The "Fair" Sex in LotR

[The Silver-shod Muse]

I am young and, by most people's standards, should be influenced (or governed) by an inexorable mixture of peer pressure and hormones. This is certainly not so, nor has it ever been. It is deeply offensive to me when an ignorant person makes some broad generalization that covers what my gender and age group would like to hear ("You'll have plenty of boyfriends soon enough." and that's definitely a euphemism)

It is also because of this that I tend to avoid people of my own age. In fact, I am terrified of them and what they might do to my understanding of the world. I have always felt simultaneously very much older and very much younger than I really am, and I develop friendships more readily with people that are older or younger than myself. Enough psychology. To the point:

Child, I really cannot agree with your opinion of Lewis. I have always felt as he did. Maybe the reason that evil often (not always; recall Uncle Andrew and Miraz) stemmed from women characters is that Lewis gratifyed the woman's ability to control and influence, and also recognized that she is given the choice (and the means to enact her choice) of good or evil as well as any man.

Susan was probably the manifestation of his dislike for that certain kind of girl that is always trying to be that certain kind of woman - shallow and silly and too grown-up. She is not dismissed from Narnia's gift, she dismisses herself by refusing to believe, which is just what the dwarves do in the Last Battle ("The dwarves are for the dwarves!").

And let's not forget the virtuous Calormene, Aravis. She was anything but silly and innocent. In fact, she was a bold, honorable, and admittedly rebellious shieldmaiden; Lewis' version of Eowyn. I love her reply to Shasta:

"Why, it's only a girl!" he exclaimed.
"And what business is it of yours if I am only a girl?" snapped the stranger. "You're probably only a boy."

At the beginning of The Last Battle, when Tirian visits England in his dream, all of the "friends of Narnia" were gathered together to discuss Narnia. Polly, a very old woman by that time, was present, (described as "an old woman with wise, merry, twinkling eyes") as was Jill, who lent her skill with the bow to Narnia in the battle before the stable door later on in the story, and Lucy, the tender-hearted girl that started all of the adventures with the faun Tumnus. The Chronicles, at least, have no lack of heroines exhibiting the entire spectum of virtues and vices.

In fact, it is Jill who points out that Susan is "interested in nothing now-a-days except nylons and lipstick and invitations. She always was a jolly sight too keen on being grown-up." And Lucy's reply, "Grown-up indeed. I wish she would grow up... 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."

Lewis does not put down women, but the loss of the ability to believe and to be truly "grown-up".