lol, I love it.
C.S. Lewis - "I'm going to make the single most catholic fairy tale ever. This thing will be such catholic, woah, watch out, catholic comin' out of your ears with this fairy tale."
The Gays: Smiling, rubbing hands together, menacingly
Is "The Problem of Susan" some incel Narnia fanfiction?
Technically, it's a short story by Neil Gaiman. Practically, it's definitely Narnia fanfiction except just legally distinct enough Neil Gaiman didn't get sued for it.
It's basically shorthand for, "it's kinda fucked up that they left Susan Pevensie out of Narnia towards the end just because she liked lipstick and dudes now."
Gotcha! It's been a long time since I've read the Narnia books so I wasn't sure if the "lipstick and boys" was from the books or this short story.
IIRC, it wasn't that "she liked lipstick and dudes" but essentially that her thoughts of Narnia became "oh, that funny game we played as kids".
It's not her gender or orientation, it's that she lost her belief in an effort to become more "adult". The lipstick and boys bit is more to emphasize this.
Narnia is apparently like Neverland in this regard. You stop believing and the magic is gone.
If you enjoy dystopian CS Lewis fanfic, check out the book/TV series "The Magicians".
Bonus: it is very gay
I second this. High quality gay magicians
You had me at gay....which was, admittedly, the end of your comment.
It’s so gay, and the show is gayer. They got to the point where the later seasons each have a musical episode
Cis Lewis isn't welcome in his own fantasy smh my head
Or so you think…
In fairness, he did state that one of the reasons that he never wrote Susan was that he believed that he couldn't do her justice, and invited readers to come up with their own theories/stories.
Theres no problem with susan. C.S. Lewis was using narnia as a very christian metaphor, for... come to think of it, lots of things. Included in that metaphor was a Peter Pan esque commentary of childhood. Susan grew up too fast. Thats it. Flawed as it may be, thats the bit. Misogynistic as is seems on reflection, i dont think it was intended that way.
Boys never grow up. If you have full grown man in your life, you already know this.
If you dont, you are missing out. Want to have a child without actually having a child? Make guy friends. Everything will make sense after that.
I'm sure glad we don't reduce genders to stereotypes around here because that would be very silly.
Included in that metaphor was a Peter Pan esque commentary of childhood. Susan grew up too fast.
One of the reasons The Last Battle soured me on the series was the way in which they applied these increasingly unpleasant purity tests to the accumulated cast of characters.
Boys never grow up. If you have full grown man in your life, you already know this.
One of the messages of "The Problem with Susan" was that pain is the source of maturity. You tend to see this in older people because they've experienced more of it.
Grown men who don't act particularly mature are ones who have led relatively charmed existences. But there are plenty who have a sobriety and seriousness about them. You'll inevitably find some kind of trauma behind each of these folks.
You had me in the first half but boys will be boys is a dangerous slippery slope, not an excuse
Men can grow up. It's just that modern society seldom cares to teach us to be proper men. So instead we often simply remain undeveloped.
okay, this is definitely how I'm going to think of Narnia from now on.
TIL all the Narnia kids except Susan die in a train crash, tf??
It's all Christian metaphors, because Lewis was a bit of a hack at times and couldn't comprehend introducing kids to the idea of eternity by having them die at different times and reaching heaven together anyways they all had to die suddenly at the same time.
With that in mind, there aren't really that many ways to kill seven people suddenly at the same time. If it wasn't a train derailment it'd have been a plane crash or something.
Which is especially silly since he established that time moves differently in Narnia.
I've seen Narnia and don't really understand the meme. what's is this even about
well there are seven books in the series, and i think only books two through five have been made into films? anyway, in The Voyage of the Dawn Treader only the two younger children return. in The Last Battle however, the eldest son is back but the eldest daughter is not.
neil gaiman wrote a short story about why.
The Magician's Nephew is counted as book one these days, but that was not the order in which it was written and a few things won't make as much sense if you read it first, so I'm not sure why they re-ordered it other than they think that chronological order makes more sense overall, something I disagree with. It was originally the penultimate book, before The Last Battle.
So really, one through four were made into films, but BBC TV and Radio both did the whole thing.
And then they came out of the closet, of course.
I could be wrong but is it not just because Susan stopped believing in Narnia? Lucy still shows up for The Last Battle.
EDIT: So do Jill and Polly! This seems a little reductive of Susan's role in the story as an example of lack of faith and how maturing brings you to focus on your surroundings and lose your inner child.
I mean, it was written by a Christian and the first book was published 1950.
The 1949 law was passed in the UK barring marriage under 16, and went into effect 1/1/50.
Knowing Lewis the entire reason for the "Susan problem" was him likely being upset child marriage had been (slightly more) outlawed.
So Susan turned 16 and Lewis made a big deal about a sudden change and now she's an adult.
Granted, I could very well be wrong.
But it seems like somebody upset about progress, and I wouldn't be the first to label Lewis as such. But it's hard for anyone to claim he wasn't using his writing to shoehorn his opinions in and get kids to agree with him.
It's not that deep. The whole series is thinly veiled Christianity. By the end, Susan lost her faith. That's it. She no longer held Narnia in her heart. But it's an allegory for children so it was couched in awkward old man language. Why Susan and not Peter? Regular old misogyny, Eve-style.
1950 is when the first book was published. Susan being excluded completely didn't happen until the last book, in 1956. And considering
Tap for spoiler
They all fucking died IRL
Susan being unable to enter
HeavenNarnia because she no longer believed makes sense narratively and thematically.If you want to see this as some sort of commentary on child marriage laws, well... have fun.
He was having an affair with a woman almost 30 years older than himself, and she died in 1951. I would lean more towards him being upset about something between them, than supposed pedophilia.
He was having an affair with a woman almost 30 years older than himself, and she died in 1951
And surely a wealthy Christian man in England 70 years ago would never be hypocritical....
But like I said, maybe it's a coincidence and not an intended statement. But the books are incredibly preachy and Lewis writes as if his personal beliefs are clearly and obviously the right and only beliefs.
It's been decades since I've read them, but I'm not the only one with that takeaway from his writings.
And while a child being married under 16 immediately sounds like pedophilia to you (as it should) this was back when the law was being passed and lots opposed it. There were people fighting it for decades after even.
And it literally explains why Susan was held to a different standard than Pete:
This section re-enacts section 1 of the Age of Marriage Act 1929 which set the minimum marriage age at 16 with consent of parents or guardians and 21 (since lowered to 18) without that consent. Marriages contracted by persons either of whom is under the age of 16 years are void.[10][11] Before 1929, the common law and canon law applied so that a person who had attained the legal age of puberty could contract a valid marriage. A marriage contracted by persons either of whom was under the legal age of puberty was voidable. The legal age of puberty was 14 for males and 12 for females.
In 1971, Eekelaar wrote that the prohibition now contained in this section "though desirable, is extreme and inflexible." According to him it could result in "genuine hardship", such as where it is discovered, after years of apparent marriage, that a mistake was made, at the time of the ceremony, regarding the age of one of the spouses, or where one of the spouses concealed their real age, though, after 1971, some protection was afforded by section 6 of the Law Reform (Miscellaneous Provisions) Act 1970[12] (now repealed and replaced by the Inheritance (Provision for Family and Dependants) Act 1975).
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marriage_Act_1949
So while you think I'm making an assumption in saying his opposition to this law was likely and may have influenced what he wrote about....
You've also twisted that into me labeling him a pedo that wants to marry a child younger than 16 and implied everyone agreed that this law was a good thing. One thing you've just invented and another that's easily disproven
"Everyone older than me is irredeemably evil" is such a Zoomer take
Dancing with the fauns.
The whole first part - thats how you realise what canon really was telling you. Sometimes you gotta process it slowly.
Do people really think about this sort of stuff.
Mostly people think.
But not all of them.
Some just don't, ever.Yes
Duh.
Is thinking about the themes and Messages in literature really where you draw the line? That's a bridge too far?
Honestly I'm constantly so busy I don't understand how anybody has the time. I hate it, I want at least an hour a day for education, ideally two.
