Pullman rips on LOTR, others [Archive] - The Barrow-Downs Discussion Forum

davem

11-01-2007, 05:14 PM

The thing that struck me (& which I was going to put into the recently closed thread) is

Pullman liked "Lord of the Rings" when he first read it as a teen ("We were all out pretending to be Gandalf"), but after thinking about it more recently, he doesn't feel it's as engaging as it could have been. "For Tolkien, the Catholic, the Church had the answers, the Church was the source of all truth, so 'Lord of the Rings' does not touch those big deep questions," Pullman said. "The 'Narnia' books are fundamentally more serious than 'Lord of the Rings,' which I take to be a trivial book."

"You have to surrender," Pullman said. "You can't have control over everything. And it would be foolish to — I'm not a filmmaker. But I've seen the shooting on set, the scripts along the way, and I've been allowed to offer advice, so I can't complain. I gather that's unusual!"

So, Pullman seems happy for his staory to be 'adapted', whereas Tolkien seems not to have been. I wonder if that means that Tolkien cared more about his creation than Pullman did - or if Tolkien was simply more precious.....

Then, there's his statement:"For Tolkien, the Catholic, the Church had the answers, the Church was the source of all truth, so 'Lord of the Rings' does not touch those big deep questions," Pullman said. "The 'Narnia' books are fundamentally more serious than 'Lord of the Rings,' which I take to be a trivial book."

So what are these 'deep questions'?

"I didn't read the 'Narnia' books until I was grown up," Pullman said, "and I could sort of see what he was getting at, and he was getting at the reader in a way I didn't like. The 'Narnia' books are full of serious questions about religion: 'Which God should we worship? Is there a God at all? What happens when we die?' The questions are all there, but I don't like Lewis' answers.

Well, no, Tolkien doesn't ask 'Which God should we (or rather the characters) worship?' because in M-e there is only one true God. One could ask whether Tolkien simply avoids that 'deep question' by ruling out any possibility that there is a choice of Gods to worship. Neither does he leave open the option that there is no God at all. Of course, one could argue that he has chosen to create a world where there is only one true God, & that he actually explores a much more difficult question - 'How can there be suffering in a world created & ruled over by a good God?'- Personally I find that a much 'deeper' question than whether there is a God at all. The final 'deep question' Pullman claims Tolkien avoids is 'What happens when we die?' Now, Pullman does answer that question - but the problem is he makes up an answer. He knows no better than anyone else what happens to any of us when we die. Tolkien leaves that question alone, & never states what happens to his characters beyond death. So, one could argue that Tolkien does avoid that one - but how could he answer it? What Tolkien does is show us characters with faith in Eru & that in some way everything will be ok in the end.

Now, in my opinion, it is Pullman's book which is the 'trivial' one - because he either avoids the difficult questions - 'Which God should we worship'? Pullman avoids the question by getting rid of God (a 'God' btw who is a senile ex dictator) - a 'God' who isn't really 'God' anyway. He avoids the difficult questions by brushing them aside & pretending they weren't asked, or by a reductio ad absurdam. His 'answer' to what happens after death is, as I said, to make something up.

I think the difference between Tolkien & Pullman is that Tolkien asks deep questions, but refuses either to offer glib answers or brush them under the carpet. Tolkien gives us a world created & sustained by a good God, but one in which evil flourishes & bad things happen to good people. In this I think Tolkien's work is far more realistic than Pullman's - Tolkien's work ends with Sam's 'Well, I'm back', Pullman's with some nonsense about 'Building the Republic of Heaven' - & no-one, however big a fan of Pullman they may be, has been able to tell me what that is supposed to mean.

Aiwendil

11-01-2007, 05:48 PM

"You have to surrender. You can't have control over everything. And it would be foolish to — I'm not a filmmaker. But I've seen the shooting on set, the scripts along the way, and I've been allowed to offer advice, so I can't complain. I gather that's unusual!"

I don't like the implication here. So only filmmakers are qualified to have opinions on films? The author has to just sit back, watch what they do, and (if he's lucky) offer a comment from time to time?

"For Tolkien, the Catholic, the Church had the answers, the Church was the source of all truth, so 'Lord of the Rings' does not touch those big deep questions. The 'Narnia' books are fundamentally more serious than 'Lord of the Rings,' which I take to be a trivial book."

Now this is an unusual claim - and no doubt one intended to be provocative. It seems to me to be exactly the other way around. 'Narnia' may ask 'big questions', but it treats them in the most superficial manner; it doesn't explore them at all but merely offers dogmatic answers. Tolkien addresses big questions too, of course, though apparently not the ones Pullman considers worthy of literary treatment. But Tolkien treats them with more than a modicum of subtlety, which apparently goes over Pullman's head.

Davem wrote:
I think the difference between Tolkien & Pullman is that Tolkien asks deep questions, but refuses either to offer glib answers or brush them under the carpet.

I think this is quite correct. I'd add something to it, though: another difference between Tolkien and Pullman is that for Pullman, literature is about asking and answering so-called 'deep questions'. A book is, for him, a platform from which to promulgate his Message. He is like Lewis in this regard; and while Pullman's world-view is closer to mine than is Lewis's, I cordially dislike this attitude toward literature in both of them. For Tolkien, what is important is not allegory but story.

Sauron the White

11-01-2007, 07:13 PM

Pullman seems to be espousing the Ernest Hemingway theory of selling film rights to one of your books. Hemingway said that the only way to do it was to meet the producer on a beach at midnight. The author tosses the book to the producer while the producer tosses a briefcase filled with cash to the author.

And truthfully, given the very different nature of both mediums, I do think that both Hemingway and Pullman have than right.

Rumil

11-01-2007, 07:16 PM

In my view a main prerequiste for a 'great' book is an emotional attachment to the protagonists. Tolkien did it, but for me Pullman didn't, I can't even remember their names now, having read the books 5 years or so ago.

I read the Pullman books avidly (always a sucker for trilogies) but never felt any need to re-read tham which is very unusual for me. Eventually they went to Oxfam.

In contrast my battered, creased, torn, pages-stuck-in-with-sticky-tape copy of LoTR will never leave me.

Nerwen

11-01-2007, 09:16 PM

I have never read His Dark Materials, but many people do seem to think it's pretty good.

However, Pullman's view of the purpose of fiction seems, well, odd. Forget other fantasy writers– his criteria for a book being worthwhile would exclude much of mainstream literature!

Mister Underhill

11-02-2007, 02:00 AM

Pullman again? It seems sometimes like he gets more press off of his jabs at Tolkien than he does for anything he's actually written himself.
I don't like the implication here. So only filmmakers are qualified to have opinions on films? The author has to just sit back, watch what they do, and (if he's lucky) offer a comment from time to time?In this case, Pullman's right -- authors rarely have much creative input beyond token gestures. There are a few big dogs who attempt to negotiate more creative control, but even with a contract things don't always work out -- just look at the whole Clive Cussler debacle of recent years. On the other hand, I heard that J.K. Rowling was able to exercise considerable control over the later Potter films. Funny, if Tolkien had survived and held on to his rights, I'll bet he could have cut a very strong deal for the films. I wonder what that might have looked like.

Anyway, Hollywood has little respect for writers in general, screenwriters included. In fact we're about to see a strike that's motivated at least in part by that fact.

Of course, no one's holding a gun to any author's head to force him or her to sell their movie rights. But that filthy Hollywood lucre is soooo much more, well, lucrative than the comparatively puny payouts that most authors earn that many are happy to cash in and let the filmmakers do what they will.

davem

11-02-2007, 03:07 AM

In this case, Pullman's right -- authors rarely have much creative input beyond token gestures. There are a few big dogs who attempt to negotiate more creative control, but even with a contract things don't always work out -- just look at the whole Clive Cussler debacle of recent years. On the other hand, I heard that J.K. Rowling was able to exercise considerable control over the later Potter films. Funny, if Tolkien had survived and held on to his rights, I'll bet he could have cut a very strong deal for the films. I wonder what that might have looked like.
.

It seems many (most?) novelists write with a movie adaptation of the work in mind, & hope the film rights will be sold as a matter of course. Pullman himself in a recent interview about the movie for Empire magazine said he had always had Nicole Kidman in mind as Mrs Coulter. Pullman has had other novels of his adapted for TV - the BBC have done a couple - so I'm assuming that he has an adaptation in mind from the start, in which case he obviously wouldn't have a problem with his works being 'adapted' for the screen.

Tolkien, I assume, never wrote with any thought of a movie in mind - an author like Pullman can include the most fantastical elements/creatures/settings in his work & know that they can be put on screen. Tolkien was writing in a period when a work like LotR could not have made it to the screen (not as live action) in a convincing way. This alone says to me that Tolkien was writing LotR with no thought of a movie adaptation entering his head. Hence, Pullman is writing a book which he hopes to see adapted & which he knows cannot (particularly the religious/anti-religious elements) be turned into a movie without major changes.

What's interesting to me about Pullman's approach here is that in numerous interviews he's stated that he's 'using fantasy to undermine fantasy' that he 'wishes he could write contemporary novels', etc. & implies that the 'fantastical' elements are secondary to the underlying philosophy & the 'deep questions'. However, he seems in this interview to be perfectly happy for that 'underlying philosophy' & those 'deep questions' to be ignored & replaced by a two hour sfx fest. The death of God won't make it to the screen but the armoured polar bears will.

This last point is central to me. Pullman attacks Tolkien for not asking the 'deep questions' but he himself will happily see the 'deep questions' he asks, & the philosophy he espouses, cast away or turned into its opposite. Chris Weitz, in the same Empire feature has stated that the movie will still attack 'totalitarianism', etc, etc. But what we have, in the end, is a writer who claims the intellectual high ground but is happy to see the 'intellectual' dimension of his work twisted beyond recognition in order to have Nicole Kidman playing Mrs Coulter on screen.

Hookbill the Goomba

11-02-2007, 03:58 AM

I read the first of His Dark Materials with no real knowledge of who the author was or what his agenda was. By the end of the first and the beginning of the second book I had a pretty good idea of where he was coming from. Perhaps it is naive of me to, but I slowly began to imagine the books not as a story but as a guy stood on a box shouting about how terrible the Church is. I think there is always a problem with writing a story with an ulterior motive which is where Narnia falters in my opinion. I still find the story enjoyable and will read them again and again. But it is a difficult thing to try and get across a message you feel passionately about without being a little overt in its delivery. You fear the risk of being too subtle with what you see as important.

Tolkien approaches the 'deep questions' in the right way, I think. As Davem pointed out, what people assume to be the 'deep questions' (Is there a God? Which one should we worship? and the rest) were not, in his opinion, the best questions to ask. Like the Zen Monk who thought he had found the ultimate question when he asked 'Who am I?' only to be surprised by the reply from within, 'Who's asking?'
By not directly answering the questions of morality or of an afterlife, Tolkien does something brilliant, he leaves it open to more questions. This makes Tolkien's questions much deeper. They are not simply the acquisition of facts, but a search that the reader, if he or she has a mind to, must wrestle with and think about. It is not simply the authors opinion (although that will come into it) but you are open to disagree. To explain; from a point of morality you cannot say that each character always makes the right decision. Sam's prejudice against Gollum could be seen as either a defect or as an insight given later events. You could also see Frodo's trust of Gollum as blindness or kindness born out of the hope to change him. Tolkien seems to question both stances in the story as it plays out.

One must always remember that Tolkien's world is an imaginary one. Although there may be similarities in behaviour or actions to historical, mythical or Biblical events, it is not simply a re-telling of them. It is Tolkien's story and he no doubt wanted his own imagination to play a large roll in the creation of Middle Earth. This doesn't mean there won't be simelarities, but these can only go so far. The fact that the elves always look back on their ancient heroes and the men on their fatherly figures, we cannot automatically assume that such people are Beowulf, or Abraham or someone, they are not. They are their own characters. It may be that the later characters regard these figures in the same light as one may regard Abraham or Beowulf if you happen to believe in them. The same goes for Eru, in my opinion. The point is not if he is God, but how the characters react to him and his work. As George MacDonald said "Attitudes are more important than facts."

In Pullman's work the focus is on disrupting a system he doesn't like. I have no problem with that, people do it all the time. But he criticizes Lewis for doing pretty much the same thing from a different angle. Two armies may critizies one another, I suppose, and be annoyed when they both use similar tactics, but they cannot criticize the tactics because they themselves are using them. This is where Pullman's argument falters, I think. He dislikes Lewis trying to get a message across through his story, yet this is precisely what he is doing.

davem

11-02-2007, 04:19 AM

William Cloud Hicklin

11-02-2007, 07:03 AM

Pullman has been doing this for years, although in earlier comments he's called Narnia both more 'serious' but also much worse- I believe he used the word 'fascist.' All because, of course, Tollers and Jack don't share Pullman's nasty little world-view.

What struck me about HDM was how fundamentally *adolescent* its thesis was- that all good would derive from sexual liberation and casting off authority. Nietzche for bratty teenagers.

Indeed there's something of the bratty teenager in Pullman's habit of slagging off the giants of his profession.

gorthaur_cruel

11-08-2007, 11:53 AM

Yes, well...this is the guy who said that "'The Lord of the Rings' is fundamentally an infantile work"

Apparently from some article in the New Yorker some years ago:
Pullman loves Oxford, but he’s far from donnish. His books have been likened to those of J. R. R. Tolkien, another alumnus, but he scoffs at the notion of any resemblance. “ ‘The Lord of the Rings’ is fundamentally an infantile work,” he said. “Tolkien is not interested in the way grownup, adult human beings interact with each other. He’s interested in maps and plans and languages and codes.” When it comes to “The Chronicles of Narnia,” by C. S. Lewis, Pullman’s antipathy is even more pronounced. Although he likes Lewis’s criticism and quotes it surprisingly often, he considers the fantasy series “morally loathsome.” In a 1998 essay for the Guardian, entitled “The Dark Side of Narnia,” he condemned “the misogyny, the racism, the sado-masochistic relish for violence that permeates the whole cycle.” He reviled Lewis for depicting the character Susan Pevensie’s sexual coming of age—suggested by her interest in “nylons and lipstick and invitations”—as grounds for exclusion from paradise. In Pullman’s view, the “Chronicles,” which end with the rest of the family’s ascension to a neo-Platonic version of Narnia after they die in a railway accident, teach that “death is better than life; boys are better than girls . . . and so on. There is no shortage of such nauseating drivel in Narnia, if you can face it.”

At one point, Pullman and I stopped by the Eagle and Child, an Oxford pub where Lewis and Tolkien used to meet regularly with a group of literary friends. (They called themselves the Inklings.) A framed photograph of Lewis’s jowly face smiled down on us as we talked. In person, Pullman isn’t quite as choleric as he sometimes comes across in his newspaper essays. When challenged, he listens carefully and considerately, and occasionally tempers his ire. “The ‘Narnia’ books are a real wrestle with real things,” he conceded. As much as he dislikes the answers Lewis arrives at, he said that he respects “the struggle that he’s undergoing as he searches for the answers. There’s hope for Lewis. Lewis could be redeemed.” Not Tolkien, however: the “Rings” series, he declared, is “just fancy spun candy. There’s no substance to it.”

Seems to me he's saying "My writings are good, and for real adults. Anybody who likes Tolkien is immature." Seems really snobbish to me, as if he knows he's right, and how close other authors' opinions are to his is his measurement of "quality"

I understand he isn't too fond of Tolkien or Lewis, but it seems to me plain rude to call their works "nauseating drivel", "infantile", or "fancy spun candy".

Sir Kohran

11-11-2007, 09:18 AM

Pullman is the Noel Gallagher of literature, constantly criticising pretty much everyone else in the business.

As to the 'Republic Of Heaven'...it's his dream; Pullman's idea of a perfect world - an atheist republic without a single ruler - a world without God. Personally I find the idea and his portrayal of Christianity revolting but then free speech must be maintained.

As for the movie versions of HDM...I don't expect much. It'll be like the Potter or Narnia movies, with plenty of special effects and 'drama' with no real reason to watch again after the initial view. I might be dragged along by my family at Christmas or something but I think that's as far as it'll go.

Tolkien's view on 'God' is interesting in that it is not what you'd expect of a Christian writer. He was a devout Catholic and indeed, the characters in his book show very Christian outlooks and themes (temptation, pity, etc.). However I've always found it interesting that Eru, regardless of his boundless power and influence, is, to the people in the story, almost non-existent. None of the characters ever pray to him; in fact he is not even mentioned once in all of LOTR. As it is the only 'faith in a higher power' is in the Valar (angels, not God). Eru does little or nothing to stop the spread of evil in his perfect world, stepping in only once to remove Morgoth from Arda - and only once much of the world has been ruined and corrupted (also note that Eru does nothing to help the world after this). Some might argue that he caused Gollum to slip - but this is never confirmed by the text (there is in fact the slightly chilling possibility that it was literally just a random slip - that Middle-Earth was saved by accident). Tolkien's portrayal of God is surprising - Eru is not loving, or even present. Eru doesn't seem to care for his world.

Lush

11-14-2007, 06:43 AM

Pullman's still at it, eh? Well, in regards to filming "His Dark Mojo" (haha) - he knows how the business works, I'll give him that much. And he's a wonderful writer and deserves all the success and adulation this little world of ours can offer.

However, the attacks on Tolkien are getting a bit tiring. First Hitchens, now this... I understand that for Pullman, it's probably very frustrating to invariably get lumped together with Tolkien when it comes to the way that HDM is assessed and placed in context of literary history. Which is, perhaps, why he feels the need to trash Tolkien repeteadly.

But doesn't he realize that, on some level, these attacks are hurting him, not Tolkien? That it's starting to look like the lady doth protest too much and all that?

He must. He's probably one of the smartest men alive in the world today. Maybe it's the media attention that's really at stake here. God knows, the culture is almost entirely soundbyte-driven these days. And who could pass up a soundbyte before the release of a major motion picture?

Quempel

11-14-2007, 02:50 PM

I have read HDM, and if Pullman could get passed re-writing Paradise Lost to fit his own needs, I might have something more to say. At least Tolkien went all the way back to the European Mythos to draw from.

I guess I will stand as one of the immature dolts that read Tolkien.

Nerwen

11-17-2007, 03:21 AM

However, the attacks on Tolkien are getting a bit tiring. First Hitchens, now this... I understand that for Pullman, it's probably very frustrating to invariably get lumped together with Tolkien when it comes to the way that HDM is assessed and placed in context of literary history. Which is, perhaps, why he feels the need to trash Tolkien repeteadly.

Or maybe, when he was still an unknown, one too many publishers sent back his manuscripts with advice to write something more like The Lord of the Rings, because that's what sells.

Lush

11-18-2007, 07:05 PM

I think you've brought up an interesting point, N. Bookstore are littered with these carbon-copies of Tolkien - and that stuff sells also. Some of it is very good... some of it is like a romance novel with dragons.

Pullman strikes me as very cerebral and high-arty, but it may very well be that the stuff that imititates Tolkien has actually replaced Tolkien in his mind. Although I do not know how that man thinks. Just total speculation.

I'd ask him if I ever met him, but what if he totally loses it then? ;)

Nerwen

11-20-2007, 02:24 AM

He probably would!

Guinevere

11-22-2007, 08:37 AM

Originally said byPhilipp Pullman:
"'Lord of the Rings,' which I take to be a trivial book."
“just fancy spun candy. There’s no substance to it.”
“ ‘The Lord of the Rings’ is fundamentally an infantile work,”

Grrr...:mad: reading such public statements really gets my hackles up!

Like gorthaur_cruel and Quempel mentioned,
this is really quite insulting to all of us who love Tolkien's works and have found meaning and timeless wisdom in them.
And how would Pullman explain the fact that there is so much secondary literature about Tolkien, so many educated and intelligent people occupying themselves with Tolkien's works since decades? Are all these people "immature dolts"?
Really, Philip Pullman should be forced to read Prof. Shippeys book "Tolkien, author of the Century"!!

I have read the "His Dark Materials Trilogy" this year, just so I could form an opinion on Pullman's own writing.
I must admit, that they were very thrilling to read, I liked especially the first volume, but the farther I got, the less I liked it, and the end was downright disappointing. (I agree much with William Cloud Hickly's post!)
They are well written, so one can't stop reading, but once finished, there's nothing that would make me go back and reread , quite unlike LotR.

Pullman strikes me as very cerebral and high-arty, but it may very well be that the stuff that imititates Tolkien has actually replaced Tolkien in his mind.
Ha! I really think you are on the right track, Lush!

After all, Pullman said he read the LotR as an adolescent and it doesn't look like he has reread the book since then, let alone the Silmarillion. So his misjudgement on LotR derives from hazy memories of an adolescent (who obviously read it just as an adventure story, much like Peter Jackson did) or perhaps even from seeing the movies.

He is obviously biased by knowing that Tolkien was a devout Catholic.
Like Sir Kohran wrote in his excellent post, in LotR God (Eru) is never mentioned. The hobbits have no religion at all.
It's more about the Northern "Theory of Courage":doing the right thing, because it is right, and not because you get a reward in heaven. But obviously Pullman doesn't see or remember this at all.
And if he states that “Tolkien is not interested in the way grownup, adult human beings interact with each other. he should read "Aldarion and Erendis" .

davem

12-07-2007, 01:00 AM

Brilliant demolition of HDM:
http://johncwright.livejournal.com/134046.html

Alonna

12-07-2007, 01:36 AM

If Mr. Pullman thinks as highly of himself as he seems to based on his interviews, I wonder if he can explain why everyone is trashing the film version of his book. It is currently labeled as rotten by Rotten Tomatoes. Perhaps he should take a long look at why the film version of the "trivial book" turned out to be a far better film than the adaptation of his own.

Nerwen

12-07-2007, 01:46 AM

Hang on. Any book can be made into a bad film. That doesn't prove anything.

davem

12-07-2007, 02:10 AM

I think its plain that in HDM the message became so dominant in Pullman's mind that the story was thrown away. Pullman is a talented writer - but that's the problem: he's talented enough that he can present boring, illogical & frankly silly ideas in an exciting & interesting way.

The whole 'killing the ghosts' thing in HDM is typical. As the writer of the piece I linked to states, Pullman, in getting rid of God & Heaven & being unable to adopt an idea like reincarnation, is left with offering nothing at all - when you die that's it. You get dissipated into some kind of 'ocean' of matter.

Now that strikes me as being a pretty depressing concept, even if was true - all the people you care about, your friends, family & pets, will die & disappear forever & you'll never see them again, & when you die you'll also just disappear forever.

OK - let's say that's true - & for all I know it may be. It seems to me that the most honest response is to acknowledge the sadness of that, even to grieve over it. The most dishonest response is to present it as some kind of glorious 'liberation' from boredom. But, as I say, Pullman is a skilled writer & can present the ugly in a beautiful way, or the hopeless in a positive way. And too many readers fall for the style & miss the substance. I mean, could we not expect just one character out of all of Pullman's Multi-verses to mutter 'Ey up - that's a bit rubbish!' But no - everyone seems blissed out by how fantastic it is to dissipate into nothingness.

Its a bit like one of those 'well-meaning' adults who can't wait to tell children (for their own good, of course) that there's no Father Christmas or Tooth Fairy - some do it in a stark & simple way, others, the more 'creative' ones, do it in a 'positive', upbeat way, but in the end the children have some of the magic taken from their lives for no better reason than that an adult decided they would be better off without it.

William Cloud Hicklin

12-07-2007, 05:32 PM

I absolutely *love* this:

Philip Pullman, author of The Golden Compass, hits back at critics who accuse him of peddling "candy-coated atheism". "I am a story teller," he said. "If I wanted to send a message I would have written a sermon."

Like he wasn't peddling a message? Like he didn't write a sermon? Puh-leez.

As one commentator at the link site said, it appears that somewhere towards the end of writing Book I Pullman was visited by annoying Jehovah's Witnesses and therefore spent the rest of the time scribbling "GoD SukZ!"

Lalwendë

12-14-2007, 04:53 PM

More Pullman/Tolkien hype eh?

Because that's all it is. Hype. He plays on how he's not like Tolkien all the time and for a very good reason. Which author could ever even hope to be like Tolkien? You very rarely see any fantasy author laud Tolkien because as an inevitability they are all compared to him in reviews an on blubs (even on the covers of HDM); writers instead choose to brush over the influence Tolkien has had as something from childhood (Pratchett, Gaiman, Rowling etc) or they go for the anti-Tolkien thing (Pullman, Moorcock etc). To open up and say "Oh yes, I'm the biggest fan of Tolkien, ever" would be tantamount to admitting you are, in fact, Terry Brooks.

So Pullman is simply doing what others have done and going for an angle. There's a blog he writes on somewhere or other on t'internet where he quietly mentions how much he likes Tolkien's work but that never makes it into his hype...it doesn't 'sell'.

And remember who he is, a member of the British Chattering Classes, and one thing they Do Not Like is Fantasy. To do what Pullman has done and produce a work, nay, a trilogy of fantasy novels is tantamount to heresy. The Chattering Classes like their younglings to read serious works of fiction about 'real' things, such as the Tracy Beaker books and whatnot. Things About Dragons And Wizards are only to be tolerated, you can tell this by the fact that Potter novels are published in 'discreet' adult covers so you can hide the fact that you are reading something 'silly and childish' on the tube. And the sheer number of parents I've heard attaching the words Harry and Potter to swear words and exasperation...you can just tell they'd far rather their kids were reading novels about African orphans or something. When Pullman is quoted in The Observer as saying Tolkien Is Pants you can hear the cogs whirring in the minds of Jocasta and Tarquin of islington thinking "Hmmm, these Dark Materials books might be just the ticket for the children" because they are Not Like That Silly Tolkien.

The proof for me is however in the pudding and His Dark Materials is awesome and I'm not going to let what the writer says in his Observer interviews sway me towards dislike.

A lot of people do not and did not like Tolkien but this won't stop me liking their work. Now I must dig out that particularly nasty passage in A Writer's Life which details exactly what Kingsley Amis and Philip Larkin thought of Tolkien's lecturing style. ;)

William Cloud Hicklin

12-14-2007, 08:07 PM

Ah, yes, Amis. Who is at least honest enough to admit he didn't give a tinker's damn about Old English and was only there because it would be on the exam. No wonder he was bored.

Surely we've all encountered a professor or two like Tolkien. The Freshman English 101 survey in the 500-seat lecture hall is not their milieu- but catch them in a seminar with a few genuinely interested upperclassmen......

Gwathagor

12-26-2007, 07:21 PM

I have only read the last ten pages or so of HDM, so this is very helpful and interesting. With my limited knowledge of Pullman, I'd have to say that my first impression of him is a rather sour one, based on his criticisms of Lewis and Tolkien ("infantile", "immature", "dolts"). He comes off as pathetic, whiny, and self-centered; I am inclined to dislike and ignore him.

Lyta_Underhill

12-26-2007, 08:20 PM

And remember who he is, a member of the British Chattering Classes, and one thing they Do Not Like is Fantasy. To do what Pullman has done and produce a work, nay, a trilogy of fantasy novels is tantamount to heresy. Thanks, Lal, for enlightening this backwoods Tennessee-American about an important aspect of Pullman's personality in a cultural context. I haven't really followed the brouhaha concerning the author himself that much, but I did enjoy the books quite a lot. I think every country and culture has a version of these "Chattering Classes." My own father disparages my tendency to base many of my moral values and spiritual truths on things I read in Lord of the Rings. Truth is everywhere, whether it be nestled in Fangorn Forest or hiding in the particles of Dust along a fantastic Northern Bridge. I enjoyed LOTR, Narnia AND His Dark Materials, all for different reasons. It doesn't matter what the authors think of other authors, what personal conceits underlie a writer's personality, or what political strategems are employed by writers to cater to a niche. The words speak for themselves; the worlds shine through the words, and Pullman did accede to the idea that the story lives in the interface between reader and author. There is no critic who can stand in this realm if one truly reads the words on the page. Second-guessing by authorial temperament seems to be a dangerous business, doesn' it?

The Squatter of Amon Rûdh

12-30-2007, 05:36 PM

What struck me about HDM was how fundamentally *adolescent* its thesis was- that all good would derive from sexual liberation and casting off authority. Nietzche for bratty teenagers.

I was put off by exactly the same atmosphere of juvenile posturing. It's also evident in Pullman's comments about Lewis' treatment of Susan Pevensey in the Narnia books, in which he appears entirely to miss the point: Lewis isn't casting his character out for growing interested in boys, but for abandoning her faith in favour of parties and nylons. Sexual maturity and only thinking about clothes and social gatherings are not the same thing, and only a fool or a charlatan would confuse them.

Bêthberry

12-30-2007, 07:43 PM

I was put off by exactly the same atmosphere of juvenile posturing. It's also evident in Pullman's comments about Lewis' treatment of Susan Pevensey in the Narnia books, in which he appears entirely to miss the point: Lewis isn't casting his character out for growing interested in boys, but for abandoning her faith in favour of parties and nylons. Sexual maturity and only thinking about clothes and social gatherings are not the same thing, and only a fool or a charlatan would confuse them.

Yes, it is so very inappropriate to show up for Sunday service in nylons, and likely directly displaying the ill after affects of Saturday night partying. If only Susan had become interested in hats and the modest covering of one's head with them, that kind of vanity (and sinful coverup) would without a doubt have escaped Lewis' chastisement.

davem

12-31-2007, 02:52 AM

I don't think Lewis can be exempted from criticism - though I take Squatter's point that what Lewis is attacking is Susan's materialism, rather than her sexual maturity. For one thing, Lewis chose one of his female characters to be cast into outer darkness rather than one of the males.

Of course, The Last Battle is seriously weird anyway, & I wouldn't have been surprised if Susan had been kept out of Paradise for an unhealthy obsession with rabbit hutches ... if you ask me, she was well out of the whole thing.

Gwathagor

12-31-2007, 06:21 PM

Yes, it is so very inappropriate to show up for Sunday service in nylons, and likely directly displaying the ill after affects of Saturday night partying. If only Susan had become interested in hats and the modest covering of one's head with them, that kind of vanity (and sinful coverup) would without a doubt have escaped Lewis' chastisement.

I don't understand what you mean at all.

Bêthberry

01-02-2008, 11:34 AM

I don't understand what you mean at all.

I suppose you could put that down to my being one of the folks who Squatter anathamatised in his post. I wasn't aware that at the Barrow Downs we stigmatise people for holding opinions contrary to our own however much we delight in excoriating the opinions.

I don't think Lewis can be exempted from criticism - though I take Squatter's point that what Lewis is attacking is Susan's materialism, rather than her sexual maturity. For one thing, Lewis chose one of his female characters to be cast into outer darkness rather than one of the males.

The problem with any kind of allegorical work like Narnia is that their images, symbols, events, plot lines get all tied in with the major tendencies of the bit being allegorized.

Bêthberry

01-02-2008, 01:00 PM

Like he wasn't peddling a message? Like he didn't write a sermon? Puh-leez.

All writers--all writers--display a fundamental world view in their work. Lord of the Rings has one--one that puts off some readers because it offers a 'sanitised' version of class social structure.

The presence of world view becomes particularly apparent in science fiction and fantasy where, because the genres are designed to present imagined/alternate worlds, writers can fall into the habit of overemphasising the world view, so much so that it becomes dogmatic rather than merely assumed.

Milton had a similar problem. Swift toyed with the possibilities. It's what puts me off Heinlein. It isn't peddling a message so much as struggling with the genre.

William Cloud Hicklin

01-03-2008, 08:51 AM

Of course all writers have a worldview. But the amount of didacticism with which they present it varies considerably. I was responding to Pullman's claim that he wasn't sermonising, which is blatantly untrue.

I fact, in an interview done long before he had to worry about boxoffice, he expressly said his purpose in writing HDM was to 'undermine Christianity.' Now he has every right to do so if he wants: but please don't turn around later and fib about it.

On to Susan Pevensey and her nylons: I rather suspect that if someone had pointed out to Lewis pre-pub that that line could be interpreted the way Pullman (and others) have, he would quickly have amended it. He was trying to say that Susan had become enamoured of the trivial, the 'things of this world;' and had moreover confused them with being 'adult' whereas Narnia was 'childish.' Both Jack and Tollers really, really resented that sort of thinking; and unfortunately Lewis was enough of an Edwardian bachelor-chauvanist to associate 'trivial' + 'young woman' with a sort of Seventeen magazine caricature. He could just as well have said 'records and parties' or 'soap operas' or, if he were really aggressive, 'political theory and macroeconomics.' Rather like Jane at the beginning of That Hideous Strength.

Lord of the Rings has [a worldview]--one that puts off some readers because it offers a 'sanitised' version of class social structure.

However LR isn't about 'class social structure.' Aragorn or for that matter the Shire's squirearchs aren't engaged in stamping out democracy or an anarcho-syndicalist movement or whatever: whereas HDM is specifically at its core about resisting the evil Church and ultimately killing God and overthrowing the Heavenly dictatorship.

Lalwendë

01-03-2008, 02:39 PM

If you don't grasp what Pullman is about, if you're still hooked on the notion that he hates God, you'd not go far wrong than to look at the lyrics of the first two verses of John Lennon's Imagine (read them if you prefer, if you're like me you'd prefer not to listen - heresy! I prefer George Harrison and Macca... ). I'll say it yet again, Pullman isn't anti-God, he is anti-Religion.

Of course, like I've already said, he knows there is a massive market out there of people who don't like fantasy and view things like Lewis and Tolkien through narrowed eyes, and what is he doing? He's opening his big mouth and being controversial. It sells. If you stray from the path of his Big Statements, you find a gentle, thoughtful and modest man. The deep, deep irony of course is that his big mouth is in good company as Lewis and Tolkien themselves were all-mouth-and-no-trousers when it came to stirring the wooden spoon and making grand statements. Masters of hyperbole one and all. ;)

Still, if you want to let it put you off reading something truly meaty then so be it. It's your loss, not Pullman's. There's enough people out there willing to give him a shot.

I'm really not inclined to give Lewis very much rope however. Not only is Narnia a deadly dull series of books, confusing and childish in the extreme, it's packed full of stuff I find dodgy and the old excuses just do not wash I am afraid.

What he said about Susan is this:

The books don't tell us what happened to Susan. She is left alive in this world at the end, having by then turned into a rather silly, conceited young woman.

So he clearly wouldn't have altered what he said about Susan had one of us "do-gooding feminists" raised a hand of caution, it was intended that she end up like that. The important word he used was 'conceited' - so the excuse trotted out that it was about her materialism doesn't work. Conceit hasn't got anything to do with materialism, it is about self-regard, which Susan as an attractive young woman, clearly has lots of; Lewis sets it up plainly that she was immoral to grow self-confident and assured of her own sexual attractiveness. Contrast that with the full-figured beauty of women like Arwen and Luthien, even of Rosie, in Tolkien's work.

Other distasteful rubbish is in those books too. He rails against comprehensive education, makes fun of non-smokers, vegetarians and teetotallers - what a cheap shot! He comes across like the reactionary Richard Littlejohn of the Daily Mail once you sit and look at what he was saying. Saying he was a product of his age is no excuse either. So was Tolkien but he doesn't come across as some curmudgeon who despises anyone who doesn't live exactly as he does!

The most amusing thing of all of course is all this rubbish Lewis came up with to explain his allegories. Well I'm one of millions who failed to be taken in by his method of recruiting as I failed to see the analogies and still fail to see most of them - I'd need a Masters in Theology to do so. But I don't fail to see some of his more odious Little Englander attitudes now I look with an adult pair of eyes. Perhaps that's his message? That if you are critical of Little Englanders then you're just like Susan... ;)

Sorry, but as a woman, and as a product of comprehensive education, I find Lewis odious at times and having had 37 years of it, I'm not in the slightest inclined to listen to excuses. If he'd just written about his talking Lions and Beavers and just left it at that his work might have been a lot more charming, but then he had to say nasty things and make nasty allusions...bring on the inflated bladder! :eek:

William Cloud Hicklin

01-03-2008, 03:22 PM

Lal:

You write as if I haven't read HDM. I have. And I realize that Pullman is (or can be) a pleasant tweedy sort who calls himself a 'cultural Anglican' and enjoys singing Christmas carols- but who also doesn't find anything unseemly in publicly slagging off other writers, whether he really means it or no.

None of that alters the fact that in Vol III his storytelling collapses under the weight of his preaching: and however much he wanted his finale to evoke Blake and Milton, to me at least it's more like Act III of Faust as retold by William Burroughs. So it's disingenous of him to disclaim sermonising when he so plainly is. At least Lewis, love him or hate him, never denied writing Christian apologias.

The important word he used was 'conceited' - so the excuse trotted out that it was about her materialism doesn't work. Conceit hasn't got anything to do with materialism, it is about self-regard, which Susan as an attractive young woman, clearly has lots of; Lewis sets it up plainly that she was immoral to grow self-confident and assured of her own sexual attractiveness.

There you're really, really reaching. One can be conceited about one's looks- but also about one's intelligence, wealth, athletic prowess, social status..... If Lewis were fixated on the physical he could have used, say, 'vain.' Nor would I equate 'self-confidence' with 'conceit.' The one is an excess of the other, which is perjorated and rightly so. By trying to force a feminist narrative of sexuality and female submission onto this (like your snark about 'keeping her head properly covered') you really make yourself sound like those old Freudian critics to whom a cigar was never just a cigar.

All Lewis was saying was that Susan had become self-absorbed, prideful, and obsessed with the 'things of this world' (by which is not meant the material, but rather the evanescent)- and thereby forgot and so lost Narnia. This is hardly radical or reactionary: even atheists will acknowledge that humility and selflessness are virtues.

(NB: Eustace's school was not a Comprehensive, which IIRC didn't exist in the early 50's, but a non-state 'experimental' school.)

davem

01-03-2008, 03:34 PM

(NB: Eustace's school was not a Comprehensive, which IIRC didn't exist in the early 50's, but a non-state 'experimental' school.)

Made me wonder about Waldorf Education/Steiner schools http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Waldorf_schools, & whether CSL was having a bit of a dig at Barfield....

Folwren

01-03-2008, 03:53 PM

Lalwendë

01-03-2008, 04:04 PM

There you're really, really reaching. One can be conceited about one's looks- but also about one's intelligence, wealth, athletic prowess, social status..... If Lewis were fixated on the physical he could have used, say, 'vain.' Nor would I equate 'self-confidence' with 'conceit.' The one is an excess of the other, which is perjorated and rightly so. By trying to force a feminist narrative of sexuality and female submission onto this (like your snark about 'keeping her head properly covered') you really make yourself sound like those old Freudian critics to whom a cigar was never just a cigar.

All Lewis was saying was that Susan had become self-absorbed, prideful, and obsessed with the 'things of this world' (by which is not meant the material, but rather the evanescent)- and thereby forgot and so lost Narnia. This is hardly radical or reactionary: even atheists will acknowledge that humility and selflessness are virtues.

Come on, it's really pushing it for an excuse when talking about a character who is said to be interested in 'lipstick, nylons and party invitations' - all shorthand for a young woman who is plainly interested in attracting men! If Lewis had been criticising conceit about intelligence he might have had a go at her Beatnik beret and clutch of shiny paperbacks by Sartre and Proust. ;)

I wouldn't dare say you or any of us here would equate self-confidence with conceit, but Lewis plainly did. And I'm afraid that if someone makes a very odd and arresting comment about the nature of womanhood then it is an inevitability that women will wish to comment upon that. And we have every right to do so. ;)

None of that alters the fact that in Vol III his storytelling collapses under the weight of his preaching: and however much he wanted his finale to evoke Blake and Milton, to me at least it's more like Act III of Faust as retold by William Burroughs. So it's disingenous of him to disclaim sermonising when he so plainly is. At least Lewis, love him or hate him, never denied writing Christian apologias.

Preaching or imagining? I'd say it rather collapses under his ambition and the whole weight of story comes down upon him here. This is something I've noticed in a lot of the best fantasy, that towards the finale the writer struggles, and sometimes just about 'loses' it. Tolkien did it, you can tell by the high falutin' language and the headlong rush of the narrative; Peake did it, with the sparse and weird third volume of Gormenghast; Rowling does it in the final volume of Potter which is seriously intense. Pullman does it too - he even loses his main protagonist somewhere along the way. What all of them have in common is that they have said things along the lines of they were 'trying to find out what happened'.

In the melee of Pullman's third book I rather found that the 'sermonising' was lost! There was so much in there that it's incredibly hard to find exactly what he is on about.

Where Pullman differs in essence to Lewis is that he does not deny that he has an agenda in there somewhere. We know some of what he's about. But not so with Lewis with his mumbo-jumbo about creating myths to lead people to something or other, which just doesn't work - and I am so not alone in thinking that! ;)

Lalwendë

01-03-2008, 04:13 PM

Lal, you really miss the point of Lewis' Chronicles of Narnia. You shouldn't carry on so about something you obviously don't understand. You only make yourself appear foolish and snobbish. I know better than to think that you really are foolish, but if I didn't, I'm afraid I'd have to think very poorly of you after that last post...

You'll notice I don't go on for pages about how awful Pullman's writing and beliefs are. ;)

-- Folwren

Sorry Folwren, but I do have to say this is very peculiar. I do happen not to like Narnia nor Lewis (though the film and TV adaptations have been immensely enjoyable and Shadowlands has me in bits). I first picked up Narnia 23 years ago and have struggled to find enjoyment in them ever since. Yes there are nice things in them and nice passages, but they simply do not work as good literature for me, and for much of those past 23 years I have been examining why they do not work.

You're quite free to go on about how awful Pullman is, as many have done on this thread (and indeed as davem does at home) as I am quite adult enough to discuss this coherently with anyone and not think poorly of them merely for their taste in books.

If you think I have an issue with Christian writers then I must ask why I enjoy John Masefield so much...

William Cloud Hicklin

01-03-2008, 04:21 PM

Come on, it's really pushing it for an excuse when talking about a character who is said to be interested in 'lipstick, nylons and party invitations' - all shorthand for a young woman who is plainly interested in attracting men!

Or rather shorthand for a Paris Hilton, a Britney Spears or an Anna Nicole Smith. Surely you're not asserting in some uber-Pagliesque way that bimbohood is the new postmodern feminism, are you?

Hookbill the Goomba

01-03-2008, 04:30 PM

Would we really be making such a fuss about Narnia if it was one of the male characters who had become interested in lipstick nylons and party invitations... Erm... Actually, we probably would come to think of it... :p

You can look at this issue in any way you want and draw whatever conclusions you wish and the stories themselves don't change an awful lot over all. Weather or not you enjoy them is another matter entirely. The question 'did you understand it?' does not always equal 'did you enjoy it?' I didn't, and still don't fully, understand The Last Battle, but found it an interesting read and did actually like it.

I think nowadays it is becoming increasingly difficult to make a fantasy without having such interpretations and themes planted on it, some of which the writer may never have had in mind. I think Lewis said something along these lines in something or other. Narnia comes into a lot of criticism for the villains wearing turbans and how that makes it all racist. But I'm not sure. It may be a case of needing a villain and the seeds in the past (namely in The Horse and his Boy) have suggested one such people who could be called upon to play the roll. But I'm no mind reader and cannot say for sure and would probably have to give Narnia a proper reread at some point to give a full account.

In terms of Pullman he set out to have his villains as representing a certain group, namely the religious establishement. I think this is where he comes into his criticism. By saying it outright he loses the subtlety that he could have had by leaving it ambiguous and open to interpretation. But then again, he probably didn't want it to be open to interpretation.

I think this is why we are still talking about Tolkien. He rarely, if ever, gives concrete 'this = that' analogies for anything. There are sometimes rough outlines, (his comment on what the function of each race was in a BBC interview springs to mind) but he says this in a glib fashion that suggests 'well it could be anything.' And so it can run away with you. Pullman obviously wants his message to dominate the reader's attention. This is by no means a bad thing if you agree with him or not. Beginning the book with the 'This person is wrong and everything he says is a lie' stance is not going to give you an enjoyable read in most cases.

Yes I am comfortable on this fence. ;)

davem

01-03-2008, 04:44 PM

Or rather shorthand for a Paris Hilton, a Britney Spears or an Anna Nicole Smith. Surely you're not asserting in some uber-Pagliesque way that bimbohood is the new postmodern feminism, are you?

"She's interested in nothing nowadays except nylons and lipstick and invitations. She always was a jolly sight too keen on being grown-up."

It seems Susan's 'sin' was wanting to be a 'grown-up' - which is not necessarily the same as becoming an adult. Its not that she's interested in 'nylons and lipstick and invitations.', its that she's interested in nothing except 'nylons and lipstick and invitations.' - ie not in Narnia, Aslan, or anything else beyond those superficialities.

Of course, Lewis left Susan's ultimate fate a mystery. In a letter to one 'Martin' he wrote:

“The books don’t tell us what happened to Susan. She is left alive in this world at the end, having by then turned into a rather silly, conceited young woman. But there is plenty of time for her to mend, and perhaps she will get into Aslan’s country in the end – in her own way.”

Susan's fate has interested other writers - from a Wikipedia article on Narnia:

Fantasy author Neil Gaiman wrote the 2004 short story "The Problem of Susan", in which an elderly woman, Professor Hastings, is depicted dealing with the grief and trauma of her entire family dying in a train crash. The woman's first name is not revealed, but she mentions her brother "Ed", and it is strongly implied that this is Susan Pevensie as an elderly woman. In the story Gaiman presents, in fictional form, a critique of Lewis' treatment of Susan.

Bêthberry

01-03-2008, 04:52 PM

On to Susan Pevensey and her nylons: I rather suspect that if someone had pointed out to Lewis pre-pub that that line could be interpreted the way Pullman (and others) have, he would quickly have amended it. He was trying to say that Susan had become enamoured of the trivial, the 'things of this world;' and had moreover confused them with being 'adult' whereas Narnia was 'childish.' Both Jack and Tollers really, really resented that sort of thinking; and unfortunately Lewis was enough of an Edwardian bachelor-chauvanist to associate 'trivial' + 'young woman' with a sort of Seventeen magazine caricature. He could just as well have said 'records and parties' or 'soap operas' or, if he were really aggressive, 'political theory and macroeconomics.' Rather like Jane at the beginning of That Hideous Strength.

Just have to ask this question here: what is the point/purpose in the narrative of having one of the children fall away from Narnia? And in the particular manner of the falling away?

If Lewis thought he was preparing minds to accept a greater story later when they came to it in adolescence, what was he doing in having one of the girls 'stray'? Why were the falling aways of the boys earlier forgiveable but not Susan's? And why is it so closely associated with , as our inestimable Lal has pointed out, things that suggest sexual coming of age? Is he preparing for readers to believe all the historically received notions of Eve being the greater sinner, and of women being morally inferior and culpable for the fall, being the more deceived? Really, was he preconditioning girls to believing that they must cover their heads in church out of their responsibility for Eve's sin? And submit to the "churching" ceremony to cleanse themselves after childbirth before they can return to public church services?

What kind of preconditioning was he about with Susan? It's got nothing to do with promoting humility and selflessness as virtues--if that's what Lewis was into, why didn't he run counter to traditional cultrual orthodoxy and demonstrate those traits in a male?

However LR isn't about 'class social structure.'

Precisely. And its view of an idyllic social organization without any strife, where there is clearly private ownership of property rather than communal ownership, provides the kind of silence which speaks volumes.

Lal, you really miss the point of Lewis' Chronicles of Narnia. You shouldn't carry on so about something you obviously don't understand. You only make yourself appear foolish and snobbish. I know better than to think that you really are foolish, but if I didn't, I'm afraid I'd have to think very poorly of you after that last post...

Rather than dissing Lal for saying things you think are wrong, why don't you tell us what you think is the point of Lewis' Narnia? Let's keep to the books rather than to each other, shall we?

Estelyn Telcontar

01-03-2008, 05:16 PM

Thank you for that good reminder to us all, Bêthberry. It's clear that this issue won't be resolved unanimously, so it's very important to let each person express personal opinions without judging them. Please state your opinion clearly and give your reasons; whether others are convinced is beyond your influence.

piosenniel

01-03-2008, 06:42 PM

I'll just throw these into the mix:

Here's the link to the short story previously referred to by davem - Neil Gaiman's *The Problem of Susan (https://webfiles.berkeley.edu/xythoswfs/webui/SrAndrea/narnia?action=frameset&subaction=print&uniq=gljjav)*.

And here's a link to an interesting essay & discussion of The Problem of Susan (http://rj-anderson.livejournal.com/176635.html) on a LiveJournal site.

William Cloud Hicklin

01-03-2008, 06:44 PM

William Cloud Hicklin

01-03-2008, 06:58 PM

BTW, piosenniel, thanks for the livejournal link, which includes this very apt passage (I had forgotten it):

"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 onto the silliest time of one's life as quick as she can and stop there as long as she can."

And the very comparable quote from the short-story The Shoddy Lands:
...all her clothes and bath salts and two-piece swimsuits and indeed the voluptuousness of her every look and gesture, had not, and never had had, the meaning which every man would read, and was intended to read, into them. They were a huge overture to an opera in which she had no interest at all; a coronation procession with no queen at the centre of it; gestures, gestures about nothing.

About says it all.

Bêthberry

01-03-2008, 11:36 PM

Just have to ask this question here: what is the point/purpose in the narrative of having one of the children fall away from Narnia? And in the particular manner of the falling away? If Lewis thought he was preparing minds to accept a greater story later when they came to it in adolescence, what was he doing in having one of the girls 'stray'? Why were the falling aways of the boys earlier forgiveable but not Susan's?

Given that the Last Battle is of course an allegory or at least an allegory of the Christian Judgment Day, it would have been, well, dishonest for Lewis not to cover the Goats as wll as the Sheep. More specifically Lewis, who was always interested in individual faith and action as they relate to salvation (see Screwtape) was making a point which is key in Lewisian theology: that indifference is often more fatal than defiant Miltonesque sin. Satan is no atheist! Edmund certainly committed a very bad act: but it was forgivable because *everything* is forgivable- provided one wants to be forgiven. Susan had simply ceased to care.

Well, of course if we are going to have an allegory of the Christian Judgement Day, we should expect the relative proportions to be slightly different. Aren't there supposed to be more goats than sheep?

Why Susan? Well, it had to be somebody, and Susan was really the extra one. Peter (name no accident) was the High King/Viceroy/Vicar/ Pope of Aslanism. Lucy was always the Good One, the one whose belief was purest. Edmund- well, it would have blown the point of Vol 1 if he's condemned anyway in the end. That leaves Susan, the least interesting Pevensey anyway.

What an intriguing trinity you postulate: Peter/ Edmund/ Lucy. But who says that the moral/spiritual worth of a human being is determined by "interest", by charm, charisma, readerly appetite?

Fact still remains that in traditional Christianity, the Fall is the female's fault and so Lewis is perpetuating that moral vision of the female's failing. Just read a few Medieval Churchmen to get a flavour of the virulent excoriation of women that is part of social history of the faith. Lewis is by no means as misogynist as the Church Fathers but he unfortunately uses traditional notions of culpability to express his idea of falling away from faith.

Is he preparing for readers to believe all the historically received notions of Eve being the greater sinner, and of women being morally inferior and culpable for the fall, being the more deceived? Really, was he preconditioning girls to believing that they must cover their heads in church out of their responsibility for Eve's sin? And submit to the "churching" ceremony to cleanse themselves after childbirth before they can return to public church services?

Is this a deliberate strawman? Are you accusing Lewis of believing or advocating such snakehandler nonsense?

No. Yes. If you have a philosophy/theology that develops a schism between mind and body, between spiritual and material, then it's going to be a problem handling the very material question of procreation, especially if you have a story so dependent upon virgin birth. (Wasn't it you who asked about Danae's golden showers on a thread recently?)

However LR isn't about 'class social structure.'

Precisely. And its view of an idyllic social organization without any strife, where there is clearly private ownership of property rather than communal ownership, provides the kind of silence which speaks volumes.

I'd like to think you're not trolling here, but I equally wouldn't want to think you're serious.

In the first place, the Shire is intended to be Home: comfortable, familiar, a little childish, even if JRRT can't help a few puckish jabs at bourgeois mentality. (Strife, if without bloodshed, clearly does take place, from Frodo's mushroom-raids to the the Bilbo/S-B feud to the very existence of lawyers.) A great statewide commune would have been as alien as Carter's Mars, and required a great deal of explanation and delving into political economy that Tolkien plainly had no interest in doing. No 'Warwickshire village about the time of Queen Victoria's Diamond Jubilee' was remotely Communard!

In the second place, the notion that 'strife' is an inevitable result of private property and can be avoided only by communal ownership is a Marxist notion which not only would have been rejected by Tolkien, but also by the overwhelming majority of rational human beings. Why should he bother to be anything but silent about a fringe theory held only by a handful of people on the looney Left? The rest of us live in a world of property ownership. Again, as I posted monts ago: Tolkien wasn't writing a political novel.

You're right, he wasn't. But that still does not mean readers cannot discuss his choice to write an a-political story, particularly since he uses the theme of regained kingship but avoids some of the concommitant situations of monarchies. And, actually, I wasn't thinking at all about Marxist theory, but thinking about pre-agrarian or early agrarian cultures, or even Viking culture--Rohan?--when I was thinking about communal ownership, trying to 'place' just where Tolkien imagined the Shire in terms of human development. In Victorian times a man could not vote unless he owned property of a certain value--not sure what the laws were in Edwardian times--and given real estate in Old Blighty at the time that stipulation certainly caused some strife in terms of a lack of political power.

But even if we take The Shire as Home, which you very interestingly and imaginatively suggest, Tolkien's assumption--or is it yours?-- that Home is always so comfortable is . . . a political statement about that form of domestic organisation. And, if you are going to argue that The Shire is Home, then that tantalizingly suggests the Ring story is almost an allegory about not wanting to grow up, Frodo wanting to save the Shire and all. Was he a kind of Peter Pan, wanting to preserve that comfortable childhood, and when he found he couldn't, he just . . . was the opposite of Susan/Wendy.

I have no idea where I'm going with this, as it's late and I've been continually interrupted. . . . Thanks, pio, for those links. They must, alas, remain unread until after this last holiday weekend. I certainly hope that does not make me sound as frivolous as Susan. ;)

Lalwendë

01-04-2008, 03:14 AM

Or rather shorthand for a Paris Hilton, a Britney Spears or an Anna Nicole Smith. Surely you're not asserting in some uber-Pagliesque way that bimbohood is the new postmodern feminism, are you?

Yes many people (well, women, men are after all only interested in intellectual pursuits aren't they? ;)) do have little interest in anything other than clothes and make-up and socialising. But the point Lewis makes is odious. There is nothing wrong in women (let's stick to it) being interested in these things, in fact it's perfectly ordinary and always has been - and I find it quite insulting that because I'm overly fond of handbags and enjoy reading about fashion in Grazia, some old professor in his dusty tweed suit thinks I'm at best 'silly' and at worst 'immoral'.

Had Lewis said that Susan had grown interested in little else than jackboots, knives and guns then he may have had a moral point to make, but there is nothing wrong in the harmless pursuit of the trappings of adult womanhood - I'm afraid that he did not see that such things as clothes and make-up are enjoyed by about 99% of women and there is absolutely no harm in that, even if their insistence that getting their lippie just so before going for a night out does make you half an hour late and give you something to moan about at length when you meet your pals in the pub.

I'm reminded of the saying 'typical man'. ;)

It's rather as if someone has just spent ages and ages creating this beautiful (but quite twee) painting and then has got in a temper towards the end and dropped a blot of red paint on it.

Whatever, all the lengthy essays in the world to explain away this inkblot by Lewis only serve to make the excuses even more tortured. Why not just be done and say "Sorry, Miss, the dog ate my homework." I'd rather leave it that Lewis just didn't know what to do with a character he didn't like any more so he decided to write her out in a most unpleasant and dissmissive way, because the alternative, that she was in some way immoral just for doing what girls do, is quite disturbing and says a whole lot more about Lewis and his Victor Meldrew-ish attitude towards young women than it does about such young women.

Let's contrast the attitude of Lewis with that of Tolkien who cast no moral judgements on his own 'silly women' who clearly took huge pleasure in such trivialities as dancing and embroidery - in fact their indulging in 'silly' girlish things became heroic - Arwen's 'silly' embroidery was taken into battle in the form of Aragorn's inspiring standard; Luthien's 'silly' dancing managed to attract the love interest of Beren and we know the rest...

Tolkien was a man who knew a little more of what women were about, because he'd loved one from a young age and had a clutch of children with said woman; what's more he had even more contact with women in his professional life - due to being a married man he was permitted to be personal tutor to female students. He lived in a wider world than Lewis and you can tell by how he writes about his women. Sure, they're not the modern women that Pullman and Rowling write so wonderfully about (don't get me started on how Lyra and Hermione are marvellous...) but they aren't cloistered either. They do bad things, trivial things, and heroic things, but what's more, there's not a lot that the Tolkien fan must find excuses for...

Now excuse me while I go and put my face on. :D

davem

01-04-2008, 07:12 AM

Lalwendë

01-04-2008, 07:35 AM

Now I'm wondering about Pullman's attitude to relationships - in HDM he has Lyra & Will get together & then immediately splits them up forever, & in an adaptation of one of his Sally Lockhart stories by the BBC over Christmas he has Sally get together with her lover, who immediately afterward gets killed in a fire! Does PP have a problem with his characters being together? Happily ever after doesn't seem to appeal to him...

Could say similar about Tolkien with his profusion of orphans ;) There's quite likely something psychological about why writers choose their characters as they do, but in the case of Lyra and Sally, the loss of a love is simply part of the story. Without saying more about Lyra (spoilers, davem, spoilers! Tch), Sally has to be an unmarried mum as otherwise the plot of the third novel would not work - she is subject to some serious exploitation owing to her vulnerable place in Victorian society. What Pullman doesn't shirk on though is Love - the characters always experience Love, even if it is doomed!

William Cloud Hicklin

01-04-2008, 10:55 AM

But even if we take The Shire as Home, which you very interestingly and imaginatively suggest, Tolkien's assumption--or is it yours?-- that Home is always so comfortable is . . . a political statement about that form of domestic organisation. And, if you are going to argue that The Shire is Home, then that tantalizingly suggests the Ring story is almost an allegory about not wanting to grow up, Frodo wanting to save the Shire and all. Was he a kind of Peter Pan, wanting to preserve that comfortable childhood, and when he found he couldn't

No, it's not a political statement: it's an emotional statement. "It was a hobbit-hole, and that means comfort:" you don't have to be a Freudian to see how womby it is. Tolkien was calling up his own nostalgia-gilded memories of the place where he was a little boy, with a mother and everything. Political matters weren't an issue for seven-year-old Ronald; and in the Shire he could sweep them away with a sort of 'if men were angels' sleight of hand: Hobbits apparently don't have or want any kind of government at all (it's not like the Mayor counts for anything). "Growing food and eating it took up most of their time."

But in the end of LR Frodo doesn't compare to Barrie's eternal boy PP at all. "You have grown, Halfling. You are both wise and cruel." Even the other Travellers might see returning as 'going back to sleep'; but Frodo is clearsighted enough to confront the awful reality: his mother has been raped (to push the Freudian thing rather too hard). Childhood always ends, whether you want it to or not.

However-- adults have homes too, you know.

(Incidentally, pre- and early agrarian societies were hardly some nonviolent Rousseauvian golden age of Noble Savages: recent research indicates that in late Paleolithic and Mesolithic societies 40 to 50% of the population died at the hands of their fellow humans. And the Vikings, my God: a sanguinary epoch of murder, outlawry and blood-feud- and that's just among themselves.)

If you have a philosophy/theology that develops a schism between mind and body, between spiritual and material, then it's going to be a problem handling the very material question of procreation

Which isn't remotely Lewis' philosophy/theology. He had no problem at all with the physical and material- a boisterous, active man who relished his pipe, his beer, his dinner and his friends. No aescetic he! What Lewis dstinguished was the important from the unimportant, which is a very different thing. (I should point out also that , based on The Four Loves, Lewis had a perfectly healthy attitude towards eros).

Child of the 7th Age

01-04-2008, 11:08 AM

Does PP have a problem with his characters being together? Happily ever after doesn't seem to appeal to him...

Tell that part about "happily ever after" to Frodo! :( The poor hobbit doesn't even have the memory of such a relationship, unless we are to believe the many trash fanfictions that exist on the internet. Surely we can't condemn Pullman for his inability to supply a wholly happy ending given the concluding chapter of LotR. There is a "sacrifice" made in both books.

Like Lalwende, I have considerable admiration for Pullman's books, despite the fact that the author's world view is leagues from my own. I gobbled up each of the hardcovers when they first came out (still have the first printings with a signed bookplate tipped in.) Pullman is not on the same level as Tolkien, but I do see his work and that of Lewis as similar in many respects, and I enjoy both HDM and Narnia. (If I only enjoyed books that closely mirrored my own world view, I would probably only have a total of two or three to read!) However, I could do without Pullman's bombastic manner in interviews. He certainly does not have the public grace that Tolkien had.

The movie Golden Compass was a real disappointment. I don't expect to see later installments. But then the same thing happened with Tolkien. The earliest film adaptations were very flawed, and we had to wait a long time to see something better. OK, so maybe that latter statement is debatable! But the basic idea is that there's no sense judging a book on a film adaptation. Someday, somewhere, some filmaker will try again with Pullman, if the books continue to appeal to readers, and I believe they will.

William Cloud Hicklin

01-04-2008, 11:09 AM

But the point Lewis makes is odious. There is nothing wrong in women (let's stick to it) being interested in these things, in fact it's perfectly ordinary and always has been - and I find it quite insulting that because I'm overly fond of handbags and enjoy reading about fashion in Grazia, some old professor in his dusty tweed suit thinks I'm at best 'silly' and at worst 'immoral'.

Had Lewis said that Susan had grown interested in little else than jackboots, knives and guns then he may have had a moral point to make, but there is nothing wrong in the harmless pursuit of the trappings of adult womanhood

I rather think you skipped or skimmed Davem's post above: what's wrong with Susan was that fripperies were ALL she cared about. Which rather counters your "harmless pusuit of the trappings of adult womanhood." I'll grant that Lewis slipped into something of the 'typical man' thing: but it wasn't his *point.* Whether it was lipstick or jackboots or stamp collecting, the essential point is that Susan had allowed the unimportant to consume her entire existence.

Certainly Lewis by this time had no problem at all with Joy, who was always nicely turned out- but who was about much, much more than merely the latest issue of Vogue. As are you.

There is a secondary point in there about 'growing up' and its connection to sexual maturity (or at least the perception thereof): but Lewis' point here is that sexual activity and mental/emotional maturity are not remotely the same thing; and while maturity and Narnia apparently cannot coexist, there is nothing mutually exclusive between maturity and the *memory* of Narnia: a fallacy which Susan fell into when she chose to jettison it in favor of the false 'grown-uppishness' of the Spears sisters.

Child of the 7th Age

01-04-2008, 12:01 PM

William Cloud Hickli -

There is a much larger problem here that no one seems to be addressing. It is impossible to judge the depiction of Susan without considering the wider issue of how Lewis generally represents women. I enjoy Lewis immensely and have done so since childhood. I have many of his fiction and non-fiction books sitting on my shelf.

However, I love these works in spite of the way Lewis portrays female characters or even discusses women in some of his non-fiction works. (Passages in the Four Loves are also suggestive, but I don't have a copy at home.) I remember being taken aback even as a child when I read the Narnia tales and found out what happened to Susan. Something in my eleven year old head howled "unfair". I was the furthest kid you could imagine from lipstick and party invitations, but I wasn't quite sure that I could measure up to Lucy in spiritual depth and had a bad feeling that otherwise (like Susan) I would be thrown into a literary pit.

I had a similar queasy feeling when I encountered Jane in That Hideous Strength. I don't have a copy handy right now so I would have a hard time coming up with specific quotes, but I always had the feeling that Lewis simply took Ephesians 5: 22-25 concerning the headship of men over women and went at it from that viewpoint, with little subtlety. Others will feel very comfortable with this, but I do not.

It's only when you get to Till We Have Faces that Lewis seems capable of portraying females with some insight and depth. This is one of my favorite books. Orual is a compelling, complex character. There is no simple right or wrong here. We are shown how Orual grows in wisdom, self knowledge, and ability to love. It's my understanding that this was written late in Lewis's career....after he had met and loved Joy. That experience must have transformed him as I see an enormous difference between Orual (and even Psyche) and his earlier females. Lucy is a compelling personality, but there is no depth in her characterization or, in another direction, that of the later Susan. And I say this while acknowledging that there is a difference between writing a story for a juvenile or adult audience. Whatever Tolkien's personal views on the role of women (a subject for debate), I do not see this same simplicity in Tolkien's females that I do in those of Lewis. But Tolkien had the advantage of Edith and Priscilla for many long years.

Lyta_Underhill

01-04-2008, 12:08 PM

This is something I've noticed in a lot of the best fantasy, that towards the finale the writer struggles, and sometimes just about 'loses' it. Tolkien did it, you can tell by the high falutin' language and the headlong rush of the narrative; Peake did it, with the sparse and weird third volume of Gormenghast; Rowling does it in the final volume of Potter which is seriously intense. Pullman does it too - he even loses his main protagonist somewhere along the way. What all of them have in common is that they have said things along the lines of they were 'trying to find out what happened'.

At the risk of lagging and taking off on an aside, I might address something that made me think in Lal's quoted post here: the inclusion of Mervyn Peake's Gormenghast "trilogy." I think this body of work is wrongly labeled thus, since Titus Alone is so very different from the other two preceding volumes and Gormenghast itself is conspicuously absent, as is the main (and most interesting) antagonist, Steerpike. Also, Peake was himself "fallen off" into the ravages of Parkinson's disease, which rendered him unable to finish his third volume definitively and coherently. The work we see is edited into shape by his wife, Maeve, and seems to reflect confusion of mind at work. Alas for Mervyn Peake, whose work I greatly admire!

The inclusion of Peake also put me in mind of the subversive mindset embodied by Pullman's Lyra Belacqua. While we are dazzled in Titus Groan and Gormenghast by the machinations of the careful villain Steerpike, we also see the development of Titus, himself a subversive character and original thinker. He is drawn to the Wild Girl, drawn away from the ages-old tradition represented by Gormenghast itself, drawn away from the rock of unchanging thought that, in Peake's case, seems to have represented the monarchy of Britain, but underneath this is also a hint that it might have included the "rock" of the established church as well. The clue comes in his ancillary work "Boy in Darkness," wherein the young Titus gets lost in the forest and meets archetypal animal characters who hold him captive. One, the Lamb, seems to represent acquiescence, a laying down before that which "is and always has been," an acceptance of his place as heir and the mindset that is required for him to become part of the unending "stones" of Gormenghast. Titus has what it takes to break away from tradition and to think for himself. We see that Steerpike, although he is clever and uses his vast knowledge to his advantage, is limited in this capacity, and he cannot think beyond the tradition and "stones" of Gormenghast. Titus goes beyond, and I think Peake wanted to explore this "beyond" in Titus Alone, but, alas, he himself went beyond before he could bring it to clarity for us readers.

In a sense, I get the hint that Pullman wishes to do this by the device of laying bare the veneer of the Church and the false gods it has raised to be the projections of its self-serving policy. This is an agenda, certainly, and it is rarely done perfectly; I don't think Pullman did it in a way that could separated his secondary world from the primary world he is criticising. But I admire someone who can illustrate this concept in a believable way, even if it does fall short of perfection.

I think the reason I raise Tolkien above all these authors--Pullman, Lewis, Peake and the rest--is that he evokes a delicate and fragile realm that cannot be directly looked into--Faerie comes alive in that "corner of the eye," "edge of the forest" way that keeps Samwise forever looking for Elves in the Shire in his early days. Tolkien may have his own "agenda," but he is not stuffing down anyone's throat. His world, in my opinion, is the finest for his light touch upon it. For all its "high-falutin'" language in Return of the King, the very richness of Middle Earth transcends these imperfections. I guess maybe this post should be "why Tolkien is my favorite author," eh? I am not even going to get into the Lewis thing right now!;)

William Cloud Hicklin

01-04-2008, 12:33 PM

Thank you Lyta. This is a point which Tolkien, as so often, expressed felicitously; "the one resides in the freedom of the reader, and the other in the purposed domination of the author."

I can't really concur in "towards the finale the writer struggles, and sometimes just about 'loses' it. Tolkien did it, you can tell by the high falutin' language and the headlong rush of the narrative". If by 'finale' you mean the denoument, from coronation to Scouring and Havens, it's quite the reverse of headlong: almost too drawn-out. If you mean the Fall of Sauron, again we get the latter part of Book V and the whole Passion of Frodo Baggins setting it up. And I think that Tolkien's skill with "high-falutin' language" demonstrably increased with practice, from hit-or-miss in Book I (the Goldberry passages are excruciating) to the masterful exchange between Eowyn and the Witch-king, and Denethor's speeches of near-Shakespearean subtlety and grandeur.

Nor- and this is key- does Tolkien's many-headed finale ever become confused or lose clarity. Titus Alone and, to a lesser extent AS (and all the Dune books after the first) by contrast induce a massive ***??? on first (and often subsequent) reading.

davem

01-04-2008, 01:33 PM

Its a long time since I read TLB, but I have to admit that when I heard of Susan's fate I didn't feel that Lewis was attacking either feminism or 'shallow' women, I just felt very sad that she had missed out. Maybe that was Lewis intention - that his readers would feel that way & not make the same choice she did. Susan 'grows up' & consigns Narnia to the Nursery - exactly the attitude Tolkien condemns in OFS. Some people do make that choice & surely it would have been dishonest if Lewis hadn't acknowledged that via one of his characters - &, as the letter I quoted shows, he never stated that Susan had lost her chance of entering Aslan's country, & left open the possibility that she could find her own way there one day.

Don't know how different this is from Boromir's fate - he misses out on his chance of coming through the war & living in peace & happiness through pride, but we see that as a tragedy. Surely Lewis has the right to 'sacrifice' one of his characters to bring home to his readers the danger of what he considered a 'sin', while leaving open the possibility of her salvation?

Gwathagor

01-04-2008, 01:42 PM

Morwen

01-04-2008, 01:55 PM

There is a much larger problem here that no one seems to be addressing. It is impossible to judge the depiction of Susan without considering the wider issue of how Lewis generally represents women. I enjoy Lewis immensely and have done so since childhood. I have many of his fiction and non-fiction books sitting on my shelf.

However, I love these works in spite of the way Lewis portrays female characters or even discusses women in some of his non-fiction works. (Passages in the Four Loves are also suggestive, but I don't have a copy at home.) I remember being taken aback even as a child when I read the Narnia tales and found out what happened to Susan. Something in my eleven year old head howled "unfair". I was the furthest kid you could imagine from lipstick and party invitations, but I wasn't quite sure that I could measure up to Lucy in spiritual depth and had a bad feeling that otherwise (like Susan) I would be thrown into a literary pit.

It is Susan who rejects Narnia. And since she's the one doing the rejecting what exactly is unfair about the situation?

Lalwendë

01-04-2008, 03:29 PM

I rather think you skipped or skimmed Davem's post above: what's wrong with Susan was that fripperies were ALL she cared about. Which rather counters your "harmless pusuit of the trappings of adult womanhood." I'll grant that Lewis slipped into something of the 'typical man' thing: but it wasn't his *point.* Whether it was lipstick or jackboots or stamp collecting, the essential point is that Susan had allowed the unimportant to consume her entire existence.

Certainly Lewis by this time had no problem at all with Joy, who was always nicely turned out- but who was about much, much more than merely the latest issue of Vogue. As are you.

There is a secondary point in there about 'growing up' and its connection to sexual maturity (or at least the perception thereof): but Lewis' point here is that sexual activity and mental/emotional maturity are not remotely the same thing; and while maturity and Narnia apparently cannot coexist, there is nothing mutually exclusive between maturity and the *memory* of Narnia: a fallacy which Susan fell into when she chose to jettison it in favor of the false 'grown-uppishness' of the Spears sisters.

Lewis makes a judgement which is entirely a value judgement based wholly on his own personal values. There is nothing inherently wrong or immoral with someone who chooses to focus on something which he might view as 'trivial' such as fashion. Why, there will be more than a handful of Downs members who focus their whole lives around Hobbits and Elves, and while it might not be entirely healthy to have a fixation on one thing, it isn't wrong in the slightest.

What's more, Lewis chose to pick on something peculiar to women, particularly to young women. It is in fact healthy for a young woman to have an interest in her social life and how she looks, it is part of her growing up. I think that had Lewis been in a proper relationship earlier he might have accepted such 'fripperies' as part and parcel of life and ignored them.

Child brings up the Four Loves which also contains some objectionable stuff - namely that women and men cannot be friends as they do not share the same types of interests. Well excuse me, but I have always had male friends, one since I was 13. He once said he liked nothing so much as the sound of 'adult male laughter', presumably women's laughter being too shrill and cackling? ;) I believe he also had a pop at women's magazines too, and said some things about how the man should be head of the household (yeah, riiight ;)) but someone more inclined to delve deep into Lewis will have to clarify, I'm afraid trying to read Narnia left me scarred for life. I might have a poke around at some time if I'm feeling girded...

So, it's not just 'the problem of Susan' that demonstrates he had 'issues', stemming from some dysfunctional (non-) relationships. And I'd be happy to leave it at that, but we keep getting the apologetics for him. A writer I do like and who was a sexist pig was Larkin, but nobody tries to deny that he had sexist (and racist) tendencies - why try to 'cover up' for Lewis? That is the point that sticks the most.

He was also well known around Oxford for being curmudgeonly on some issues, he certainly was not the saintly figure of Shadowlands (that is all the doing of the marvellous Hopkins). His spat with Betjeman and his 'effete' friends is exemplary of the personality of Lewis, and the story of the tea party with Louis MacNeice is hilarious as the young aesthetes forced Lewis (who was all manly and talked of giving people 'a smack') to discuss lace curtains and so forth. This whole hatred thing has amused me for some time - and the great irony is that the parents giving their children the regulation box set of Narnia to read will likely know more than a few Betjeman lines off by heart as he's Britain's best loved 'modern' poet.

Lewis in fact might be wholly improved by acknowledging his darker side and stepping for a moment outside the doors of what Betjeman dubbed "the church of St CS Lewis". I always think it doesn't do us any favours to be instantly dismissive of criticism of Tolkien and it ought to be taken onboard and examined honestly - time to do that with Lewis and it makes no intellectual sense to dismiss someone like Pullman out of hand just for daring to be critical.

Bêthberry

01-04-2008, 04:09 PM

No, it's not a political statement: it's an emotional statement. "It was a hobbit-hole, and that means comfort:" you don't have to be a Freudian to see how womby it is. Tolkien was calling up his own nostalgia-gilded memories of the place where he was a little boy, with a mother and everything. Political matters weren't an issue for seven-year-old Ronald; and in the Shire he could sweep them away with a sort of 'if men were angels' sleight of hand.

Yes, this is precisely my point. Tolkien's Shire is gilded with nostalgia, in contrast to some very non-nostalgic Victorian views of womby things. Pullman's Dust falls over all, but it doesn't gild things. His fantasy is all the more intriguing because it isn't rosy. ;)

(Incidentally, pre- and early agrarian societies were hardly some nonviolent Rousseauvian golden age of Noble Savages: recent research indicates that in late Paleolithic and Mesolithic societies 40 to 50% of the population died at the hands of their fellow humans. And the Vikings, my God: a sanguinary epoch of murder, outlawry and blood-feud- and that's just among themselves.)

Again, you are mischaracterising my comments, this time as Rousseauvian rather than Marxist. Careful now. The traditional view of Vikings has recently come in for some rethinking, particularly as that notion of them comes down to us from those who fought with them. Rome, after all, had a vested interest in explaining just how and why she was conquered. ;)

Which isn't remotely Lewis' philosophy/theology. He had no problem at all with the physical and material- a boisterous, active man who relished his pipe, his beer, his dinner and his friends. No aescetic he! What Lewis dstinguished was the important from the unimportant, which is a very different thing. (I should point out also that , based on The Four Loves, Lewis had a perfectly healthy attitude towards eros).

So Lewis can have his pipe, his beer, his dinner and his friends, but Susan may not because he determined that she was placing too great a value on her friends, her parties, her salon. Role playing kings and queens in Narnia might not have been all that different from role playing drama queen wannabe--in fact, it might have 'preconditioned' Susan to enjoying stylish things and powerful people.

Thank you, Child, for mentioning Till We have Faces. It's a hard book to find (I'm always too lazy to special order) but I'll keep looking for it.

Gwathagor

01-04-2008, 04:23 PM

davem

01-04-2008, 04:35 PM

I think this section from the Introduction to Lewis' allegory 'The Great Divorce' sums up where he is coming from with Susan:

I do not think that all who choose wrong roads will perish; but their rescue
consists in being put back on the right road. A wrong sum can be put right: but
only by going back till you find the error and working it afresh from that point,
never by simply going on. Evil can be undone, but it cannot “develop” into good.
Time does not heal it. The spell must be unwound, bit by bit, “with backward
mutters of dissevering power” – or else not. It is still “either-or.” If we insist on
keeping Hell (or even earth) we shall not see Heaven: if we accept Heaven we
shall not be able to retain even the smallest and most intimate souvenirs of Hell. I
believe, to be sure, that any [person] who reaches Heaven will find out what he
abandoned (even plucking out his right eye) was precisely nothing; that the
kernel of wheat he was really seeking even in his most depraved wishes will be
there, beyond expectation, waiting for him in “the High Countries.”

Now, you may agree or disagree with that, but that's what Lewis believed & I think, as a consequence one can see Susan's (temporary?) fate as inevitable. Susan's fate was a direct consequence of Lewis' worldview.

For myself, I find most of Lewis stuff unreadable - though there are some jewels scattered throughout.....

William Cloud Hicklin

01-04-2008, 09:37 PM

The traditional view of Vikings has recently come in for some rethinking, particularly as that notion of them comes down to us from those who fought with them. Rome, after all, had a vested interest in explaining just how and why she was conquered.

Whoa, whoa, whoa. First off, Rome (in the West) was centuries gone by the time of the first Vikings (traditionally Lindisfarne, 793)

In the second place, the portrait I referred to was the Norsemen's *own*, drawn from their quasi-historical sagas, and from Heimskringla. They were barely-concealed *proud* of their killers, even when they couldn't pay their weregeld and had to be outlawed. Reading what the Vikings wrote about *themselves* and their interpersonal relationships puts me in mind of nobody so much as LA street gangs: "show me respect or I'll put an axe in yo' ***."

This is not to say that the Vikings did not have admirable qualities: at least those qualities valued in a warrior culture- honor, loyalty, courage, generosity. But it was, unapologetically, a warrior culture, which regarded rapine, pillage, plunder and bloodshed as praiseworthy things and the true measure of a man.

Mind you, I *like* the Vikings. But while we can admire their seacraft and artwork and many other things, we shouldn't forget that that most ancient of parliaments, the Althing, was followed by the 'weapontake:' the men taking up their arms again after they left the assembly. And it's hardly a puzzle why no weapons were allowed inside......

Lalwendë

01-05-2008, 03:27 AM

I believe, Lalwende and Bethberry, that you are letting your strong dislike of Lewis's curmudgeonly tendencies overwhelm and misdirect your understanding of this particular part of TLB.

The point of the lipstick and invitations bit isn't to condemn the proper use of those things, but rather the deeper problem Susan has, of which the abuse of said items is merely the symptom. This makes a great deal of sense considering the context of the previous books: the apparent childishness of Narnia contrasted with a false, silly grown-upishness. This is a contrast that is made fairly regularly throughout the series (Edmund vs. Pevensies, Peter vs. Lucy in "Prince Caspian", Susan vs. Siblings, etc.)

One of the problems is that items such lipstick and stockings are heavily symbolic of adult female sexuality (along with high heels, glossy hair etc) and what Lewis is saying is that an interest in her own sexuality is "silly". That's both unhealthy and wrong. There is sometimes a tendency of fathers to fail to come to terms with their own daughters' growing up by preventing them (or attempting to prevent them, as they don't know what the girl is sneaking out in her school bag ;)) from doing such things as experimenting with make-up and clothes, in an unconscious attempt to keep them in childhood. And you do get adult men who have issues with their own partners/wives getting dressed up as they find it threatening - this even appears in entire cultures where women are expected to wear veils and so on. In our own western culture you can find this in the fashion industry where frailty and the look of adolescence is preferred over the look of a real, healthy, full grown woman. It is all to do with power; if women are kept in a state of childhood they pose no threat both in terms of their own potential power or the power other men could gain by 'stealing' them.

So there is very clearly a message about men's power over women in what Lewis says. The boys are allowed to grow and do 'manly' things, but are the girls allowed to grow and do 'womanly' things?

There's your Women's Studies lecture for the day ;)

And all this business Lewis says about how grown ups cannot accept fantasy is nonsense. It is vital that people grow up, lest they become like Michael Jackson! Thank goodness Joy came along and shook Lewis out of his closeted little males only world!

Gwathagor

01-05-2008, 11:33 AM

Like I said.

obloquy

01-05-2008, 12:11 PM

In our own western culture you can find this in the fashion industry where frailty and the look of adolescence is preferred over the look of a real, healthy, full grown woman. It is all to do with power; if women are kept in a state of childhood they pose no threat both in terms of their own potential power or the power other men could gain by 'stealing' them.

Or maybe young, thin girls are actually more attractive than what you call "real, healthy, full grown women." Out of curiosity, do you suppose there's a single mastermind dictating the repression of powerful women, or is it a syndicate with an official charter and handshake? Then again, maybe fashion isn't exactly "all to do with power." Maybe fashion is fashion, and the struggle of women seeking more independence and influence has a little more to do with thousands of years of near-universal patriarchal tradition than what designers are selling to anorexic celebrities.

By the way, guys rule and girls drool.

Eönwë

01-05-2008, 04:56 PM

Well, lots of authors "borrow" from others. Imean, at least Tolkien's is done discreetly, or at least, a lot of his books are his creation (but it does have a bit of a biblical connection).

But look at people like Christopher Paolini, he writes about King called Hrothgar. That is just Beowulf in disguise, not to mention his elves and what he calls urgals but sound verey similar to orcs.

And people like Terry Pratchett just take ideas from everywhere...

But thats just how life is as an author... *wink wink*

Lalwendë

01-06-2008, 09:10 AM

Or maybe young, thin girls are actually more attractive than what you call "real, healthy, full grown women." Out of curiosity, do you suppose there's a single mastermind dictating the repression of powerful women, or is it a syndicate with an official charter and handshake? Then again, maybe fashion isn't exactly "all to do with power." Maybe fashion is fashion, and the struggle of women seeking more independence and influence has a little more to do with thousands of years of near-universal patriarchal tradition than what designers are selling to anorexic celebrities.

By the way, guys rule and girls drool.

You're dicing with death there, you'll have half the female Downs membership going "Tch" ;)

Though to be serious, this argument about the link between fashion and power can actually be seen in history. I know not many historians are interested in what styles of frock the lasses wore and when (being that guns and swords and planes and stuff are more interesting - including to me) but there is a clear correlation between styles of dress and attitudes towards women. To take a recent example, the later 1940s saw a return to fitted, corsetted, and impractical styles just as women went back to their kitchen sinks to clear the factory jobs for returning men from war. But I shall not bore you with any more lecturing as that's getting right off the point ;)

Getting right back to the issues Pullman has with Tolkien, the worst that can be said about it is that Pullman just doesn't find Tolkien 'serious' enough, and I have to say this is down at least to some essential differences between what the two men hoped to achieve.

On the one hand Tolkien was working from a basis of epic, heroic literature such as Beowulf and the sagas, at times quite dispassionate in that they do not examine what is happening in the characters' heads; whereas Pullman works more from the intense poetry of Milton and Blake which examine psychological matters and personal spiritual viewpoints.

One of the criticisms of Tolkien is that his characters are one-dimensional - this is because we are used to modern fiction which gets into the heads of characters, not to sagas which simply tell the tale. A lot of people do not realise that like in a Viking saga, in Tolkien's world we learn about the character and their motivation from the words he/she says or the deeds he/she does. Contrast that with Pullman, very much the modern writer, who uses the authorial voice, not the character voice, to tell us why Lyra wants to do this or that. And then go and read some Blake and you will find just the same thing.

So it boils down to influences and by extension, taste. Tolkien liked one thing, Pullman likes another. Tolkien, it must be noted, also "cordially disliked allegory", a particular form of writing in which the authorial voice is scrawled in red pen all over the page, and the form Lewis and Pullman have both chosen, to a certain extent; Tolkien didn't like Narnia and I think he also wouldn't have liked HDM, for artistic reasons.

Something else is important and this is that what Tolkien created was more than a 'mere' book. LotR is a precision crafted narrative, a world with just about everything it needs built in and added on. That is what you can get if someone is allowed most of their adult life to create one book - perfection. You certainly do not find this with Lewis and Pullman - much as I find HDM dazzling, it is full of errors and incongruous stuff, things which just don't 'fit' and narrative bad choices. The same is true of Narnia (together with the clunky nursery style and Pigwiggenry I find tedious). And Harry Potter. All these were conventional novels, churned out relatively quickly in comparison to Rings, which wasn't really a novel in any conventional sense but a perfect representation/reproduction of Tolkien's alternate world.

So is Pullman actually objecting to something which is quite outside normal literary conventions anyway, when he calls Tolkien boring?

obloquy

01-06-2008, 06:37 PM

You're dicing with death there, you'll have half the female Downs membership going "Tch" ;)

Though to be serious, this argument about the link between fashion and power can actually be seen in history. I know not many historians are interested in what styles of frock the lasses wore and when (being that guns and swords and planes and stuff are more interesting - including to me) but there is a clear correlation between styles of dress and attitudes towards women. To take a recent example, the later 1940s saw a return to fitted, corsetted, and impractical styles just as women went back to their kitchen sinks to clear the factory jobs for returning men from war. But I shall not bore you with any more lecturing as that's getting right off the point ;)

I don't see the correlation. I see a general atmosphere of conservatism that leads women to dress conservatively, and to carry out a certain traditional role while the men resume their old jobs.

Modern fashion has nothing to do with power. Most fashion designers are either women or gay men: where's their motivation to keep women from looking powerful?

Bêthberry

01-06-2008, 09:22 PM

Gwathagor

01-06-2008, 11:08 PM

You won't find very many authors with more charity and compassion than Lewis.

Lalwendë

01-10-2008, 03:02 PM

I don't see the correlation. I see a general atmosphere of conservatism that leads women to dress conservatively, and to carry out a certain traditional role while the men resume their old jobs.

Modern fashion has nothing to do with power. Most fashion designers are either women or gay men: where's their motivation to keep women from looking powerful?

You're wrong, thus proving fashion is indeed a ladies' thing ;)

The difficulty lies in how very, very far Lewis falls from the concept and understanding of spirituality which can be found in other writers and other people of more enlarged grace, hope, and charity.

Yes. Lewis instead gave us a kind of begrudging grace, and a strictly rationed hope. This is why Tolkien stomps all over Lewis as he just didn't bring that stuff into it - you get the sense that even Gollum got something in the end.

Folwren

01-10-2008, 03:13 PM

Tolkien may have been correct about a lot of things, but if he 'stomps all over Lewis' (I know you meant Lewis' writings and I took it as such), then he was not correct in that opinion.

Look. So far as I am concerned, I actually admire Lewis more than any other author that I have ever read, and that includes Tolkien. All this argument about whether or not his protrayal of Susan and what it meant is right or wrong or stupid or whatever is very, very shallow, and doesn't really belong here on the Barrow Downs. People - you're better than this. I believe that all of you who are putting Lewis down because of this issue are smarter than you're making yourself look right now.

If you want a true look at what Lewis believed, read his other books - Mere Christianity, The Great Divorce, Miracles, The Screwtape Letters (those are probably the most pertitent to this conversation), even Till We Have Faces...

Lalwendë

01-10-2008, 03:40 PM

I've nothing wrong with Lewis being a bit sexist etc. As I've said, many other writers also have their PC failings but it doesn't stop me liking them if I find their writing good. However, I get a little fed up with the apologies for Lewis which don't wash and would find discussion of him and his work much more interesting if people did not blindly leap to the defence.

Note I'm not the only one who thinks this, many greater minds than mine share this opinion, including Betjeman, who personally knew the man rather too well. And as we're here to discuss books (I'm quite sure Lewis was as nice as anyone, long as you weren't cluttering up the snug of the Bird and Baby with a WI meeting :P), then my disappointment with Narnia is also shared with none other than one Professor Tolkien. I don't care how smart or not I'm making myself look when I share such good company ;)

Folwren

01-10-2008, 03:46 PM

Lal, if this should be taken to PM, that's fine. But how on earth is Lewis sexist? And what other 'etc' stuff are you hinting at?

And I have not been apologizing for Lewis. He doesn't need apologizing for. I might have to explain for him, but in no way will it be an apology.

Bêthberry

01-10-2008, 04:43 PM

Yes. Lewis instead gave us a kind of begrudging grace, and a strictly rationed hope. This is why Tolkien stomps all over Lewis as he just didn't bring that stuff into it - you get the sense that even Gollum got something in the end.

That's a fascinating comparison, Lal, between Susan and Gollem. One of Tolkien's great achievements in LotR is, I think, his depiction of pity--the word itself is currently unfashionable, although the behaviour is not--especially for Gollem. Gandalf's talk with Frodo early in Bag End colours so much of the moral vision of Middle-earth. Even the ends of Saruman and Grima ring true morally--nothing contrived there, but a logical acting out of the impulses and consequences which the entire story unfolds. It isn't petty or narrow minded or self-complacent.

Really, when I think of Lewis and Susan, I can't help thinking of Brocklehurst in Jane Eyre at the charity school for orphans forcing the teachers to cut off the girl's hair because it was naturally curly and thus a symptom of the terrible vanity girls fall prey to.

obloquy

01-10-2008, 04:58 PM

You're wrong, thus proving fashion is indeed a ladies' thing ;)

Along with gross oversimplification, conspiratorial delusions, and mistaking collateral effects for deliberate ones. No wonder Old Navy and the gay men of Hollywood have coalesced over this plan to keep you ladies from gaining any meaningful influence.

Lalwendë

01-11-2008, 03:23 AM

That's a fascinating comparison, Lal, between Susan and Gollem. One of Tolkien's great achievements in LotR is, I think, his depiction of pity--the word itself is currently unfashionable, although the behaviour is not--especially for Gollem. Gandalf's talk with Frodo early in Bag End colours so much of the moral vision of Middle-earth. Even the ends of Saruman and Grima ring true morally--nothing contrived there, but a logical acting out of the impulses and consequences which the entire story unfolds. It isn't petty or narrow minded or self-complacent.

Really, when I think of Lewis and Susan, I can't help thinking of Brocklehurst in Jane Eyre at the charity school for orphans forcing the teachers to cut off the girl's hair because it was naturally curly and thus a symptom of the terrible vanity girls fall prey to.

Tolkien also gives out a far more powerful message of growth. Wrapped up in the narrative motif of the journey or quest is also the inherent idea that this is more then merely moving across a map with a job to do, it is also an interior journey in which all the characters grow and grow up. The growing up is in a literal sense for Merry and Pippin who grow taller and also become responsible adults instead of remaining as two slightly aristocratic fun-loving boys. It is in a spiritual sense for Frodo and for Gollum in two very different ways, but with both receiving pity (and perfect, satisfying endings consistent with their characters) at the end of their suffering. It is also in a metaphorical sense for Sam who develops social aspirations after seeing a world beyond taters.

In not dealing with the issue of growth Lewis missed a trick. Instead what his message does is tell us that growth is not the answer, that stasis is in fact preferable. Susan does indeed 'grow' but is punished for it. She doesn't stand a chance. Aside from that, it's also a cop-out. She is not given the satisfactory and consistent endings that all of Tolkien's 'bad guys' are and you get the sense that Lewis simply stopped caring about her once he got to the thorny question of what he was going to do with a normal young woman. It gives the impression that he didn't think about what he was going to do with her, that he just took some Tippex to her character.

And I think this is why both make and female readers find this so odd, so unsatisfying and why it ruins Narnia for so many to see a much-loved character dealt with so dismissively. Neil Gaiman called it infuriating and this is one of the reasons behind his story "The Problem Of Susan" - he hoped to write something equally as irritating and inconclusive.

Nice analogy in Jane Eyre there too. I'm also reminded of the girl in The Magdalen Sisters who is shipped off to a life of torment in the laundries just for being pretty.

Child of the 7th Age

01-11-2008, 02:04 PM

Folwren -

Hold yer horses! :D I think you need to be careful here.

Over the years, I have read all the titles by Lewis you listed as well as a host of biographies, studies etc, most of them sympathetic. I wouldn't have done all this reading unless I felt I was getting something from it. But while I have learned many things from Lewis, and can see beautiful thoughts and ideas, there are aspects of his writing that I am still not comfortable with.

One of those "uncomfortable points" is Lewis's handling of Susan. So much has been said on this that I will not add anything except one personal note. I can remember curling up with the stories long, long ago and was troubled as I read what happened to Susan. But as I said before, it is not just Susan. I also have trouble with certain aspects of Jane Tudor in Hideous Strength as well as the archetypal villians in Narnia. Lewis's Narnia villains come in three varieties: supernatural creatures like Tash, political states like Calormen, and three witches: the White Witch, the Green Lady, and Empress Jade (a reworking of the White Witch but so changed as to be a different character).

There are no comparable wizard figures in Narnia. When Lewis wanted to embody evil in a single human "personna", he chose the symbol of a seductive female character. These are not realistic women but mythic figures that embody beauty and evil. These two factors are inevitably linked. The greater the beauty, the greater the evil. Lewis does show positive female characters in Narnia and other works but he downplays or negates their physical beauty. His best character of all---his most complex depiction of a woman--was Orual who was said to be so ugly that no one could look at her. There are passages throughout Lewis's books and his letters that show a similar ambivalence about female beauty. He is both intrigued and distrustful of it. I am as far from being a fashion plate as you can imagine. Still, it saddens me that Lewis had such difficulty appreciating the female form and figure or in acknowledging that physical beauty and goodness can be linked. His writings show no comparable problem depicting men who are brave, virile, great warriors, etc, which of course are characteristics frequently ascribed to the male gender both in fantasy and real life.

This discussion does relate to Tolkien because his own writings are a contrast to Lewis in this respect. Galadriel, Luthien, Arwen, Eowyn....Tolkien's writings have many mature and beautiful women who were good to the essence, yet capable of exercising a spell over the men near them. Just witness Gimli and Galadriel, or Frodo and Goldberry. (Whoops! I almost typed Bethberry...)

There are also legitimate reasons why Tolkien was not personally enthusiastic about Narnia. There is a wonderful article that came out in a recent issue of Mythlore that discusses this question. It's the best piece of writing I've encountered on this topic. When I'd finished it, I had a better view of how and why Tolkien felt uncomfortable with Narnia and also how this may have contributed to the strains in their friendship. This article discusses the Letters to Malcolm and the Narnia chronicles (in light of a reference in the Letters where Tolkien himself links the two). The author shows how the Narnia chronicles embody many views that Tolkien as a Catholic simply could not accept. The things is quite long -- 12 pages of text, 6 of sources and detailed notes, but definitely worth the read: http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m0OON/is_1-2_26/ai_n21130448/pg_1

Gwathagor

01-11-2008, 02:12 PM

Lewis's Narnia villains come in three varieties: supernatural creatures like Tash, political states like Calormen, and three witches: the White Witch, the Green Lady, and Empress Jade (a reworking of the White Witch but so changed as to be a different character).

Funny...I must have read a different version of Perelandra...I only remember Lewis saying positive things about the Green Lady.

Child of the 7th Age

01-11-2008, 02:24 PM

Gwathagor,

There are two Green Ladies....

I was specifically referring to Narnia Villains here. In The Silver Chair, the witch-like Lady of the Green Kirtle is first described in connection with the evil serpent who kills the queen of Narnia, King Caspian’s bride, Ramadu’s daughter, and Prince Rillian’s mother. Green is traditionally the color of jealousy and seduction. The Lady is greedy for power, and she is an overt seductress.

But the Green Lady of Perelandra proves my point again. She is pre-fall and thus immune from the stigma that the rest of us poor women bear (and which Lewis found so hard to deal with). As such, she is the safest female character of all. Lewis "sanitizes" his women in various ways. He may make his characters older, put them in animal form, give them a supernatural aura that removes them from being human, simply de-emphasize their physical attributes, or, in this particular case, place them before the fall. When Susan becomes too dangerous, she is removed.

Ok, ok...I'm exaggerating, but there is some truth in this.

Gwathagor

01-11-2008, 02:28 PM

Oh, different Green Lady. My mistake.

Folwren

01-11-2008, 02:44 PM

Oh man. I just lost a whole long post. :mad:

I don't have time to say everything over again, so I'll try to be brief:

Child, Lewis may have had beautiful, female villians, but I recall beautiful female heroines, too - Psyche in Till We Have Faces and Ramendu's Daughter in The Voyage of the Dawn Treader. Also, Lucy is not described as ugly, or not pretty. She's a normal girl. However, Lucy, out of all of her siblings had the most faith in Aslan. If Lewis were sexist (a fierce glance in Lal's direction) why would he have made his most faithrul, upright character a girl in Narnia?

I was going to correct Gwathagor's mistake, but I see you already have.

I would like to make an illustration...of what Lewis meant with his 'handling' of Susan.

When I was younger, Lucy's age in The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, I played with qutie a few girls. We ran around outside in the woods and field and played and pretended and did all sorts of fun stuff like that.
And then a time came when I didn't see some of these girls for a while...about four or five years, probably. When I saw some of them again at a wedding shower, the first thing I noticed was how much they had changed, and the second how little I knew them. I had not changed much...I was still playing in the woods, getting dirty, and playing out silly little pretend stories...at the wedding shower, I wore no make-up and I had on a simple, modest cotton dress. In comparison, these girls were wearing make-up (painted to perfection), tight jeans or tight, short skirts with nylons (I don't think that's how it's spelled), and snazy shirts. The gap, which had been so narrow before, was chasm wide between me and those girls now - and mostly because of the way they dressed and spoke. Their ideals had left the simple, down to earth character - the type that could let them play out in the woods and play - and flown upwards to catch the attention of the boys and society.

That's what happened to me, and I think that Lewis was making Susan into one of those girls that I used to know. He wasn't punishing her...nor was Aslan. Susan was punishing herself.

Folwren

01-11-2008, 02:49 PM

I don't know why I even bother to argue, though. Who's mind am I going to change? No one's, likely, 'cause no one is open minded. I'll just harden their preveiously formed opinions.

Gwathagor

01-11-2008, 04:14 PM

Hm. Well, I see what you're saying, Child of the 7th Age, even though I don't know that I agree with you. The issue seems to hinge on personal opinion, which means that it will never be settled.

Personally, I've never had a problem with Susan's eventual lack of interest in Narnia. It makes me sad, but I don't find it unjust or unfair that she gets left out. She wouldn't have enjoyed it anyway.

Lalwendë

01-13-2008, 11:23 AM

There are passages throughout Lewis's books and his letters that show a similar ambivalence about female beauty. He is both intrigued and distrustful of it. I am as far from being a fashion plate as you can imagine. Still, it saddens me that Lewis had such difficulty appreciating the female form and figure or in acknowledging that physical beauty and goodness can be linked. His writings show no comparable problem depicting men who are brave, virile, great warriors, etc, which of course are characteristics frequently ascribed to the male gender both in fantasy and real life.

This discussion does relate to Tolkien because his own writings are a contrast to Lewis in this respect. Galadriel, Luthien, Arwen, Eowyn....Tolkien's writings have many mature and beautiful women who were good to the essence, yet capable of exercising a spell over the men near them. Just witness Gimli and Galadriel, or Frodo and Goldberry. (Whoops! I almost typed Bethberry...)

Fascinating stuff there. One accusation levelled at Tolkien is that he possibly idealises women and creates women who are up on a pedestal to be admired. For one, that would set him in direct opposition to Lewis who displays a sense of feeling threatened by female beauty and the inherent power that beauty bestows on a woman (as witnessed in the beautiful White Witch, and played to perfection by the weirdly beautiful Tilda Swinton). But for another, Tolkien's women are not at all idealised. They may be beautiful and compelling but they are also: heroic (Luthien), power-hungry (Galadriel), independently minded (Arwen - who chooses an eternity apart from her father), stubborn (Eowyn), tricksy (Goldberry), disobedient (Aredhel) etc.

I find a lot of 'meat' in Tolkien's women. And what's even better is that they are all different, and they all have failings. And they appeal or not to all types of readers. Some find Luthien heroic, some find her silly (winks at Mithalwen ;)); some find Aredhel tragic, whereas I think she was childish for upping and leaving her husband in that way. Some take from Eowyn a picture of a doomed young woman whereas I see her more as a symbol of the doomed youth of England in 1914. All of which just to show how we can read so much into these complex characters.

I think that you can also see this in the women Pullman creates - and he is remarkably good at this (I have to add, my modern day heroines are Lyra Belacqua and Hermione Granger (a stubborn swot with unruly hair and a penchant for punching out bullies, a girl after my own heart)). There are rounded women, who can be beautiful without being 'airheads' as we see also in Tolkien's women, and they can be both enchanting and incredibly dangerous too - like the fabulous creation of Mrs Coulter...brrrr...:eek:

Tolkien and Pullman share something in that their women are allowed to be women, they are also allowed to fail and falter, but they are always given a chance of redemption after doing Very Bad Things and that is heartening when you read about them! You do not get that with Lewis.

Their ideals had left the simple, down to earth character - the type that could let them play out in the woods and play - and flown upwards to catch the attention of the boys and society.

It may seem odd but most women do not choose hair, clothes and make-up just to please men (in fact most men would probably prefer a woman who walked around in the nip ;)). They do it to please themselves. Choosing to wear red lipstick is as valid a choice as choosing to wear none at all. Fashion can be as much a form of play as is running around playing horsey or whatever.