InsaneJournal

Because I am not sleeping


Kings and princes from foreign lands, we are told, seek Susan and Lucy's hands in marriage, but we hear nothing more of these exotic unnamed suitors, let alone whether our indefinitely aged heroines desire or accept their proposals.

Well, I’ll think you’ll find that question gets answered in “Horse and His Boy”. Maybe, if you’re going to write Serious Academic Articles on Narnia, maybe you should read the whole series first. It’s a crazy thought, I know. But I was only going to write some fan fic and I still took the time to read the whole thing again, even the book I hadn’t finished before. It’s weird because the author of this article seems to know a great deal about Lewis and has a lot of great, indepth things to say about LWW…so how is such a slip up possible? I mean, the things Rabadash says about Susan in H&HB are pretty shocking and a good example of what this person is trying to discuss- Rabadash is saying these scary, misogynistic things about Susan and makes you desire for Shasta and Aravis to get to Archenland even faster so they can warn Edmund. And you’re really really getting scared because The Pevensies don’t know! And Rabadash is going to have his men set upon Edmund and bind him and then Rabadash will kidnap and rape Susan. This is so urgent that Aslan makes it a personal mission to get Shasta and Aravis to their destination in time, because this is what’s at stake if they don’t. That’s not children’s book stuff, or restrained or unemotional, it’s wild panic among the characters.

I found another interesting book, “Revisiting Narnia , Fantasy, Myth and Religion in C.S Lewis’ Chronicles of Narnia”.

I don’t have a problem with other people having a problem with C.S Lewis. But I have a problem with the way people often try to argue it.

1) Sometimes they haven’t read all the books, making statements about the books or the author that are factually incorrect. Someone once called him a “lifelong bachelor” as proof of his “hatred of women”. Ohhh, so that’s why he was so depressed over the death of his wife. A man can be married and sexist, a man can be married and misogynistic, but a man cannot be a "lifelong bachelor" if he was ever married.
2) They use his other fiction to bolster points about Narnia, quoting his non Narnian characters as if they are quoting from a non fiction source.
3) Acting as if all these things were done on purpose, as if he had some kind of actual plan to push an anti woman and anti non white people agenda. One article (in the book mentioned above) stated that Aslan leaping upon Jadis before he kills her is obviously symbolic of the author reasserting the need for male dominance against female rebellion. I am sure it has nothing do with the fact that Aslan is a huge frigging cat and that's one way they often kill things. I suppose he could have picked her up and shook her around in his jaw for awhile first.
4) It’s not that I think people should refrain from criticizing him, go ahead, criticism is good. It’s just that the arguments are so predictable, and everyone has to make them, as if we’ve never heard any of this before. It’s fashionable to hold to these theories so anyone who wants to look up to date and like a good feminist has to at least put in a little disclaimer. You want a gold star or something?

He’s not a feminist. There are some issues there. But going into the books with lowered expectations, I realized…they’re not that bad in terms of gender issues. I’ve seen much, much worse and even some excellent girl-empowering books, movies and tv shows have dropped the ball occasionally (the entire ending of PotC for example). This isn’t about anything else he wrote, or said, this is about Narnia. No, he’s not Joss Whedon but I wasn’t expecting him to be, and since I expect Joss Whedon to consistently be Joss Whedon, I get more upset with Joss Whedon when Joss Whedon isn’t Joss Whedon than I do when C.S Lewis is not Joss Whedon. So therefore I count the last season of Angel as worse than Narnia in terms of gender (and I draw your attention to the current complaints about “Dr.Horrible”). Whedon, who created "Buffy" and publically supports feminism (he even made a speech for NOW) ought to know better. But then, some authors who are women fail on that level too.

He (C.S Lewis) does let the girls fight after LWW and they are usually not portrayed as all that helpless (pay particular attention to the essay “Why I Love Narnia” in the previously mentioned essay book). They’re actually far more proactive than girls are in a lot of books in that genre, at least things written pre Xena and Buffy and sadly, much more recently. The books consistently switch between boys povs and girls povs and all are written with the same amount of attention. Occasionally, a character will say something that could be construed as offensive…if you were looking for things to be offended by. Mostly I just thought “well, I don’t agree but what he’s saying is not exactly unusual for the average person to think."

The girls are present, they speak up, they argue intelligently, they snark when the men are wrong, they have three dimensional personalities and thoughts, feelings, goals and dreams of their own. They can usually keep up. They are brave and don’t spend much time falling down or screaming and yet they’re not shrill about being right either, and they don’t throw themselves into stupid situations that they have to be rescued from (unlike say, Edmund and Rillian). When we meet Aravis, she's fleeing an arranged marriage and she is portrayed as having done this in a very smart, capable way. Lucy has the strongest relationship with Aslan of any character in the entire series. The majority of The Silver Chair is from Jill’s point of view. Plenty of “H&HB” is from the pov of Aravis (yes, she disappears before the big ending but so do several random characters of both genders). These aren’t stories in which the only person who really matters is one male main character or where the male character abuses his love interest because of the pressure of his mission or abandons his love interest “for her own good”. What I’ve always loved about Narnia and never realized it before is the total lack of any Lone Hero And His Tragic Mission Which Requires Him to Rid Himself of Anything Soft or Emotional And All Intimate Relationships plot. Tasks are accomplished by cooperating with, and accepting help from, friends and family- more "Buffy" than "Angel". People who try to go it alone end up getting themselves into big trouble.

Ramandu’s Daughter is the only female character who gets the Interchangeable Gratuitous Love Interest treatment (the author doesn’t even bother to give her a name of her own). This would be more upsetting if she was the only or one of the only, female characters available but she isn't. There are more than ten others.

I also read a comment in one of those famous "C.S Lewis is a woman hater" essays that male villains are "human" and "get to be redeemed" while female villains are all supernatural monsters. Huh. I don't know about anyone else but I find Miraz pretty darn scary (especially in the movie versions). And I don't recall him being redeemed, I recall him being killed. It would seem to *me* that the fact that his male villains are all human and his female villains are all supernatural says that women have to become inhuman to do those evil things while for men, the potential for evil is much easier to access. The men are weak and succumb to temptation much more easily than *any* of the women. That is still very sexist, but it's a very different form of sexism from what people usually claim is in these books.

And of course, the entire reason the Pevensies were in the Professor's house in the first place was because of one specific Real World scary male villain who doesn't get redeemed. His name is never spoken, just like the War is never named but the threat of him hovers over their lives.

I mentioned Prince Rabadash before (talk about your scary male villains who don't get redeemed). I think it’s important to note that in no way does Edmund ever attempt to tell Susan what to do or make a decision for her. Amazingly, he actually trusts her judgment even if he personally can’t stand Rabadash. He makes no move on her behalf without word from her first. It is true that she’s one of the few grownup woman characters in Narnia and…she gets treated like one- a grownup capable of making her own decisions (and, incidentally, facing the consequences for them).

This says to me that C.S Lewis may have had some sexist ideas but he understood what constitutes going too far and he at least, did not see himself as having anything in common with the Calormene view of women.

Let me list off some famous works that treat their female characters worse, or have less visible/useful female characters. Or better yet, let’s not because I don’t have all day. Seriously, I looked at that post and 99 percent of major female characters in Narnia pass that test.

I like to think of Lewis as a person who had prejudices based on the time and place he was writing in, but that they were no worse than those around him and he was largely unaware of the extent of his prejudices. Guess what? We’re all like that. It also seems to me that he was capable of accepting constructive criticism and changing his mind about things over the course of his life. The female characters get steadily more powerful and more involved in things like battle plans as the series continues. Which might actually be another explanation for what happened to Susan. He started with two heroines, but from the begining it didn't seem like he was all that interested in one of them, and as the story evolved, along came this third heroine who had something, whatever it was, that he found more intriguing and seemed to adapt herself better to his evolving vision of what he planned for his heroines. It's interesting to note that he'd fallen in love by then and perhaps finally knowing a woman as a real person made a difference.

The big problem here is that you keep wondering if you’re wrong and all that stuff people say is true. And if it is, is it possible that C.S Lewis was an utterly horrible, detestable person? Because he’d have to be
if I'm wrong.

Either they’re wrong, or I am. Right?