Content Note: Loss of Family, Execution MethodsNarnia Recap: The Pevensie children have determined that the ruined castle they have found themselves in is their old home, Cair Paravel.
Ana's Note: Because there has been some discussion in the comments about this, I want to reiterate that the charter for my deconstructions is not to say a book is bad, or that an author is bad, or that a fandom is bad. I believe art is subjective, that most problems occur in text despite (rather than because of) the author's intentions, and I believe people should enjoy what they enjoy without guilt.
My deconstructions are about having a conversation with Society, about voicing my opinion about an aspect of art and how Society at large frequently chooses to interact with it, and about using that art as a stepping-stone for discussing feminist issues. Discussing long-dead authors may be interesting, but discussing our modern society and how we are influenced by and interact with their works is much more so for me -- and this is what I've tried to do.
I hope you enjoy the result, and thank you for reading.
Prince Caspian, Chapter 3: The Dwarf
It's time for someone to come along.
This is a fantasy rule: someone native to the fantasy country must come along to meet the children and provide plot exposition and embroilment into the mandatory plot conflict. In LWW, this someone was for Lucy the faun Mr. Tumnus, and this someone was for Edmund the antagonistic White Witch.
But a very real problem here is that it's very difficult to tell whether the someone who comes along is good or bad. Mr. Tumnus seemed good, with his faun-legs and bright umbrella and cheery packages, but he was a spy in the employ of the Witch Witch and was bound to turn over any human children he met to her. He didn't do this, of course, having a change of heart once he actually met Lucy, but the risk was there. And the White Witch was not with Edmund for more than a few minutes before she had tricked him into eating magically poisoned food that overrode his will and made him subservient to her.
So it would seem that caution would be in order when meeting a new person in a fantasy land. But I'm getting ahead of myself.
THE WORST OF SLEEPING OUT OF DOORS is that you wake up so dreadfully early. And when you wake you have to get up because the ground is so hard that you are uncomfortable. And it makes matters worse if there is nothing but apples for breakfast and you have had nothing but apples for supper the night before. When Lucy had said -- truly enough -- that it was a glorious morning, there did not seem to be anything else nice to be said. Edmund said what everyone was feeling, "We've simply got to get off this island." [...]
"We'll have to swim," said Edmund.
"It would be all right for Su," said Peter (Susan had won prizes for swimming at school). "But I don't know about the rest of us." By "the rest of us" he really meant Edmund who couldn't yet do two lengths at the school baths, and Lucy, who could hardly swim at all.
What is interesting to me is how delicately the Pevensie children have avoided the real subject: they're back in Narnia, and yet everything has changed. Yesterday, Susan was reduced to tears on discovering the little gold chess-piece. The children then broke into their storage room and found proof positive that they were in Cair Paravel, along with a great deal of evidence in the form of copious dust and dilapidated ruins, that indicates that something has gone horribly wrong. They don't yet know what, but they know it's something serious: this is not the Cair Paravel they left behind.
The children want to get off the island, and this is not in itself a bad idea, but it's strange that they don't seem to have a destination in mind. There are many possible reasons for this -- maybe they can't remember enough to formulate a plan, maybe they're too overwhelmed to think far ahead, maybe the author didn't bother to give them a goal that wouldn't be met anyway -- but it's strange to me that they seem to be making this decision without any planning.
They've come to their home and the seat of their government only to find everything awfully wrong: now what? Was there ever designated a fallback position of government, maybe in the form of another castle elsewhere in Narnia? Are there any great cities or port towns to head towards? Might they strike out for the home of a close friend -- Mr. Tumnus, perhaps? -- or a landmark such as the Stone Table? Even if they can't think of a place to head to for help, they should at least do something other than wander randomly. Even now, when they've finally agreed that this is Narnia, they don't use that knowledge to guide their footsteps. The Pevensie children seem to follow mindlessly the line laid out by the narrative.
Worth noting is that again we have a mention of Susan's swimming prowess, and Susan will be instrumental in this chapter as the single child responsible for saving their new guide. And it's interesting to me that Susan, who spoke so little in LWW and who has spoken comparatively little in PC so far, will turn out to be the child most skilled at living and working in Narnia, no matter what body she's in. Possibly this is narrative convenience -- Peter will need someone to help him pull a boat to shore, so why not the second-oldest child? -- as well as a stab at narrative consistency since Susan's bow from LWW will come into play here, but it strikes me as somehow sad that Susan (as a character) will be so useful here and then tossed aside so callously at the end of this novel, not to be picked up again until The Last Battle
"But, Peter," said Lucy, "look here. I know I can't swim for nuts at home -- in England, I mean. But couldn't we all swim long ago -- if it was long ago -- when we were Kings and Queens in Narnia? We could ride then too, and do all sorts of things. Don't you think -- "
"Ah, but we were sort of grown-up then," said Peter. "We reigned for years and years and learned to do things. Aren't we just back at our proper ages again now?"
And now it occurs to me that possibly Lewis was just as confused about his characters, their personalities, their memories, and their abilities as I currently am. Yet, it seems like this is precisely the sort of thing one can expect when in a single paragraph in a final chapter, an author gives their characters entire lives off the page and then just as quickly yanks it all away and tosses them back through a time portal. If an author isn't planning to put serious thought into how something like that will affect the characters' memories, skills, and mental processes (as well as how it affects them individually, allowing for variations in type and personality), then I don't think they can expect to just brush past all that when it comes time to write a sequel, because nit-picky readers like me are going to be confused and frustrated.
But I digress. Lucy has asked a valuable question: at some point in her mental past -- though possibly not in her current body's physical past -- she knew how to swim. Where has that skill gone? Does she have all the knowledge of how to swim, but none of the muscle memory? Could she regain this skill more quickly now that she has that knowledge, or does she only retain a memory of that knowledge? (I.e., I remember being able to flap my wings and fly last night in my dreams, but I have neither the muscle memory for that nor the mental understanding of the technique.)
The obvious answer would seem to be to let Lucy wade out with Susan at her side and see how it goes. But we don't get to see that because there's a whole host of accompanying world-building questions that would answer (and probably new ones that would be created) and that's not what we're here for.
"Oh!" said Edmund in a voice which made everyone stop talking and listen to him. [...] "You know what we were puzzling about last night, that it was only a year ago since we left Narnia but everything looks as if no one had lived in Cair Paravel for hundreds of years? Well, don't you see? You know that, however long we seemed to have lived in Narnia, when we got back through the wardrobe it seemed to have taken no time at all?"
"Go on," said Susan. "I think I'm beginning to understand."
"And that means," continued Edmund, "that, once you're out of Narnia, you have no idea how Narnian time is going. Why shouldn't hundreds of years have gone past in Narnia while only one year has passed for us in England?"
"By Jove, Ed," said Peter. "I believe you've got it. In that sense it really was hundreds of years ago that we lived in Cair Paravel. And now we're coming back to Narnia just as if we were Crusaders or Anglo-Saxons or Ancient Britons or someone coming back to modern England!"
"How excited they'll be to see us -- " began Lucy, but at the same moment everyone else said, "Hush!" or "Look!" For now something was happening.
I don't really understand why this was some kind of revelation all the way into Chapter 3 as we are. Edmund already pointed out last night that Cair Paravel had hundreds of years of ruin heaped on the site, and they've had an entire night on the hard ground to think all this through, but regardless here is the reveal: they children are back in Narnia, but 1,300 years have passed since their reign...
...and Peter's and Lucy's immediate reactions are how awesome it will be to pitch up on someone's doorstep claiming to be King Arthur. Yeeeah.
I'm sure that's going to go really well for them. I mean, why wouldn't it? They've only been gone thirteen hundred years. Our personal equivalent would be Hesiod or Homer or Sargon II showing up*. As small children. Without pretty much any of the skills or memories or qualities that made them most famous as rulers, except for a talent with the bow. In a world where written records are apparently rare (if not entirely non-existent) and paintings, portraits, statues, and the like don't seem to exist at all. Gods, they'll be lucky if anyone even remembers them considering that they reigned less than a couple of decades and their most notable achievement after defeating the White Witch (which was probably mostly credited to Aslan anyway) was disappearing mid-reign without an established heir.
* Correction: 700 BC is not the same as 700 AD, no matter how much a sleep-deprived Ana may think it so. See comments below.
Maybe if they're really lucky, they can find a Tree to vouch for them. Assuming the invaders didn't torch the forest surrounding the lamppost, and also assuming that the Trees can live 1,300 years. Otherwise, good luck with that.
But beyond that, there's an obvious issue that Lewis has either not thought of or shoved aside in the hopes that we won't notice it and it's this: everyone they've ever known in Narnia is dead. Mr. Tumnus is dead. Philip the Horse (who only existed in the movies, but won all our hearts) is dead. The men and boys who courted Susan and Lucy are dead. The nymphs and naiads who (I'm guessing) flirted with Peter and Edmund are (probably) dead. Mr. and Mrs. Beaver are dead. Everyone at their court, everyone they knew and loved in Archenland, everyone the Pevensies have ever known in this land, they are all now dead.
Except Aslan. But they surely can't know that. Why would the lifespan of Aslan automatically be "infinite" and not just "super longish"?
For me, something like this would be a bit of a blow. It would be like waking up tomorrow in a Rip Van Winkle scenario and finding out that Husband, Mom, Dad, Best Friend, and both my cats died and I never even got to say goodbye. (All the blubs just thinking about it.) For Lucy, it doesn't seem to sink in at all. "How excited they will be to see us," she says, but who is "they"? Does she think the Narnians she remembers are still alive and waiting to see her again? If she does, she's in for a bit of a shock. Does she mean those Narnians' descendents will be happy to see them? And, if so, why would they be? The Pevensies are now strangers to Narnia, and potentially dangerous ones to the existing political order.
Imagine if, say, Edward V of England showed up today and it could be conclusively proven that he was who he claimed to be. What do you then do with him? Does he have some kind of claim on the throne, even though he has no concept of the modern age nor how to rule the modern British kingdom? And what do you do with the fact that he's been transported to our time by a magical portal that no one can understand or explain? And that this magical portal is somehow linked to his initial mysterious disappearance? My head hurts just thinking about it.
There was a wooded point on the mainland a little to their right, and they all felt sure that just beyond that point must be the mouth of the river. And now, round that point there came into sight a boat. [...] Both these people seemed to be soldiers. They had steel caps on their heads and light shirts of chain-mail. Their faces were bearded and hard. The children drew back from the beach into the wood and watched without moving a finger.
"This'll do," said the soldier in the stern when the boat had come about opposite to them.
"What about tying a stone to his feet, Corporal?" said the other, resting on his oars.
"Garn!" growled the other. "We don't need that, and we haven't brought one. He'll drown sure enough without a stone, as long as we've tied the cords right." With these words he rose and lifted his bundle. Peter now saw that it was really alive and was in fact a Dwarf, bound hand and foot but struggling as hard as he could. Next moment he heard a twang just beside his ear, and all at once the soldier threw up his arms, dropping the Dwarf into the bottom of the boat, and fell over into the water. He floundered away to the far bank and Peter knew that Susan's arrow had struck on his helmet. He turned and saw that she was very pale but was already fitting a second arrow to the string. But it was never used. As soon as he saw his companion fall, the other soldier, with a loud cry, jumped out of the boat on the far side, and he also floundered through the water (which was apparently just in his depth) and disappeared into the woods of the mainland.
Susan, pale-faced but grimly determined, has in a moment strung her bow and utterly routed the two soldiers in the boat. (She missed fatally striking the men on purpose because this is a children's book and Susan is The Gentle, but it will be underlined that she missed on purpose.)
She has, presumably, taken this action because she couldn't stand by and watch someone be drowned to death. And this is actually very admirable and courageous, given that the children have no idea if there are more soldiers waiting across the channel to provide reinforcements against the four largely-unarmed children.
And yet this is a fairly decisive action, and not a little risky. The children know that they are in Narnia, but they are as ignorant as to the political and social situation as they were a year ago (or 1,300 years ago, depending on your timeline) when Lucy and Edmund were meeting Tumnus and the White Witch. The dwarf could be an incredibly dangerous villain; the soldiers could be good stewards of the land carrying out Aslan's peculiar orders. The children simply don't know.
Of course, the soldiers have "hard faces" and the method of execution they are following is not a terribly kind one. (Though possibly better than whatever the Pevensies had when they were rulers. I think I would rather die by drowning than die by axe beheading, having been reading up on Tudor history lately. And the Pevensies must have had some means of executing the unrepentant werewolves and giants they captured in their campaigns against the north.) But once again we see the children rushing in to side with one side of a Narnian civil war when they know almost nothing about the facts and history behind it. And now we're back to our dear little Edward V again because WHO WOULD EDWARD V BOMB? (My guess is France.)
It's really only a matter of narrative luck that the children haven't ended up on the side of the White Witch (that nice lady fighting that horrible lion who eats people alive with his huge jaws) or on the side of King Miraz against his nephew (he's a human trying to exercise his divine right to rule and doing his best to keep the trains running, after all). And how does any of this mesh with the Platonic codswallop fed to us in LWW where humans were divinely selected to rule and things-what-looked-like-humans-but-weren't (dwarfs were explicitly mentioned!) were to be kept at arms length because they were by and large irredeemably evil.
When at last the Dwarf was free, he sat up, rubbed his arms and legs, and exclaimed:
"Well, whatever they say, you don't feel like ghosts." [...] "I've been told all my life," said the Dwarf, "that these woods along the shore were as full of ghosts as they were of trees. That's what the story is. And that's why, when they want to get rid of anyone, they usually bring him down here (like they were doing with me) and say they'll leave him to the ghosts. But I always wondered if they didn't really drown 'em or cut their throats. I never quite believed in the ghosts. But those two cowards you've just shot believed all right. They were more frightened of taking me to my death than I was of going!"
"Oh," said Susan. "So that's why they both ran away." [...] "I wasn't shooting to kill, you know," said Susan. She would not have liked anyone to think she could miss at such a short range.
"Hm," said the Dwarf. "That's not so good. That may mean trouble later on. Unless they hold their tongues for their own sake."
He has a good point. As much as I admire Susan for sticking to her pacifist principles, she's not only declared war on the ruling powers in Narnia, she's also left them alive to report back what she's done. On the other hand, since no blood has been spilled, there's still a chance to write the whole thing off as a hilarious misunderstanding if it comes to that.
"You tell us your story first," said Peter. "And then we'll tell you ours."
"Well," said the Dwarf, "as you've saved my life it is only fair you should have your own way. But I hardly know where to begin. First of all I'm a messenger of King Caspian's."
"Who's he?" asked four voices all at once.
"Caspian the Tenth, King of Narnia, and long may he reign!" answered the Dwarf. "That is to say, he ought to be King of Narnia and we hope he will be. At present he is only King of us Old Narnians -- "
"What do you mean by old Narnians, please?" asked Lucy.
"Why, that's us," said the Dwarf. "We're a kind of rebellion, I suppose."
"I see," said Peter. "And Caspian is the chief Old Narnian."
"Well, in a manner of speaking," said the Dwarf, scratching his head. "But he's really a New Narnian himself, a Telmarine, if you follow me."
"I don't," said Edmund.
"It's worse than the Wars of the Roses," said Lucy.
"Oh dear," said the Dwarf. "I'm doing this very badly. Look here: I think I'll have to go right back to the beginning and tell you how Caspian grew up in his uncle's court and how he comes to be on our side at all. But it'll be a long story."
"All the better," said Lucy. "We love stories."
So the Dwarf settled down and told his tale.
NO NO NO NO NO.
No.
Argh. No, you do not compare this whole mess to the Wars of the Roses as if this is all an academic exercise and you've never heard of Narnia before. You are Kings and Queens of Narnia for crying out loud, and as you continually keep reminding the reader as though the "once an X, always an X" actually had some kind of logical meaning behind it and wasn't just a meaningless platitude. You don't just say "oh, tell us what's going on" in a general sort of way. Is that how you questioned diplomats and spies and generals when you were ruling?
You ask guided questions. If you trust them, you tell them what you know and where you're starting from, knowledge-wise, so that they can fill you in as needed. You don't just clap your hands at the shiny story which is told by the complacent dwarf who is not at all surprised at the fact that you seem to not know any basic history at all and you smell faintly of Edward V. Gah.
The next four chapters will be the story of Prince Caspian. Settle in.
69 comments:
Our personal equivalent would be Hesiod or Homer or Sargon II showing up.
LOL LOL LOL. You say 700 aah-dee, I say 700 bee-cee, what's the difference??
(Thank you. Much egg on my face.)
>"Caspian the Tenth, King of Narnia, and long may he reign!"
Makes me wonder how many kings there've been, if we're up to ten on the Caspian names. Even if it's like Louis in France, it's a lot of reigns. And then I wonder how many rebellions and suppressions there must have been before - how many times the Old Narnians have risen up and been defeated, while waiting for Aslan or Pevensies who never came...
>waiting for Aslan or Pevensies who never came
"Waiting for Aslanot, a Narnia play in two acts, featuring a Dwarf as Vladimir, a Giant as Estragon and Mr. and Mrs. Beaver (no relations to the previous pair) as Pozzo and Lucky. In the play, Aslan fails to happen - twice".
Does she have all the knowledge of how to swim, but none of the muscle memory?
Well, I know floating gets much easier with puberty*, for one thing. Having a different body shape is going to be enough to throw her off.
*Well, estrogen-based puberty. I don't know about testosterone, but it's not relevant here anyway.
and light shirts of chain mail
I wouldn't think "light" and "chain mail" really belong in the same sentence. Compared to plate, maybe.
and Edmund was busily engaged in cutting his bonds with the pocket knife. (Peter's sword would have been sharper, but a sword is very inconvenient for this sort of work because you can't hold it anywhere lower than the hilt.)
If only you had a dagger. Shame there weren't any in the treasure room.
I wouldn't think "light" and "chain mail" really belong in the same sentence. Compared to plate, maybe.
I would have thought so as well, but as it happens, plates would usually be relatively thin and chain would be bulky, so chain is not merely heavy - it's the heaviest thing anyone would wear.
Unrelated: Susan: not merely a good archer, but an archer capable of going from 'unstrung bow' to 'landing a non-injurious headshot' in a matter of seconds.
Other thoughts are still percolating.
The children want to get off the island
Is it bad of me that this sent my brain straight into a crossover fic with Lost?
Yes, yes it is.
The Pevensie children seem to follow mindlessly the line laid out by the narrative.
This is one of several large problems with this book. Not that many of the characters are particularly protagonist-y at any point in the series -- they're often passengers on C.S. Lewis' ride -- but I think in PC more than just about anywhere else, the Pevensies just observe things and listen to things and then do stuff when the narrative expects it of them, without much sense of agency or motivation.
Susan's shot is risky as heck, because there's a better-than-even chance the dwarf will be dropped, not into the bottom of the boat, but over the side, or the boat will capsize. Girl has nerves of steel.
I'm not sure that the Dwarf should be so open about sharing his story, either. Wouldn't one of the things to watch out for if you're a spy - er, "messenger" - be allies conveniently appearing out of nowhere to save your ass and then pumping you for information? Especially if the "bad cops" in this scenario don't get hurt at all?
And they're sweet little innocent children with no food, no transportation, and no explanation for how they got on the island! How much more obvious can they make it?? *head canon*
"Good thing she don't miss."
Suddenly, I want to read a fanfic crossover story in which Legolas Greenleaf and Susan Pevensie meet and do archery-nerd stuff together. Jabbering away to each other about their favourite bows and the best kind of arrows and archery techniques. And Lucy bouncing up and down a bit with excitement and joining in when she can, because she shoots a bow too, and Gimli standing by with a fond proud smile.
OMG. I think I need to stay away from Fanfiction.net until this feeling goes away.
France (or what is now France) went from Louis I (778 – 20 June 840) to Louis X, (4 October 1289 – 5 June 1316) in 535 years. And that timeframe includes two dynasties, four Philips, three Charles, two Roberts, and six other kings named Hugh, Henry, Lothair, Carloman, Rudolph, and Odo.
Legolas Greenleaf and Susan Pevensie
Legolas, eh? My mind has been trending toward some kind of Hunger Games crossover deal, and frankly the idea of setting Katniss (let alone any of the rest of the cast) loose in Narnia is abjectly terrifying. She would presumably find belief in Aslan to be utterly impractical, but still prefer his side because the best government is an absentee government.
dynasties, four Philips, three Charles, two Roberts, and six other kings named Hugh, Henry, Lothair, Carloman, Rudolph, and Odo.
Little-known fact: Odo was actually all of them. </gratuitous DS9
HTML fail; I was trying to attach a tag at the end of this last post; something like [/gratuitous DS9]
My little brother liked LWW, but he never got through the rest of the Narnia series on account of how much Prince Caspian bored him. I believe his plot summary/review of this book was: "Somebody punches a dwarf."
Good $DEITY, four chapters? No, no, no. Too much time. Those soldiers are presumably going back to their commanding officer to say what happened. If the kids are lucky, the commander is just as superstitious and will write off the encounter as ghosts, figuring the dwarf will die in the wilderness. If he isn't, there's going to be a search party riding back to this spot, looking for both dwarf and "ghosts" to make sure the job gets done. Escape first, stories later.
Also, isn't Susan's bell-ringer here a violation of the rules of the use of the bow? (And how peculiar that she insists she was aiming that way, lest her brothers think of her as...less? Maybe this is another of the reasons Susan is going to be excluded - she keeps trying to get out of Her Place?)
@Will - That's what I thought, too. DS9 high-fives all around.
She might be insisting that she meant to do that, because she was shooting to kill and missed. I'd even be inclined to wonder if Susan's bow, the bow she is never to use in battle, can be used offensively against sapient beings.
something like [/gratuitous DS9]
Not [/obvious joke]? Really, you can't mention someone named Odo and not have DS9 jokes.
Ho, there's an interesting weapon idea. It would only work in a magical world, of course, but a weapon that refuses to kill could be quite interesting to work around. Especially if the weapon itself is sapient or has sufficiently good magical programming to not only not strike people in vital areas, but also not do anything that would indirectly kill people.
EdinburghEye, please, for the love of fanon, do it? :D :D :D
Viola, you have inspired me. (Non-D20 nerds, please disregard the jargon.)
Susan's Bow (Minor Magic Item)
+2 Pacifist Longbow: Cost: 10,375 GP (total bonus: +3; see below for pricing information)
"Pacifist" is treated as "Merciful" in terms of dealing damage; a Pacifist weapon may only inflict subdual, not lethal, damage. If the weapon is used to inflict more subdual damage than a given creature can absorb, the extra damage is bled off in a spectacular magical flash, a lecture from Santa Claus, or a sudden smell of tea, whichever is more appropriate to the scene. As the Merciful quality, Pacifist may only be applied to weapons of +2 or greater enhancement bonus.
Under normal conditions, a weapon with this total enhancement bonus would incur a significantly higher price. However, the Pacifist ability renders the weapon unable to inflict lethal damage at any cost, even when under enchantment, enhancement, or the effects of geas or wish. As such, Pacifist weapons are popular for use in the tournaments of the very rich, as they are nonlethal to all targets. This removes 8,000 gold from the price, as the weapon is useless in warfare. Battles where one side is armed with Pacifist weapons are known to be very ugly indeed.
Pacifist weapons have a 50% chance of having been gifts from a higher power.
OMG. So much D&D love from over here. I had to read this aloud to Husband.
Thinking about the heir issue, who would be the legitimate heir in a pseudo-European monarchy with two brothers and two sisters as co-rulers?
Because Lewis mentioned Susan and Lucy being courted. But he gave no mention to Peter or Edmund courting.
My guess would be that Peter, as high king, would have his child(ren) as heir? Or would each sibling pass on their throne separately, so that as the generations passed it would be cousins as co-rulers, then second cousins, etc.? How well would such joint monarchy work in five or six generations, when the rulers are only distantly related?
My thought is that Peter, as the oldest and as High King, would have faced intense pressure to marry and produce children/heirs. And that Susan or Lucy courting or marrying (or taking "lovers" like Susan, with the potential for children while unmarried) would be extremely destabilizing, as their husband's family would have an interest in the Narnian throne passing into their family.
For all we know, the siblings did leave a plan for suitable heirs, if they died/disappeared without issue. But if they tried to preserve the Aslan-ordained monarchical structure of having four human siblings, two male and two female, as co-rulers, the result would have been so unstable that it quickly collapsed. Old Narnia did not seem to have a significant human population, and finding sets of four human siblings would have been difficult.
Not coincidentally, we spent several minutes working out how a similar weapon could work in a LARP. Assuming that it simply fails to work against sapient targets (the arrows bounce), we decided that:
In downtime, if you are carrying this bow, you will always find something to hunt and always hunt it successfully.
In uptime, this bow has a damage call of SMITE BEAST DOUBLE THROUGH. It will therefore only cause injury to targets classified as beasts. If you are attempting to shoot a target who is clearly sapient (such as another player character), you may choose to call ZERO.
If you are using special arrows (eg magically enhanced) you must add SMITE BEAST to the start of whatever damage call they grant you.
If this bow passes into the hands of another player, you must brief them on the correct damage call.
But beyond that, there's an obvious issue that Lewis has either not thought of or shoved aside in the hopes that we won't notice it and it's this: everyone they've ever known in Narnia is dead.
Ye, I wondered about that, too. Usually in these sorts of stories, the traveler who returns from a short stay in fairyland to find everyone he knows dead and gone, just withers away on the spot from the shock of it. So, maybe the children haven't got their full memories back yet, and don't really have much of an emotional connection to Narnia over and above "something we heard in a story." Or maybe they didn't have much of an emotional connection to anyone in Narnia the last time they were there; maybe they really were as self-absorbed as this makes them seem. Or maybe they're in shock from the whole idea, and haven't gotten as far as "that means Mr. Tumnus is dead?" before they're interrupted by the dwarf and his captors. (Not that I remember ever showing much emotion about it, so never mind.) Or maybe, as there were few or no other humans in their Narnia, all their relationships were with non-human beings, and maybe the children assume that their friends are *not* all dead. How long is the life-span of a faun or dryad or a good giant, anyway?
Or maybe, once again. Lewis has not bothered to relate what he writes in this book to what he wrote in the last one. I believe he shows Jill and Eustace, in The Silver Chair, as being shocked to meet an elderly, dying King Caspian when they'd seen him a few months ago as a young man; which is at least more realistic. But continuity is just not his strong point.
Thinking about the heir issue, who would be the legitimate heir in a pseudo-European monarchy with two brothers and two sisters as co-rulers?
Who knows? Because in a fairytale, it's not an issue. In a fairytale, they live happily ever after on their own thrones.
If we're to take the prophecy seriously, it seems that any old human, any descendent of "Adam's flesh and Adam's bone" would do, as long as there were four of them. Maybe they could hold elections. Maybe the court would choose from the suitable candidates.
Maybe that's why Narnia is in trouble in the first place, because they dropped those old ways in favor of a single hereditary monarch.
Narnia might do all sorts of things to insure the line of succession, but four ostensibly celibate sibling monarchs is not a terrific point to start from.
Now, if Susan had married Rabadash, one might expect that Calormen would expect their son to succeed to Peter's throne. (And become Pope, I comment, now that I've seen that written out.) Which is yet another reason I remain skeptical of the situation in THAHB. Peter is not an idiot. He was not going to let his sister and co-monarch marry the Sheik of Araby...excuse me, the Tisroc's son...even if she wasn't clear-headed enough to realize he's a schmuck. The political ramifications would be horrifying.
I think that may be a big chunk of the problem here. We had our fairy tale and happily-ever-after in LWW, and everything was wrapped up. I think a big chunk of what's wrong here is Lewis trying to write a sequel to a story that, as a matter of genre, can't have one.
Argh. No, you do not compare this whole mess to the Wars of the Roses as if this is all an academic exercise and you've never heard of Narnia before. You are Kings and Queens of Narnia for crying out loud, and as you continually keep reminding the reader as though the "once an X, always an X" actually had some kind of logical meaning behind it and wasn't just a meaningless platitude. You don't just say "oh, tell us what's going on" in a general sort of way. Is that how you questioned diplomats and spies and generals when you were ruling?
You ask guided questions. If you trust them, you tell them what you know and where you're starting from, knowledge-wise, so that they can fill you in as needed. You don't just clap your hands at the shiny story which is told by the complacent dwarf who is not at all surprised at the fact that you seem to not know any basic history at all and you smell faintly of Edward V. Gah.
In fairness to the children, they don't know enough about the current situation to treat Trumpkin as if he was a diplomat or spy in their employ. All of their information is over a thousand years out of date. They don't have the background knowledge to ask suitable leading questions. They haven't charged him to gather specific information, as they would a spy or diplomat, to ask him questions related to his assignment.
And Trumpkin isn't their agent. They don't have the right to question him that they would have with a diplomat they appointed. He isn't loyal to them in any way, because he doesn't know them. And they don't know him. They don't know what sort of information he has access to, who he is loyal to, who his enemies are beyond there being a couple of soldiers who were ordered to drown him.
In that circumstance, playing the role of innocent and ignorant children, who just want a nice long story, would be a legitimate tactic. It will put Trumpkin at ease. He may let things slip in a children's story that he would guard against telling if he were being skillfully interrogated by a monarch other than his own. And it gives away no information about who they are.
The children are monarchs, but they're monarchs completely ignorant of current events. Making a point of their general ignorance (kids wanting a story) hides the nature of their specific ignorance (monarchs returned 1000+ years later, who have no idea of the current political climate.) Trumpkin assumes that they're typical children who have at most a general understanding of their nation's politics (e.g., knowing the name of the king) but who haven't been paying attention to the newspapers. When in fact, they're even more ignorant than such a child. If an ordinary child asks Trumpkin "tell us how you got here and why they were trying to drown you" any story he gives would need to be consistent with that child's understanding of the land's politics. Which means it will be more accurate than a story he might concoct to deceive newly-returned monarchs in competition with Caspian who know nothing of the last 1000+ years.
In their situation, any attempt to ask leading or guiding questions would give away their ignorance, rather than eliciting the truth. "How is the Fawn Tumnis doing?" tells a lot about their ignorance, when "the Fawn Tumnis" is a character from ancient legends of lost kings and queens.
Trumpkin's story gives the kids enough information that they can start to think like monarchs rather than newly-landed time-travelers whose TARDIS won't tell them when or where they are.
Now, if Susan had married Rabadash, one might expect that Calormen would expect their son to succeed to Peter's throne. (And become Pope, I comment, now that I've seen that written out.) Which is yet another reason I remain skeptical of the situation in THAHB. Peter is not an idiot. He was not going to let his sister and co-monarch marry the Sheik of Araby...excuse me, the Tisroc's son...even if she wasn't clear-headed enough to realize he's a schmuck. The political ramifications would be horrifying.
Yeah, it's not a good idea for them to have got that far without discussing the M-word. (Matrilinear.)
All four of the Pevensie children become monarchs over Narnia.
Except for them all becoming kings and queens at the same time, this is a situation not far removed from (for example) the kingdom of Wessex in the 9th century, which was ruled by four kings, all brothers - Ethelbald (Noble Bold), Ethelbert (Noble Magnificent), Ethelred (Noble Counsel), and Alfred (Elf Counsel).
While Rabadash may have expected his son to become Pope if he married Susan, it seems more likely that if the four children had been allowed to live out their lives in Narnia as (we suppose) Frank and Helen did, the succession would have passed by tontine - which could have left Lucy, as youngest, reigning alone as sole Queen. (Or Susan, if she'd turned back at the lamp post when the others went on.)
If the monarch of Narnia has to be a Son of Adam or Daughter of Eve, and the Calormenes seem not to qualify (but presumably the Archenlander humans do) then it seems entirely plausible to me that initially Aslan populated the thrones of Narnia with humans he had taken from our world. There was no tradition of heirship by descent because it was understood that the next set of monarchs would be two or four children, usually sisters and brothers, magically provided by Aslan. Once the last of a tontine of monarchy was dead, the next set of monarchs were enthroned.
In this system I think the monarchs would be more like Kumari than actual rulers - loved, admired, pampered, given gifts, thought to bring good luck and prosperity, indulged in their whims. Perhaps because I am British I find myself wondering what the Narnian Civil Service was like....
...and if they had moles.
So the Archenlander humans are descended from the kings and queens
I think that may be a big chunk of the problem here. We had our fairy tale and happily-ever-after in LWW, and everything was wrapped up. I think a big chunk of what's wrong here is Lewis trying to write a sequel to a story that, as a matter of genre, can't have one.
Exactly. At least, the sequel can't be the Pevensies' story -- not unless Lewis is willing to address the consequences of what happened to them in LWW, which he manifestly isn't.
It would work if this were straight-up framed as Caspian's story, with the Pevensies appearing solely in the King Arthur-ish role of Legendary Monarchs Returned to Help. Then you're comfortably settled in a new folkloric paradigm, and you can roll with it. But we don't have any traditional legends or what have you about the return from Arthur's point of view.
(I find it not at all surprising that the movie chose to try and run with both of those fixes: address the consequences, and give us more of Caspian's pov.)
Well, the sword Need in Mercedes Lackey's Valdemar books is sort of a half example: highly useful magic weapon which confers sword mastery or immunity from magic depending on the needs of the bearer, but only against men - it can't be used at all against women. As in, faced with a female opponent, the sword causes the bearer to freeze up, unable to attack or defend at all. It causes the bearers a fair amount of trouble over the course of the books.
*SPOILERS*
It turns out in later books that the blade is sapient. It was created by a warrior-priestess in the deep past who basically sealed her own soul into it. By the time it crops up in the books, it is so old that it has sort of fallen asleep. The sword wakes up more and more over the course of successive books until it can have conversations and exchange vital information about the past. Basically, the sword becomes a character in its own right over time. I don't know if Mercedes Lackey intended that to happen when she initially wrote the sword in.
Ye, I wondered about that, too. Usually in these sorts of stories, the traveler who returns from a short stay in fairyland to find everyone he knows dead and gone, just withers away on the spot from the shock of it.
I always figured it was less shock then 'suddenly, they are a thousand years old too'. D&D has a similar thing, where on a timeless plane (or at least certain ones), you don't need to eat, or drink, and you don't age... but the moment you go back onto a normal-time plane, all the time you spent there applies retroactively...
I wouldn't think "light" and "chain mail" really belong in the same sentence. Compared to plate, maybe.
There are different kinds of chainmail, it has to do with the size of the links/thickness of the links. I've read the lightest is basically like metallic cloth.
Susan aimed for the helmet at short range, but said she didn't mean to kill? How'd she know the arrow wouldn't punch through?
The four-chapter flashback is why it took me a dozen tries to get through Prince Caspian as a child.
One of the many ways in which I thought the movie was actually superior to the book: they started out with Caspian's story. (In fact, they started out with him being told by his tutor to flee.)
The nymphs and dryads and small-'g'-gods went to sleep. The river-god was tied down with bridges and such development (which Aslan and Bacchus tear down, to the joy of Susan and Lucy); I don't think Lewis explained just how the Telmarines drove the others asleep.
Odo was actually all of them.
Will, I love you.
My crossover would have (Avengers!)Hawkeye in it.
The problem is not just that Susan's transformation into a teenage Bad Girl occurs entirely offscreen. The kind of Bad Girl she becomes makes no sense given her previous personality.
Maybe it was the year she spent in the U. S. with her parents. ISTR that Lewis had no very high idea of the U. S. educational system, and I bet that he'd have hated the idea of "teen culture" and despised that rock'n'roll music. Yeah, must have been America that turned Susan into a Good Girl Gone Bad.
I think Lewis may have determined he just had too many characters to juggle and couldn't do it effectively (hence the long stretch of chapters at the end of LWW when Edmund never speaks), so he decided to get rid of his least favorite. Trapped by the genre again, he couldn't kill her off, and the magic setting prevents her from being cut off by distance or some other practical reason, so the best thing he could come up with is the "frivolous young woman forgot about Narnia" excuse. (And it is an excuse.)
I suspect Rabadash's expectation was that Peter would at some point marry--without a lot of concern for whether the woman he wanted to marry wanted to marry him, because that's how Rabadash would expect every man to think--and have a son, who would inherit the throne of Narnia. He believed High King Peter was sensible, which to Rabadash meant the kind of misogynistic pragmatist who would hear "your sister has almost certainly been married at sword point and raped by the crown prince of Calormene" and think, "what is important here is that my nephew will be the ruler of Calormene." He is unlikely to have thought that Peter would let the rulership of his country go through a woman.
If the plan he described to the Tisroc was at all sincere, which it probably was, then he planned for the thrones of Narnia and Archenland to pass to Rabadash because they had been conquered during Rabadash's father's reign.
It's just occurred to me that there's another piece of young-adult literature that deals with the return of King Arthur, and characters reverted to children with limited memories of their previous life: Winter of Magic's Return and its sequel, by Pamela F. Service. [Side note: in looking up the author I've just realized there's another sequel I never read! Yay!]
It takes place sometime in our future, after a nuclear war has reduced the world to medieval living conditions and a perpetual nuclear winter. This happens to coincide with the gradual return of magic to the world. After an explosion of some sort a young boy is discovered with no memory, and as all he can remember of his name is "erl", he is christened "Earl". With the help of another boy and girl, he gradually comes to realize that he is Merlin, having survived the thousands of years since being trapped in a cave by Nimue by repeatedly aging and de-aging himself; the explosion that broke open his cave and gave him amnesia occurred when he was in the young-but-aging-forward part of the cycle.
I remember the book fondly for a few reasons: 1) the main POV character was a strong female character whose wits and caring nature both contributed to her success. 2) Earl, even after remembering his identity as Merlin, graciously ceded the center stage to the girl when he realized that his magic didn't work anymore and hers did. He was happy to help her improve her magical skill, knowing that she would probably soon surpass him, and even though he had the vast knowledge of his history as Merlin, they had a relationship of equals. And 3), I felt that the characterization of Earl as a thousand-year-old wizard but also a teenage boy was spot on.
The one difficulty I had with the book was that the climax involves going to Avalon to bring back Arthur, in the hope that he can become King again and…what? Yes, he was a great leader in the days of knights and chivalry, but he's not exactly going to end the nuclear winter now, is he? There may have been more of an explanation in the book that I didn't appreciate at that age, though.
I think Lewis may have determined he just had too many characters to juggle and couldn't do it effectively (hence the long stretch of chapters at the end of LWW when Edmund never speaks), so he decided to get rid of his least favorite.
Honestly, this is my opinion, too. I absolutely think that Lewis wouldn't have expected this outcry over Susan because it was just an expedient way to get rid of a (female) unfavorite character by having hir fall from grace (in a reference to female pursuits and female sexuality).
It's not -- imho -- a coincidence that the "English protagonists" bucket shrinks as the series progresses.
1. LWW: 4 Protagonists, 1 Learns a Lesson (Edmund)
2. PC: 4 Protagonists, 1 Learns a Lesson (Susan, we're getting there)
3. DT: 3 Protagonists (Lucy, Edmund, Eustace), 1 Learns a Lesson (Eustace)
4. SC: 2 Protagonists (Eustace, Jill), 1 Learns a Lesson (Jill)
5. THAHB: 2 Protagonists (Shasta, Aravis), 1 Learns a Lesson (Aravis)
6. TMN: 2 Protagonists (Digory, Polly), 1 Learns a Lesson (Digory)
7. TLB: 2 Protagonists (Eustace, Jill)
5. THAHB: 2 Protagonists (Shasta, Aravis), 1 Learns a Lesson (Aravis)
*preemptive seethe*
I had not seen that as part of a larger pattern before, but lookee, it totally is.
Lewis does seem to split up his character-hate, though, it's not all on the girls. (Which is good or I'd probably have gotten even more wonky notions of What Girls Can Do from literature than I did.)
Ah, Eustace.
Susan aimed for the helmet at short range, but said she didn't mean to kill? How'd she know the arrow wouldn't punch through?
Boxing Glove Arrow?
3. DT: 3 Protagonists (Lucy, Edmund, Eustace), 1 Learns a Lesson (Eustace)
Lucy also "learns a lesson" in DT when she is tempted by the beauty spell, and chooses to cast the "know what your friends say about you" spell.
And that one is particularly interesting, because Lewis takes the only girl-character in the book, and throws at her temptations specifically designed to fit his own prejudices about the weakness of women. Women care only about appearances, women are gossips who will happily listen in on the private conversations of others.
Even worse, women will be tempted by the promise beauty, even if they are women who lived through WWII and know the consequences of war,and know that war would be the inevitable consequence of them using a beauty spell.
When we listen in on the conversation of Lucy's friend with a school bully, we learn that girls and women will say nasty things about their friends to other girls and women if it helps them temporarily in the social competition that is the focus of the lives of girls and women.
At the end of the book, Edmund and Lucy are told they can't come back to Narnia because they are "too old."
We don't see anything in particular to indicate that Edmund has matured in a particular way.
But Lucy has experienced the temptations that Lewis associates with the particular faults of an adult woman. The faults of caring about appearances and social standing, when appearances and social standing are the only things by which the success of an adult woman can be measured.
Lucy is beginning to negotiate her way through a world that places little value on her as a girl and future woman. And she's tempted by the only things for which she might be valued as an adult woman, her appearance and social position.
And if Lucy is starting to think like an adult woman, and to deal with the profound oppression of adult women in the culture that Lewis idealizes, then Lucy is too mature for Narnia.
And Edmund, being older, becomes "too mature" by default, since as the older one, and a boy, he must, by definition, be more mature than Lucy, even if we never see any signs of this.
THAHB: 2 Protagonists (Shasta, Aravis), 1 Learns a Lesson (Aravis)
If we're not treating THAHB as "automatically zero, no protagonists from England" then I'd actually say 4 Protagonists (Shasta, Aravis, Bree, Hwin), 2 Learn a Lesson (Aravis, Bree). And if "from England" isn't a requirement here then, in addition to what Ursula said about Lucy in Voyage of the Dawn Treader, I'm not sure Caspian doesn't count there, and if he does he learns a lesson too.
*preemptive seethe*
I talk about Aravis in my upcoming 5/29 post. Which is incidentally the day I'm in surgery. I hope that doesn't Break The Internet.
I think Lewis may have determined he just had too many characters to juggle and couldn't do it effectively (hence the long stretch of chapters at the end of LWW when Edmund never speaks), so he decided to get rid of his least favorite. Trapped by the genre again, he couldn't kill her off, and the magic setting prevents her from being cut off by distance or some other practical reason, so the best thing he could come up with is the "frivolous young woman forgot about Narnia" excuse. (And it is an excuse.)
I don't see how that could explain what's in the text. That scene at the end of the Last Battle would not take any more juggling, practically, for the addition of one more character and the removal of a few lines bashing said absent character.
It's not like Susan is actually a character in Voyage of the Dawn Treader, The Silver Chair, or the Magician's Nephew, any more than Peter is. No, he had some reason to want a "fallen" Friend of Narnia. I think, most likely, he wanted to make a point about how having been one of the protagonists in the first book didn't mean you had a guaranteed ticket to Heaven, and once he decided to make that point there was no question he would use the one character he felt no affection for. Of course he wasn't prepared for the casual sexism he used to do it upsetting anyone.
Ooh, neat. :D
I wish you the best in surgery.
I think, most likely, he wanted to make a point about how having been one of the protagonists in the first book didn't mean you had a guaranteed ticket to Heaven, and once he decided to make that point there was no question he would use the one character he felt no affection for.
That's pretty close to my thought, which is that TLB is where Lewis' desire to write a theological allegory overwhelmed his storytelling. I see his point as being more about salvation in general than anything linked to protagonist status, but yeah -- he had a point to make, and grabbed the character he saw as the most disposable.
That's possible. Still, unless his style and theology changed radically, I don't see why he would need or want a counter-example from among the protagonists. He's already gone to great pains in several places to gloss over/ignore anything that might be distressing (such as "everyone you knew in Narnia is long dead") and made them all legendary heroes and monarchs just for being there and being human. I don't see why he'd think one of them not making the cut was a necessity.
*ponders what would have been if Digory-the-Professor was unsaved because he cared too much for his books and not enough for the practice of Narnia*
While we are speaking of Arthur's return, allow me to recommend a remarkably funny book called "Knight Life", in which Arthur and Merlin escape from their cave, and Arthur runs for mayor of New York City.
I like this. It would have made the same substantive points, and even more good points that picking Susan didn't! And it isn't as if Digory has been showing up more recently than Susan - the last we've heard of him before LB (another interesting acronym...), he's downsized his old house (because of money), has implicitly gotten rid of the wardrobe, and is tutoring Peter for exams. Not for Narnia - for exams. For which there's a perfectly good reason, but if you're looking for excuses to leave someone out, this's as good as any.
And he's even shown up in almost as many books as Susan...
I see his point as being more about salvation in general than anything linked to protagonist status, but yeah -- he had a point to make, and grabbed the character he saw as the most disposable.
[Delurk]So, these deconstructions have inspired me to a re-read, and now I get the impression that Susan was set up early in the game. Near the start of Dawn Treader we get:
Grownups thought her the pretty one of the family and she was no good at school work (though otherwise very old for her age) and Mother said she "would get far more out of a trip to America than the youngsters".
That smells of very iffy fish to me, in the light of what he did later. Going by copyright dates, that's one year after Prince Caspian and four years before The Last Battle.
If Lewis really needed the tragic depth of putting one of Our Heroes in grave jeopardy of damnation, I think there's an even more promising choice. What about Peter?
He's the Chosen High King in Narnia, which is surely the position of maximum spiritual danger. He's the eldest son, and the guy with the most agency and respect in our world too. And he strikes me as by far the least reflective of the four. He wouldn't deny Narnia, no - but I can easily see him losing himself up his own moral pride in the world of Important Affairs, with the best of intentions but without a big lion to smack him upside the head when he starts to go off beam. It's not like he thinks he's coming back again to his old responsibilities, after all.
Of the four, that leaves Susan with all her (Lewisian) doubts and failings and foibles, but carried through by her ruling compassion at the last; Edmund the Traitor; and Lucy the Last Who Shall Be First as the ones who struggle, broken as they are, to the harbour. Peter the All-But-Perfect, on the other hand, the First Who Shall Be Last - he hasn't got their yet, and is still in the worst kind of danger. And yet...
...it would explain why they're not completely wrecked at his loss. Because, after all, in the end of things he's Peter Hero still, and they trust that somehow he will make his way up the impossible mountain if anybody can.
Which would all be both a much more devastating stroke, and a much more hale and heart-whole ending, than the thin meanness of "Eh, Susan, meh. What can you do?" that Lewis palmed off in me in the actual bloody Last Battle.
Just to end here by thanking you for these fabulous deconstructions, and for inspiring me to Thoughts of Interest like this one, which I should never otherwise have come by in a month of Sundays!
(Please excuse the several illiteracies: this is what I get for hitting 'post' with two eyes still full of sleep! Ahem.)
That's awesome!
I'd been thinking as I pondered Aslan unFriending Digory that . . . it actually bothers me that Lewis is damning any of these characters at all. I have enough trouble with what happened to the dwarves, whose doom is at least thoroughly shown and given a weight of narrative/structural momentum rather than told. But you're right, someone who they can trust "will somehow make his way up the impossible mountain" is actually a pretty good choice; and a theologically interesting one.
I mean, it's sort of toothless, because I think I and most readers would assume Peter would make it; but at the same time, realizing that helps me to realize that part of the problem with Susan's offstage unFriending is that it feels extremely Calvinist. You know? When you see the dwarves . . . stable themselves . . . that flows like free will. When you see Susan not making it to Heaven, that's like: oh, well, it turns out that this girl is just, you know, not one of the elect.
It's good that Lewis believed that Susan could redeem herself; but without seeing her make the choices that require redemption makes that seem awfully . . . unnecessary. It's like an author declaring that some character is in jail, but that they're almost certainly going to find a way to redeem the mess they made of their life---like, shouldn't that come after they *do something wrong*, not *be in jail?*
I mean, it's sort of toothless, because I think I and most readers would assume Peter would make it...
For me, it's not so toothless as that. Exactly how he made it would have a mighty impact on just who he'd become when he got there. Also, whilst in my fantasy we can trust to Lewis's authorial charity and an implied happy ending, Peter is supposed to have got lost in the defects of his virtues - which, arguably, is what happened to Susan in our reality, obscured by Lewis's bottling out of properly showing it. That's a really hard bind to escape, let alone to escape without significant changes of character.
I'm very much with you on the shoddiness of this whole technique of doing the heavy dissing of Susan when she's offstage, and Lewis is out of bowshot. I wonder whether he could have both borne it and believed in it, otherwise.
Grownups thought her the pretty one of the family and she was no good at school work (though otherwise very old for her age) and Mother said she "would get far more out of a trip to America than the youngsters".
That smells of very iffy fish to me, in the light of what he did later. Going by copyright dates, that's one year after Prince Caspian and four years before The Last Battle.
This is very strange. Susan was previously characterized as being good at school, at least for athletics. She excels at archery and is a prize-winning swimmer. There is nothing in her characterization to suggest that she is unintelligent or undisciplined, to be having trouble with her school work.
But if Susan is having trouble in school, why is Peter the one getting extra tutoring? Surely Susan's parents would be concerned to help her get her academics to the same level as her athletics?
Is Susan being "the pretty one" and "old for her age" some sort of 1950s code for being potentially promiscuous? So that her parents feel it is important to keep her with them and chaperon her themselves?
Lucy is still a little girl, and presumed innocent. But Susan is old enough that if she's left unchaperoned, her reputation may be "ruined" simply because she's an adolescent girl with insufficient supervision.
And if Susan seems "old for her age" surely it is because she actually is older than she looks, having grown to adulthood in LWW? If she's sexually sophisticated for her age, isn't it because she had the mind and experiences of having lived in an adult body?
Susan's parents seem oddly willing to write off her academic success. She's no good at school work, but rather than getting her help with her schoolwork, they take her out of school so she can travel with them. They don't give any indication of what Susan would get from a trip to America that wouldn't also benefit the other children.
If Susan grows up, as Lewis claims, to be concerned with "nylons and lipstick and invitations" then surely she's being exactly the person she was raised to be? Someone whose academic potential was dismissed, who was pulled from school young, and dragged too soon into the adult world as her parents kept her by their side on the trip to America, isolating her from other young people of her own age?
Is Susan being "the pretty one" and "old for her age" some sort of 1950s code for being potentially promiscuous? So that her parents feel it is important to keep her with them and chaperon her themselves?
Or maybe it means "she's of an age where we should start looking to marry her off" and that mom is more concerned about putting that last bit of polish on her manners and dress than she is in any continuing academics? Take her on a tour so she can say she's traveled and seen (part of) the world, bring her back and launch her socially, and have her be a bit more interesting than her competition because she's got more to talk about?
In which case, that whole "she's more interested in lipstick" thing is even worse, because refusing to obey mom's instructions and desires would have gotten her in trouble just as fast as being too willing to comply.
To elaborate: the traitor must be a girl because ... Sin of Eve (Lol). But Jill is too much needed in the story to fall away, Polly is too old, and Lucy always was the one to believe most, to her falling out would be even more illogical. And even if we consider boys, Edmund and Eustace already learned their lessons, Peter is the High King, and thus untouchable and prof. Kirke is very old and definitely on pro-Narnia side. It boils down to Susan vs. Polly, and this is a relativelöy clear decision. Susan, being a doomed contrarian already in PC, is thus doomed to fall from grace and be stuck on Earth. (Though Lewis writing about Susan feft behind would be definitely better then the Left Behind series...)
First point, I stand corrected. Susan does use her bow. Somehow this scene slipped away, possibly because of general portrayal. Also, the fact that the bow seems non-lethal ma explain why she doesn't use it more often.
Older Susan is (so we are told) vain and conceited, "silly," lazy. She's obsessed with superficial socializing.
Younger Susan is pragmatic, renowned for her compassion, and keenly remorseful when she sees herself at fault for something. She's the most independent of the Pevensies, and the most accomplished athlete, which argues for some amount of drive and determination on top of natural talent. (Note that Peter and Edmund are first-class swordsmen because of Narnian magic and lifetimes of combat experience. Susan is a first-class archer because she learned to be one as an English schoolgirl.) She doesn't seem to be particularly vain; in fact, she makes up excuses for Trumpkin when she beats him at the bow. She expresses no romantic interests until she's an adult queen; she's attracted to Rabadash because he's courteous to others and excels on the jousting field, and she rejects him when he turns out to be a cruel tyrant.
The problem is not just that Susan's transformation into a teenage Bad Girl occurs entirely offscreen. The kind of Bad Girl she becomes makes no sense given her previous personality. Dark Susan shouldn't be a vapid socialite; she should be an obsessive type that ignores their responsibilities and respects nobody's dreams but their own. She should cut herself off from other people, because she doesn't want to change to please them and she can't bear to see them disappointed, and then she should resent them for not sharing her precise constellation of interests.
This line of thinking was actaully pretty sound back then (and has many similarities now), the point being the "Not X" manner of putting all sorts of different behaviour into big groups, which go along "paths of wrongness". In this case, the idea is that a girll who is too independent as a child, will then, when she reaches puberty, also disregard authority about not flirting too much and not allowing the boys too much. Note that the text in "Last Battle" says "nylons and lipstick and invitations", meaning that Susan is too interested about parties, rather than anything else. Whether Susan actually sleeps around is not told, but the fact that she likes flirting so much is alone outrageous for Lewis, who also implicitly assumes that her parents (who are definitely along the "good people" - remember they also end with the siblings) also find this outrageous. Her "not wanting to change" is thus transformed into "not wanting to change her flirtatious, romancing, boy-centered, potentially promiscuous ways", even though logically, she should not be interested in boys that much in the first place, and being independent, she would most likely be fixated on her hobbys and career,rather than on the boys, and not really flirtatious..
Same in THAHB:her not hearing Peter's warnings is explainable, her trusting Rabadash so much is not. Also given that she is athletic and headstrong (just like in this chapter), she should be fighting alongsode Lucy, bow properties nonwwithstanding.. But the idea was that Susan being pragmatic, renowned for her compassion, and keenly remorseful will wane with puberty, while her "not being good girl" will not, leaving her the way she is described later.
Regarding the story of Caspian, I also think Pevesies ask sensiible. They don't know much from current situation, and they know the dwarf will be wayr of telling them specific details. So they ask him to give them a general picture, which can not be used against Caspian if they are spies, and which will help them to decidie what to do. Also , goading questions are actually a bad way to ask a stranger. First you let the person introduce the general picture freely, and then you ask specific questions.
Is Susan being "the pretty one" and "old for her age" some sort of 1950s code for being potentially promiscuous? So that her parents feel it is important to keep her with them and chaperon her themselves?
Lucy is still a little girl, and presumed innocent. But Susan is old enough that if she's left unchaperoned, her reputation may be "ruined" simply because she's an adolescent girl with insufficient supervision.
And if Susan seems "old for her age" surely it is because she actually is older than she looks, having grown to adulthood in LWW? If she's sexually sophisticated for her age, isn't it because she had the mind and experiences of having lived in an adult body?
Not outright for being promiscuous, of course. But for being "weak for boys", sure. Most likely, what Lewis had in mind was the idea is that as soon as she entered puberty, she started trying to recreate her court in Narnia, which was perfectly innocent for her, but her parents (who, again, described by Lewis as "good") were concerned that if this continues, she might someday become weak and be seduced. Apparently being strong-minded does not carry into puberty [sarcasm off.] Note that while the Pevensie parents most likely hoped to marry Susan off at some point, certainly they did not consider being flirtatious and dawn to boys the way to do so. Just like with Anne Bolein, Susan must remain chaste to attract a good party - while being able to court boys. In fact I remember one film when a woman who pretends to be a callgirl is told that she, being a proper lady, never learned hor to entice a man while not allowing him to have sex with you. She replies that this is the only thing "proper lady" knows how to do. This is indeed probably the reason they took her to America. Another may be that they thought that younger children will not be so adaptable to a new place (remember they know nothing about Narnia).
Btw, the whole "path" theory still exists in psychlogy today, the point being that in different age, different "lessons" are extracted from behaviour patterns. For example I have read a couple of books which state that teaching preteen girls aggression is good, as this makes them more independent and assertive later, whereas teaching teenaged girls the same is to be avoided as they tend to become ruthless and noncooperative instead.
Oh and about the other girls in strange lands: Dorothy did end in OZ for good. And Coraline returning home was surely a wise decision...
I love this concept very much. Unfortunately, it would require Peter to have a personality beyond Good At Games, which I really sort of don't see.
Well, he's good at public-school games and War, which in the old English public-school mindset pretty much follows on directly. As to the rest...
No, I don't see a huge amount of directly achieved characterization either. But here the text hits a rock. It doesn't explicitly show him as a natural leader in any way I honestly recognize... and yet the tale it tells conveys very little sense on any level to me if he isn't one. Given the choice between "this story suffers some major failures of telling" and "this story makes no gosh-darn sense", I have to go with the latter. So even from what Lewis actually wrote, the only conclusion I'm half happy with is that Peter has a lot more charisma (and character behind the charisma) than the narrative voice is competent to express. Or, perhaps, than it's comfortable with showing.
We see Narnia and its friends through a nursery-window, stickily, and with random gratuitous incursions from Pooh Corner and the Riverbank whenever the master of the show starts getting insecure about our infantine attention-span. This makes it both hard and strangely fascinating to interpret. The wobbly sets and dialogue of old-school Doctor Who used to get to me in more or less the same way. I don't know... it resembles, more than anything, the high-order and intensely engaged suspension of disbelief that I get watching a play on stage, where naturalistic representation is barely even a pretence. That's the feeling I get with Narnia.
Given the choice between "this story suffers some major failures of telling" and "this story makes no gosh-darn sense", I have to go with the latter.
The former, bother it! The former!
I love the idea of Susan attempting to recreate the Narnian court as soon as the people her age start to resemble actual adults in conversation/interests. It *would* be awfully creepy for her parents to see, and a lot of the description of Susan suggests (to me) that she's setting herself up as a social arbiter. Not being terribly interested in schoolwork? Let's face it -- by the standards of the sexist society she'd be growing up in, that's a good thing, and it doesn't preclude her studying more interesting and useful stuff outside of school. Growing pretty? That opens up a lot of doors for her. Travelling means meeting people, creating connections, picking up souvenirs and anecdotes for later use, and from her parents' perspective, she's the one about to be launched into society. Peter, as older brother, can be safely ensconced in schooling a lot longer than Susan, as eldest daughter.
The lipstick and nylons suggest that the society she's gathering around herself is that of the new, modern generation -- Lewis' generation's women wore makeup with the understanding that you weren't to actually look like you were wearing makeup, and stockings were not traditionally made in nylon. Being good at sports, and attractive, and honest about being interested in the opposite sex, are all good qualities for Susan to have if she wants to attract her peers. Susan's Narnian court might be medieval, but her Earthly court shapes up to be very modern indeed.
Now I want to read lots about the adventures of Susan outside Narnia. I don't know that Susan is someone I would particularly like, but she sounds like someone whose story deserves to be told.
Oh, excellent! This makes me wonder whether Susan was set up to cleave to our world, not because she isn't good enough for Narnia, but rather because it's our world she is supposed and fitted to do something good for. That feels like the sort of thing Aslan might pull, even if Lewis mightn't have thought of it.
Odo, Odo, Odo, Odo, Odo, Odo, Odo.
See? a whole tapestry of Odo and not a single DS9 joke, just Bayeuxing to be released
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