Aravis was a bit snobbish towards Shasta, but she later gets over it. Does her snobbishness and the treatment of her slave (which Aslan punished her for) take away from her feminine gender?  After all, she was not always gentle as some men would expect women to be.  I don’t know what C. S. Lewis thought of men who were “sissies”.  Maybe he wouldn’t have liked them if they were not chivalrous (not good soldiers in battle protecting women). But of course I don’t know for sure. In Narnia the men were mostly masculine and the women were usually feminine, although Jill may have been a tomboy. 

@narnian78 Exactly. And how is that she, a teen girl, killed who knows how many grown Calormene men? 

There's a fantastic article on this website itself — I wish it was easier to find! — by a really good Narnia scholar, Devin Brown, on this very topic and the racism one as well: Are the Chronicles of Narnia Sexist and Racist?

Really well worth reading, as he goes into just about every possible instance of sexism and racism throughout all seven books and shows very clearly that there's far more nuance to Lewis's portrayals than the naysaying critics ever bother to notice, and in fact, overall, the Chronicles come across as strongly anti-sexist and anti-racist.

I know when I was reading them as a young girl, I was very sensitive to any books that appeared to be telling me that girls "shouldn't do" this or that, but I never got that message from any of the Narnia books. Even when we got to Susan's famous downfall in The Last Battle, I never saw a shred of sexism in there. She's not being "punished" for growing up or liking lipsticks and nylons and (implicitly) boys. She's chosen to exclude herself from Narnia by making shallow concerns about her appearance and popularity more important to her than deeper and more meaningful things, to the point where she's managed to convince herself (or is trying to convince herself) that her adventures in Narnia were just a silly made-up game. I took that message very much to heart, about there being a wrong way of trying to be "grown-up", and resolved (as a 7-year-old) never to let that happen to me. And it hasn't.  

(It's worth noting, too, that the person who makes the extended "I wish she would grow up" comments about Susan is Polly, who's one of the wisest and most sensible female characters we meet in the Chronicles. Polly is my second favourite lead girl character after Lucy and I rather wish she had a bigger role in the series! We don't learn anything about her own journey of "growing up", between the end of The Magician's Nephew and her final appearance in The Last Battle, but she does come across as the kind of person who knows what she's talking about.)

@courtenay 

I always saw Lewis’ views on gender roles as being a little old fashioned, but not sexist in any way. And I think he was right in that battles are ugly when women fight, just as they are when men are forced into them. But maybe chivalry was the best way for men to protect women. I don’t think that Lewis was wrong in his support of it. And women aren’t necessarily weaker than men if they are the protected ones. Men protecting women like the knights did in medieval times generally is something positive and admirable.

@narnian78 The thing about the "battles are ugly when women fight" line is that, as Devin Brown shows in that article, it's actually not reflected consistently in the rest of the series. In The Horse and His Boy, Lucy rides into battle with the archers and is obviously totally welcome to do so — and when Shasta questions it, he's told "Her Majesty's grace will do as she pleases"! And in The Last Battle, Jill fights valiantly alongside the male characters even when she's almost overwhelmed by horror and sadness.

Lewis was writing in an era when most people in his society, including a lot of women, pretty much accepted the idea that men and women have different roles and fighting in physical warfare was not considered the right thing for a woman to do, so it's quite notable that he isn't consistent on that point throughout the Chronicles. Perhaps he had complaints about what he had Father Christmas say about women fighting in the first book, or he just re-thought that stance himself as he went on writing the series? (I wonder if there was any connection with him meeting and later marrying a woman who was by all accounts a very strong and feisty character herself?? )

But being aware that Lewis was reflecting the values of his time, I've never had any problem with Father Christmas's comment. As a young reader, I was quite happy with the fact that Lucy and Susan didn't fight in the battle, since it wasn't something I would have wanted to do either. I loved the fact that they got to go with Aslan and see the statues brought back to life, and that Lucy's main gift from Father Christmas was the magic cordial that saves the life of Edmund and many other characters. I'd rather be a healer than a fighter myself!

@courtenay I was about ten when I first read the series in 2003, which I think was the year that a Narnia movie franchise from Walden was announced. Thankfully, I was never a target for sexism. I guess racism and sexism is those things kids don't really think about when reading the books.

I felt a bit shocked by Susan's sudden absence in The Last Battle. Is she just randomly interested in boys and nylons and lipsticks? I think after reading The Last Battle, it kind of makes you want to go back and re-read the series, because, "Oh is there something that I missed?" CS Lewis could have set it up more about Susan not being a friend of Narnia. It wasn't talked about before, and even after that, it's not talked about again.

@narnian78 I think at the time, women were not allowed to fight. In the Revolutionary War, women usually stayed home or were camp followers that cooked meals for soldiers. I don't think it was until either WWI or WWII that women were allowed to enlist.

So I do get what you're saying about in Narnia, the idea of men protecting women. I think that would explain King Tirian's comment to Jill in The Last Battle-

"Good," said Tirian. "Now look yonder to our left. You see a great rock that gleams white like marble in the firelight. First we will fall upon those Calormenes. You, maiden, shall move out on our left and shoot as fast as ever you may into their ranks: and you, Eagle, fly at their faces from the right. Meanwhile we others will be charging them. When we are so close, Jill, that you can no longer shoot at them for fear of striking us, go back to the white rock and wait. You others, keep your ears wide even in the fighting. We must put them to flight in a few minutes or else not at all, for we are fewer than they. As soon as I call Back, then rush to join Jill at the white rock, where we shall have protection behind us and can breathe awhile. Now, be off, Jill."

Most likely, he did that for her protection.

Posted by: @jasminetarkheena

I felt a bit shocked by Susan's sudden absence in The Last Battle. Is she just randomly interested in boys and nylons and lipsticks? I think after reading The Last Battle, it kind of makes you want to go back and re-read the series, because, "Oh is there something that I miss." CS Lewis could have set it up more about Susan not being a friend of Narnia. It wasn't talked about before, and even after that, it's not talked about again.

I wasn't surprised at all when I got to that point in the series — it is actually signalled quite clearly in Prince Caspian, the last book (chronologically) where we see Susan as a main character, that there's a reluctance in her to embrace Narnia, and Aslan, fully. It comes through most obviously in her responses when Lucy sees Aslan and none of the others do. I've written another post on this somewhere, so I'll link to it below when I find it.

In a nutshell, the most significant part (to me, anyway) is that she's the last one to see Aslan when they're following him — and when he finally confronts her, not with anger but with tenderness, and breathes on her to take away her fears, all she can say is that she's "a little" braver. We don't yet fully know how or why, but she is resisting Aslan himself at the deepest level. That's not a good sign.

Then in Dawn Treader, while we don't see Susan in person, we hear how she's the only one of the four siblings to go to America with their parents, precisely because she's the "beauty" of the family and no good at her schoolwork. Later in the same story, we're shown that Lucy is, almost unconsciously, deeply jealous of Susan being the beautiful one. Clearly Susan is being actively encouraged to think of her looks and her popularity over everything else, and that's subtly driving a wedge between her and her siblings, probably without any of them fully realising it.

It might have been good if Lewis had gone into that aspect of the narrative in more depth — I'm hoping that Netflix might show us more of "the Friends of Narnia" and their interactions in between the stories, and perhaps trace Susan's "falling away" in more detail than the books do. My "head canon" is that after Dawn Treader, Peter, who's been studying with the Professor, has talked with him more about their adventures in Narnia and learned that the Professor himself and his closest friend went to Narnia when they were children; then Lucy and Edmund come home and tell Peter they've been to Narnia (or the sea east of it!) one more time, along with Eustace. Then Susan comes back from America — maybe after a year or so — and while there, separated from all her siblings, she's become so fixated on those "grown-up" things that as soon as she hears her brothers and sister "still" talking about Narnia, she starts resisting it and dismissing it and telling herself that it can only have been a childish game and she's grown out of all that. It could be great to see that played out in a TV version. But the signs are definitely there in the books if you're alert to them.

Here's the post in another thread where I did a bit more research into what we do see of those indications — it's in a discussion specifically about Susan, so there are other posts there related to the "sexism" debate as well.

@courtenay I think it was even brought up in the Talking Beasts Podcast.

I think CS Lewis did a good job contrasting the two sisters. Susan being the girly one and Lucy more of a tomboy. I think in Voyage of the Dawn Treader, Lucy was jealous of Susan because she got to go to America with their parents, being the pretty one. I think sibling jealousy is seen almost throughout the Chronicles.

Some churches say that there's a possibility to lose salvation (even some in my church believe that). Some might argue that's what CS Lewis was trying to get at with Susan's downfall. I don't think that's it. I don't think she's completely left out. I think it's just a matter of timing. Her absent could as well be permanent.

Being females, I think we can understand being so wrapped up with appearances. We can fuss about what should we wear today or how should we do our hair and makeup. I never been too concern with my appearance. I think nylons and lipsticks can become a distraction, and I think that's what's happening with Susan.

Posted by: @jasminetarkheena

Some churches say that there's a possibility to lose salvation (even some in my church believe that). Some might argue that's what CS Lewis was trying to get at with Susan's downfall. I don't think that's it. I don't think she's completely left out. I think it's just a matter of timing. Her absent could as well be permanent.

Lewis himself explained it further in a letter to a young fan. I do have the excellent book of his Letters to Children, but it's in storage at the moment, so I can't reference it properly, but I've found the quote I wanted by doing a bit of Googling...

The books don’t tell us what happened to Susan.  She is left alive in this world at the end, having been turned into a rather silly, conceited young woman.  But there is plenty of time for her to mend, and perhaps she will get to Aslan’s country in the end—in her own way.

@courtenay Perhaps she will get there when the time is right. As far as we know, she thinks Narnia is childish or she outgrew Narnia.

I'm sure she will come around, and re-discover Narnia once again. If she marry and has kids, she might tell her own children about Narnia. It makes me think of Peter Pan, where Wendy is grown up and has her own family. Yet, she still believes in Peter Pan. Even one of own her children experiences Neverland. So there could be a similar idea for Susan's story after the Narnia series there.

Posted by: @jasminetarkheena

I'm sure she will come around, and re-discover Narnia once again. If she marry and has kids, she might tell her own children about Narnia. It makes me think of Peter Pan, where Wendy is grown up and has her own family. Yet, she still believes in Peter Pan. Even one of own her children experiences Neverland. So there could be a similar idea for Susan's story after the Narnia series there.

Could be! I'm sure there are plenty of fan-fic versions of Susan's future — I've only read a few, but it's one of the most obvious places to pick up and continue the story. (Which Lewis, incidentally, loved to encourage his readers to do for themselves.)

Aslan certainly states "Once a King or Queen in Narnia, always a King or Queen" in LWW, and the Professor repeats the same line in his last speech in the book. Whether Lewis intended that to be a theological statement, I don't know, but it certainly gives one hope that Susan isn't lost forever. I doubt very much that Lewis intended for us to think she is. He was an atheist himself from his teenage years right through to his early 30s, so he knew from direct experience what it's like to dismiss religion as just a silly game that rational people ought to outgrow — and then to gradually, increasingly find that all his long-held arguments against God were weakening... 

There's a subtle difference, I think, between "Battles are ugly when women fight." and "But battles are ugly when women fight." The former is an absolute, the latter is a modifier to the (unspoken) statement that women *do* fight in battles sometimes. I always took it to mean that women fight when all the men are gone or dead, leaving them in a desperate situation which is, of course, ugly.

There were plenty of women in England fighting on the home front in England, as in the codebreakers at Bletchly mansion, and others in the Special Operations Unit, Britain's WWII version of the CIA or KGB. I think Lewis would have known this. Other ladies kept the munitions factories going. In Keith Richard's biography, he mentions that his mother had him to keep from working in a factory, which I can guess were targets of Nazi bombing missions back then.

I think that Narnia and LOTR actually treated female characters better than most SFF of the 1950s, 60s, and 70s did.

Posted by: @cobalt-jade

There's a subtle difference, I think, between "Battles are ugly when women fight." and "But battles are ugly when women fight." The former is an absolute, the latter is a modifier to the (unspoken) statement that women *do* fight in battles sometimes. I always took it to mean that women fight when all the men are gone or dead, leaving them in a desperate situation which is, of course, ugly.

Good point — I hadn't thought of it that way.

There were plenty of women in England fighting on the home front in England, as in the codebreakers at Bletchly mansion, and others in the Special Operations Unit, Britain's WWII version of the CIA or KGB. I think Lewis would have known this.

He wouldn't have, simply because all or most of those operations were top secret and weren't declassified until 50 years after the war. People who worked in them were bound by the Official Secrets Act and many of them went to their graves without telling a soul, even in their own families, what work they had actually done during the war. We in the general public never heard anything about Bletchley Park and other covert operations until the 1990s. But women were involved in many other vital jobs during the war that Lewis would have known about, as you say — just not normally in direct combat roles.

I think that Narnia and LOTR actually treated female characters better than most SFF of the 1950s, 60s, and 70s did.

Agreed!  

I guess if this was a Talking Beast Podcast discussion, it could be an all-girl hosting it.

Posted by: @cobalt-jade

I think that Narnia and LOTR actually treated female characters better than most SFF of the 1950s, 60s, and 70s did.

I actually haven't thought of that. I guess it's no wonder that King Theoden didn't want Eowyn to fight at Minas Tirith. She disguised herself as a man, and it was she and Merry or Pippin that killed the Witch-King of Angmar.

There was also the separation between the boys and girls in Prince Caspian. The boys were with Caspian, fighting the Telmarines and the girls were with Aslan as He freed the school children.

How is that Jadis has superhuman strength, even for a female? You would usually think that a woman would be the weaker one.