Volume XIX, Issue VIIIb:
The Redemption of Susan Pevensie
Pauline Bannister, a young fan of C. S. Lewis’s Chronicles of Narnia, wrote to the author with great concern. In the seventh book in the series, The Last Battle, it is revealed that “Susan is no longer a friend of Narnia.” Indeed this is a rather startling and distressing moment for those of us who have grown to love the Pevensies and comes about all too quickly and with way too little explanation. Peter says that she is “no longer a friend of Narnia”, and Jill Pole's adds: “she's interested in nothing now-a-days except nylons and lipstick and invitations.” Eustace Scrubb quotes her as saying, “What wonderful memories you have! Fancy you still thinking about all those funny games we used to play when we were children,” and Polly Plummer adds, “She wasted all her school time wanting to be the age she is now, and she'll waste all the rest of her life trying to stay that age. Her whole idea is to race on to the silliest time of one's life as quick as she can and then stop there as long as she can.” Susan does not come into the real Narnia with the others at the end of the series. It is left ambiguous whether Susan's absence is permanent, especially since Lewis stated elsewhere that: “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's plenty of time for her to mend and perhaps she will get to Aslan's country in the end... in her own way.”
Susan is around twelve when she first steps into the wardrobe and a young woman in her twenties at the time of The Last Battle. Two modern authors who are greatly influenced by Lewis’s work offer the following commentary: “There comes a point where Susan, who was the older girl, is lost to Narnia because she becomes interested in lipstick. She's become irreligious basically because she found sex. I have a big problem with that.” — J. K. Rowling. “I just don’t like the conclusions Lewis comes to, after all that analysis, the way he shuts children out from heaven, or whatever it is, on the grounds that the one girl is interested in boys. She’s a teenager! Ah, it’s terrible: Sex — can’t have that.” — Philip Pullman. But I believe that over-analyzing the comments of Edmund and Polly we miss the point of something bigger that I believe C. S. Lewis is coming to. He is anticipating the plight of the ‘Nones’ – the young people of today who have walked away from Faith. He himself had discovered the world of ‘Nones’ when, after his mother’s death, he immersed himself in the logic of his mentor Kirkpatrick. He sought out the world of reason as he himself walked away from Faith. He had found belief in God ‘unreliable,’ and there was a world out there. 'Logic and Learning' would engage the young Lewis. ‘Lipstick and invitations’ are the symptoms, not the ailment. Susan, it would appear, finds herself at the same crossroads Lewis did.
In Surprised by Joy, Lewis details his falling away and his coming to the deeper faith of his adulthood. Could it be that he intended to write another novel illustrating this, much as the book That Hideous Strength illuminates The Abolition of Man? That is what I truly suspect. Susan’s quest will be the same as Lewis’s. We will discover that her friends were too concentrated on the outward manifestations of her innermost struggle. Isn’t that almost always true?
Lewis must have struggled with that story though. Each of us who has come to real mature Faith has one. It is unique to each saint and therefore hard to capture. In the end, he writes to Pauline and suggests that she write a bit of ‘fan fiction’ long before this is a thing! “Dear Pauline Bannister I could not write that story [about Susan’s future?] myself. Not that I have no hope of Susan’s ever getting to Aslan’s country, but because I have a feeling that the story of her journey would be longer and more like a grown-up novel than I wanted to write. But I may be mistaken. Why not try it yourself?” — The Collected Letters of C. S. Lewis, Volume 3: Narnia, Cambridge, and Joy, pages 1,135–1,136. Lewis seems to truly believe that Susan will find Faith and return to Narnia, but he passes the torch in the telling of it.
Dyane Forde’s Lost Pen Magazine just published their ‘Repentance and Reconciliation’ issue. I submitted a piece of fiction for it that I very much believe to be the thing he wished Pauline Bannister to write. I do believe he wished her to explore his own journey in Surprised by Joy and find in it a roadmap for Susan. You can read my story: Further Up and Further In, in Issue Three of Lost Pen Magazine [click to read].
A Journey of “Moral Imagination”
A counterfeit gospel, a false myth, created a cacophony of despair in the West. Yet two friends and authors refused to succumb to this storm of doubt and disillusionment. Fortified by their faith, they proclaimed for their generation – and ours – a True Myth about the dignity of human life and its relationship to God. Against all expectations, their writings would captivate and inspire countless readers from every culture and every part of the globe.
What explains their enduring influence? As mythmakers they create new worlds. They invent new languages. They transport us into realms of brooding darkness and unforgettable beauty. Yet their mythic imagination only partly accounts for their influence” – Joseph Loconte
J. R. R. Tolkien and C. S. Lewis both lived in a time when Western Civilization was tearing itself apart. Joseph Loconte, in his book: A Hobbit, A Wardrobe, And a Great War tells how these two men, who both experienced the horrors of trench warfare, found a Faith that would be so important in their time. Their rediscovery of Faith and True Heroism and the imaginative way they shared it with a wanting world are the very things we need in our present day!
A Bit of Narnian Architecture
Photos by Bob Kirchman
Old Pump House, Oak Ridge Estate, Arrington, Virginia.
