Fair point,
DamselJillPole. I can see how that sort of relationship you had with your friend from Grade School (Primary school as I understand it?) would match something like we learn about Polly and Digory who were friends for life but specifically did not marry.
On the other hand, C.S.Lewis in HHB allowed Aravis and Shasta to first become friends before eventually marrying. By that time they had grown up enough to appreciate each other's friendship and trustworthiness even if they argued still. And I could agree that if Jill and Eustace had been allowed longer to live, they, too, might have eventually developed romantic feelings for each other. The relationship Jill and Eustace had in LB is far different, from the armed truce they had in SC. In Last Battle, Eustace even admires Jill, even gushing to Tirian how skilled she is in finding their way.
Louloudi the Centaur wrote:Relationships are very vital to the story. Whether that be brother and sister, cousin and cousin, best friends, or husband and wife, interactions between characters are important.
What I do hate is when writers just making characters fall in love just to fall in love. It's very soppy and often detracts from the conflict. If characters do fall in love, it should be for a certain reason. Do they have similar characteristics? Beliefs? Backgrounds?
As said before, this is why I love Narnia. Romance is not a driving part of the plots. I just love it when friends just remain friends, and these friends do not happen to fall in love with the cousins of the friend.
No, and I think that the little C.S.Lewis says about relationships in general goes a long way to explain his views of romance and marriage. The way Aravis and Shasta became friends was in learning to work together as equals, and to start to respect and trust each other as
equals. There is something inherently unequal when a girl marries an older man, who might try to dominate her on this ground alone.
This can be the case even if it wasn't a revolting old man like Ahosta, practically buying a young girl like Aravis to own. And when you comment about "writers just making characters fall in love just to fall in love", I am wondering the downside of this sort of phenomenon is what C.S.Lewis is commenting about when he has Susan deluded into almost accepting Rabadash's hand in marriage. There she was, looking at pictures of would be suitors at the end of LWW, then being swayed by flattery and courtesy in Cair Paravel in HHB into visiting Rabadash at Tashbaan.
Rabadash was very much the "tall, dark and handsome" stranger that Susan, as a girl of her age would be led by 'grown-ups' to see as a suitable romantic figure, if she believed the sort of instant, whirlwind romances of WW2 movies and radio serials. But Susan really needed to realise what sort of person Rabadash was when he was at home in Tashbaan, before Edmund could get her to see why she should flee from there ASAP.
I wonder if this is really Susan's problem in LB, that she wanted to forget the lessons of Rabadash when she told Eustace, "fancy your remembering those funny games we played as children". I'm wondering if she represents those who "want to fall in love just for the sake of falling in love", maybe with another stranger like Rabadash, probably someone older than herself, and never mind what the consequences might be if she married for the sake of marrying, perhaps someone whose values, background and characteristics might be wildly different from her own.