Does Susan go to the "New Narnia"?/Whatever happened to Susan?

pink-cheetah said:
do you think that when Susan died, and if she did "grow out of nylons and lipstick", she could always pass from the 'England-within-England" into"Narnia-within-Narnia" like Mr. Tumnus said somethng about all the countries are connected or something from Aslan's country?
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she might...
she'd most likely be givin' a chance from aslan.
 
devils_advocate_for_evil said:
I have a feeling you are surprised when I say that I love Mark Twain, Jane Austin, Charlotte Bronte, Emily Bronte, and such classic writers. I loved "A Tale of Two Cities" as well as "Pride and Prejudice!" I just found that Lewis' books were lacking. I don't like Jadis as a person, I like Tilda Swinton who did a FANTASTIC job as the white witch. I just found that the dialogue was too boring and stilted. But then again, that is my own opinion, not that of others..
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Don't forget that CoN were written for children. Have you tried reading "The Screwtape Letters" "Mere Christianity" or "The Great Divorce"? ;)
 
LadyEm said:
It goes into trying to explain why Susan was kept out of Narnia and was saying, as part not whole of the explanation - that part of the reason was that Susan was being punished for her sex, sexuality and being grown up.

I have heard this theory batted about online, and it has never sat right with me. The correct reason in my understanding with all that I have understood, read and interpreted is that Susan had forgotten about Narnia and her heart had strayed from it and had become occupied with other things. It is not that nylons and lipsticks and loved were bad things - but that they had replaced and eclipsed narnia and Aslan in her heart. I am quite sure that Lucy wore lipstick and Nylons, but it seemed that they became Susan's love.
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Exactly. It wasn't "the lipstick, nylons and invitations" that kept her from Narnia, it was her lack of faith that immersed her in materialistic things over spiritual. "The lipstick, nylons and invitations" was only a symbol of this.
You can still be a Christian and enjoy going to parties and wearing make-up :D
 
devils_advocate_for_evil said:
I must say I don't know anything about Lewis as a person, but as a writer I believe him to be lacking. His plot is fantastic which allowed for such a great movie, but I picked up the book just the other day and almost fell asleep! His little nuances, like the wand for the witch, give the book the wrong feel. The way he describes, she carries with her a faerie wand, which is not the image he needs. Also, his dialogue is repetitive and lacking in flavor. I can understand that the time period is different, and thus the dialogue was as well, but it would still not be that stilted and formal and repetitive between siblings!! Especially the White Witch's sudden moodswings. They make her seem as pyscho! I was not impressed....
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Have you only read "The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe"? If so, I would recommend reading the whole series because I didn't enjoy "The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe" that much, either, but *love* the other books.

And Mr. Lewis was certainly not lacking as a writer, he has written many books (outside of Narnia) that are some of the most prolific of all time. "The Abolition of Man" is considered one of the 10 ten greatest non-fiction works of all time.

And although, "The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe" isn't that great (in both our opinions ;)) it is not the b and end all of the Narnia series, so please, read them all and you will see what I mean :D
 
Regarding Susan, from the very beginning, Susan was the first to want to "go back." Narnia was not a part of her "world." Although certainly frightening but challenging, Narnia was just the "thing" for the boys to experience. And Lucy, being a bit tomboyish but full of love and compassion, Narnia was just the "place" for her.

Again, for Susan, Narnia just did not fit into her view of how "things" ought to be. And, some people are just not cut out or comfortable with an existence that is "outside the accepted box of reality." This does not mean that Susan rejected Narnia or Aslan. Narnia is/was not heaven. Aslan, to Susan, was not the Christ. In her rejection of Narnia and Aslan was limited to a choice of ignoring or denying a sphere of existence that belief in the same bordered on mental instability in the eyes of other people. She walled off or boxed up her Narnia adventures as a means of maintaining her sanity in the "real world."

Imagine being Susan's husband, and the morning after you're married, Susan comes up to you and starts telling you about Narnia. Uh-oh! Time for the men in little white coats!
 
Addendum.

Rejection of Narnia's existence or the experiences Susan had in Narnia does NOT equal lack of faith in the Christ.

At no point did Lewis give the impression that Susan rejected the Christ, only the concept and reality of Narnia.

I feel that Susan actually represents the majority of human beings in the world. Very few people are willing to open up and accept the possibility of such outlandish concepts and "realities" as Narnia. Most people, even if exposed to or touched by the "unreal," are quick to deny that anything happened. Anything that does not fit comfortably within that individual box each of us builds to define reality or "our life" or the whole universe (for that matter) is immediately rejected through a psychological knee-jerk, survival mechanism.
 
devils_advocate_for_evil said:
well...i did only read "The Lion, The Witch, and the Wardrobe" but the movie impressed me much more than the book. The plot was fantastic! Just the writing...
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I agree with you on that, the movie was more grasping and lively then the book. But trust me on the other Narnia books, they are worth the read :D
 
Wallis said:
Addendum.

Rejection of Narnia's existence or the experiences Susan had in Narnia does NOT equal lack of faith in the Christ.

At no point did Lewis give the impression that Susan rejected the Christ, only the concept and reality of Narnia.

I feel that Susan actually represents the majority of human beings in the world. Very few people are willing to open up and accept the possibility of such outlandish concepts and "realities" as Narnia. Most people, even if exposed to or touched by the "unreal," are quick to deny that anything happened. Anything that does not fit comfortably within that individual box each of us builds to define reality or "our life" or the whole universe (for that matter) is immediately rejected through a psychological knee-jerk, survival mechanism.
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I am not so sure I agree entirely with this. Susan overcame her tenativeness in accepting that Narnia was real, the first time she entered Narnia and met Aslan in LWW. Each of the Pevensie's went through a change of heart and mind - Susan, Peter, Edmund and Lucy. None were exempt.

She lived there for over a decade as a Queen of Narnia and was always considered a champion of the Golden Age of Narnia. She was a lover of Aslan, and she was truly as devoted as any one of her siblings to her country. Additionally, she returned to Narnia in Prince Caspian and there does not seem to be any sort of disdain or disbelief at being transported to Narnia at that point.

Imagine if you will, having grown up - she and Pete were in their late twenties when they left Narnia - and coming back through the wardrobe door and suddenly be very much a child in your old world. Is it any wonder that Su became obsessed with being grown up? She was searching for Narnia in her world, albeit the wrong way.

Then there is the point that after Prince Caspian, that Aslan tells her that she cannot enter Narnia anymore because she is too old.
Susan's character seems to be that she has difficulty accepting things at first, but she accepts it wholeheartedly when she does. She loved Narnia! How could she not?

But then she feels banished from Narnia, never to return. She's searching to find a place in her world and in order to find that place, things of menial importance take precidence. She's searching for herself in Narnia and she can't find it in England.

I don't think that her heart is fully against Narnia, she has forgotten so she can cope with the deep hurt. Perhaps she is angry with Aslan for not letting her return and she's hurt.
Regardless, her love for Narnia and Aslan has been replaced by her love for materelistic things and people's approval, what they think of her, their esteem for her.

Susan would have rejected Aslan when she rejected Narnia all in one lump sum. Aslan was apart of Narnia. She said it was "all" make believe. That means she included Aslan into the bundle.
Let me pose this question then - why else would a girl who loved Narnia and Aslan with her whole heart say such a thing and act a certain way if there hadn't been something traumatic to pierce her heart?

She truly was apart of Narnia - she fell, she made mistakes and Lewis was showing that if we turn our back on our faith and on these things that were true, that we are in danger of losing eternal life. But grace continually abounds, and that Susan has her second chance - just like Ed did.

I agree very much that she walled or boxed off her memories of Narnia in order to keep sane in our world. It was her way of dealing with the package that came from her entire experience - I can't imagine trying to fit back into living in England, over ten years your junior, after a day earlier being a grown up Queen of a country? You'd be a 28 year old walking around in a 14 year old body!

I don't think she did this however because she didn't believe: I think she did it so she could cope with the hurt and the issues that arose in trying to live her day today life in England.

Edited to add: If we are basing her actions on her personality it is also necessary to note that Susan was considered "Queen Susan the Gentle." This denotes to me that Su was indeed gentle of heart, which can also be translated into "sensitive of heart." That means that she was of sweet temperment, and a soft heart - soft hearts are bruised easily. Could it not be her rationalization that was her downfall but her soft heart? That her greatest asset in Narnia would be her greatest downfall in our world?
 
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Wallis said:
Regarding Susan, from the very beginning, Susan was the first to want to "go back." Narnia was not a part of her "world." Although certainly frightening but challenging, Narnia was just the "thing" for the boys to experience. And Lucy, being a bit tomboyish but full of love and compassion, Narnia was just the "place" for her.

Again, for Susan, Narnia just did not fit into her view of how "things" ought to be. And, some people are just not cut out or comfortable with an existence that is "outside the accepted box of reality." This does not mean that Susan rejected Narnia or Aslan. Narnia is/was not heaven. Aslan, to Susan, was not the Christ. In her rejection of Narnia and Aslan was limited to a choice of ignoring or denying a sphere of existence that belief in the same bordered on mental instability in the eyes of other people. She walled off or boxed up her Narnia adventures as a means of maintaining her sanity in the "real world."

Imagine being Susan's husband, and the morning after you're married, Susan comes up to you and starts telling you about Narnia. Uh-oh! Time for the men in little white coats!
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Old Narnia was not heaven, the new Narnia was. Aslan represented Christ in every aspect of things and even if Su did reject the concept of Narnia just to cope it still means that she rejected the divinity of Aslan and in other words Christ.
As for the argument that Willis posed for Su only trying to cope in the real world thus becoming obsessed with grown up things why didn’t Peter as well as the rest of them do the same. They all would have gone through similar trauma of being grown one moment and being young the next so Su is no exception. One more point that I would like to touch on is that when Aslan said that Su and Peter could not go back Peter never denied Narnia or Aslan as did his sister. I think that Lewis wanted to paint a clear picture of what happened so those who lose faith and I don’t know why he chose Susan to do it but he did.
Narnia was a depiction of the Supernatural and we are faced with that decision as well and many will say that we are crazy that we believe in such outlandish things. Susan was afraid of what others would think of her for believing in the supernatural and so she aloud herself to desert it and finally convince herself that it was all a dream.
 
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I will not disagree with you, Forgiven Traitor. Please accept my comments as a view of how I "see" a lot of people.

To answer your question about Peter, I think that Peter and the others of his company represent a minority of people who can accept things beyond the physical (possibly spiritual) dimensions of what we all tend to call "the real world."
 
Before we get too heavily into psychoanalyzing Susan (from a distance), it might be helpful to remember that she's a fictional character, and that there's no "real" Susan to feel sorry for because there's no real Susan.

That being said, the character of Susan is not without meaning, because Lewis imbued all his major characters with meaning, and especially since 1) this was his last Narnia book, and 2) Susan's absence was such a discordant note in the general joy of the New Narnia. Lewis was using it to make an instructive point, and when a genius like Lewis does that, it's a good idea to attend to the instruction. Here's the actual dialogue from The Last Battle:
"My sister Susan," answered Peter shortly and gravely, "is no longer a friend of Narnia."

"Yes," said Eustace, "and whenever you've tried to get her to come and talk about Narnia or do anything about Narnia, she says 'What wonderful memories you have! Fancy your still thinking about all those funny games we used to play when we were children!'"

"Oh, Susan!" said Jill. "She's interested in nothing nowadays except nylons and lipstick and invitations. She always was a jolly sight too keen on being grown-up."

"Grown-up, indeed," said the Lady Polly. "I wish she would grow up. She wasted all her school time wanting to be the age she is now, and she'll waste the rest of her life trying to stay that age. Her whole idea is to race on to the silliest time of one's life as quick as she can and then stop there as long as she can."

"Well, let's don't talk about that now," said Peter...
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Now, before anyone drags in the old canard about Lewis being anti-women, attend to this quote from Magician's Nephew:
[Uncle Andrew] put on a very high, shiny, stiff collar...He put on a white waistcoat with a pattern on it and arranged his gold watch chain across the front...He put on his best frock-coat...He got out his best tall hat...he took [a flower] and put it in his button-hole..

Children have one kind of silliness, as you know, and grown-ups have another kind. At this moment Uncle Andrew was beginning to be silly in a grown-up way. Now that the Witch was no longer in the same room with him he was quickly forgetting how she had frightened him and thinking more and more of her wondrful beauty...

"Andrew, my boy," he said to himself as he looked in the glass, "you're a devilishly well-preserved fellow for your age. A distinguised looking man, sir."

You see, the foolish old man was actually beginning to imagine the Witch would fall in love with him. The two drinks probably had something to do with it; and so had his best clothes. But he was, in any case, as vain as a peacock; that was why he had become a Magician.
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There are many other examples of this in Lewis' writing, particularly in The Great Divorce (chapters 5 and 9 in particular), the fussy self-importance of Curry in That Hideous Strength, and in the short story The Shoddy Lands, found in the collection The Dark Tower. The pivotal point is that we humans have a tendency to let the trivial things of life occlude our view of the greater things. Vanity is one example of this, as both Uncle Andrew and Susan demonstrate. Lewis, speaking through Lady Polly, makes clear his opinion of this folly: "I wish she would grow up!" He sees these "adult mannerisms" for what they are: shows and posturing. To Lewis, being "grown up" meant much more than clothes and cigars (or nylons): it meant being a person of your word, having courage and fortitude, and keeping the important things clearly in sight. Susan's tragedy wasn't that she traded in Narnia, but what she traded it in for. Imagine how different the dialog would have been if Susan had chosen a more mature path; say, honorable marriage and motherhood, or charitable work, or even just being a working woman who looked after her duties to parents and others. The tragedy of Susan isn't that she didn't make it into the New Narnia (Lewis deliberately left that door open), or that she lost her parents and siblings, but that she traded her Queenship for a mess of pottage.

To me, speculating that Susan was somehow "hurt" that she wasn't allowed to return to Narnia, and out of this hurt rose her rejection of Narnia (thus, conveniently, casting some of the blame on that Big, Bad Aslan) is simply nonsense. Susan was already pulling away from Narnia even in Prince Caspian. What did Aslan say to her when they finally met at the base of Aslan's How? "You have listened to your fears, child." Susan was already giving in to fear, and what little we know of her later life indicates that she followed through on that path. Women who "race on to the silliest time of one's life as quick as she can and then stop there as long as she can" are women who fear (I know a few): they fear the creeping advance of the years, the loss of the bloom of youth (so worshipped by this culture), the decline in attention. Men suffer from this, too, it just manifests somewhat differently ("Mid-life crisis"?) Unlike Lady Polly, who gracefully welcomed the gift of age and maturity, Susan (from what we know) fled from it by setting up a false sanctuary (attractive young-ladyhood) and cowering in there, denying both her childhood and her approaching age.

Susan may have represented the majority of humans in this world, but that's Lewis' point. We all have a tendency to trade in the beauty of true, deep reality for the trite and worthless. For another example of this, look at the introspection of Mark Studdock at the end of That Hideous Strength. Trapped by his enemies and facing (he thinks) death, he realizes that all his life he's traded what he really wanted for what he thought would impress others:
He saw himself making believe that he enjoyed those Sunday afternoons with the athletic heroes of Grip while all the time (as he now saw) he was almost homesick for one of the old walks with Pearson - Pearson who he had taken such pains to leave behind. He saw himself as a teen laboriously reading rubbishy grown-up novels and drinking beer when what he really enjoyed was John Buchan and stone ginger. The hours that he had spent learning the very slang of each new circle that attracted him...When had he ever done what he wanted?
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If we're going to learn a lesson from Lewis through the character of Susan, let's remember to keep our eyes on the eternal, the significant, the holy, the "deep", and not be distracted by tritisms of the world, whatever form they come in.
 
Chronicles of Narnia was all about maturity. A boy that became a man when he faced Maugrim in mortal combat, then led an army against the White Witch. Rilian facing a midlife crisis before he was hardly old enough to shave, having to go rule rather than explore Bism. Let's be quite honest about CoN, Lewis was playing off the great dichotomy, one who enters the Kingdom of God as a child (innocence) and yet one who becomes mature in the faith and puts away childish things (responsibilty).

Lewis was teaching his readers to be CHILDLIKE without being CHILDISH. And yes, in the ways it counts, I hope I never "grow up." I never want to be too old to play word games or dream of castles and dragons. On the other hand when I have to make hard decisions on behalf of the people I love, I want to be wiser than Moses, steelier than David and more perceptive than Isaiah.

Christ turned the world upside down when he said "blessed are the poor". He did so again as Aslan when he basically said "mature are the children".
 
I see no reason to fear that she couldn't - after all, the Friends see the Pevensie parents way off in the "real" (i.e. heavenly) England, and it's only a matter of distance - which to them is no real bar as they now have all eternity in which to wander around Narnia-as-it-should-have-been, England-as-it-should-have-been, and every other world God ever created - probably including Charn-as-it-should-have-been too, since even that world was hardly likely to have been horrible from its beginning. It's all a question of whether Susan would have let Aslan back into her heart
 
I have to disagree...

I just finished TLB and the entire Susan situation is just not sitting right with me. I think everyone is over analyzing Susan's fate and the change in her character. I would be right there with you if it weren't for Lewis's essay "On Three Ways of Writing for Children."

Part of this essay is a defense of children's literature and fantasy writing.

"I am almost inclined to set it up as a cannon that a children's story which is enjoyed only by children is a bad children's story. The good ones last. A waltz which you can like only when you are waltzing is a bad waltz.
This cannon seems to me most obviously true of that particular type of children's story which is dearest to my own taste, the fantasy or fairy tale. Now the modern critical world uses "adult" as a term of approval. It is hostile to what it calls "nostalgia" and contemptuous of what it calls "Peter Pantheism." Hence a man who admits that dwarfs and giants and talking beasts and witches are still dear to him in his fifty-third year is now less likely to be praised for his perennial youth then scorned and pitied for arrested development. If I spend some little time defending myself against these charges, this is not so much because it matters greatly whether I am scorned and pitied as because the difference is germane to my whole view of the fairy tale and even of literature in general. My defense consists of three propositions."

It is in his first proposition that bears the crux of the tie in to Susan and her dismissal from the story line in The Last Battle.

"Critics who treat adult as a term of approval, instead of as a merely descriptive term, cannot be adult themselves. To be concerned about growing up, to admire the grown up because it is grown up, to blush at the suspicion of being childish; these things are the marks of childhood and adolescence. And in childhood and adolescence they are, in moderation, healthy symptoms. Young things ought to want to grow. But to carry on into middle life or even into early manhood this concern about being adult is a mark of really arrested development."

I don't disagree with his thesis. However, it would appear that Lewis in the very climax of his masterpiece choose to destroy the integrity of a core character, to prove an academic point.

Considering this, if Lewis conceived this plot twist with the intent of illustrating this behavior in her character he irrevocably damaged the series.

Yes, I concede that Susan could act out to deny childish whimsy. However, this betrayal is far deeper then that. Susan is completely incapable of denying her love of her family and their relationships. Think of the impact that this should have had of Lucy (who had previously been devastated by a very similar betrayal), and on Edmund (Whose learning experience should have also taught her a lesson). Lastly; Aslan, after her experiences could Susan deny Aslan and her love for him?

Honestly, I wish I had never read the essay. True even without it, this aberration would have gnawed at my gut but at least I would have been able to enjoy the speculation. I’m crushed.
 
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