Thank you,
johobbit, especially as there is also a thread in Talking about Narnia forum about why people don't like Narnia. The last time I posted here, was because I am getting more and more convinced that people are misreading that particularly infamous passage in LB about Susan. Believe me, C.S. Lewis certainly was not saying in that passage anything like Gaiman's Greta the journalist says in this quote:
Gaiman 2004 p193 wrote: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.
Unfortunately, that is the way it is usually taken as this debate has also shown quite convincingly. Even though
starkat's statement that "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", might
sound right, in principle at any rate, it isn't right either.
Earlier in LB, Tirian appeared at a meeting of the 7 Friends of Narnia like a guest speaker whose ghost speech writer has left him high and dry. When Tirian passes the stable door he realises he is meeting the same 7 Friends of Narnia he saw at the meeting, no longer dressed in their strange clothes, but nice comfortable ones people could enjoy wearing.
But it is then, not at the meeting, that Tirian realises that Susan is missing. So he asks
"Where is Queen Susan?". Peter answers him by saying
:"My sister Susan is no longer a friend of Narnia" (LB pp 127-8, my ed) And then Peter concludes this section by saying
"Well, don't let's talk about that, now" (ibid) which effectively stops Ed and Lu saying anything more.
I always thought whoa, there has been a family dispute of sorts. Peter does seem unhappy with Susan. But he doesn't say that Susan is no longer a friend of him or his siblings, does he? Was the argument something to do with Narnia, then? Of course it was!
I'm not altogether convinced either that Peter spoke for Edmund and Lucy, who had nothing to say at this stage. However much he was high king and their big brother, Su, Ed and Lu never thought twice about arguing with Peter if they had to. It wasn't till years afterwards that I realised that Edmund and Lucy had both been at the siege of Anvard on Susan's account whilst Peter had been in the North fighting giants. They, not Peter, had to bail out Susan on that occasion.
The next to speak was Eustace (ibid):
"...whenever you've tried to get her to talk about Narnia, or do anything about Narnia, she says, 'What wonderful memories you have! Fancy your still thinking about all those funny games we used to play when we were children.'"Now this at least hints why Susan wasn't at the first meeting. But why would Susan want to discuss old Narnia times with Eustace anyway? Remember how scathing he was about Narnia at the beginning of VDT when he was eavesdropping on Edmund and Lucy? Remember how he made limericks about Narnia, and people getting barmier and barmier? But why would Peter be upset by Susan making such comments to Eustace, which is how I first read it?
Well might Susan say something like that to Eustace just to stop him teasing her, too. Remember also, that Susan liked to be seen as grown up, often patronised her younger siblings, that she had gone to America in VDT, didn't know about Eustace's change of heart and we don't even know if she ever found out about what happened to Prince Caspian, let alone his son Rilian. Though when
someone online drew a comparison with what Eustace says in this quote and what he heard from the Queen of Underland at the end of
Silver Chair, I did see the point in spades. Didn't LOTGK also accuse Jill, Eustace, Puddleglum and Rilian of playing at games like children, inventing a world better than her own?
However, it wasn't until I read this extract right now that I realised that Eustace was saying that
Peter had been trying to get Susan to attend meetings etc, not Eustace, himself. So now we know that not only did Susan not attend that meeting with Tirian, but she wouldn't have attended any meeting Peter called that mentioned Narnia, anyway. So how does Eustace know first hand about what she had been saying to Peter on earlier occasions? Oh yes, Eustace is Susan's cousin, don't forget. Did he want her to meet Jill Pole, his friend from his
Silver Chair adventure? Did Susan even want to know about that incident? So if she wasn't attending meetings, how did Susan ever meet Jill? Or did she meet Jill at that end of SC party where Jill wore the Narnian gear? Did Susan, showing off her adult status at that time say something patronising about the standard of dress that schoolgirls like Jill would have? Proving just how keen Susan was in being grown up. Or was there some other social occasion where Jill would have met Susan?
It is also Jill who tells us next:
"She's interested in nothing nowadays except nylons and lipstick and invitations.", which hints where Susan has got to whilst the meeting was being held. And this is a real red herring. Yes Susan might be overly wrapped up in dressing her best in the latest fashions in lipstick and stockings for those invitations, but she wouldn't have upset Peter if she had just missed a meeting to attend a party, important or not. There had been parties galore in Narnia. The PC romp through Narnia was one huge party. In Tashbaan the parties had been in Susan's honour as Rabadash's prospective bride. Peter had even put on parties, hastiludes, tournaments and other festivities to entertain Rabadash at Cair Paravel. And at the end of LWW when we learn about Queen Susan the Gentle and her marriage proposals, there is a strong suggestion that Rabadash wasn't the only one seeking Susan's hand in marriage.
Peter is upset, not only because Susan didn't attend that meeting, or any other meeting for that matter, but also because she probably wasn't even interested later in what happened at the meeting at which Tirian appeared. If he had even tried to give her a big brotherly reminder to watch out for Rabadash types at the party she attended instead, that, too, would have gone down like the proverbial lead balloon. And how dare she patronise her
elder brother when he was referring quite properly to something Narnian that was not at all childish!
What Polly has to say clinches what Susan has been up to. Now where or when in Narnia or outside of it did Polly meet Susan? Or does that really matter? Polly is the voice of experience in this conversation. We don't know how she spent her life, other than that although she was always friends with Digory, she didn't choose to marry him. Why would she after his sexist outburst in Charn about women, engagements and marriages? By the way, notice how the Professor doesn't say anything? Because after what Professor Digory had to say as a boy in Charn, he really would have been sexist to comment about Susan in any way whatever. Especially if he had been so good as to give the "friend of the bride's family" speech at the wedding. Besides, he knew from LWW that Susan, deep in her heart, still felt those Narnia adventures were barmy and that she had only been giving Lucy the benefit of the doubt.
Susan didn't enter Aslan's Country, because she wasn't at the meeting and so was not involved in any way in the Narnia plans. She didn't enter Aslan's Country, because, unlike Mr & Mrs Pevensie, she wasn't on the train to Bristol. So, to answer Tirian's question, where was Queen Susan?
For all we know, Queen Susan was at Bristol, waiting for her parents to arrive. She might not have known that her siblings were on the train as well, being deep in Bridezilla mode at the time. Like in 'childish' fairy tales, beautiful Queen Susan the Gentle, having finally met her Prince Charming, has gone off to get married and live happily ever after, now she is 21, legally an adult, and can do as she likes, possibly as a Mrs Somebody in Bristol. Which is why 21 just might be the silliest time of one's life, until 18 became the age of majority. Let us hope that Prince Charming, whatever his views on royalty, doesn't turn out to be another Rabadash.
C.S.Lewis wasn't being sexist. Women's libbers would have applauded Polly and C.S.Lewis in the 1970's. Through Polly, the voice of experience, C.S.Lewis was warning girls like Susan, like myself as a young girl, that 'happily ever after', like beauty, doesn't go on forever. Only heaven goes on forever. Oddly enough, the need to warn girls like Susan against being influenced too much by fashion, fairytales and convention, and the need to warn against neglecting girls' educations, in favour of their getting married once they were adults, were exactly the reasons why we needed Women's Lib in the first place.
Leah Betts wrote: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.
Not at all. Those school uniforms that Susan, myself and many others wore in the 1940's and afterwards, in UK & elsewhere did really make us look dumpy, despite rationing during WW2 and the later age of austerity ensuring that nobody actually could be described as 'fat', not even me.
Typical girls' school clothes in those days were just as dreadful as the attire described in PC, worn compulsorily in Telmarine schools run by the likes of Miss Prizzle, to force conformity on everyone, if nothing else.
These school uniforms consisted of horribly thick black stockings, that snarled and laddered anyway, as stated in PC, to cover calves revealed by heavy serge box-pleated tunics, which sagged halfway down one's calves at the back after a few wears, cut girls' silhouettes in half horizontally, unlike the vertical lines of trousers and long dresses, and were a nightmare to keep clean. And except for Gwendolen, neither Miss Prizzle nor the other girls in her drearily untrue history lesson, in her drearily conformist school, wanted to meet Aslan. No wonder Susan would embrace the glamorous nylon stockings and lipstick advertised so romantically at that time.
There is a real danger in expressing views simply from hearsay, or from second hand sources like Greta the Journalist, whether about Narnia, C.S.Lewis' alleged sexism or whether about Susan and why she wasn't suitably killed for entry into Aslan's country. It is better to go and read the books oneself. Carefully, to show the proper reference to one's quotes and to show exactly where it was written. And to think what C.S.Lewis really meant to convey.