Pullman rips on LOTR, others

[Gwathagor]

Originally Posted by William Cloud Hickli

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.

Well said.

[Morwen]

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?