Posted by: @king_erlian

One thing that puzzles me is that, whenever Aslan tells a character from our world that they will not return to Narnia, he also says that he exists in our world and has another name - but this is never followed up. I think it was quite deliberate that Lewis did not spell things out with no room for interpretation, otherwise he would have been accused (quite rightly) that he was using his stories to preach. But there's no indication in what the Seven Friends of Narnia say that when they got together to talk about Narnia, Aslan-With-Another-Name was with them. What if Susan had been with them to begin with and was expecting Aslan-With-Another-Name to be there, and when he wasn't, that fuelled the disenchantment and doubt?

That's an interesting thought, although the end of Voyage is the only time we're given Aslan's exact words to those who wouldn't be returning to Narnia — when he tells Peter and Susan at the end of Prince Caspian, it happens "offstage" and there's no indication of what Aslan actually said. We're only given Peter's account of it afterwards, and when Lucy asks him if he can bear it, he just responds "Well, I think I can... It's all rather different from what I thought. You'll understand when it comes to your last time."

We can definitely assume that Aslan did tell Peter and Susan they would need to learn to know him by his name in their own world (although first-time readers of PC who hadn't yet read VDT wouldn't know that) and Peter is trying to fathom what that means — and from the fact that he's so calm about it and tells Lucy she'll "understand" some day too, I'm wondering if he's already at least starting to realise who Aslan is. But we're never told at all how Susan took that last conversation with Aslan or what her response was, so that might be significant. The implication could be that unlike Peter, she hasn't grasped anything of what Aslan meant and this is a further hint that she's already starting to pull away from Narnia and its influence on her.

I don't think we're ever told in detail what the Seven Friends of Narnia said or did at their meetings (it's a while since I last read The Last Battle), but I wouldn't imagine them as being like a private religious meeting where they would expect Aslan/Jesus to be literally with them in person. Lewis was a fairly conservative Anglican and I'm guessing his idea would be that his young characters, once they'd realised who Aslan is in our world, would become regular churchgoers as Lewis himself became after his conversion. But as you say, he deliberately doesn't spell it out and risk sounding preachy.

I guess in the end it's also left for us to imagine what exactly put Susan off Narnia, or rather led to her convincing herself that this other world (where she had actually reigned for years as a Queen!) was only a silly childhood game. I don't get the impression it was any one thing that triggered it, but rather a gradual process that we can already see beginning in the earlier books. But as Lewis himself wrote to a young reader, "there is still plenty of time for her to mend, and perhaps she will get to Aslan's country in the end — in her own way." Which I've always felt she did do, at last.

I do think it's unfair that some people put the blame entirely on Susan herself, as if to say she was simply a Bad Person. We don't know what happened to her over the years, or what she may have been thinking "inside" while telling her siblings "Fancy you remembering the games we used to play as children". Just like Lucy's friend who told an older girl that she didn't much care for Lucy (while Lucy was "spying" on her using magic on Coriakin's island), she may have been saying things she did not mean but she was afraid of what others might say - her parents, her peers, possibly even a potential fiance.

If there's an out-of-universe reason for Lewis' decision to write Susan out, I think it may have been more to do with Lewis criticising the emerging Fifties' youth culture and the rise of the teenager who was neither child nor adult. If the Pevensies had been Peter, Simon, Edmund and Lucy, Simon may have been more interested in motorbikes and guitars and rock 'n' roll.  

Well said, King Erlian!
I didn't exactly warm to book Susan, when I first read the books in my late teens, but it was a shock to find she had abandoned Narnia.  Later I realised that Lewis had not finished Susan's story, merely her connection to Narnia. As anyone reading to the end of LB sees, the Real Narnia is only part of Aslan's Country, and Aslan is not only found in our world, with another name, but his true self does not look like a Lion. 
Susan has the rest of her life to rediscover the 'faith' of her older childhood, but to discover Aslan by his other name in her own world.  If she was in her early 20s when her brothers and sister and parents disappeared from her life, perhaps she lived into her 80s or 90s, and had so many years to refind her faith.
There are Susans everywhere, and the complaint that Lewis excluded her is invalid, since he gave her up to another 70 more years to refind Aslan (under his Other Name) in our world.

Well said too, @coracle. For Susan to lose her entire family at a stroke — parents, brothers, sister and cousin — is a horrific tragedy, but I often remind myself that Lewis was writing this only 10-15 years after WW2. Plenty of people in that time, including some of his readers, WOULD have lost family members suddenly and horribly in real life, in the armed forces or in the Blitz. Susan of course is a fictional character and Lewis left the rest of her story open for us to think about, so I often wonder what her reaction to that terrible loss would have been. Did she discard faith altogether at the time — how can there be a God, or at least a good God, if He would let this happen? That would be a very natural and understandable response. But maybe as the years went by and her life went on, I imagine she might find that resistance eroding away, however gradually, and maybe she started to remember something she'd pushed to the back of her mind and told herself over and over that it was only a game they used to play when they were little, it never actually happened, it couldn't really have been true, could it... could it...?

Lewis himself, of course, started to lose his own childhood faith when his mother died, and was a committed atheist by the time he was a young adult — and in later years he readily admitted how unknowingly conceited and prideful he was at that time of his life — so there's no way he would have wanted to imply that Susan was lost forever. When critics like Pullman or Rowling claim that Susan was "sent to hell" or "lost to Narnia" for liking lipstick and boys and so on, it only goes to prove they haven't actually read the book, or at least not very carefully. But unfortunately, because those critics are famous in their own right and very vocal about things they don't like, these total misconceptions keep getting rehashed, and so "the problem with Susan" goes on...

A lot of the criticism of this plot point seems to be that people feel like the message is that growing up is bad. I remember in the book, Wild Thing: The Joy of Reading Children's Literature as an Adult, the author (Bruce Handy) makes a big deal of Lewis "flattering" children and portraying them as superior to adults. (He really likes the books BTW. He doesn't intend this as a harsh criticism.) I really don't understand where he (and Philip Pullman and J. K. Rowling) get this idea. (To be fair, maybe they're thinking of things Lewis wrote that I haven't read.)

I mean it's true that adults in Narnia are portrayed as inferior to kids in some ways. (Lucy tells Susan not to "talk like a grownup" in Prince Caspian. Lewis says that some adults would have been too fussy to eat Digory and Polly's toffees.) But growing up is also portrayed positively in several places. The main character are all described as becoming more adult in their abilities thanks to the air of Narnia. Eustace is described as looking "like a man crying" as opposed to a boy crying in The Silver Chair. We're supposed to be happy to hear about the Pevensies growing up at the end of The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe and Shasta and Aravis growing up (and getting married) at the end of The Horse and his Boy. At the end of The Last Battle, the characters are portrayed as not being exactly young or old. 

I guess some people just can't take any criticism of adults whatsoever.  

Good observations, @col-klink.  There are good adults in Narnia!  
     I’ve heard this observation of children being superior or “better” than adults in Paul F. Ford’s Companion to Narnia, under an entry titled “ADULT(S)”: 

Throughout the Chronicles, Lewis uses “grown-up” as a synonym for narrow-minded, unimaginative, and too practical thinking...Perhaps the main complaint children and youth have against grown-ups is that they they have lost their imaginations...[The good human grown-ups] have in common their honesty and care for others...The foolish and wicked faults share a total contempt for things childish.  In fact, it is a dead giveaway of wickedness in the Chronicles for an adult character to identify things children hold dear as “fairy tales,” “old wives’ tales,” or “impractical,” and they usually pay for their nonbelief in the end.

     Ford goes on to note that few of the children (aside from the Pevensies and King Lune’s sons) in the Chronicles have good relationships with their parents or other adults.  Ford cites Lewis’s own rocky relationship with his father and the early death of his mother as the reason behind many of the grown-ups’ portrayal.

     That said, I do find it extremely ironic that J.K. Rowling of all people would level the criticism of “portraying the children as superior to adults” at Narnia, especially when the Harry Potter books are filled with instances of children “thinking that they know better” than adult figures (pick one—Snape, Dumbledore, the Dursleys, the Weasleys, Umbridge, Fudge, Lockhart, Slughorn, Hagrid, McGonagall).  In the end, the children (particularly Harry, Ron, and Hermione) are usually vindicated, showing that they were right all along (thereby making the adults around them seem inept and stupid).  I would also hazard a guess that it is the same with the His Dark Materials books (even though I have not read them and they were written to be the “anti-Narnia”).  Books with children as protagonists will naturally favor that point of view.  It think there is something to be said for a book series that emphasizes the childlike (not childish) joy of imagination and discovery, curiosity and integrity without having to be “dark,” “edgy,” or angst-filled all the time.  I just find it frustrating that there are many middle-grade and YA books that would fall into the “flattering children” category, yet Narnia is singled out.  

Susan was “Susan the Gentle” so how could she have been all bad?  It never really says that she was permanently shut out of Narnia.  It seems more like she hasn’t learned how to be mature and certainly Aslan wasn’t ready to give up on her.  I am tired of people who try pass judgement on her. It doesn’t matter if she is a fictional character since to me her situation could be the same in real life. 🙂

I didn't like it that Susan lost her loved ones; in my opinion, she didn't deserve to live with this pain (and nobody does), and she would have been better off with them in Aslan's Country. However, as for "racism", "sexism", and all the other allegations against Lewis, I completely agree with you; these attempts to smear classics from the position of modern PC are just as irritating as the historical obscenity trials against "Ulysses" and "Lady Chatterley's Lover".

The book I am using to study the series with my kids says there was a fan letter written to Lewis about Susan and he had essentially said he didn't think her story was over either.  And the fact that people think "Nylons and lipstick" mean 'sex' to them shows how shallowly they view the subject themselves.  Nylons and lipstick were the short-hand for vanity because the others said that was all she cared about.  You can grow up, mature, and dress like a grown-up and still keep higher things in mind.  Even as Susan the Gentle she had some rashness when it came to love as she entertained marrying Prince Rabadash though that wasn't entirely her fault either.  Maybe that incident made her gun-shy in pursuing real adulthood.  I don't know.

Yes, it really bothered me as a child when I first read her being excluded.  It made my blood run cold and I had to put the book down for a moment. It just never occurred to me that she was still alive and had another chance to remember who she was.   It really is a shockingly sad moment for her.  She lost her entire family and her nearest friends/mentors.  Getting to her happy ending would take some significant work.

I once wrote a poem in which Susan had become a friend of my parents (if she was a real person she would have been about the same age as my mother!) who I now knew as an old lady, and who had come to know Aslan in this world by his Other Name. [it's not published anywhere, but it was one of many possible ways her life could have gone after the train cras of 1949]. 

@Mrs Smooshy: Even as Susan the Gentle she had some rashness when it came to love as she entertained marrying Prince Rabadash though that wasn't entirely her fault either.  Maybe that incident made her gun-shy in pursuing real adulthood.  I don't know.

The problem with that line about the nylons & lipstick, in an age of rebellion & social change, has been a conflation with sexuality & so-called sexual freedom. That isn't the case, & I agree it has become boring to take that line. Nylons & lipstick are more to do with fashion & how fashion sells. The advertisements at the time, and to some extent still do, suggest that if you wear this kind of lipstick or those pair of nylons you will look more alluring to the object of your desires, in Susan's case, maybe her dream husband. Look like this fashion model or that famous actor & you, too might look as sensational. Until reading in the same gossip magazines you realise how their private lives have been portrayed, as being less than perfectly happy. Yesterday's fashion never wanted the likes of Susan, to know just how transient it still is, while Susan, herself, still had a life to live. 

It was my interpretation that the key word in Jill's comment was "Invitations". Nylons & lipstick, after all, are just means to an end. Invitations provide chances to meet people, & to get involved in social groups. It was also the rule in those days of the 1940's & 1950's for girls of 17 in England, to make their debut to launch them socially, though I think that died out somewhat by the 1980's. How old was Susan by The Last Battle? Definitely old enough to be a debutante.

So who was Susan trying to impress? And why? The other thing about Susan was her tendency to act & dress more grown up than she actually was. Younger siblings & cousins might very well cramp her style, even an older brother, whose disapproval might irritate her. But was her experience of Rabadash really one of "those silly games we played as children"? I think Susan would always have a memory of that experience, not as easy to dismiss as those "childish" memories of Narnia. I would describe Rabadash as a nightmare suitor, but I wondered how Susan could go through a whole marriage without discussing that experience with her husband if she did most likely marry, in that most close of personal relationships. It is not only the memories but also what Susan, herself,  might inadvertently say or do, to reveal her past. In decades of marriage, how would it be possible to keep denying that her experiences never happened, despite losing her family in the train accident? 

On my livejournal I wrote a fanfiction to sort out how I felt. The trouble is with Girls' Education at the time C.S.Lewis wrote, was the idea that girls like Susan didn't always consider that they had to persevere at schoolwork, especially if they found it difficult. I've been told myself that I didn't need to further my education, just to get married to change nappies. Once a girl left school she might get a fill-in job to pay for her ongoing expenses, before she found a "suitably rich & titled" husband, in upper class UK terms, at any rate. Then having succeeded in her husband-hunting, she would live happily ever after, like Disney versions of some old fairy tale. 

Rushing into marriage as Susan almost did with Rabadash, was something that even quite young girls could be pushed into in the real world, due to social & peer pressure, not to mention the sort of family conniving, that Aravis almost fell victim to. Narnia in the end, could teach Susan to be herself, to resist envy & vanity & to have the courage to call on genuine help & guidance when in trouble. She might end up having to call on her Narnian memories to live the very life which would bring her in the end back to Narnia.

I've always thought that Aunt Polly was also an educator, even if not a professor. As a wise teacher once told us as a bit of career advice, that every skill you develop in life might come in handy in some way. The more strings to one's bow the better off the archer might be. Think of that biblical parable of the talents & how they were used. Of course that teacher was advising the boys, in our English class, all asking the questions that concerned them, whilst us girls were represented by the Phoenician woman getting crumbs under the rich man's table. But that teacher's wife was our music teacher as well, & I was touched decades later, to learn that they did look out for me in some important ways, as a desperately ill asthmatic child who was finding it hard to cope at the time. 

I've been thinking about "the problem with Susan" a lot recently. I was reading a book called Court of Swans, by Melanie Dickerson, which combined in my head with having watched the Narnian lore Youtube channel's video on Aslan and Easter. In the book, one of Dickerson's characters says, "We ask for thorns to be taken from us, trials to end, but sometimes God does not take them away. He walks us through them. So stay hopeful and believe for the best, but don't lose faith if the worst happens."

The Last Battle doesn't end with Susan's death, but it does end with that of her parents and siblings. In chapter 12, Polly comments on how she wishes Susan would grow up. It is my belief that Susan hasn't yet gone through her trials and thorns as Eustace and Aravis had.

It seems to me that Susan still has a chance to grow in the Lord through the pain and suffering of her family's deaths. She was told long ago, "Once a King or Queen in Narnia, always a king or queen." To me, this speaks of predestination, of her being chosen by God. Everyone struggles with faith at some point in their lives, it could be that Susan needs another problem to deal with to bring her out of where she has been.

Susan's choice in The Last Battle is controversial. It wasn't mentioned before, then after that, never mentioned again. C.S. Lewis could have been clear on this.

From my experience, I was a Disney girl and love Disney princesses. When I got into my teen years, I thought I was too old for Disney princesses. But in my early twenties, I discovered my love for princesses.

I love watching a series of Hallmark movies, Good Witch... it makes me glad that there's not one that exists.

I'm sure Susan will come around... her story is not finished. She might rediscovered Narnia at one time, after realizing she had lost her entire family (spoilers). And yes, I'm getting tired of how it's being misinterpreted.

I think the biggest problem, presently, is that everything that has any ties to tradition is under fire by the modern “progressive” collective. A lot of the criticisms of CS Lewis (and a lot of those same criticisms are coming out towards Tolkien as well) are coming from authors such as Rowling and JRR Martin who, let’s be honest, are hardly icons of morality themselves. Rowling is not only part of the mob, but she has recently found that the mob is cannibalistic in nature. 

I honestly applaud how both writers handled both genders. Women, let’s be frank, are not physical equals to men. We aren’t built for combat in a physical or emotional sense- but we have strengths that men do not. We’re equal in value, not in ability, and we’re two sides of the same coin. Lewis did a fantastic job showing that we complement each other in having each company from each book include at least one lady and one gent. The boys tend to be reckless, headstrong, and more physically capable while the girls tend to be the level-headed ones, kinder, and tactful. Even two of the villains are women- and I really don’t hear people talk enough about how well they were portrayed as more threatening or dangerous than the male antags we get. It always baffles me how the Susan situation is portrayed as a sexist problem- and often times I wonder if the accuser has taken a moment to read even one of the books.

The criticism against Susan is more or less a modern knee jerk reaction to being “called out”. Susan’s issue wasn’t sexuality- it was materialism. She was becoming part of the popular  society of her time/setting and couldn’t be bothered with anything that pulled her out of it. Susan represented a falling out of the faith, someone who has lost sight of Christ in favor of embracing what the world had to offer- and Lewis left her fate completely open-ended. In a way, everyone knows a “Susan” and I think that’s why Lewis wrote her story the way he did. It leaves an impression with the reader and brings attention to people in our lives who may be falling into the same trap. 

I was bothered by it as a kid, but as I grew older and one of my own siblings became a “Susan”, I appreciated the inclusion of this character arc because it is, sadly, something that a lot of Christians will deal with.

Posted by: @tigryph

I think the biggest problem, presently, is that everything that has any ties to tradition is under fire by the modern “progressive” collective. A lot of the criticisms of CS Lewis (and a lot of those same criticisms are coming out towards Tolkien as well) are coming from authors such as Rowling and JRR Martin who, let’s be honest, are hardly icons of morality themselves. Rowling is not only part of the mob, but she has recently found that the mob is cannibalistic in nature. 

I'm cynical about the progressive collective too, but I don't think it's in the best taste to condemn them so explicitly on this forum, where politics are no-go zone. After all, some Narniawebbers might well be progressive types and certainly a few lurkers. You don't want to unknowingly insult them, do you?

I do wonder, though, how the critics of Lewis's handling of Susan would want a vain female character to be written? If portraying her as being absorbed by clothes and makeup is a tired stereotype, what should she be interested in to demonstrate her materialism?