The Problem of Susan

[truepenny]

Quite some time ago, elisem asked me if I would read Neil Gaiman's story, "The Problem of Susan" (Fragile Things, New York: William Morrow, 2006: 181-190) and write about it. And, well, Fourth Street is coming up, and I am procrastinating like a crazy procrastinating thing, and I finally got around to it.

Spoilers both for the Gaiman story and for, inevitably, C. S. Lewis's Chronicles of Narnia.


"The Problem of Susan" is essentially an objection to the fate of Susan Pevensie, but what makes the story interesting is that it's an objection on several levels. The objection is articulated openly and directly by both characters in the story: the professor and Greta, the journalist sent to interview her. The easy thing, of course, would be to make the professor Susan, and Gaiman gracefully eschews the easy thing, while never quite letting go of the identity between them. The professor is the right age; she lost her entire family (two brothers, one named Ed, and a younger sister) in a cataclysmic train crash; she is an expert on children's literature. But the Chronicles of Narnia exist in the world of the story; Greta and the professor talk about the books and about the professor's likeness to Susan and, in fact, The Problem Of Susan:

          "You know, that used to make me so angry."
          "What did, dear?"
          "Susan. All the other kids go off to Paradise, and Susan can't go. She's no longer a friend of Narnia because she's too fond of lipsticks and nylons and invitations to parties. I even talked to my English teacher about it, about the problem of Susan, when I was twelve. [...] She said that even though Susan had refused Paradise then, she still had time while she lived to repent."
          "Repent what?"
          "Not believing, I suppose. And the sin of Eve."

I want to hold that thought for a minute, before we go on with the truly crushing blow Gaiman's professor delivers to Lewis's simplistic moral judgment. Before we go on, let's look at the only "solution" to the problem of Susan offered in the story.

It is not, let's be clear, a solution the story embraces. It's second-hand, what Greta's English teacher said to an indignant twelve-year-old girl (and clearly with an eye to reinforcing the allegory): she still had time while she lived to repent. We know nothing about the English teacher except that she was a woman (all the characters in the story are women, except for the lion), and I think the professor's sharp, disbelieving, "Repent what?" sums up the story's response to this idea. But Greta struggles to find an answer--not believing, which is certainly Susan's sin in Prince Caspian, and "the sin of Eve."

And what I want to unpack here is twofold. First of all, "the sin of Eve" is not, as far as I can recall, ever mentioned in the Narnia books. Lewis gives the intrinsic evil of women over to the White Witch. "Sons of Adam and Daughters of Eve" is intended (or at least I've always read it as being intended) as a formula of equality. It's not better to be a Son of Adam; Lucy is the hero of the first three books, and it's Edmund who is the Judas and who possibly, depending on how one defines it, partakes of the sin of Eve. That's the other question that Gaiman, drat him, leaves indeterminate: what is the sin of Eve? Disobedience? Greed? Succumbing to temptation? Or tempting Adam in her turn? But the important thing is that none of these is a sin Susan Pevensie commits. Which I think points out something Gaiman (and Greta and the professor) never quite says, which is the fundamental arbitrariness of Susan becoming her siblings' scapegoat. "There must have been something else wrong with Susan," says Greta, articulating the dissatisfaction, but not having an answer to it.

Apparently, in Lewis's canon, Thomas is less forgivable than Judas. Edmund betrays Aslan, repents, and is forgiven. And never betrays Aslan again. Susan willfully disbelieves, repents, and is forgiven--and then, dammit, goes right back to willfully disbelieving again. And here's the other thing I wanted to bring up. In my posts on Narnia, I talked a lot about Lewis's negative portrayal of adulthood, particularly adult femininity, and the way that all his "good" characters sneer at Susan for choosing that over Narnia. That seems to be Susan's sin in Lewis's eyes, and I think it's interesting that Gaiman doesn't articulate that directly, but his critique of Lewis's stance captures perfectly what's wrong with it:

"I don't know about the girl in the books," says the professor, "but remaining behind would also have meant that she was available to identify her brothers' and little sister's bodies. [...] My younger brother was decapitated, you know. A god who would punish me for liking nylons and parties by making me walk through that school dining room, with the flies, to identify Ed, well . . . he's enjoying himself a bit too much, isn't he? Like a cat, getting the last ounce of enjoyment out of a mouse."

Gaiman is pointing out, brilliantly, that the smug self-superiority of Lewis and his characters, sitting in judgment on Susan, is only possible because they don't have to deal with the real world anymore. They don't have to--and certainly don't--think about what Susan is going through, about the grotesque, tragic, terrible mess that they've left behind. And that's all right for them, being dead and all, but Gaiman (I think) is taking Lewis to task, quietly and politely, for not facing up to the consequences of his grand moral judgments. "He's enjoying himself a bit too much, isn't he?"

And if that were all there were to "The Problem of Susan," it would be a fantastic story. But that isn't all. There's another layer.

(Actually, there are two other layers, one of them being the tangent about Mary Poppins Brings in the Dawn, which shows beautifully the way in which this old-woman-who-isn't-quite-Susan-Pevensie has grown up and left behind the great tragedy and betrayal of her youth. She doesn't dream about C. S. Lewis and Narnia; she dreams about a different children's book entirely, and one--since Gaiman can make it up to suit himself--with a quite different relationship to its Christ-figure and his female opposite number.)

The dreams of Aslan and the White Witch, which may be the professor's, or may be Greta's, or may belong to both, are a much more vicious critique of Narnia than the surface narrative of the story. And a much more vicious critique of adults and adulthood than Lewis ever imagined. In the dreams, Aslan and the White Witch make a deal to betray the children. Aslan eats the girls, and the White Witch does something to the boys ("she stares, unflinching, at the twisted thing her brothers have become"). And then the lion and the witch fornicate. And the terrible last line, with its echoes of being washed clean in the blood of the Lamb, perfectly captures the predatory nature of Lewis's Narnia, the way that it claims for itself and keeps those it claims to love. It isn't that Susan was left behind. It's that she escaped.

Comments

[ronin-kakuhito.livejournal.com]

3 months ago I went searching the net for your essay on The Problem of Susan. Apparently, I just jumped the gun.

Another Neil Gaiman story I shall probably dislike!

[oneoflokis.livejournal.com]

I only found out about this today on Wikipedia. What would I like to say: briefly:

Neil Gaiman, like many modern (indeed "postmodern") writers is a milksop and grossly overrated.

Reading this doesn't make me any more enamoured of him. I've enjoyed a couple of his novels; many if not most of his short stories strike me as immoral, half-baked or just plain silly! Eg: he wrote one which is online which seems a pretty standard justification of Hell: glorifying a demon torturing a businessman!

If NG thinks he is even half the literary or moral equal of CSL, he surely has another think coming!

I don't believe he has read any of the other works of CSL; the essays and so on which explain his thinking and his stories: agree with them or not. He might start with The Problem Of Pain; also Surprised by Joy. Lewis was no stranger to death and loss: also see A Grief Observed.

Maybe Aslan didn't "make" the Pevensies die: maybe it was their fate to. Rail accidents happen all around the world every day - que voulez-vous?

Another Neil Gaiman story I shall probably dislike!

[oneoflokis.livejournal.com]

The idea of "those whom the gods love the most, die young" is an ANCIENT one, going back to classical pagan times, maybe even before. (I am a neo-pagan, BTW.) It still has echoes in modern times; they used to say it of composers (eg Mozart); now it most often comes up when some pop star overdoses; cf Amy Winehouse, "the 27 club" etc: same idea.

As for Gaiman's over-the-top imagination of the Lion and the Witch "fornicating" together: now *that* is some variation on a classical *Freudian* scenario: about which analyst *Lewis knew all about*: don't forget, he was all the rage by the 1930s! & see again: Surprised by Joy and also the allegory The Pilgrim's Regress! But ultimately: CSL didn't believe much in Freud: TPR explains why! :)

Now if Neilie hasn't read all of the above, then he shouldn't bother with "sequels" to the Narnia chronicles, I say!

"What do they teach them at these schools" - quite! Though NG went to a better one than I did: I only went to a comp!

NG = trendy wannabe, AKA Mr Scrubb senior?

[sartorias.livejournal.com]

The problem I had with the Gaiman story was the emotional jerk-round I felt reading the story. "This isn't the Narnia I knew, it's someone else's Narnia."

A much better treatment of the problem of Susan, at least I thought, was in this story (http://yuletidetreasure.org/archive/40/theivory.html) which combines Narnia and Pullman's His Dark Materials trilogy.

[truepenny.livejournal.com]

I think part of the point is that it isn't "your" Narnia or "my" Narnia. It's Narnia as seen from the perspective of someone who has been horribly betrayed by it. So, no, it doesn't look right.

[lareinenoire.livejournal.com]

Oh, this is so funny -- I assigned my student an essay a few weeks ago on Susan's expulsion from Narnia, and gave her both the Chronicles and Gaiman's story. She more or less came to the conclusion that Lewis' point was about disbelief and not sexuality, which makes a lot of sense to me and seems to be more or less what you're talking about.

But that idea of escape is fascinating. And I knew something was niggling at me about the ending of The Last Battle, and that was the complete disregard for the consequences in the real world of everyone's going into Narnia after death. Gaiman articulates that beautifully, and although I found the dream sequence incredibly disturbing and wasn't precisely able to glean what he meant by it, the thought that Susan might have escaped that awful fate is rather heartening.

Fascinating analysis.

[mia-mcdavid.livejournal.com]

But, remember, Aslan's Mountain *IS* the real world as far as Lewis is concerned; this Earth is just a pale imitation that will fade.

You can escape Narnia, if you will, but you can't escape Death, and after that, your only choices are Aslan's Mountain or, like some of the dwarves, to remain inside a dark and smelly stable when you could so easily walk outside.

[txanne.livejournal.com]

i just read some of the linked essays. I've always (okay, since grad school) thought that Shasta = Aucassin and Aravis = Nicolette.

[rymenhild.livejournal.com]

Oh, really? That works. That works very well, actually. Huh.

...

Hi. My name is rymenhild. I've been collecting notes on and off, in between sections of a dissertation on medieval romance, for a side paper on C.S. Lewis's use of medievally-constructed Saracens in Narnia (well, in Calormen). If you're interested in sharing contact information so I can cite you in my paper, email me at rymenhild at yahoo dot com and I'll reply from my professional account.

[kalimac.livejournal.com]

stumbling here from elsewhere ...

There are definitely problems with Lewis's portrayal of women, and his portrayal of everything in The Last Battle in particular, but criticizing Susan for choosing "adult femininity" is definitely not one of them.

Look at the text: Jill says that Susan "always was a jolly sight too keen on being grown-up," and Polly, who is the oldest woman there, replies, "I wish she _would_ grow up," and explains: Susan (who at this point would be about 21) is not being an adult but is stuck at the awkward stage of trying to _prove_ she's grown-up, which is the surest sign that she isn't. Once you actually grow up, you put those silly anxieties aside. It's adolescents, not adults, who are anxious to prove they're too old for fairy tales - so Lewis has argued in many places of which this is just one.

[truepenny.livejournal.com]

My other Narnia posts talk about the problems of adulthood in greater depth, but essentially the problem that I see is that there's no place for adult women who don't want to be "one of the boys" (and I'm using that word "boys" very very deliberately). Now my personal performance of adult femininity would (at least on that issue) meet with Lewis's approval, but it's not the only one, or the only good one, or the only one which ought to be allowed. Adult women in Narnia? Dead (or absent) or evil--particularly those who are at all femme, like the Lady of the Green Kirtle. Polly is the only exception (since he carefully kills Jill and Lucy before they have to grow up, a little like the creepy thing in Baum's Oz books where the little girls are going to go on being little girls forever and ever and ever), and she gets the exception exactly by NOT being feminine.

Yes, I am reading against the text in making this argument. But that's because I find the double-bind the text puts women in untenable.

[leahbobet.livejournal.com]

It's interesting -- I remember my take-home from the Susan issue being that it's important to keep your mind open? To keep the sensawunda? Rather than repudiating the things you loved because they're not supposed to be cool anymore.

This may have been a reading born in projection. *g*

[truepenny.livejournal.com]

That's the Prince Caspian Susan. The one who repents and is forgiven. In other words, no, you weren't projecting to get there. *g*

[mattador.livejournal.com]

Hm. It's my week to think about this, I guess- I just reread an excellent but very different take on the Problem of Susan here (http://andrewrilstone.blogspot.com/2005/11/lipstick-on-my-scholar.html).

[swan-tower.livejournal.com]

That is indeed interesting, and it makes me think of Pamela Dean's Secret Country trilogy. I don't know if you've read it, but it's about a group of children who make up and play out stories about an imaginary world, then find themselves in that world (except it isn't quite as they imagined it . . .) I don't remember the details precisely, but they discuss at one point how problematic it was for them to have created (or did they?) a character who disbelieved in magic when living in a magical world. I think one of them says it's like having someone in our world not believe in gravity.

And that comes to mind for me because Lewis saying Susan has ceased to believe in Narnia feels to me like the author jerking on the reins, making Susan behave that way so he can make a point about faith and salvation. A la truepenny's comments here and elsewhere, I don't feel like Susan ever gets to be a character; she's more like a stick-figure shoved into whatever role is needed at the moment. (Nagging mother? Check. Regal queen? Check. Doubting Thomas? Check. Frivolous wannabe adult? Check.)

Damn. Now I want to write my own "Problem of Susan" story, except a) it would probably be a wholesale rewrite of LWW, PC, and TLB from her point of view, b) I don't have the time for that, and c) I don't have the Lewis/Narnia chops to give it any real substance beyond "can we make this character not suck?"

[britmandelo.livejournal.com]

Oh, bravo. That was one of my favorite pieces in his collection Fragile Things. I nearly wrote an essay on it, but I ended up going for "October in the Chair" instead.

This is a fine piece.

[sistermagpie.livejournal.com]

The phrase "willfully disbelieve" always jumps out at me and makes me wonder how one is supposed to do it. You can't choose what you believe or not. It seems more like "pretending to disbelieve." But why would someone pretend they didn't believe in a land where they were queen? How deep does her denial go? How do her siblings and the others know what's in her heart? Do they think she's lying? Has she just made the mistake of enjoying her real life and that made the other belief go away? Is that like a test?

[gramina.livejournal.com]

I'm not anywhere close to saying anything useful about the problem of Susan (though as I ramble below I do talk about it a little), but I can (I think) speak to "willfully disbelieve."

*If* you start from a perspective that says that what some people are believing (in this case Narnia et al) is inherently *realer* than the rest of our experiences, then the "willfull disbelief" referenced is very like, say, my -- what? Mother-out-law? --'s ability to convince herself that the partner in question is "really (mostly) straight," and "will probably eventually marry (cross-gender partner)," not to mention the many other counter-factual things she's persuaded herself of because they are more comfortable for her. (Or at least, that's the reason I project for her having persuaded herself of them.) And of course, once you've persuaded yourself of something counterfactual, you become highly committed to that thing, because it's (typically and imo) cost you so much to get there.

In that version of things, what has happened is that Susan is more comfortable trying to adapt herself to fit the mores around her than she is remaining true to her own experience at the cost of fitting in. And that was a perspective that appealed very strongly to me in the books, as the kid who didn't -- couldn't! -- fit in; it put me on the moral high ground, if you will. I've come to the conclusion that that's not so useful to me, but then, I've had lots of time to get there -- it's upwards of twenty-five years or so since I was tormented for being odd.

I do think it's very telling that *Lewis* apparently could not see any way to get through adolescence as a female (and especially as a "feminine" female) without falling prey to that kind of group-think. And I wish he -- or anyone I was reading -- had. For far too long I had a deep, unaddressed conviction that I could only be femme/attractive/sexy if I gave up being myself.

[cija.livejournal.com]

Brief comment, since I am at work [1] -- I have a long essay about this somewhere on my computer, but my greatest difficulty with Susan's fate was always that the feminine, sexual part of being grown-up that is symbolized by parties and nylons --there's a Lewis letter somewhere where he congratulates a Christian woman on having got much better things to think about than 'jazz and lipstick', it's the same thing -- is flatly not the same kind of sinful femininity that Susan is seen to demonstrate over and over as a child. Because her two great sins in the books are 1. nagging and 2. pity. Pity especially--she's the one who spoils the fun by shuddering at bloodshed.

So I would agree with the commonly-voiced objection to critics of the Susan Issue, it is pretty unfair for readers to identify her falling away from Narnia with sexual maturation, except that it's a confusion that Lewis made himself, and first. The adult Queen Susan who goes around breaking hearts and getting courted offstage in The Horse and his Boy, who is the Susan who grows up in the real world to wear nylons and go to parties, is not the Susan who used to wring her hands and worry about what their parents would think. And that was the Susan who was damned from the beginning. I think that Lewis fell victim to the temptation of mapping his two great hates onto each other--the 'femininity' of nagging domesticity & the 'femininity' of beguiling sexual wiles--without caring that they are two different things, and in many ways opposed to each other.

[truepenny.livejournal.com]

That makes a lot of sense. Susan in The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe and Prince Caspian is sort of drearily practical, the sort of person who sucks all the joy out of everything by being a nag and a worrywart and "practical": "mothering" in its worst connotations. Susan in The Last Battle--as we see her through the disparaging comments of her friends and loved ones--who echoes the version of Susan we never really see in The Horse and His Boy is exactly the opposite, focusing on fripperies, on vanity, instead of on what Really Matters. Both are "bad" performances of femininity, but you're right that they don't match up.

[sarahtales.livejournal.com]

I was always enraged by the - well, the terribly pi, to be an Enid Blyton schoolgirl about this - attitude of the dead towards living Susan, but somehow my mind never took the leap to identifying the bodies.

To think of Susan with the corpses while people talked about how they wished she'd grow up with not a thought of how she would have to grow up pretty sharpish now she was alone in a world turned into a nightmare makes me want to shake Lewis and ask him why he didn't think it through.

[deepad]

Interesting analysis.
My own reaction to Gaiman's story was one of disappointment, because I felt that he had taken the easy way out. Easy, that is, compared to fanfiction writers (Ob disclaimer: I've written one story in the fandom myself) who wrote against Lewis's text while staying true to canon.
That is, Gaiman seemed to make his argument by going AU, and I felt that there was more meat and subtlety in the stories that didn't.
I would love to hear your thoughts on how this sort of 'profic' vs fanfic divide plays out when interacting with source texts that are being argued.

[truepenny.livejournal.com]

Um.

I think there's a problem with judging Gaiman by the rules of a game he isn't playing. He's not writing fanfiction or pastische (and there is a pastiche in Fragile Things, so it's not that he won't or can't)--as signalled by the fact that his characters discuss Lewis--he's REIMAGINING Narnia from a point of view that does not and cannot exist within canon. For me, personally, that's what makes the story powerful: both the professor talking about that scene Lewis never lets us see, of Susan having to identify her family's bodies, and the terrible brutal betrayal of the deal between the Lion and the Witch.

Now. I have no quarrel with subverting Lewis from within, and I agree that it's a very nifty trick. My argument here isn't against fanfiction/pastiche, it's against reading the story by what you (general "you") think it should have been doing instead of reading it for what it does do.

[crookedfeet.livejournal.com]

Willful disbelief, to me, means that despite being shown the error of her ways, she is still insisting on reason instead of blind faith. I think that also defines Lewis' women, as we see them in Narnia, Lucy and Jill and Polly accept everything and do very little worrying about consequences and the reasons behind things, which is in my opinion, partly why she's rather unsympathetic in Prince Caspian. Then she repents and accepts faith, and then later we get the lipsticks and being grown up.
In Caspian after all, it's the girls who have that madcap adventure, and it's a female teacher who is despised-but the little girl who runs off with them who is praised. Aside from myth, i think that's why the Maenads are there. The boys however, are getting on with formulating plans and thinking about what to do.

[mostlikely2.livejournal.com]

"It isn't that Susan was left behind. It's that she escaped."

♥. Exactly. I have no illusions about the preconceptions and nastinesses implicit in the story itself, but this isn't the first time we've encountered a narrative written by an old white man that told us we were wrong and ugly. You can enjoy the story and still dance outside of it. Although admittedly, that's a personal solution that doesn't change the narrative, or its effect on children, in any way.

[aberrant1.livejournal.com]

Followed someone's link to this post, and realized that:

1. You wrote several awesome books that I love.
2. You have posts analyzing Due South.


Dear Universe: Why was I not informed of this blog?

Uhm, yeah. So, this is a drive-by friending. Hope that's okay.

[truepenny.livejournal.com]

That's totally fine.

[fenrah.livejournal.com]

Er, hi! I enjoyed your essay. That story has been stewing away in the back of my head since I read it a year ago. I think that means it was a good story.

I thought what Gaiman had to say about Susan and being left behind and especially the image of the dead mouse on the doorstep (as though swimming) was haunting and fascinating.

However, the bit about Aslan screwing the witch (and killing the kids) seemed cheap. This sort of scenario is such a common Gaiman trope that I can't help thinking he sees it everywhere. God and the Devil are in allegiance against mankind. Super-nature good and evil beings have more in common with each other than with mortals. They're con artists; they're using us. It's William Blake. It's the marriage of Heaven and Hell. We see it in American Gods, in Good Omens, in parts of Sandman. It's a card Gaiman loves to play. It's a thought-provoking card, and it knocked my socks off the first time he did it, but he plays it a lot.

[truepenny.livejournal.com]

I thought in this case it was a perfect metaphor for the way Lewis stacks the deck. Also, having read American Gods, Good Omens, and Sandman, I didn't find this treatment of the idea either similar to any of those or in any way cheap. Although that may be a matter of personal taste.

There's a throughline from the dead mouse on the doorstep to "He's enjoying himself a bit too much, isn't he? Like a cat, getting the last ounce of enjoyment out of a mouse," to the circumstances of Aslan devouring Susan in the dream, which I think is necessary to the theme and structure of the story.

[firebirdgrrl.livejournal.com]

The ending give me chills-I love this piece. (I also love the double allusion to the White Witch and Aslan as the Whore of Babylon and the Beast in the Christian Biblical Revelations and the Tarot card "Strength"--there's a whole lot to be played with in there including the role of sexuality, femininity and symbol including, well the giant taboo.) I also love that the ending has Narnia recreated through appetite-for food (well, prey), sex and power, all very adult yet also at the end has Aslan and the Witch together in power. It's weirdly balanced and cooperative for such a transgressive thing, which makes it even more chill-worthy.

Of course, I'm certain there are other readings, but that jumped out at me right way (and I also friended you-hi!).

[frostfox.livejournal.com]

Susan escaped and moved to Alderley Edge, at least in my reality as a 11 year old girl.

FF

Drive by Friending

[jcfiala.livejournal.com]

Saw your post on tor.com, read some of your posts on narnia, want to read more of your writing, so I've friended you.

Wow. Great stuff.

Re: Drive by Friending

[truepenny.livejournal.com]

Be welcome!

Gaiman's Susan vs real Susan

[gadigal.livejournal.com]

What an interesting discussion! I've read Neil Gaiman's short story, but I am puzzled about his Susan becoming a professor. In the 1940's and 1950's it was quite common for girls to be told that they didn't need a fancy education because they would get married. Or conversely, if they were good at schoolwork and did go on to further study, that they were only studying to get a Mrs degree.

Really! Susan, who according to VDT (p.8) was 'no good at schoolwork', suddenly becomes a Professor? How? Oh I know that Susan could read, that her father was on a study tour when they went to America in VDT, and that Susan was noted for her grown-up demeanour (including practicality & nagging) and otherwise good social skills even in Narnia. According to Gaiman's story, it would appear that when young and frivolous, Susan Hastings also had good contacts, though they could help only so much.

But Professors don't get to be such without completing their educations, going on to complete both undergraduate and postgraduate degrees and putting in enough of the 'hard yards' to become enough of a recognised authority to hold tenure as a Professor. Good contacts might ease the struggle a little, but qualifications and hard work are far more important. C.S.Lewis knew this, and maybe Neil Gaiman also does. Also,I doubt that either Neil Gaiman or Philip Pullman are old enough to remember the sorts of media advertisements directed at young women, or social pressures, conformities and attitudes of the immediate post-war era, though both might have at some time read Ira Levin's 'The Stepford Wives', which wasn't published until the 1970's.

If somehow Susan Pevensie, who 'was no good at schoolwork, but otherwise very old for her age', had managed to become a Professor, despite having gone off to America instead of finishing school, she would have automatically have repented of any frivolous past, alluded to by Jill, Eustace and Polly. Gaiman's Susan mentions that after the rail accident, she didn't have much money left over for unnecessary stockings and lipstick, which implies that at the very least she had to find some way of supporting herself. If she had to do part-time study that, too, would have eaten into her spare-time partying. Accepting that the real Susan was able to accomplish all of that whilst alive, it would have been really rude of the journalist in Gaiman's tale to mention the Last Battle Susan, or to think that an older Susan should need to repent any further. No wonder her interview with Susan gave Greta the Journalist nightmares!

Personally, I pictured Last Battle Susan Pevensie as some sort of Bridezilla. No wonder that Peter only commented that 'Susan was no longer a friend of Narnia' and didn't want to discuss her further. He might have remembered the festivities he staged for Rabadash and their outcome whilst he was away fighting giants. And no wonder that Jill and Polly, whom Susan had been avoiding meeting, except maybe, socially, are the only ones to comment, apart from Eustace, Susan's disliked cousin. I'm not surprised that the Professor, who had argued with Susan in LWW said nothing. And Lucy and Edmund who had stayed with Eustace in VDT, and relieved the siege of Anvard, also mysteriously remain silent. Well, that is my take on the subject anyway.