![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
truepennyI started a jeremiad at ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
heres_luck this afternoon whilst we were allegedly working on our Firefly abstract, and then said, "This is probably an LJ post." And now it's going to be.
I haven't reread the Narnia books for quite a while; mostly this was because I didn't need to--I'd read them (and had them read to me) so many times as a child that reading them again seemed deeply redundant. But Saturday's discussion of allegory (in the comments) enticed me back to C. S. Lewis again for the first time in I don't know how long.
It's different reading them as an adult.
I learned that the Chronicles of Narnia were "allegories" as a teenager, going to a Girl Scout meeting in the basement of a local church and finding the walls decorated with handmade posters proclaiming "ASLAN IS ON THE MOVE." I asked my mother what these church people were doing with Narnia, and she gave me a funny look and said, "Well, it is Christian, you know." I hadn't. I hadn't recognized the allegorical elements, because I was a heathen child and my receiver was not tuned to those transmissions. Now, of course, I've been trained to read Christian symbolism, and the White Witch talking about the capital-L Law would tell me what's going to happen between her and Aslan even if I didn't already know it.
But, although I'm not Christian, the religion in these books doesn't bother me, any more than it bothers me in Milton or Spenser. What bothers me now, as an adult woman, are the other ideologies Lewis is promulgating.melymbrosia has talked about this some, and, for this post, I don't actually want to talk about adulthood in the Narnia books. I want to talk about the children.
First of all, my god is Peter boring! I didn't even notice that as a child; now, I can see a definite progression in Lewis's ability to write characters and dialogue, from The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe to The Silver Chair, which is the one I'm reading now. (*heart*Puddleglum*heart*, even though it would appall him) But Peter is just fantastically boring, both in the narratological sense I've been expounding re: Faramir and in the plain old *yawn* sense. I keep being struck by this mad urge to set an essay question: "Edmund is more heroic than Peter. Discuss."
Susan, of course, as is the fate of all Susans in mid-twentieth century children's literature, is very feminine and dull and mothering/nagging. I hadn't liked her as a child, and I don't like her now, but my not liking her now is complicated by the fact that I resent the way Lewis is maneuvering me into not liking her. Susan exists in the story (taking The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe and Prince Caspian together) largely for the purpose of not being liked--which, of course, is completely and triumphantly vindicated in The Last Battle, when we learn that Susan has become too obsessed with adult femininity to bother about Narnia. Bad Susan! Bad! No Rapture-trainwreck and redemption into childhood's paradise for you!
But I wasn't going to talk about that part.
I got mildly annoyed in the first two books with the constant harping on how girls ought not to fight, and ought to be protected and all the rest of that nonsense, but I didn't really start to conduct vituperative little arguments in my head until The Voyage of the Dawn Treader.
TVotDT was not my favorite book (that, as loyal readers will know, is The Silver Chair), but it was definitely my second favorite. I love the set pieces of the fates of each of the seven Lords, and I love the fact that Lewis has finally figured out how to write dialogue (the little bits of byplay with Rhince and Drinian are just funny). Reepicheep annoys the fuck out of me as an adult, but that's part and parcel of my primary complaint, which is with what Lewis makes Eustace be a mouthpiece for.
Eustace, I want to be perfectly clear, is a spoiled, rotten, self-serving, selfish, hypocritical little snot. I have no quarrels with Lewis's characterization of him in that way (and I do still cheer at his correlation between Eustace's character flaws and his reading the wrong kind of books), and I don't feel, as I do with Susan, any compulsion to try to read against the text. But it irks me, profoundly, that Eustace is the only character who says anything about pacifism and he is the only character who suggests that maybe chivalry isn't really the way to go.
The pacifism-cowardice conflation I can understand, even if I neither respect nor condone it. These are WWII era books, and the idea of being morally opposed to war is alien to them. That's fine. But Lewis wrote TVotDT after Dorothy Sayers had pointed out, in Gaudy Night (1936) that "a desire to have all the fun is nine-tenths of the law of chivalry" (GN 293). And therefore it ANNOYS me to have the idea that girls aren't weaker than boys lumped in with the rest of Eustace's wrong-headed ideas. (This may be another reason I love TSC--Jill doesn't get the cosseting that Lucy does.) See, Eustace is right to complain about Lucy getting special treatment, even though he's complaining for entirely the wrong reasons, and I deeply dislike the way in which Lewis uses Eustace's selfish reasons to mock the idea he's articulating.
And I don't like the way "chivalry" puts Lucy into a position of constantly being used as justification for the male characters' behavior. Reepicheep says on the island of the Duffers that, if there were any chance they could save Lucy by laying down their lives, they would be obligated to fight. That's a horrible burden to put on Lucy's shoulders, frankly, as is the ghastly moment, when they're arguing about sailing into the darkness around the Dark Island and Reepicheep (prattling on about "honor" again) has blackmailed Caspian into doing something Caspian, Drinian, and the other men all know is stupid, that Caspian says, "Unless Lucy would rather not?" (TVotDT 153), which again places a burden on Lucy she shouldn't have to bear (Caspian's the freaking king--he should be able to make his own call) and also puts her in a bind--much as Reepicheep has just put Caspian in a bind, and it's particularly not-nice of Caspian to turn around and do the same thing to Lucy that's just been done to him.
But the thing that has particularly displeased and upset me, rereading TVotDT, is something that actually surprises me. When Lucy reads the spell to let her know what her friends think of her, and observes Marjorie Preston and Anne Featherstone putting her down, Aslan does, quite properly, tell her off for eavesdropping:
"... you have misjudged your friend. She is weak, but she loves you. She was afraid of the older girl and said what she does not mean."
"I don't think I'll ever be able to forget what I heard her say."
"No, you won't."
"Oh dear," said Lucy. "Have I spoiled everything? Do you mean we would have gone on being friends if it hadn't been for this--and been really great friends--all our lives perhaps--and now we never shall."
(Lewis 135-6)
But Aslan's answer to this is merely to rebuke her (as he does in Prince Caspian) for wondering about what would have happened. He says nothing about forgiveness, about the frailty of human nature, about the fact that what Lucy has done to Marjorie is not really any less reprehensible than what Marjorie has done to Lucy. Aslan (and Lewis) allows Lucy's assumption that she cannot be friends with Marjorie any longer to go unchallenged. And, I'm sorry, that's just wrong. Particularly in books which have allowed characters (i.e., Edmund and to a lesser extent Eustace) to redeem themselves without any particular difficulty or soul-searching (And I'm not going to start drawing comparisons with Buffy the Vampire Slayer. I'm not, I'm not, I'm not.), this seems unwarrantedly petty and spiteful.
And that bothers me more than any of the other things I've been complaining about.
I'll probably have more stuff to say later, after I've dealt with the other books in the series (parenthetical digression for one pet peeve: what is up with Lewis's estate and the whole reordering the books thing? The Magician's Nephew is not and never will be the first book of the series, and putting it first is only likely to turn people off the books entirely. It is not a point of easy entry into the series. Chronological order doesn't matter as much as you think it does. To Aslan, all times are soon.). But the first three books belong together, and, well (*looks at post*), I had things to say.
---
WORKS CITED
Lewis, C. S. The Voyage of the Dawn Treader. 1952. New York: Collier Books, 1970.
Sayers, Dorothy L. Gaudy Night. 1936. New York: Harper & Row, Publishers, 1964.
heres_luck this afternoon whilst we were allegedly working on our Firefly abstract, and then said, "This is probably an LJ post." And now it's going to be.I haven't reread the Narnia books for quite a while; mostly this was because I didn't need to--I'd read them (and had them read to me) so many times as a child that reading them again seemed deeply redundant. But Saturday's discussion of allegory (in the comments) enticed me back to C. S. Lewis again for the first time in I don't know how long.
It's different reading them as an adult.
I learned that the Chronicles of Narnia were "allegories" as a teenager, going to a Girl Scout meeting in the basement of a local church and finding the walls decorated with handmade posters proclaiming "ASLAN IS ON THE MOVE." I asked my mother what these church people were doing with Narnia, and she gave me a funny look and said, "Well, it is Christian, you know." I hadn't. I hadn't recognized the allegorical elements, because I was a heathen child and my receiver was not tuned to those transmissions. Now, of course, I've been trained to read Christian symbolism, and the White Witch talking about the capital-L Law would tell me what's going to happen between her and Aslan even if I didn't already know it.
But, although I'm not Christian, the religion in these books doesn't bother me, any more than it bothers me in Milton or Spenser. What bothers me now, as an adult woman, are the other ideologies Lewis is promulgating.
melymbrosia has talked about this some, and, for this post, I don't actually want to talk about adulthood in the Narnia books. I want to talk about the children.First of all, my god is Peter boring! I didn't even notice that as a child; now, I can see a definite progression in Lewis's ability to write characters and dialogue, from The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe to The Silver Chair, which is the one I'm reading now. (*heart*Puddleglum*heart*, even though it would appall him) But Peter is just fantastically boring, both in the narratological sense I've been expounding re: Faramir and in the plain old *yawn* sense. I keep being struck by this mad urge to set an essay question: "Edmund is more heroic than Peter. Discuss."
Susan, of course, as is the fate of all Susans in mid-twentieth century children's literature, is very feminine and dull and mothering/nagging. I hadn't liked her as a child, and I don't like her now, but my not liking her now is complicated by the fact that I resent the way Lewis is maneuvering me into not liking her. Susan exists in the story (taking The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe and Prince Caspian together) largely for the purpose of not being liked--which, of course, is completely and triumphantly vindicated in The Last Battle, when we learn that Susan has become too obsessed with adult femininity to bother about Narnia. Bad Susan! Bad! No Rapture-trainwreck and redemption into childhood's paradise for you!
But I wasn't going to talk about that part.
I got mildly annoyed in the first two books with the constant harping on how girls ought not to fight, and ought to be protected and all the rest of that nonsense, but I didn't really start to conduct vituperative little arguments in my head until The Voyage of the Dawn Treader.
TVotDT was not my favorite book (that, as loyal readers will know, is The Silver Chair), but it was definitely my second favorite. I love the set pieces of the fates of each of the seven Lords, and I love the fact that Lewis has finally figured out how to write dialogue (the little bits of byplay with Rhince and Drinian are just funny). Reepicheep annoys the fuck out of me as an adult, but that's part and parcel of my primary complaint, which is with what Lewis makes Eustace be a mouthpiece for.
Eustace, I want to be perfectly clear, is a spoiled, rotten, self-serving, selfish, hypocritical little snot. I have no quarrels with Lewis's characterization of him in that way (and I do still cheer at his correlation between Eustace's character flaws and his reading the wrong kind of books), and I don't feel, as I do with Susan, any compulsion to try to read against the text. But it irks me, profoundly, that Eustace is the only character who says anything about pacifism and he is the only character who suggests that maybe chivalry isn't really the way to go.
The pacifism-cowardice conflation I can understand, even if I neither respect nor condone it. These are WWII era books, and the idea of being morally opposed to war is alien to them. That's fine. But Lewis wrote TVotDT after Dorothy Sayers had pointed out, in Gaudy Night (1936) that "a desire to have all the fun is nine-tenths of the law of chivalry" (GN 293). And therefore it ANNOYS me to have the idea that girls aren't weaker than boys lumped in with the rest of Eustace's wrong-headed ideas. (This may be another reason I love TSC--Jill doesn't get the cosseting that Lucy does.) See, Eustace is right to complain about Lucy getting special treatment, even though he's complaining for entirely the wrong reasons, and I deeply dislike the way in which Lewis uses Eustace's selfish reasons to mock the idea he's articulating.
And I don't like the way "chivalry" puts Lucy into a position of constantly being used as justification for the male characters' behavior. Reepicheep says on the island of the Duffers that, if there were any chance they could save Lucy by laying down their lives, they would be obligated to fight. That's a horrible burden to put on Lucy's shoulders, frankly, as is the ghastly moment, when they're arguing about sailing into the darkness around the Dark Island and Reepicheep (prattling on about "honor" again) has blackmailed Caspian into doing something Caspian, Drinian, and the other men all know is stupid, that Caspian says, "Unless Lucy would rather not?" (TVotDT 153), which again places a burden on Lucy she shouldn't have to bear (Caspian's the freaking king--he should be able to make his own call) and also puts her in a bind--much as Reepicheep has just put Caspian in a bind, and it's particularly not-nice of Caspian to turn around and do the same thing to Lucy that's just been done to him.
But the thing that has particularly displeased and upset me, rereading TVotDT, is something that actually surprises me. When Lucy reads the spell to let her know what her friends think of her, and observes Marjorie Preston and Anne Featherstone putting her down, Aslan does, quite properly, tell her off for eavesdropping:
"... you have misjudged your friend. She is weak, but she loves you. She was afraid of the older girl and said what she does not mean."
"I don't think I'll ever be able to forget what I heard her say."
"No, you won't."
"Oh dear," said Lucy. "Have I spoiled everything? Do you mean we would have gone on being friends if it hadn't been for this--and been really great friends--all our lives perhaps--and now we never shall."
(Lewis 135-6)
But Aslan's answer to this is merely to rebuke her (as he does in Prince Caspian) for wondering about what would have happened. He says nothing about forgiveness, about the frailty of human nature, about the fact that what Lucy has done to Marjorie is not really any less reprehensible than what Marjorie has done to Lucy. Aslan (and Lewis) allows Lucy's assumption that she cannot be friends with Marjorie any longer to go unchallenged. And, I'm sorry, that's just wrong. Particularly in books which have allowed characters (i.e., Edmund and to a lesser extent Eustace) to redeem themselves without any particular difficulty or soul-searching (And I'm not going to start drawing comparisons with Buffy the Vampire Slayer. I'm not, I'm not, I'm not.), this seems unwarrantedly petty and spiteful.
And that bothers me more than any of the other things I've been complaining about.
I'll probably have more stuff to say later, after I've dealt with the other books in the series (parenthetical digression for one pet peeve: what is up with Lewis's estate and the whole reordering the books thing? The Magician's Nephew is not and never will be the first book of the series, and putting it first is only likely to turn people off the books entirely. It is not a point of easy entry into the series. Chronological order doesn't matter as much as you think it does. To Aslan, all times are soon.). But the first three books belong together, and, well (*looks at post*), I had things to say.
---
WORKS CITED
Lewis, C. S. The Voyage of the Dawn Treader. 1952. New York: Collier Books, 1970.
Sayers, Dorothy L. Gaudy Night. 1936. New York: Harper & Row, Publishers, 1964.
