The problem with Susan - Narnia

[galanx]

Indeed, I find myself wondering just how it was that Susan had access to these goods.

Same as me Mum.

"Overpaid, Oversexed, and Over here."

And as Mum, who was four years older and lived through the Blitz, used to add, "Thank God for that", though I'm not sure which part she was referring to - Mum was a bit of a goer in her younger days.- and all three of my dad's sisters ended up as Yankee war brides.

As well this was in 1945-49, when Susan would have been 17-21, and while rationing would have been in place, it would have eased somewhat with plenty of workarounds for an especially beautiful middle-class (British usage) girl to get them.

**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).

And the Narnia books were written with that memory fresh in mind- there is a specific reference at the end of "The Silver Chair":

And not wretched sausages half full of bread and soya bean either, but real meaty, spicy ones, fat and piping hot and burst and just the tiniest bit burnt.

The Narnia books are full of references to food- an interesting example of Lewis' viewpoint is in a letter quoted in A.N. Wilson's (admittedly not very good) biography , when during the post-war rationing period Lewis writes that he could actually go hungry, and how totally astonished he is that this could have happened to someone in modern Britain.

This after having lived through the Great Depression when malnutrition was a chronic cndition of the working classes. especially in the North, and starvation was not unknown.

But much more on that later in my upcoming thread "Dwarfs, The Last Battle, Lewis, and the Labour government 1945-1951".

 

[Toby Frost]

I did read Narnia as a child, but I don't remember this book well. Working purely from the excerpt that Ray has posted, presumably the argument being skirted around (pun intended) is that Lewis is punishing Susan for being too girly. That doesn't seem the most natural reading of that excerpt. If someone gave the passage of text that Ray has quoted to me, I would assume that the criticism was not that Susan was being criticised for being overly feminine, but that she was overly worldly, and had become dead to whatever magical (and arguably religious) sensitivity was required to be connected to Narnia - in effect, she was being undone by being a materialist, not a woman. If it was a man being criticised, I would assume that he would only be interested in sport, women, cars, drinking or other stereotypical things like that given the time of writing. Of course a man isn't being criticised here, but I don't think that in itself proves anything, although others may disagree.

 

[aThenian]

I agree with what @TobyFrost says - it's Susan's worldliness that is the problem. So, the lipstick and nylons aren't irrelevant, as they are what is distracting her, but equally, in condemning Susan, I don't think Lewis is condemning women/femininity per se, which is what some of the critics (notably Philip Pullman) have suggested. In some ways Susan is a sort of evening up of Lewis's treatment of the sexes, in the Edmund and Eustace have been the main sinners in the rest of the series (though of course they do get redeemed, but then so will Susan most likely, esp as she will get the nasty shock of her entire family being wiped out in one day...wow, poor girl).

By the way, clothes rationing ended pretty early - I think 1949, and anyway, didn't Susan go to USA in Voyage to the Dawn Treader, from where she could have brought back as many lipsticks and nylons as she wanted?

 

[Hex]

She did -- Susan was in America with her parents, which was why Peter was staying with the Professor.

I said it before, but I think it's very much down to the individual's interpretation. It's perfectly reasonable to see it both ways, and I don't think Pullman is being unreasonable when he spots it. When I read it as a child, I certainly believed that Susan had rejected Narnia in order to embrace all the silly girly things that were beneath a sensible person's notice, and I believed CS Lewis was condemning that kind of femininity. Which was fine -- there are lots of books condemning it, and I did too when I was a child.

Whether it would have been different if Peter had turned from Narnia to focus on girls and cars is kind of beside the point; it wasn't Peter (and how unimaginable that it could have been -- the seeds of Susan's fall are laid through the books -- she is beautiful, she is sought after among foreign princes, she is too weak to find a way to defend herself and must depend on her brothers to rescue her). The character to fall away from Narnia was Susan, and thus the association between female frivolities and rejection of Aslan (or God).

Perhaps she was redeemed, but not in the books. I always assumed she died and was lost to Narnia forever, but there's no evidence either way.

Another aspect that may or may not have a bearing on the perception of women, is the tensions that the war created -- and especially the post-war period -- about women moving in on men's territory in the workplace etc. Throughout Europe in the 1920s and 30s there was a fairly ambivalent representation of women (MALE FANTASIES, about the Nazi perception, is an interesting read) but you can look at films like Metropolis to see the juxtaposition of the good woman who looks after orphans etc. and the sexualised and out-of-control robot-woman who certainly doesn't deserve a place in heaven. Women only got the vote on the same terms as men in 1928 and much of the interwar and wartime period was an ongoing discussion about how women fitted into society. There was still a good woman/ bad woman juxtaposition (did people really smile happily upon pretty young girls getting all the good stuff because the American soldiers were chasing them? It seems unlikely).

I think CS Lewis was writing within this context, and Susan can probably be seen within this context as well (perhaps as a commentary on the traditional kind of woman, whereas Lucy is a wartime woman working on the land in her headscarf-type?)

 

[aThenian]

Another aspect that may or may not have a bearing on the perception of women, is the tensions that the war created -- and especially the post-war period -- about women moving in on men's territory in the workplace etc. Throughout Europe in the 1920s and 30s there was a fairly ambivalent representation of women (MALE FANTASIES, about the Nazi perception, is an interesting read) but you can look at films like Metropolis to see the juxtaposition of the good woman who looks after orphans etc. and the sexualised and out-of-control robot-woman who certainly doesn't deserve a place in heaven. Women only got the vote on the same terms as men in 1928 and much of the interwar and wartime period was an ongoing discussion about how women fitted into society. There was still a good woman/ bad woman juxtaposition (did people really smile happily upon pretty young girls getting all the good stuff because the American soldiers were chasing them? It seems unlikely).

I think CS Lewis was writing within this context, and Susan can probably be seen within this context as well (perhaps as a commentary on the traditional kind of woman, whereas Lucy is a wartime woman working on the land in her headscarf-type?)

That's interesting - and thought-provoking.

I wonder actually if it's the 1920s model of the "bright young thing"/flapper that CS Lewis is thinking of in his creation of Susan? The stereotype would be upper class, no job, lots of money, very frivolous, lots of night clubs etc. Quite probably a "deb" on the aristocratic marriage market. Possibly quite selfish and egotistical. The kind of person who might turn into Lady Brenda Last in Evelyn Waugh's Handful of Dust? Or like the type of woman the Mitfords were expected to be?

If so, it's not really a "traditional kind of woman" that he is critiquing, I don't think, which would be more related to domesticity, children, the home etc (This "traditional model" is also what I associate with the Nazis.) And to be fair, it's also possibly the kind of model that a lot of women of the time would have found irritating and maybe an obstacle - while they were still fighting for education, the right to work - and fundamentally, to be taken a bit more seriously, and not just interested only in "lipstick and nylons". (In fact, it's maybe a model that could be attacked from two angles - the let's keep women shackled to the home traditionalists/conservatives - and the women should take themselves/be treated more seriously feminists. To simplify dramatically. I'm not sure we can assume CS Lewis is in the first camp.)

I believed CS Lewis was condemning that kind of femininity. Which was fine -- there are lots of books condemning it, and I did too when I was a child.

Yes, interesting, I hadn't thought about that, but a lot of children's fiction of the time and on through the twentieth century is also condemning or questioning of girliness/femininity when it comes to interest in appearance etc and tends to favour girls who are active, brave, not "soppy" or "emotional", and not too interested in how they look. It's there in a lot of girls' school stories, pony books etc etc. A lot of these books are actually written by women. Which I feel maybe supports my point that Lewis's treatment of Susan is not misogynist, even if it is critical of a certain model of femininity.

Maybe Lewis's own life is also relevant? I'm far from an expert on him, but he married a very independent-sounding American, and I know got into a trouble with Cambridge male friends because he expected them to include her and treat her as an intellectual equal (think Tolkien was especially annoyed by this).

 

[Hex]

Yes, I think you make excellent points. For me, there is a commentary in what CS Lewis writes on Susan and a particular kind of femininity -- which doesn't mean I disagree with him.

 

[Jo Zebedee]

Yes, I think you make excellent points. For me, there is a commentary in what CS Lewis writes on Susan and a particular kind of femininity -- which doesn't mean I disagree with him.

I always read it as very much a commentary, although I'm not sure it was entirely all about women, but in a society in general that was moving away from its more traditional routes. And, when a society starts to do that, one of the things that happens is a freeing of women from that traditional so, in a way, a woman is an easy target. But I thought it was also full of pathos that she had moved away, and that there is a part of life where we stop believing in magic, which is a loss. So I always saw it as a sadness rather than an out and out castigation. (Although quite why Peter didn't move away so much is another matter...)

 

[Stephen Palmer]

Stopping believing in magic is a fabulous freedom.

 

[galanx]

Hex said

She did -- Susan was in America with her parents, which was why Peter was staying with the Professor.

Yes, she went with her father- there wasn't enough money for Edmund and Lucy to go, and the thought was that Susan as the oldest would get more out of it.
The two younger Pevensies grumbled about how lucky she was, while they had to stay with Eustace.

The only problem was that according to the timeline this would have been at the height of the Battle of the Atlantic (mid-1942) which the Allies were decicedly losing, with German U-boat wolfpacks sinking record amounts of Allied shipping (at the time my father was a captain in the British Merchant Marine , which suffered porportionately heavier losses of life than all but a few elite combat units)

Hardly the time to send your daughter for a pleasure jaunt.
(I have a vague recollection of this being mentioned in the movie of the Dawn Treader, when Lucy reads from the spell in the Magician's book, becomes more beautiful and Susan vanishes from the family, presumably never being born.There's a scene involving the two boys, with a lot of young officers checking out the newly-beautified Lucy.)

By the way, clothes rationing ended pretty early - I think 1949, and anyway, didn't Susan go to USA in Voyage to the Dawn Treader, from where she could have brought back as many lipsticks and nylons as she wanted?

Yes, except that was in 1942, and the others died in 1949, when the conversation took place- a seven-year supply of lipstick would be a bit much

 

[galanx]

Though of course that might have been when that impression of her was formed (Jill wouldn't have known her before that)- especially if she flaunted all her newly acquired American luxuries.
As in my quote above, there was some resentment against the better-paid better-supplied Americans and Canadians, and it was often expressed against the girls/women who associated with them (Susan would have been 17 by the end of the war, easily old enough to be going out dancing.)

 

[Ray McCarthy]

except that was in 1942, and the others died in 1949,

Really? I don't remember any dates.
Is there any definitive timeline other than "The Lion the Witch and Wardrobe" being during WWII and "The Magician's Nephew" being Victorian?
In that there are inconsistencies anyway that can't be reconciled, in our world and Narnia, does any timeline based on incidental evidence even match the children's ages anyway?

"Dawn Treader" and "Silver Chair" particularly to me have a 1940s post WWII flavour. I don't remember any mention of the War in "Prince Caspian", only boarding schools.

 

[Hex]

@Extollager linked to one here: Narnian timeline It says it was provided by CS Lewis to map the ways Narnia time differs from "real world" time.

The Magician's Nephew is in 1900, and then The Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe - the Silver Chair happen 1940-42, and the Last Battle in 1949.

(but then, there aren't many mentions of the Napoleonic Wars in Austen, either, so Lewis isn't alone in ignoring what seem to us the most significant bits of history to concentrate on other things!)

 

[galanx]

"Dawn Treader" and "Silver Chair" particularly to me have a 1940s post WWII flavour. I don't remember any mention of the War in "Prince Caspian", only boarding schools.

Yes, I agree with you there- there doesn't seem to be any of the stress that the War would bring. As well as Susan's trip, I find the description of Eustace Scrubbs and his parents Alberta and Harold to point that way. They're vegetarians, teetotallers, non-smokers, and wear a special kind of underwear. (Some people think that means they're Mormon, but I think "Heavy" Lewis just wants to show they're left-wing 'progressive' health-nuts).

One of the two things that seem to place them post-war is they have very little furniture in their rooms, which could be a reference to the fad for Danish Modern at that time; the other is Eustace's taste for books with pictures of 'fat foreign children doing exercises in model schools', which sounds like Soviet Bloc propaganda.

With "The Silver Chair" the progressive "mixed"(boys and girls together) school that Lewis disliked so much seems to have been a product of the educational reforms of the 1950s.

But then Lewis was banging these out pretty quickly without much concern for internal consistency. He'd only planned on writing TLTWTW; its popularity led to the demand for more.

 

[aThenian]

Some people think that means they're Mormon, but I think "Heavy" Lewis just wants to show they're left-wing 'progressive' health-nuts

I can't imagine they're Mormons either - not many Mormons in the UK surely! Yes, left wing progressives for sure.

With "The Silver Chair" the progressive "mixed"(boys and girls together) school that Lewis disliked so much seems to have been a product of the educational reforms of the 1950s.

I don't think so - Enid Blyton wrote about co-ed boarding schools a few times, most notably in "The Naughtiest Girl" series, first book published (I just googled it) 1940. And Blyton is pretty mainstream.

But then Lewis was banging these out pretty quickly without much concern for internal consistency.

Think you've hit the nail pretty much on the head there.

 

[aThenian]

By the way, apparently Blyton's "Naughtiest Girl" stories are thought to be inspired by Summerhill, a famous progressive boarding school founded in the early 20s Summerhill School - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. I'd imagine CS Lewis is probably inspired by the same school. It had "democratic" decision-making by pupils which fits with Lewis - he says something in Silver Chair to the effect that because there weren't prefects there were bullies ("Them") instead.

 

[Ray McCarthy]

I'd imagine CS Lewis is probably inspired by the same school.

Possibly. There was so much change in 1946, that The Chalet School had to leave UK again. Though fictional, it was set always in contemporaneous way. Hence with invasion of Austria it moved to Ch. Is. Then to Welsh border, maybe one book offshore at Wales, then to Switzerland. She did try to run real boarding school during 1940s (maybe started just before the war?) based on her ideas in the books!

The Chalet School is a series of approximately sixty school story novels by Elinor Brent-Dyer, initially published between 1925 and 1970

Some of the books in later prints combined (making 59 today), but also no-one is sure how many short stories etc in the series in magazines, comics and papers!
Angel Brazil might be regarded as the creator of the modern School Story, though there are earlier ones starting 18th C. She and Eleanor Sharp didn't get the popularity of Elinor M. Brent-Dyer, who cashed in on the series concept. Young readers want more of the same. That's why Enid Bylton (unusually for her) planned out her two boarding school series. The last major series of the style started by Brazil and Sharp in Victorian Era (ignoring J.K. R) may be the Anne Digby "Trebizon" series (very like Brazil, Sharp, Blyton, but with boyfriends, no sex). Noel Streatfeld (boots /shoes) and Lorna Hill (Ballet) shouldn't be ignored, though more "specialist" schools.
Various unlikely writers such as P.G. Wodehouse (quite a few before WWI) and Kipling (Stalky & Co) as well folk that did lots did the boy versions

 

[aThenian]

The best school stories of all IMO are by Antonia Forest.
And Jennings (Anthony Buckeridge) is brilliantly funny - started on the radio, then he wrote the books.

 

[Ray McCarthy]

The best school stories of all IMO are by Antonia Forest

I have only one ... It was fine.

 

[galanx]

My family emigrated to Canada after WWII- parents, one set of grandparents, uncles and aunts- but our relatives used to send us very British presents for Christmas- English toffee, Brighton rock candy, and annuals of Boy's Own Stories, already way outdated in the mid-60s, plus colections of boys' and girls' school stories- all of a very (minor) public school nature. Somewhat strange, as my relatives were Lancashire working class- the only way they'd get into a public school was if they were delivering a sack of coal to the backdoor. Still remember stories of midnight feasts, fagging and one's 'people' coming to pick one up for the 'hols.'.

 

[Ray McCarthy]

Somewhat strange, as my relatives were Lancashire working class- the only way they'd get into a public school

There was a study on this:
1) The stories very popular with all classes from Victorian era. People aspire to be upper middle class.
2) Kids liked to read them, but didn't confuse them with reality. Most didn't want to be at a real Boarding or public School, though they liked the stories.
3) They are not real. Public School / English Boarding School kids suffer more from bullies, cliques and social exclusion than kids at regular schools. They are largely less suited for the real world (i.e. Jobs other than an MP or Company Director).