The Sexual Politics of Narnia

[truepenny]

I used the phrase the sexual politics of Narnia in a reply to cija, and dude, it's too good and too mind-blowing to waste.

Many many thanks, btw, to papersky and cija who have been going back-and-forth with me and providing useful bits of information and analysis in the comments to these posts. None of what follows is their fault (*g*), although much of it resounds to their virtue.

[ETA, 3/7/03: Added a paragraph down at the end about Aslan.]


First off, for my own amusement, I'm making a list of all the female characters in the books: Lucy, Susan, the White Witch/Jadis, Jill, the Lady of the Green Kirtle, Aravis (whose name, I just noticed, is a kind of semi-anagram of "Avarice"), Lasaraleen, Hwin, Polly. Am I missing anybody, or is that really it?

There are also, of course, the women with walk-ons, cameos, and offstage existences: Queen Helen, Ramandu's daughter, Digory's mother and aunt, the Queen of Harfang, Caspian's nurse (and his horrid aunt--who I just realize I associate with the even more horrid Gertrude in Titus Groan, though I have no idea why), Gwendolen and the Schoolmistress from Prince Caspian ... but there aren't even so very many of those. Caspian's mother, IIRC, is never even mentioned, any more than Tirian's mother is. Plus some Dryads and Bacchantes. The Beasts are almost exclusively male, with the exception of Hwin; there are no female dwarves, no female fauns or satyrs (come to think of it, I don't even know what the females of those species would look like).

So females are underrepresented. Tell us something we DON'T know.

Papersky pointed out that romance in Narnia never goes well. The four Pevensies rule well into adulthood, but do not marry or produce offspring. Susan's "romance" with Rabadash is a ghastly mistake that springs, apparently, from sheer bird-brainedness on Susan's part. Caspian and Ramandu's daughter ... well, we don't know, do we? They do have a kid, but then she gets bitten by that exceptionally Freudian snake and dies. Rilian seems more torn up about her death than Caspian, and Caspian seems to get way more exercised about losing Rilian than he does about losing his wife. Uncle Andrew's "romance" with Jadis is nothing more than an opportunity for that humor which Lewis writes so badly. And Rilian's relationship with the Lady of the Green Kirtle is disturbing on so many levels ... I tend to read it as intensely sexual, but that may just be me. In any event, we can all be sure that it is Bad News.

Aravis marries Cor/Shasta, but that's described in the most plebeian and unromantic terms possible; it feels frankly obligatory, as if Lewis sort of vaguely knows that's what supposed to happen in this sort of story. It's worth noticing that Polly and Digory, whom he seems to care much more about than he does about Aravis and Shasta, do not get married. Polly is still "Miss Plummer" in The Last Battle. I think it also says something quite pointed that Tirian's closest and most affectionate relationship is with a unicorn.

One of the bits I like in The Last Battle is Jill and Eustace's conversation after they've refused to leave Tirian:

"Pole," said Eustace in a whisper, "I may as well tell you I've got the wind up."

"Oh you're all right, Scrubb," said Jill. "You can fight. But I--I'm just shaking, if you want to know the truth."

"Oh shaking's nothing," said Eustace. "I'm feeling I'm going to be sick."

"Don't talk about that, for goodness' sake," said Jill.

(TLB 95)

This is a conversation between friends--friends, moreover, who are equals. In the last four books, from The Silver Chair to The Last Battle, Lewis seems to have reconceptualized his idea of the relations between men and women enough to allow them to be equals in a nonsexual relationship; chivalry may at last be dead. And that does genuinely make me happy.

But it leaves us with the dreadful matter of sexual politics still to struggle with. Cija posits a dichotomy in Lewis's thinking (based on a passage from his autobiography): that one could either worship a woman or conquer her. Susan and Lucy (especially Lucy) are both victims of the former idiocy, and I think the Chronicles' villainesses represent the other.

Male villains in Narnia tend to be comically ineffectual once they get down to the villainy bit: Miraz being stabbed by his own courtier in Prince Caspian; Rabadash getting his stupid self caught on a hook and then being turned into a donkey in The Horse and His Boy; the villains in The Last Battle are all male (Shift, Rishda, Ginger), and they are all petty and small-minded and made pathetic by the manifestation of Tash. But the villainesses! The White Witch and The Lady of the Green Kirtle are worthy foes; they have power, both magical and political (that's not quite the right word, but I can't think of a better), they are frightening as Miraz and Rabadash never are, and they must be genuinely defeated by courage and sacrifice. Aslan has to die to defeat the White Witch, and one of the things I admire about The Silver Chair is how much defeating the Lady takes. Puddleglum, Eustace, and Jill escape the trap she sent them into at Harfang, are captured by her Warden; they are rescued from the Warden by Rilian, but then have to follow the Fourth Sign on pure blind miserable faith. Rilian destroys the chair (Huzzah! we think. Victory!), and then the Lady comes in and very nearly re-enchants all four of them. Their struggle against her is agonizing and verging failure, until Puddleglum deliberately burns his foot. And then she turns into a snake and nearly kills Rilian and it takes both Rilian and Puddleglum (with not much help from Eustace and Jill) to kill her. And then the Deep Realm starts collapsing down around their ears, necessitating a very nerve-wracking escape. The Lady is a force, as Jadis is a force. Both of them are worshipped; in turn, both of them must be cast down and conquered.

So women are safe as friends, but romantic love tends to bring things back around into badness, as the example of Susan and Rabadash shows us. We have no on-stage examples of successful romantic relationships. Caspian and Ramadu's daughter's entire relationship (except for a teeny tiny bit of extraordinarily restrained and dignified flirting) takes place in between The Voyage of the Dawn Treader and The Silver Chair. Hwin and Bree, like Digory and Polly, specifically do not marry each other, and I've already talked about Aravis and Shasta. Digory's father is in India for the whole of The Magician's Nephew. The Pevensies mere and pere never appear at all, except for that one distant view of them waving in Aslan's country, which frankly I can't be brought to believe counts. There is, I suppose, Mr. and Mrs. Beaver (ooh, and Mrs. Beaver is the other female Talking Beast, aside from Hwin!), but they're (a.) animals and (b.) um, romance? Besides, Mrs. Beaver gives me a pain. Romantic love seems to be something Lewis knows happens, but that he can't quite imagine.

There's also the matter of adults. I talked about the demonization of adulthood in a previous post in this sequence, the way in which it is specifically constructed against childhood, as something damaging and contaminating. Susan, poor creature, is the primary example of this, as we learn in The Last Battle:

"... Where is Queen Susan?"

"My sister Susan," answered Peter shortly and gravely, "is no longer a friend of Narnia."

"Yes," said Eustace, "and whenever you've tried to get her to come and 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.'"

"Oh Susan!" said Jill, "she's interested in nothing now-a-days except nylons and lipstick and invitations. She always was a jolly sight too keen on being grown-up."

"Grown-up, indeed," said the Lady Polly. "I wish she would grow up. She wasted all her school time wanting to be the age she is now, and she'll waste the rest of her life trying to stay that age. Her whole idea is to race on to the silliest time of one's life as quick as she can and then stop there as long as she can."

(TLB 135)

Poor Susan is now going to be grown-up for real. For, as Peter, Edmund, Lucy, Jill, and Eustace are rewarded for their devotion to Narnia by never entirely having to grow up at all (staying the age they are now, as Polly says Susan wants to), and Digory and Polly are rewarded by being regressed to that same age, Susan is punished for her desertion by having her entire family taken away from her at a single stroke. The punishment does not, frankly, seem in proportion to the crime. (Remember, Lewis is his own Emperor-over-the-Sea here; he's the one who decided this trainwreck was the way to go.)

Most adults we see are ineffectual or unimportant at best; others are destructive or actively malevolent. Back in The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe (which is the only time we see Digory as an adult until after he's dead), Digory is monumentally unhelpful, tho' comic and unexpectedly understanding. We get a couple of Wise Old Sages (Coriakin and the Hermit), but one of them's properly a star anyway. Polly's speech is the first time any suggestion has been made that there are different ways of being an adult, and since it's very nearly the end of the last book, there's no time to do anything with it. Tirian, although he may be between 20 and 25, certainly behaves more like a prince than a king--as Caspian does in The Voyage of the Dawn Treader. Adulthood is something to be avoided; its clearest and most appalling depiction is in the struggle with the Lady, whose "adult reality" is, aside from being a lie, depressing enough to make anyone want to retreat into children's make-believe. So of course, romantic love and adult femininity are suspect, treacherous, and signs of betraying Narnia. There's an unbroken continuum between boys having adventures and knights going on quests; adult masculinity in Narnia is allowed to be very little different from boyhood. But adult femininity, what little we see of it, seems to leave little room for adventuring or imagination. If our models of adult femininity are the White Witch, the Lady of the Green Kirtle, and Susan, either in her incarnation as Queen or in her real-world existence, it's no wonder that Lucy and Jill are holding onto their girlhood like grim death.

And thus, the roles for women in Narnia boil down essentially to "friend" and sometimes "lesser hero." (Jill never does as much of the fighting as Eustace, even though Eustace doesn't seem to be terrifically good at it.) They can be girls--and they are, as I said somewhere, genuinely girls, not just boys in drag--but there is no good way for them to be women until they come to Aslan's country, where sexual politics, like so many other things, have ceased to matter. Certainly, the idea that marriage itself could be an adventure is foreign to Narnia.

[ADDENDUM (I can't believe I didn't think of this earlier): Aslan has no mother! There's no Mary-analogue in Lewis's cosmology. It's just Aslan and the Emperor-over-the-Sea, and goodness knows how Aslan was created, but it doesn't seem to have required female participation, just as Aslan is swinging creation all on his lonesome in The Magician's Nephew. Good parental figures are always male; the mother is represented only by the Bad Mother (Wicked Stepmother, Evil Queen): the White Witch, the Lady of the Green Kirtle, or the Absent Mother: Ramandu's daughter, Mabel Kirke.]

---
WORKS CITED
Lewis, C. S. The Last Battle. The Chronicles of Narnia 7. 1956. New York: Collier Books, 1970.

Comments

[cija.livejournal.com]

There's the hag in Prince Caspian, don't forget the hag.


I never thought Susan was as bad as all that, but I finally remembered who she reminds me of, and it's Mary in the Little House on the Prairie books before she becomes blind and thoroughly good. She (Susan) sticks to the adult-approved answers even when there are no adults around to commend her, which is brave and true of her, however smug and annoying it may also be. Come to think of it, she ought to slide into heaven on the same technicality as Emeth: she was true and loyal and faithful, just to the wrong god.

And I thought Miraz was pretty scary, but I guess it's because we first see him as a Wicked Uncle, from a child's viewpoint - but once you become a man (should you be so lucky) you can challenge him on his own terms and beat him. But an adult woman is always on her own ground, even when you're her equal in age: there's always something she knows that you don't, some way she can make a fool of you. I guess.

Damn it. I used to have a copy of Lewis' letters, but I must have lost it, or sat on it, or eaten it, or something, so I can't quote it at you. I am not sure, but if I remember rightly it indicates that he was at one time at work on or considering working on an epic poem about Medea. That would have been something to see. Whatever I think of his motives, he did female sexual evil very well, as you say. Part of the effectiveness is in his unashamed readiness to admit that beautiful, forceful women are scary - you don't have to poke around for subtext about him devaluing femininity because it's threatening because he comes right out and says it, which I find sort of disarming.

[pdcawley.livejournal.com]

I know it's probably cheating to look outside the text for this sort of thing, but what the hell, I'm going to cheat. When you look at the development of the handling of female characters over the course of the books one could say that Lewis seems to come to a different understanding of women by the end of the sequence than he had at the beginning. True, he's still not enamoured of Susan's idea of adult femininity, but he seems to have reached the conclusion that this caricature is not the only possibility. I can't help wonder if the growth of Lewis's relationship with Joy Gresham (which went from correspondent in 1950 to husband and wife in 1956) had something to do with it.

I've always associated Lewis with Uncle Andrew for some reason and it's tempting to think that Lewis did too. So in letting us see the Andrew's misogyny for what it is, he is also recognizing and attempting to overcome that flaw in himself.

As for Susan's punishment, I doubt very much that Lewis intended us to read it that way -- though it's hard to find any other reading for it -- I'm more inclined to think that, like Father Christmas in TLtWatW, it's another example of Lewis failing to think things through.

The thing I find hardest to stomach in the Narnia books now is the incredibly unsophisticated views of fall and redemption. The books appear to imply that once Fallen, always Fallen, unless you started the book in a fallen state (Edward), in which case it's once redeemed, always redeemed. There seems to be no recognition (as there is in say, Buffy) that redemption is not a one time thing but a continuing process. As you pointed out when discussing Lucy's mental eavesdropping of her friends, forgiveness doesn't really enter into the Narnian picture very much either (with the exception of Edward of course). It's this complete absence of shades of grey, coupled with a strong implication that there's only One True Way to be good (compare this with the diversity of the forces of good in LotR, where only evil is totalitarian) that makes it hard for me to read the Narnia books these days, though I loved them as a child.

Give me Swallows and Amazons any day of the week; I'll take my escapism without a side order of allegory.

[yonmei.livejournal.com]

Did you (plural you) ever read the collection of short stories, The Dark Tower? I expect so (but if not, go do it!) There are a couple of examples of incredible misogyny - indeed, one might say that, with one exception, whenever women appear they are treated with contempt (or, at best, pity). The exception is Lewis's retelling of the taking of Troy, and the appearance of Helen, ten years on: except for Digory's mother, who really doesn't even have a walk-on part in TMN, the only positive portrait of a mother in the whole of Lewis's writings - including his autobiography. (Well, okay, I haven't read all his "theological" writings.)

When Menelaus first sets eyes on her, he doesn't recognise her - he's looking for the woman of heartstopping beauty he remembers from ten years ago - but he admires her: her courage in sitting calmly still as armed men approach. Other characters are misogynistic, but Lewis's authorial voice notably - and unusually, in TDT isn't. If I could have one literary wish concerning C.S. Lewis, I don't want the fourth Ransom book and I don't want Father Christmas erased from TLtWatW - i want Lewis to have lived long enough to finish his retelling of the fall of Troy - to have completed it as well as it was begun.

[cija.livejournal.com]

Yes! Yes yes yes! (See also: Yes). I had the hardest time not bringing that into a paper on Euripides' Helen; I had to remember that not everyone would have read it.

That is Lewis taking the fact that a woman exists separately from mens' perceptions of her and staring it right in the face. I think it would have been, anyway. It would have been another Til We Have Faces.

What was uncomplimentary to mothers in his autobiography? I may be somewhat biased, since his description of not knowing how to deal with or be at all helpful in the face of adult grief when his mother died was very reminiscent of my own memories of not knowing what to do about my mother after my father died, and I may have brushed by what didn't remind me of myself. I found that he talked around her more than he talked about her, about the family characteristics he got from her, that her relatives shared, but I found that pretty natural.

[yonmei.livejournal.com]

I didn't mean Lewis was uncomplimentary to mothers in his autobiography: I meant exactly what I said. I too found Lewis's description of his reaction to his father's adult grief sympathetic and convincing: but my recollection of Surprised by Joy is that his mother didn't really ever exist for him as a person. Which is natural and understandable: she died when he was at an age at which our parents don't usually yet exist for us as real people.

Note re. Susan

[yonmei.livejournal.com]

A friend of mine wrote a lovely filk song ("Susan At Eighteen") about Susan Pevensie. If I can get her permission, I'll post it here.

[truepenny.livejournal.com]

Can someone tell me what's so awful about Father Christmas appearing in TLTW&TW? I mean, yeah, it's kind of dumb, but there seems to be a more principled objection floating around that I haven't thought of.

I agree with you on the oversimplification of fall and redemption. It smacks slightly of Election--although that may merely be because Lewis, as his secondary world's god, DOES decide who gets saved and who doesn't.

The feel I always get with Edmund in TLTW&TW is that the other three are simply incapable of imagining what it was like, or imagining that they might do the same thing themselves, so that it really is more a matter of forgetting than forgiving. Edmund himself doesn't forget--and I think that gives his character hints of depth and interestingness that Peter conspicuously lacks--but otherwise it's like it NEVER HAPPENED. And that's not how those things work.

And his concept of redemption is very much like, you do it once, and then it's done. And (the analogy with Buffy that I was trying to keep myself from making because it's such a huge, huge topic) really, no, it's something you have to do over and over again, and every time you have to choose, there's no guarantee you'll make the right choice. Children's literature does not have to be simple-minded, but Lewis is definitely making some very simplistic choices.

I also have profound objections to Emeth not being allowed to worship Tash in that kind of dreadful Freudian, "Yes means yes and no means yes and silence means yes" way, where he can't say, "No, but really, honestly, TASH IS MY GOD." That's insulting and patronizing, not merely to Emeth and all of Calormen (and to all those Narnians who thought they were worshipping Aslan, but not doing it right), but to the Muslims whose culture and faith is not so heavily disguised under the veneer of Calormen. It also means, very conveniently, that Aslan doesn't have to worry about anybody who does terrible things in his name; that call apparently get automatically redirected to Tash. Aslan's paws are clean, like Pontius Pilate's hands.

[truepenny.livejournal.com]

Oh, right, the hag. Yeeee!

Susan is like Mary. She's also like Susan in Swallows & Amazons; her notions of "good" have gotten tangled up with her notions of "adult." What irks me, particularly, is that Lewis and Ransome are content to disapprove of their Susans and make fun of them and let them be bad examples (Susan in We Didn't Mean to Go to Sea is like a textbook case of How One Ought Not To Act In A Crisis). They don't show any interest in helping their Susans out of their Susanness or in offering hope that Susans can grow up to be better and more interesting people than they are as teenagers. Susans are foils, poor things, and they're stuck with it.

(I'm thinking I may continue my YA nostalgia trip with The Dark Is Rising sequence, in which case there will be Thoughts about Jane and how she both is and isn't a Susan.)

Also, yes, to your ideas about the upfrontness of scary adult femininity. I agree that's part of the reason the White Witch and the Lady of the Green Kirtle are such unabashed and magnificent villains.

[papersky.livejournal.com]

I think Lewis was a natural polytheist, not just because of his cheerful acceptance of deities from all over into Narnia, but because of that Tash/Emeth thing, which makes so much sense in a polytheistic context and so little sense in a monotheistic one. I know he is spinning in his grave at the thought, I know he's a foremost Christian apologist, but anyway.

As a child, while I felt profoundly uneasy at The Last Battle I did find that bit about Emeth significantly more tolerant to other religions than I was accustomed to find around me in the Church of England.

[yonmei.livejournal.com]

I agree that Lewis didn't approve of Susan Pevensie, but I entirely disagree that Arthur Ransome didn't approve of Susan Walker! To my mind, the Swallows and Amazons sequence is one of the best examples of teamfic - all the children are different from each other, and all of them are real people. It's true that Susan gets to be "the sensible one" (a role thrust upon her as the oldest daughter, I imagine) but her common sense, practical ability, and organisational skills - she never ends up doing all the domestic work, she manages the domestic work - are valued by her brothers and sister, and their friends, as well as by the adults, and definitely by the authorial voice. What about the bit in Peter Duck where Captain Flint triumphantly tells the crew that they don't have to stop for water and supplies in the port where the pirates will have to stop, because of Susan's effective management and recordkeeping?

Susan Walker is a triumph, dammit, a tribute to the good sense and practicality that underwrites all the most successful adventures, and I will not see her classified with Susan Pevensie without protest.

[truepenny.livejournal.com]

I'm backing away slowly, hands in the air. *g*

Perhaps some contextualizing is in order. Until last summer, the only S&A book I had read was Swallows and Amazons, because that was the one, for some strange reason, which we owned, and the damn things are scarcer than hens' teeth in the USA. So my mental image of Susan Walker was fairly well solidified as nag, nag, nag, NAG, nag, nag before I ever encountered the rest of the series.

I will freely admit that I have overstated the case, but I also think that the Susans (Walker as well as Pevensie) do get the thankless job of being the Voice of Adult Reasonableness much more often than they ought to. Susan W. is sometimes vindicated; poor Susan P. never is. Ransome doesn't object to adulthood as strongly as Lewis--the adults in Ransome are some of the coolest adults EVER--so Susan W. can come out of it better than Susan P., but, is it at least fair to say that Ransome and Lewis were starting from the same archetype?

I was casting nasturtiums at Susan Walker, yes. That may also be partly because I don't sympathize with her, and that's my bias as a reader, not a flaw in the character. Mea culpa.

Sexual Politics in Narnia

[netninny.livejournal.com]

I'm making a list of all the female characters in the books: Lucy, Susan, the White Witch/Jadis, Jill, the Lady of the Green Kirtle, Aravis (whose name, I just noticed, is a kind of semi-anagram of "Avarice"), Lasaraleen, Hwin, Polly. Am I missing anybody, or is that really it?

Mrs. Beaver? She's not human, but she's definitely female. I'd call her a sympathetic, nurturing, married adult female. Her relationship with Mr. B. is very old-fashioned, of course.

There are also, of course, the women with walk-ons, cameos, and offstage existences:

In addition, I would suggest Eve as a strong metaphorical presence (given that the girls in the story are referred to as "Daughters of Eve," which in itself tells you something about their options in the Narnian world). ;-)

There's an unbroken continuum between boys having adventures and knights going on quests; adult masculinity in Narnia is allowed to be very little different from boyhood. But adult femininity, what little we see of it, seems to le ave little room for adventuring or imagination. If our models of adult femininity are the White Witch, the Lady of the Green Kirtle, and Susan, either in her incarnation as Queen or in her real-world existence, it's no wonder that Lucy and Jill are holding onto their girlhood like grim death.

Lewis certainly treats adult--and to a certain extent youthful--femininity as Other, and often a dangerous Other. But the literary ramifications of such a pattern may differ from the moral ones. What are the results for characterization? Peter is perhaps the model of the chivalric boy adventurer and you've noted previously that you find him profoundly uninteresting: is this just because you find yourself reading against the grain because of your gender and your moment in history? I would suggest that Edmund and Eustace are presented as canonically more interesting to the reader, and both of them are portrayed as somewhat "feminine" characters--Edmund for feeling and succumbing to the lure of the White Witch, Eustace for bucking the chivalric ideal. In the same way that the sympathetic young female characters in the Narnia books have more than a bit of "boy" in them, I would say that the male characters in whom we are most encouraged to emotionally invest ourselves have a recognizable quality of "female" otherness to them.

When it comes to characters like Jadis and the Lady of the Green Kirtle, I'm torn. I know that in a more enlightened fairy-tale world, there would be a role for strong female characters besides that of mighty opposite to the force of good represented by Aslan. Yet I love their magnificent villainy, and I'm aware that in a less enlightened fairy-tale world even *that* magnificence would be denied them. Put it this way: in a stage or film version of the books, which role would you prefer to play--Peter or Jadis?

*

[pdcawley.livejournal.com]

Can someone tell me what's so awful about Father Christmas appearing in TLTW&TW? I mean, yeah, it's kind of dumb, but there seems to be a more principled objection floating around that I haven't thought of.

I don't have a particularly principled object to Father Christmas, hell I enjoyed it at the time. I think it's used almost as a shorthand for those occasions when Lewis fails to think through the implications of his story. The Father Christmas thing jars because it's so obviously out of place in the allegory that it's easy to point to.

The whole 'there but for the grace of go I' thing that the other Pevensies fail to understand about Edmund's fall seems to be glossed over because I'm not entirely sure that the writer understands it either. It's apparent from the beginning of TLTW&TW that Edmund is a Bad Egg; his temptation by the White Witch is not seen as something that could happen to just anyone, but merely the end result of the preexisting weakness in Edmund's character.

It's (possibly) interesting to compare the Narnian view of fall/redemption with that in evidence in the Lord of the Rings. Without wishing to accuse Tolkien of deliberate allegory (at least not of the heavy handed kind practiced by Lewis), Tolkien's evil is totalitarian; much of what is evil about it seems to stem from its desire to replace the diversity of cultures in Middle Earth with some ghastly (industrial) monoculture. The forces of good in LotR are, by comparison a patchwork of different peoples, with their own goals and traditions. Tolkien seems to be say that there are many ways to travel and they're all good, but Evil is all consuming and monolithic.

In Narnia the boot is on the other foot. Lewis has a totalitarian view of goodness; everything is offered up to Aslan, even when people don't know that that's what they're doing (how patronizing can the man get?) and we see a variety of different forms of evil, from the White Witch's stultifying everlasting winter to the insidious evils of Shift as he perverts poor Puzzle's good intentions to his own mundanely selfish ends.

Both Tolkien and Lewis offer up a stark black and white view of good and evil with almost nothing in between, which is probably why they are so popular; they shy away from the complexities of real world morality in favour of an almost tabloid yes/no view.

Re: Sexual Politics in Narnia

[truepenny.livejournal.com]

Put it this way: in a stage or film version of the books, which role would you prefer to play--Peter or Jadis?

Jadis. Ten times out of ten.

I have to say, I think Peter is uninteresting simply because he isn't given any characterization. None of the children are particularly in The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe; Peter is Eldest, Susan is the Voice of Adult Responsibility (as I said in a reply to someone else), Edmund is the Bad Egg (as pdcawley puts it), Lucy is the child/reader: our point of entry, our viewpoint. They're all very broadly drawn archetypal English children. This is only just beginning to shift in Prince Caspian, which is the only other book in which Peter and Susan have any major part to play. Susan is clearly starting to Go Bad (denying Aslan like St. Peter denying Christ--or is that too much of a stretch?), whereas Peter stays pretty much what he was in TLTW&TW: High King, eldest, leader, hero, etc. etc. I think the only bit of CHARACTER we get out of Peter is that Lucy is his favorite sister, and by the time Lewis trots that out, Susan's already been such a whiny troll that that just seems like a sign of sanity.

I've said elsewhere that it's very difficult to write characters who are both Good and interesting and that I don't think Lewis ever does a very good job of it. I think Lucy is boring, frankly, and the semi-worship of her in later books makes me ill--there's Narnia's analogue to Mary, not a mother but a daughter.

But I also think you're right; the interesting and sympathetic characters are the ones like Jill and Polly, who are boyish girls, or Edmund and Eustace, who aside from the markers of femininity you've noted, are also extremely bitchy--a word I'm using quite deliberately for the full range of its connotations. If he were female, I think Eustace might well be labeled a shrew in The Voyage of the Dawn Treader. Like Edmund, he becomes much more masculine once redeemed, suggesting--along with the increasing boyinshess of the female characters (Polly, Jill, Aravis, the specific contrast between Lucy and Susan in The Horse & His Boy, that Lucy goes out with the archers and Susan (the cause of all the trouble) stays home)--that more masculinity is better. Jadis, especially in The Magician's Nephew, has masculine traits: strength, what the Romans called imperium and I can't think of an English word for at the moment, the fact that explicit parallels are drawn between her and Uncle Andrew. Unlike the Lady of the Green Kirtle, Jadis seems to be supremely unaware of her own feminine charms (both Digory and Uncle Andrew fall under the spell of her beauty (metaphorical spell, not literal), but she doesn't USE that, and I think she would if she had any idea it was happening). The Lady of the Green Kirtle, like Susan, is almost pure, undiluted femininity, and thus she is capital-O Other and supremely dangerous. Jadis can only overpower people; the Lady can charm them.

Re: Sexual Politics in Narnia

[netninny.livejournal.com]

Like Edmund, he becomes much more masculine once redeemed, suggesting--along with the increasing boyinshess of the female characters [snip]--that more masculinity is better.

True. Ultimately, the sexual politics of the Narnian stories are strongly influenced by Christianity and the medieval Christian romance tradition, both of which tend to regard femininity with a great deal of suspicion.

Jadis, especially in The Magician's Nephew, has masculine traits: strength, what the Romans called imperium [snip] The Lady of the Green Kirtle, like Susan, is almost pure, undiluted femininity, and thus she is capital-O Other and supremely dangerous. Jadis can only overpower people; the Lady can charm them.

Good distinction. The White Witch does a bit of charming in the Turkish Delight scene with Edmund, but it's very clearly signalled as a performance of femininity, rather like Jill's at Harfang.

*

[cija.livejournal.com]

The Father Christmas thing jars because it's so obviously out of place in the allegory that it's easy to point to.

Well, but, it's not an allegory. I would have thought he's put in there just so nobody could possibly call it one.

[yonmei.livejournal.com]

*Grrr*bounce*scary*yonmei*

Okay, sorry.

I admit my first reaction to your comment about Susan nagging in Swallows and Amazons was WHAT??? and then it occurred to me that the way the word "nag" is most normally used is to criticise a woman who is talking sense but to whom the listener does not want to pay attention. And yes, in that sense, in S&A Susan is plainly, worriedly, deeply conscious of her role as enabler: her reputation for common sense and responsibility is why the Walker children are let to stay on the island alone. Without Susan, though they would probably have been let to go sailing, they would never have been allowed to camp out by themselves in such isolation and independence, and Susan is clearly well aware of it.

I guess I sympathise with Susan, and admire her, because like her I am an eldest daughter but not an eldest child: and like her, I would far rather be the one in charge and see things done right than escape the responsibility but see things done badly.

Also, because I dislike the model of "Adulthood is bad" that you seem to be holding up here. Adulthood is not bad: adulthood, in the sense of taking responsibility for your actions and acting independently with that responsibility in mind, is fundamentally a good thing: to decry adulthood as automatically a bad thing, to me makes as little sense as setting up childhood as automatically a good thing.

Yes, Susan Walker is the "adult" of the group of children in the S&A books. And yes, she is clearly and plainly approved of for this by her older brother, her siblings, and the author. (That the adults in the book also approve her is is a necessary factor in making the adventures convincing.)

And yes, I did read the vast majority of the S&A books before I was 14: we had almost the whole sequence, in hardbacks with a green cloth binding, that even today mean childhood adventure to me.

[yonmei.livejournal.com]

I object to Father Christmas in the Narnia books just because he makes the whole thing momentarily like a stageset - not a real world. "Father Christmas" is a 19th-century concept: he doesn't fit with the other myths being used. It's as jarring in its way as Mrs Beaver's sewing machine.

[truepenny.livejournal.com]

Argh! I have backed myself into a bog and will now proceed to sink slowly, sputtering, out of sight.

Unless, perchance, I can just ... reach ... that stable ... clump of grass!
*pant*pant*pant*

Let me regroup. I, personally, do not think adulthood is bad. I'm an adult. I like being an adult much better than I liked being a teenager. I think taking responsibility for our own actions is the most important thing we have to learn how to do in growing up. I think the Chronicles of Narnia do argue that adulthood is bad, whether intentionally or not.

The S&A books are not arguing that adulthood is bad, although they have some pointed things to say about taking yourself too seriously. Describing Susan's habitual attitude as "nagging" is (a.) how the other children tend to perceive it, until in the aftermath of some crisis, Susan has been proved right, and (b.) how I perceived it when reading Swallows and Amazons when I was Titty's age. (And what I wouldn't give for that poor child to have a less unfortunate diminutive.) Also, I still think Susan behaves abominably in We Didn't Mean to Go to See, although I accept the plea of extenuating circumstances. However, my choice of words was not a good one, and I admit that freely. I don't personally sympathize with Susan, because I am neither maternal nor domestic, but that doesn't mean I don't recognize her fundamental, down-to-earth decency and goodness.

Overall, it's very clear that John and Susan's level-headed, responsible attitude is being held up against Nancy and Peggy's recklessness, impulsiveness, and over-bearingness. I'd vastly prefer to spend time (much less be embroiled in a crisis) with John and Susan.

Does that make my position clearer? Or am I still sinking?

[truepenny.livejournal.com]

Or Mr. Tumnus's umbrella?

[papersky.livejournal.com]

Gollum, Denethor, Boromir, Faramir, Lobelia, the genuine temptation Galadriel, Gandalf and Aragorn feel, oh no, no shades of grey at all, good grief, you can call Smeagol/Gollum being torn about what to do tabloid yes/no?

As for Lewis, I think Jill and Eustace and Lucy are all shown in their different ways as realistically tempted and resisting and giving way and going on. Edmund, I'll grant you, isn't anything like so much of a character after he reforms, but Eustace is. Eustace in The Silver Chair is someone dealing with having been all the things he used to be at the beginning of The Voyage of the Dawn Treader and not finding it easy.

[truepenny.livejournal.com]

Also, now that I'm thinking about it, I'm not sure we get an unmitigated Good anywhere in Tolkien. Nobility, yes, and courage to stand against unmitigated Evil, yes. But I don't think I'd argue that any of the human characters are entirely 100% driven-snow Good in quite the way that so many characters in Lewis are, and the Elves are ... Elves. They're ineffable.

And, in Tolkien, Goodness, whether undiluted or not, does not get the unambiguous rewards that it does in Lewis. Tolkien does not declare victors by fiat, and sailing into the West, although only a metaphorical death, is much more elegiac and mournful than death in Lewis, which gets you into Aslan's country, which is where you wanted to be anyway.

Am I making any sense with this?

Quick note

[yonmei.livejournal.com]

Describing Susan's habitual attitude as "nagging" is (a.) how the other children tend to perceive it, until in the aftermath of some crisis, Susan has been proved right, and (b.) how I perceived it when reading Swallows and Amazons when I was Titty's age.
Well, I'd like to see your textual evidence for (a) substantiated, but I accept (b). Childhood perceptions colour adult readings.

::hopeful smile:: Are you going to do more of theses analyses? I've also read The Dark Is Rising...

[yonmei.livejournal.com]

Indeed.

Re: Quick note

[truepenny.livejournal.com]

Can't substantiate, as do not personally own any Ransome books (she says with deep sadness). Which may also be a reason that my original assertion looks like I was snorting toads.

But, yes, there will be The Dark Is Rising posts, and probably a lot more talk about the construction of adulthood in children's lit. I had no idea this interested me, but now it does.

Btw, why is that girls always have to be the Voice of Responsible Adulthood? (That still is a link between the Susans, and also Jane Drew.) Can anybody think of an example of it being a boy? Because the only one I can think of is Simon in Witch Week, and he's (a.) a hateful prig and (b.) being a hypocrite.