posted
But where does he suggest it? She chooses not to remember Narnia any more. Where does it say she can't go to heaven if she wears lipstick?
Posts: 26071 | Registered: Oct 2003
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posted
That's an oversimplification of what I said. Come on, Dag.
You know, it's okay that I dissaprove of the way Susan was written. I still like the books, and it doesn't take away anything from you.
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posted
OK, where does it say "that the Lord is only happy with the girls who are not bothering with that kind of thing," (lipstick being one of that kind of thing?
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Whatever, Kat. If you don't want to discuss, don't discuss it. If for some reason doing so would require your passion, it's probably for the best.
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I went out and read that Neil Gaiman story last night. Weird and disturbing. He is more critical of Lewis than Rowling or kat.
It was one of those stories where the author is trying to be clever and symbolic and "teach us some great truth" but it was just weird and nonsensical.
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Well, since you've left the discussion I won't bother about it anymore except to say this: I don't think Susan is supposed to be (what's the word) archetype? Representative? of all other girls.
She's kind of unique. She has, after all, seen, touched, smelled, heard, and spoken with Aslan / God, and at the time of the rest of her family's death, she was choosing to care more for 'the things of the world' than for Aslan / God.
How could Aslan do anything but be unhappy with that decision? And frankly, I agree-that decision Susan made was wrong, in the context of those stories.
People make mistakes all the time.
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posted
Exactly. So, "this discussion is over, except for the part where it's not over so I get to have the last word."
Nothing new has been said since perhaps the previous page. It's been reduced to "No he didn't." "Yes, he did." "Didn't!" "Whatever." "Okay, I'm done, except...Didn't!"
If you're going to insist on the last word, at least be honest about it. Posts: 26077 | Registered: Mar 2000
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quote:Exactly. So, "this discussion is over, except for the part where it's not over so I get to have the last word."
More like "X isn't going to participate anymore, but that doesn't mean I can't still post my opinion. But I'm not expecting X to respond because X said she wouldn't."
quote:Nothing new has been said since perhaps the previous page. It's been reduced to "No he didn't." "Yes, he did." "Didn't!" "Whatever." "Okay, I'm done, except...Didn't!"
It's only been reduced to that because you won't answer a fairly simple question.
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posted
It's because I don't like the way you are talking to me.
Also, there's not slightest chance in heaven or earth that you'll change your mind, so why bother? To give you fodder? I don't think so.
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A lot of people have spent a lot of time dicussing this, pointing out plot points in multiple volumes and underlying beliefs held by Lewis to backup their explanation of what happens with Susan. When asked what point in the story gives you that impression, you've simply acted dismissively.
If you're only participating in this to change people's minds, that's rather sad.
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Did CS Lewis consider feminimity to be antithetical to a relationship with God, and is that shown in his Narnia series?
Well. . . no. I can think of two places where Lewis overtly critisizes fashion and fashionable attitudes (one, the Susan episode; two, the portion where he critisizes Helen's Sunday hat in 'The Magician's Nephew, saying that she looked rather nicer without it). Neither have anything to do with them being beautiful, or women. They do have to do with artifice.
Susan is critisized, not because she wears nylons and lipstick-- but because she thinks ONLY of 'nylons, lipstick and invitations.' Susan has become, in other words, a bimbo.
And before you throw 'misogynist!' out there-- remember that CS Lewis has a male character act very similarly (Uncle Andrew in 'Magician's Nephew').
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It's not about changing minds, it's about understanding where the other person is coming from. Or, at least, it should be. Posts: 7050 | Registered: Feb 2004
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I think I sympathize with Susan because I believe, and Lewis didn't know, that a crazy social period of nylons, lipstick, and invitations is normal. She was still a kid - she wasn't done. Uncle Andrew was a grown man and should have reached some sort of balance by then, but Susan was still a teenager. Part of being a teenager is careening from one aspect of yourself to another. Five years of that - fine, Susan has disqualified herself. If she's 30 and still thinks only of the social fripperies, then she may be fairly called shallow. But she's not - she's the oldest girl, so she has to figure it out on her own.
That snapshot of her in an exploratory phase - which can last over a year (social niceties are hard) - is what it taken to be her character. She's not a bimbo - she's a teenage girl. A teenage girl can be obsessed with that kind of thing without being shallow. A fifty-year-old man can't. I don't think Lewis understood that.
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If there was anything in Rowling's books that made me raise my eyebrows, it's that Hermione didn't go through a phase like that. How on earth did she know so much? She was explaining about relationships between the sexes to Harry, and I was wondering how on earth she knew. Sure, she'd dated Krum, but Krum didn't seem like the type to teach that. Considering how awkward the boys' first encounters were, I'm surprised that Hermione's went so smoothly. Krum was 18, a star - practically an adult, and Hermione was 14. She should have been freaking out!
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I don't understand how on Earth this conversation is perceived by anyone as a personal affront ?????
--------
Katie, if that aspect of Susan's personality was the only thing that barred Susan from uber-Narnia, I could immediately and wholeheartedly agree with you. But I don't think that it is the only thing.
On another note, I think teenagers are being very shallow when they're so strongly focused on 'social vanity' and that 'exploratory phase'. I feel that way about most teenagers I meet and have known, and include myself in that category.
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quote:Susan is critisized, not because she wears nylons and lipstick-- but because she thinks ONLY of 'nylons, lipstick and invitations.' Susan, has become, in other words, a bimbo.
And before you throw 'misogynist!' out there-- remember that CS Lewis has a male character act very similarly (Uncle Andrew in 'Magician's Nephew').
This is an interesting point. You know, I think there just isn't enough information provided to know whether Lewis believed that social vanity is something that bars a person from heaven.
So, since there isn't enough info to judge Lewis, I choose to believe in the interpretation that most agrees with my own worldview. That is *why* I side with the idea that there was more to it keeping Susan out of "heaven". I give Lewis the benefit of the doubt.
As Kat says here, Susan isn't "finished". She still has her life to live. It isn't her time yet, and there is no reason to think that she is forever barred from "heaven".
Whether or not Lewis understood this... I cannot judge.
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I also agree with that:) Hermione, extremely bookish and focused on academics, seems to have done very well socially speaking. It's a very, very rare thing for someone to so naturally know social intricacies at all, especially when they spend so much time reading.
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I'm not sure it really matters how old she was in OUR years. In her life, she'd lived to be a queen-- certainly of marrying age, because she almost married a prince of the Calormen in 'Horse'-- none of that experience was wiped away when they went back through the wardrobe.
And it IS in character for her-- from the first book, Susan is always shown as the one with the tendencies toward vanity and shallowness, and false maturity. (Edmund points this out in the first chapter of LWW)
And I was always under the impression that she was in her late teens; at least she was only a year or two younger than Peter, who is described as an adult in 'Battle.'
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How old was Susan at the end of the series? I thought she was out of the teenage years, but it's been years since I've read them, so I could very well be wrong.
Edit: Curse your fast fingers, Scott!
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quote:On another note, I think teenagers are being very shallow when they're so strongly focused on 'social vanity' and that 'exploratory phase'. I feel that way about most teenagers I meet and have known, and include myself in that category.
I agree. Most teenagers are *painfully* shallow. I certainly was! But we are patient with them because it is totally understandable. We expect that they probably will have grown out of it in 10 years or so. That doesn't remove the fact that at that time, they are shallow.
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quote:On another note, I think teenagers are being very shallow when they're so strongly focused on 'social vanity' and that 'exploratory phase'. I feel that way about most teenagers I meet and have known, and include myself in that category.
I don't think they are being shallow.
I'm all for books and deep conversations and spirituality, and I hope I've proven that enough that what I say next will be taken seriously:
Social niceties are hard. They are even harder for kids who are unique, in either good or bad ways. You know how some people seem to just have the People Thing down? That can be learned - it's not like perfect pitch.
If it wasn't necessary, then I'd agree that it was shallow. But it is necessary. We live in a society, and it's a social world. I love everything intellectual and esoteric, but life is just better if you know how to make friends and how to get along with people. The skills to do that must be acquired, and the only real way is with trial and error. It means you have to think about it, and you have to practice.
If we didn't have to live in a civilization, then that kind of thing wouldn't be necessary. Since we do, then it is.
You know how there's a stereotype that women are better at communication? This is NOT innate - it's learned out of necessity. And learning it takes time.
There have been innumerable studies done showing that people with an extensive support system fare better during life - are healthier, happier in general - than people who do not. The ability to create and maintain that social system is essential. It shouldn't be the only thing in anyone's long life, but it is perfectly okay to focus on it for a while. It doesn't make her shallow - it makes her independent. She doesn't have to rely on other people to hand her a society. She'll know how to create her own.
---
It isn't fair to say that teenagers are shallow. They are learning. That's like saying two-year-olds are dumb because they can't read. They just are not finished human beings yet.
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quote:You know, I think there just isn't enough information provided to know whether Lewis believed that social vanity is something that bars a person from heaven.
In Perelandra, when the Queen wears a feather cloak, Ransom says, "Thanks Heavens, it's only simple vanity." (paraphrased)
In Mere Christianity, he makes it very clear that vanity is not the debilitating sin that Pride is.
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posted
In The Great Divorce, he presents the idea that vanity is a pretty minor vice, because vanity at least acknoledges that other people matter.
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I think two-year-olds are stupid. When compared to a healthy well-adjusted and well-educated adult, that is.
I use the same basis for calling most teenagers shallow. I agree it's necessary, and I agree it's not something bad.
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posted
In all honesty, I think Lewis was using Susan as an allegorical tool rather than a complete human being. She wasn't in Narnia because of the obsession with lipstick because Lewis wanted to illustrate something.
That is certianly my interpretation. Clearly people who are more inclined to put higher motives on Lewis will think something different. Even then, the comparison has been made between Susan and the Dursleys, other human beings who are there to serve as a plot point and character development for our main character.
Perhaps what Rowling was objecting was turning one of the main characters into a flat moral lesson.
quote:I think two-year-olds are stupid. When compared to a healthy well-adjusted and well-educated adult, that is.
I use the same basis for calling most teenagers shallow. I agree it's necessary, and I agree it's not something bad.
Then why are you comparing them to adults?
It's a terrible thing to label something pejorative that it is not. Isn't there a way to describe the level of development without using an insult? Stupid and shallow are insults, and they are not deserved.
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quote:That's like saying two-year-olds are dumb because they can't read. They just are not finished human beings yet.
I don't agree. It is more like saying 2-yr-olds are self-centered. They are! But it is also completely understandable.
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Why doesn't it work? Because it sounds bad?
Calling someone shallow and barring them from heaven for it is pretty bad.
The follower of Tash made it. All sorts of people of middling morality made it. But Susan, because she was working on the social thing, didn't. That sucks.
Theca: I'm sorry you got the crappy end of their learning experience. My own early teenage years were rather hellish due to my older brother, and I don't care that he's grown out of choking people younger than him when they don't do what he says, he wasn't a good person when he did it then.
I do think it's possible to be frou-frou and socially adept without being cruel.
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If I am in a state of being vain and shallow, I am not ready to go to heaven yet. But my life isn't over, and I can grown and change. Thank goodness for that.
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Basically, let's hope Lewis was wrong about that part.
quote:If I am in a state of being vain and shallow, I am not ready to go to heaven yet.
This is why I object to calling teenagers shallow. Because of the above statements - it means that they are not worthy. They are not unworthy - they are just not finished. I think someone can be vain and shallow but still worthy of all that good stuff Lewis promised - it depends on where they are and what they are doing about it.
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posted
Or, let's take Lewis's professed beliefs on the subject into account when interpreting his religious allegory.
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quote:I think someone can be vain and shallow but still worthy of all that good stuff Lewis promised - it depends on where they are and what they are doing about it.
But they may have to wait awhile, until they are "finished" to receive those blessings. At least, that is how I imagine things working. I don't really know either way.
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quote:See, and I think a work of art should stand on its own.
It does, if you interpret what's actually there.
Susan chose not to be present at the meeting of the Friends of Narnia where the King's call was made, and chose not to be on the train, so she didn't go to Heaven at that moment.
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Bev: Maybe that's where we disagree. There are so, so many things to learn about and be perfected in - there's no way in this life to ever be completely finished.
Dag: I think I liked the story much better when I didn't know it was supposed to be an allegory. I'm fine with Lewis making up the rules to his world, and whatever happens to Susan in that context is his perogative. I'm irritated with the implication that they are also the rules to our world - I simply don't believe it. They are better stories without the analogy.
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