Parties and fashions maybe, but i don't think that boys was ever mentioned. I don't think the reason Susan didn't come back was because she liked boys. I don't think it had anything to do with that. She didn't come back because she did not believe. That is the only reason.

Exactly, she stopped believing. The reason why she stopped believing was because she became too materialistic. Too many people mistake this, thinking she was left out because she became mature; these people claim Lewis was being cruel and discriminating against women. However, that's not the case at all; Susan didn't go to Narnia because she wasn't on the train, which in turn was because she no longer wanted to have anything to do with Narnia, which in turn was because she placed too much emphasis on this temporal Earth and not on the things beyond. Since I've always liked Susan, I've always believed that she did eventually come back to the things that really mattered, and eventually made it to either the New Narnia or the New London (both of which are merely branches of Aslan's Country). I'm glad Lewis never specifically tells us what happened to her; it leaves her as a grave warning as to what happens when we pay too much attention to this Earth, but it also lets us imagine a happier ending to come about later.

I think the problem stems back to the "Deeper Magic from before the Dawn of Time" chapter. Notice how it was Susan who asked if Aslan was a ghost, and if anything could be worked against the Deep Magic earlier in the book.
Then she said not to tell Edmund what the agreement with the witch really was. She must have thought she was just being polite but I think she missed the entire point.
Then she comes back to our world where she is a regular person. Of course her parents do think she's the prettiest of the family, but she is used to getting attention in Narnia and she tries to regain it in our world.

I think she comes to the point where she doesn't really care what happened so long ago. This is the Here and Now. She is horrified about what happened to Aslan and as a result tries not to think about him.

I was always sad about that that Susan was not a friend of narnia

Yes indeed, me too. There was just something about that part that bothered me. It still does every time I come to it.

In reference to the bible in each of the Pevensies represent a different kind of christian, sadly Queen Susan represents the christian who has drifted away from God/Aslan never to return. As in the book it says she is "more interested in lipstick and nylons and invitions" these few items listed represents all the wordly things a christian could get caught up in that would drag them away from God. As to why it said that Susan had learned all she could in Narnia is (this is just my theory) that again refrencing the bible it says that God knows right from the start who is going to Heaven and who isnt, my guess is that Aslan knew Susan was going to drift away the whole time and so if that was set in stone, what was the point of her remaining in Narnia save the fact that she wanted to. Just a thought.

-Katana

Mod Note:

This topic is a bit tricky because while it's discussing Narnia-related matters, it has the tendency to delve into religion a bit, as referenced by the post above. Try to keep the deep spiritual discussions in the Narnia and Christianity forum, or the Christianity & Religion thread over in the Spare Oom.
Thanks for understanding! Carry on...

I imagine another thing that would have made the whole Narnia experience difficult for Susan was the whole being an adult and then going back to being a child. In Narnia Susan had a marriage proposal and appeared to be seriously considering it until she discovered Rabadash's true nature. To go from that to being a child again must have been very confusing. Not to mention being plunged back into Narnia, still as a child and then just as quickly to be told she's going home never to return (I thought the scene beside the camp fire in PC film illustrated this very well when Susan said she was happy to be back 'while it lasts.') It makes it a bit more understandable that when she was back in England she was in a hurry top grow up and wanted to forget Narnia which she may by now have associated with confusion and disappointments (not saying she was right to think this but she may just have been misguided)

Thanks for the note, Val!

My thoughts are that Susan was able to believe in Narnia the first two times because she was able to go there. Actually being in Narnia, living there, seeing it tangible and real, made the experience real to her.

When Susan left Narnia because she was "too old", she didn't have that crutch of being able to see it. To me, it seems like Susan was a person who needed to see something in order to believe it. Even her memories of the place weren't enough once she was in our world. Memories are tricky things, you know. It's very easy to convince ourselves that the memories are made up if they are older. Susan never went back to Narnia, so her memories of it were never...hmm, confirmed, so to speak.

Since she couldn't see/feel Narnia, Susan was able to convince herself that it wasn't real. And so on and so forth.

I came across this line while rereading LWW:

“So they lived in great joy and even if they remembered their old life in this world it was only as one remembers a dream.” Chapter 17

I think this might have something to do with why Susan stopped believing in Narnia. If the Pevensies had trouble remembering their old lives while in Narnia, perhaps once they returned to our world it was hard to remember what happened in Narnia. Susan assumed since it was harder to remember what happened in Narnia it must not have really happened. There is still a lot to be said about why she out of eight other people stopped believing, but I think this helps explain why someone could deny such an amazing experience.

Also, I wonder if the lipsticks, nylons and invites that Susan cared so much about weren’t so much related to her materialistic side, but her pride. Susan was supposed to be a very beautiful woman. The books mention she was thought of as the beauty in the family. So I wonder if maybe she cared about the nylons, lipsticks and invites and because it elevated her pride. I belivieve if she had been known more for her intelligence instead of her beauty the line might have been: “She’s interested in nothing nowadays except books, homework, and lectures.”

Personally, I like to think Susan eventually finds her way into Aslan’s Country. I wonder if Lewis wrote about Susan’s turn from Narnia to symbolize his own turn from the faith he was raised in as a child. And maybe Susan will eventually come back to Narnia the same way Lewis came back to his faith.

Those are very good thoughts, DOECOG! Good ideas about how the line might have been changed if Susan was known for her intelligence.

I do like to think that Susan found her way into Aslan's country somehow. Maybe even the deaths of her family members helped her to wake up and realize that the things she'd been counting as awfully important weren't really so important after all.

it makes me really sad when I think of Susan no longer believing in Narnia or Aslan!
but C.S. Lewis made a really good point with her character.....still, it's sad!

Hmm her pride, never thought about that. That is a good point.

I always figured that she was too busy living in the moment, trying to be socially at her best, concerned with looks and tea parties(it is the 40's) and trying to please people then and there without a thought of the past or the future(too busy trying to stay at the certain age she had reached). And since she always seemed to be concerned with being mature and level headed she thought that maybe Aslan and Narnai were just childish games as it seems impossible in this world for such things to happen, and so she fooled herself into believing that it is impossible.

A bit like when young children enter secondary school, they can go from sweet to rebelious and troublesome because they rush to grow up and be 'independent' the way the world potrays it to be. And in turn they lose their innocence.

I always believed that the reason Susan did not enter Aslan's Country in LB was because of her loss of faith in it. She put Narnia away as silly and ceased to believe in it. Susan's situation is all about a loss of spirituality. She shuts herself off from it. I think that it could have been because the transition from Narnia back to her life in England was just too difficult for her and maybe she shut it out because it was too painful. She went from being a child to a queen who reigned for years to back to a child and then was told that she was not coming back again, so it must have been a very frustrating for her to go through all those transitions.

Not to say it wasn't for the other three as well, but maybe Susan took it the hardest for whatever reason and rushed to grow up and forget about her childhood as quickly as possible. The other three hung onto Narnia even when it was difficult and Susan faltered as sometimes people do. We are only human, we all stumble and fall sometimes. Not always is staying steadfast in one's beliefs easy, and Susan let it slip. So Susan's story is a lesson in holding onto that even when it's an uphill battle.

However, her fate is not set in stone, Lewis left it open to the reader's imagination. There is hope for Susan, and I always believed that one day she eventually found her own way back to Aslan's Country and her family. Because remember what Aslan said, "Once a king or queen of Narnia, always a king or queen of Narnia."

I've always felt like this was one of the darker themes in the Chronicles of Narnia. As many of you have stated, Susan didn't stop believing in Narnia due to becoming mature, but because of vanity. She was always considered the beautiful sister, and im sure that that tended to be part of the reason she was caught up in parties in nylons, lipstick. I dont think that references maturity at all, but vanity. Its entirely possible that when Susan loses her entire family in the Last Battle, that she may rethink her life choice, and hopefully, make a return to believing. But its left entirely up to the reader to make their interpretation. After all, the book's events never go that far into the future.