and freckles, which is why they would be associated with cold, cloudy climates and less exposure to sunlight as in the North.
Today I was browsing the Internet and found this interesting item on the BBC, which was discussing the fashion in beards in Egypt, where it seems that some men also dye their beards like Anradin did in various shades of red. Ouch, after all I said about Anradin! But I didn't know that either before today! And, because the men wearing such beards were likely either children or even not born yet in 1963, I'd be very amazed if C.S.Lewis had the sort of knowledge about the nuances of wearing beards as the author of this article obviously has. Lewis had rather a busy life in the 1950's, looking after his dying wife, Joy Gresham, who, before he married her, had been Jewish by upbringing and in her first marriage. After her death he also suffered from ill-health.
PhelanVelvel wrote:Nowadays, however, people read it and interpret it as racist more easily because of the world we live in now. Today, the idea of "well this nation is generally evil and militaristic and they happen to be dark-skinned" kind of sticks out badly among all the "politically correct" stuff you typically see.
I can only reply to what you say in terms of World War II and its aftermath, since that was the era which influenced both Lewis and Tolkien and much of that generation of British children's writers. World War II was a deeply racist war, where the German army represented a loathesome ideology, held by the Nazis which called for the extermination, especially of Jews but also many others, including Poles, Russians and Gypsies. I agree that there is a sore point about a fair-haired, fair-skinned Nordic look because of the Nazis, but how many of the leaders of this organisation actually conformed to it, themselves? Hardly any, if you look at old pictures.
But it would be just as racist to tar everyone or even every country who fought on the Axis side in WW2 as racist or as evil as those Nazis were. Hungarians, who speak a language unrelated to most European languages, fought on the German side in the hopes they would regain some of the territory they lost after WW1. Until they were themselves taken over by Germany, they did not transport their Jewish citizens to Auschwitz. Finland, who did rather better in that regard, as far as I know, and who speak a language related to Hungarian and not at all to German, Polish or Italian, fought on Germany's side because they had been attacked by the USSR. The Finns, like the Poles the Germans wanted to get rid of, are just as likely to be as fair-haired and have milky skin as any Norwegian, whilst over in Norway, occupied by the Germans, and whose citizens were, according to the Nazis, the epitome of being Nordic, can be dark-haired as Varnafinde already mentioned a few posts previously.
The trouble is, that any army can be evil, depending on the purpose of the military action, who is the aggressor and who is being victimised by it, and why. Just 'happening' to be dark-skinned or dark haired is rather irrelevant to whether an army is evil or not. Just as being terrorised by a bunch of skinhead Neo-Nazis doesn't make that bunch of people good because of the lack of dark hair. There were some excellent Afro-American G.I's who served in the US army in Europe and there were also Aborigines who served in the Australian army in both World Wars.
PhelanVelvet wrote:I don't think that makes Lewis racist, I just think it seems racist to a lot of people. Even though there is Aravis and Emeth, I think some people still kind of see it as "Okay...so 98% of the good guys are white...and there's a whole nation full of dark-skinned people..." Because they aren't getting into the story enough to see that it's not really like that. Frankly, the fact that Lewis actually made Aravis a hero is pretty forward-thinking of him, isn't it? How many white authors of the 1950's had genuinely heroic characters who weren't white?
Actually there were quite a few, including Harper Lee's To kill a Mocking Bird, or even Ian Serrallier's The Silver Sword, where an Afro-American GI helps some children escaping from Poland and journeying through Germany to reach Switzerland after WW2. But that is just the point of those books; the characters were only dark-skinned where they were dealing with issues relevant to the story. And in the 1950's, when C.S.Lewis wrote the Narnia series, it was probably less common to have British citizens from Jamaica or Nigeria than is the case now.
PhelanVelvet wrote:It just comes off as "Here are the white English heroes...oh yeah there are also Calormenes, they're like arabs and they're bad." It's a lot for some people to accept. I also see it as "This kingdom just so happens to be full of bad guys, has nothing to do with what they resemble culturally." But putting all in one paragraph that they have "dark faces and long beards" and also "they wear robes and turbans" and also "wise, wealthy, courteous, and cruel", and then on top of it we learn that they're in the slave trade...
Well, Saudi Arabia, which, like the next door state of United Arab Emirates, could be described as wealthy to this day, didn't sign the UN anti-slavery conventions until 1965. So that, too, is an unfair criticism of C.S.Lewis, especially as that particular description, even if it was true at the time is not true now. Especially as people in the Arab world can be just as fair-skinned and fair-haired as any British born person. You can't judge literature anachronistically.
And I would not describe even the Calormenes as automatically "bad guys" from the HHB descriptions you quoted. Would you have said that Aravis' maid was a "bad guy"? The secretary who helped Aravis, or Lazaraleen? Of her step-mother? Her father, brother and cousin? The people in the Tashbaan crowd, who behaved just like people everywhere do when caught in a crowd at a parade?
Do you think that people would jump to the same sorts of conclusions you refer to if Lewis had described Calormen in the same paragraph as having pale faces and bristling moustaches, and also wear blue coloured trousers and tall hats with enormous brims (not to mention those hysterically high heeled boots?) And also "wise, wealthy, courteous, and cruel"? Or would they be more upset if instead of "wise, wealthy, courteous, and cruel", the description ran to foolish, dirt poor, rude and just as "cruel"?
Yes, the men could sound dreary according to Shasta, but he saw them as like Arsheesh, whom Shasta found he could not love as a father as he should have done, and who was in the habit of beating him. To assume the Narnia-haters are justified by what you say, shows they have only given the novels a cursory, inaccurate, and maybe a second-hand view of them.
I could offer another criticism of the Chronicles of Narnia which is more to the point, more likely to come from an adult point of view, and which I read a couple of years ago. The reviewer of VDT said he could have done without the doings of a bunch of English toffs or a lion-delivered sermon. Given the "current cultural climate" I strongly suspect that at least some Narnia-haters who make such accusations might also be anti-monarchist and anti the original British, basing their opinions accordingly.