The problem with Susan - Narnia

[Kylara]

This was the focus of our children's literature this week. Well it was on Narnia, but it turned into a big discussion about the problem with Susan. How she seems to be excluded from Narnia and is obviously absent in The Last Battle.

Lots of thoughts and theories on this. Ranging from misogyny, to sex, circumstance, cornered by structure, growing up, no longer a believer, etc and I thought it may make an interesting discussion.

So, what are your thoughts on Susan's exclusion from Narnia and why do you think it happens? Do you see it as a problem or not? And did you even notice? I'll leave off my opinion for a while until the discussion gets going, and apologies if there is a Lewis subforum - I looked and failed to see one!

 

[Brian G Turner]

This was discussed recently in another thread:
Arrogant critics?

 

[AnyaKimlin]

Well due to not travelling on the train for the reunion she isn't dead yet. She wasn't there when it crashed. That would be the main reason to exclude her. Otherwise her denials would have been in the same class as the dwarves and she'd have been somewhere not seeing things.

 

[Ray McCarthy]

The people bringing it up have an axe to grind. There is IMO no case for Lewis to answer. He has has lots of good female characters and it's Susan's denial, not makeup, nylons and parties (comment by Jill, the youngest girl).

The Last Battle, Vol 7 of the Chronicles of Narnia
End of Chapter 12
----------------
"Sir," said Tirian, when he had greeted all these. "If I have read the chronicles aright, there should be another. Has not your Majesty two sisters? 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 talk about Narnia or to anything about Narnia, she says, 'What wonderful memories you have! Fancy you still thinking about all those funny games we used to play when we where children.'"
"Oh Susan!" said Jill, "she's interested in nothing now-a-days except nylons and lipstick and invitations. She always was 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 all 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."
"Well, don't let's talk about that now," said Peter. "Look! Here are lovely fruit-trees. Let us taste them."
And then, for the first time, Tirian looked about him and realised how very queer this adventure was.
-----------------

Points:

1. Only Jill makes the comment about lipstick etc. It's quite in character for her.
   
2. The issue is rejection, denial that Narnia is real, so how could she be a friend of Narnia.
3. It's not actually about heaven. For a start, Susan maybe isn't dead yet!
4. In The Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe (vol1), Edmund starts nasty and reforms. Lucy is loyal and faithful from the beginning.
5. In Prince Caspian, (vol2) Susan doesn't believe Lucy. Only Lucy sees Aslan.
6. In The Voyage of the Dawn Treader, (vol3) Susan & Peter are too old, so don't visit Narnia. Eustace is nasty and reforms. Lucy again is important, though not central. I think Susan is in America.
   
7. In The Silver Chair (vol4), Jill is introduced. At various times Eustace and Jill make fools of themselves, Puddleglum is really the hero. Jill is almost a 1970s teen even though it's a mid 1960s book.
   
8. The Horse and his Boy (vol5) has a Calormen Noble Teen girl (Aravis) become partner to the slave Corin escaping, we learn in The Last Battle that he and she become King & Queen of Archenland, an "inter-racial marriage". Susan appears briefly in an unfavourable light meeting suitors in Calormen in this book.
9. Then we get the serious "retcon" of "The Magician's Nephew" (vol 6) that makes the Professor of Vol1 be Digory, the first Narnian King and Queen be cabbie Frank and wife Helen and the more sensible Polly is Digory's friend.
10. Finally we have The Last Battle (vol7), when Jill and Eustace arrive in Ch5 to rescue Tirian.
11. Aslan never says anything about Susan's fate? I'd have to re-read it to be sure.
12. There is an ongoing impression from Vol 2 to Vol5 that Susan hasn't the commitment to Aslan and Narnia of the others and becoming more selfish?

We have seven volumes. For the mid 1960s a marvellous collection of female characters and heroines. Yet, Pullman and J.K. Rowlings take one sentence out of context to condemn Lewis for his attitude to makeup and frivolity in one woman.
Female Humans of our world in Narnia:
Lucy, Susan, Jill, Polly, Helen.
We have villainous woman, the White Witch (vol retconned to be Jadis (vol6) and not human.
We have the dark Ararvis Calormen girl helped by her Calormen girl friend help the horses and Corin, become Queen of Archenland.

We have Emeth the young Calormen soldier accepted by Aslan.

Susan's "crime" in The Last Battle isn't female frivolity but rejecting the reality of Narnia. The text only says it means she is no friend of Narnia. Aslan says "Your father and mother and all you are - as you used to call it in the Shadowlands - dead. ..."
Was Susan on the train or elsewhere? I'd have to re-read the book. Does Aslan make any mention of Susan in "The Last Battle"?
In any case if the intention of Lewis was that Susan was denied Heaven, it was rejection of Narnia, not about lipstick.

I'll now have to re-read them again.

 

[kythe]

My parents are Christian fundamentalists, so I was raised with the Chronicles of Narnia as an allegory of faith. I haven't thought of Susan's story as a case against women, but as being related to "falling away from Christ".

It could be said that she didn't go to Narnia because she rejected Aslan, but this goes against the "once saved always saved" doctrine. It makes more sense that she is a survivor and didn't die with the rest of them.

This is an example of God's mercy - Susan now has another chance to repent. It is interesting that "mercy" means killing everyone in your family besides you. This type of "logic" is also why I can't make Christianity make sense to me, even though I was raised with it.

 

[AnyaKimlin]

CS Lewis was Anglican he didn't necessarily believe once saved always saved. In fact in terms of fundamental Christianity one of the characters who made it to "heaven" wasn't "saved" as he worshipped "Satan".

Fallen women are as much a part of the Anglican church as they were Roman Catholics. However, I just figured she wasn't dead. Denial is represented by the dwarves who believe they are still in the stable. As a character she wasn't needed.

 

[Hex]

I thought it was pretty clear that by turning to stockings and lipstick, Susan was no longer a good pure woman, but frivolous and (at that time) unworthy of Narnia/ heaven.

I know Ray's interpretation of this differs from mine, and we're both using the same passage as evidence, so it comes down to your interpretation.

I love the Chronicles of Narnia, and I re-read them often, but Susan's being punished for what could be perceived as excessively feminine behaviour always annoyed me (it doesn't mean that I despise CS Lewis for it -- he was entitled to his feelings about appropriate behaviour as much as anyone is, and Susan is arguably an early example of the kind of girl who often comes to grief/ is the antagonist in modern YA).

 

[Ray McCarthy]

so I was raised with the Chronicles of Narnia as an allegory of faith.

Except Lewis himself was adamant it WASN'T an allegory. He did write Allegories. It's certainly a fairy story imagining what the God of Sentient Animals would be like modelled on the Judeao - Christian - Anglican outlook.

but this goes against the "once saved always saved" doctrine.

Lots of Denominations believe it's like being rescued on to a ship, that you have the free will to be an idiot and jump back into the sea That's what my grandfather believed.
At what point does salvation occur? "The Great Divorce" is certainly allegory, and Evangelicals that take it literally claim it proves Lewis believed in Purgatory (a quite late Roman Catholic 'invention'). I don't know if he did.

but Susan's being punished for what could be perceived as excessively feminine behaviour always annoyed me

It doesn't say that anywhere.

 

[Hex]

Well, to be fair, Jill says it. You choose to regard Jill as untrustworthy, and I never did when I read it. It comes down to what you think of Jill.

 

[Extollager]

A bit of context:

Arguably, the children's Narnian experiences are like the seed sown by the Sower in Christ's parable.

Bible Gateway passage: Matthew 13 - New International Version

In Susan's case, it seems that, so far in her life, the good seed has been choked by "the worries of this life and the deceitfulness of wealth," the World. The lipstick and nylons, not reprehensible in themselves, would have been luxury items, if I'm not mistaken, at the time Lewis began writing the Narnian books or soon after. Since the first book begins during the war, and the children are still children* in our world at the end of the final book, we may infer that The Last Battle is set (insofar as earthly chronology is concerned) during the Austerity period superbly described in David Kynaston's superb book, to which I would refer everyone.**

Austerity Britain, 1945-1951 (Tales of a New Jerusalem): Amazon.co.uk: David Kynaston: 9780747599234: Books

Indeed, I find myself wondering just how it was that Susan had access to these goods. It is easy to imagine that she may have had wealthy friends who valued such things and either shared them with her, or expected her to get them somehow if she were going to hang out with them. Did she nag her family for spending money for them? She wouldn't have been old enough to go to work, right?

It would be crude and inaccurate to say that Susan was going to go to hell because she (as seems likely) was attracted to relatively glamourous friends and liked to dress and use the cosmetics they liked. Anyone inclined to concern himself or herself with what Lewis thought about hell should read the chapter on the topic in The Problem of Pain ASAP.

Also, I think that, from an artistic point of view, Lewis's reference to Susan, properly understood, is a master touch, adding a somber note that offsets the joyous music. I won't say that the conclusion of the Narnian cycle would become insipid without it, certainly, but it does add gravitas.

*Right? Surely not independent young people yet. (I haven't seen all of the movies, btw, but the actors seemed too old in the ones I did see.

**Reading this book a few years ago made quite an impression on me and suggested to me why there might be so much emphasis on the pleasures of the table (which well-fed Americans and Britons today have objected to) in The Lord of the Rings. There's nothing like having a scrappy and sparse diet -- even if you're a don with a family -- to make you remember fondly times when there was a relative plenty of good-tasting food available. Tolkien wrote the book shortly before the war broke out and during the war years, and completed it during the Austerity era; in 1951, when Kynaston ends his account, Tolkien was (as I recall) despairing of seeing new his book into print. In other words, LOTR was written almost entirely during a very long period of dreary food rationing and shortages (also unavailability of other consumer goods, too).

 

[Hex]

It would be crude and inaccurate to say that Susan was going to go to hell because she (as seems likely) was attracted to relatively glamourous friends and liked to dress and use the cosmetics they liked.

Um. Not sure I deserved that.

 

[Extollager]

Um. Not sure I deserved that.

I wasn't thinking of your comment, Hex. I wanted to say something about the topic in general. The Susan topic seems to get a lot of discussion in various places, and some of those remarks are peevish and not very thoughtful or well-informed.

 

[AnyaKimlin]

By the end I should imagine she would be old enough to work for them. The Last Battle came out in 1956 so she would only have had to be 15 to leave school and get a job.

 

[Extollager]

By the end I should imagine she would be old enough to work for them. The Last Battle came out in 1956 so she would only have had to be 15 to leave school and get a job.

It has been twenty years since I reread The Last Battle, but isn't the oldest Pevensie, Peter, still younger than 15 by the book's end, or no older than that? Susan is the next oldest, I take it.

I'm not sure how important the matter of the children's ages is to the topic here, but perhaps it is... can anyone pin it down with reasonable confidence?

In any event, austerity would have to be in force. Let's suppose the children's first adventure occurs in 1939 or 1940. As I recall, that is when children were evacuated into the country. They're still youngsters in the final book. If the war is over by then, it can only just be barely over, right? So even though the book comes out in 1956, the earthly chronology must be no later than 1946 or so?

I'm overdue for a rereading, clearly!

 

[AnyaKimlin]

It has been some years since I read the books, but isn't the oldest Pevensie, Peter, still younger than that at the end of The Last Battle? Susan is the next oldest, I take it. I'm not sure how important the matter of the children's ages is to the topic here, but perhaps it is... can anyone pin it down with reasonable confidence?

If she was in to nylons and lipstick in 1956 I wouldn't have pegged her much younger.

 

[Extollager]

If she was in to nylons and lipstick in 1956 I wouldn't have pegged her much younger.

Might that have to do with the people she was socializing with? I'm going out on a limb, as I have hinted earlier, but I'm getting the sense of Susan as attracted to a glam world of kids perhaps a bit older than she. Probably we can't say for sure.

 

[Extollager]

Wartime unavailability of nylons led to painting "seams" on bare legs.

Women painted on their 'nylons' using gravy juice, during WWII shortage

 

[AnyaKimlin]

Rationing ended 1954. I'm not sure when clothing rationing ending but I don't think it was that late.

 

[Extollager]

Here we go --

I remembered that Lewis had roughed out a chronology of Narnia and earth-time. Of course you could say it's extracanonical, but at any rate it helps to establish what he imagined. Narnia ends in what on earth is the year 1949, i.e. (for what it's worth) deep in the Austerity period of rationing.

Narnian timeline

I was way off in my estimate of Susan's age at the time. She's 20 or 21! Old enough to get a job for sure, as Anya suggested. My goof.

 

[Grimward]

Slightly off topic (and I've mentioned this elsewhere), but for those unaware, Neil Gaiman actually wrote a short story called "The Problem of Susan". And if you value your perceptions of Narnia, you probably DON'T want to read it. Not that it's bad, or even irreverent (there's PLENTY of that; it's Neil Gaiman, after all), it's actually decent as short stories go. The glistening eastern sea, great western wood, radiant southern sun, and clear northern sky, however, don't seem so bright after reading Gaiman's story (yes I know that quote is only in the movie).

Now, as to the question: I never saw Susan not being part of the last book as a problem. In a weird sort of way, it achieved a balance. There are multiple instances of characters who don't believe in Narnia coming 'round thru their experiences. Susan, on the other hand, began with every reason to believe in it, grew apart when she could no longer return, and finally relegated it to the realm of children's stories, which "grown-ups" (whatever those are ) put aside.