[Child of the 7th Age]

Silver Shod Muse -- I think you have made some good points, but I still feel that Lewis does not do as good a job as Tolkien in depicting certain kinds of women.

Perhaps, I should clarify. As Lewis depicts Susan, she is indeed someone I would have no interest in meeting. Indeed, as my parents can confirm, I was in open rebellion against the pressures of the world which were suggesting that I turn into someone like Susan whom I intently disliked! And this was at a time, many years ago, when such rebellion against female stereotypes was not common.

It was at least partially because of my intense desire to circumvent the Susans of the world that I elected to study for many years to earn a doctorate in medieval history. I wanted to be judged and appreciated for who I was --my mind, my values, my beliefs--rather than for what I looked like.

But while I dislike Susan, I question why Lewis chose her as the example of an apple turned rotten. The young boys in the story (Eustace, Edmund) were able to face evil and turn back from it.

Lewis did a great job of portraying young girls like Lucy and Jill or older women like Polly, but I don't think he could portray a figure like Galadriel or Goldberry or Arwen as well, a woman who had obvious sensual charm who was of childbearing age. I feel that Lewis had trouble depicting the transtion from girlhood to womanhood.

Jane, for example, in That Hideous Strength is a very harsh, "modern" woman--in the worst sense of that word. She only finds her way back to her role as mother-to-be under the strict guidance of her husband. And Eustace's mother Alberta is an even worse example of the overtly "modern" woman who is charging around ostensibly indoctrinating her son about "equal gender rights" while truly not possessing a single bone in her body that cares about her son or anything of real value.

To me that is one of the challenges of both life and writing in regard to gender relations--to be able to appreciate the physical attributes of the female (or male!) sex but not to be so fixed on it that the real and more important qualities like beliefs, values, and goodness get lost. And, I do feel Tolkien did a better job depicting this type of woman than Lewis did. (The one exception to this out of Lewis' many, many writings may be Till We Have Faces which is a retelling of Greek myth.)

Perhaps this difference was because Lewis had relatively few women of this type--both good in soul and attractive in body-- in his own private world (Oxford was extremely male at this point) until he met his wife-to-be which was very late in life. While Tolkien, in contrast, at least had the real life examples of wife and daughter.

I do enjoy reading Lewis, but this is one area where I feel he could have done a better job.

Anyways, your post was very interesting, and we may just have to agree to disagree since something like this really gets down to personal preference and what resonates in your heart. No real "proof" is possible one way or another. Thanks again.

sharon, the 7th age hobbit