Pullman rips on LOTR, others

[William Cloud Hicklin]

I absolutely *love* this:

Philip Pullman, author of The Golden Compass, hits back at critics who accuse him of peddling "candy-coated atheism". "I am a story teller," he said. "If I wanted to send a message I would have written a sermon."

Like he wasn't peddling a message? Like he didn't write a sermon? Puh-leez.

As one commentator at the link site said, it appears that somewhere towards the end of writing Book I Pullman was visited by annoying Jehovah's Witnesses and therefore spent the rest of the time scribbling "GoD SukZ!"

[Lalwendë]

More Pullman/Tolkien hype eh?

Because that's all it is. Hype. He plays on how he's not like Tolkien all the time and for a very good reason. Which author could ever even hope to be like Tolkien? You very rarely see any fantasy author laud Tolkien because as an inevitability they are all compared to him in reviews an on blubs (even on the covers of HDM); writers instead choose to brush over the influence Tolkien has had as something from childhood (Pratchett, Gaiman, Rowling etc) or they go for the anti-Tolkien thing (Pullman, Moorcock etc). To open up and say "Oh yes, I'm the biggest fan of Tolkien, ever" would be tantamount to admitting you are, in fact, Terry Brooks.

So Pullman is simply doing what others have done and going for an angle. There's a blog he writes on somewhere or other on t'internet where he quietly mentions how much he likes Tolkien's work but that never makes it into his hype...it doesn't 'sell'.

And remember who he is, a member of the British Chattering Classes, and one thing they Do Not Like is Fantasy. To do what Pullman has done and produce a work, nay, a trilogy of fantasy novels is tantamount to heresy. The Chattering Classes like their younglings to read serious works of fiction about 'real' things, such as the Tracy Beaker books and whatnot. Things About Dragons And Wizards are only to be tolerated, you can tell this by the fact that Potter novels are published in 'discreet' adult covers so you can hide the fact that you are reading something 'silly and childish' on the tube. And the sheer number of parents I've heard attaching the words Harry and Potter to swear words and exasperation...you can just tell they'd far rather their kids were reading novels about African orphans or something. When Pullman is quoted in The Observer as saying Tolkien Is Pants you can hear the cogs whirring in the minds of Jocasta and Tarquin of islington thinking "Hmmm, these Dark Materials books might be just the ticket for the children" because they are Not Like That Silly Tolkien.

The proof for me is however in the pudding and His Dark Materials is awesome and I'm not going to let what the writer says in his Observer interviews sway me towards dislike.

A lot of people do not and did not like Tolkien but this won't stop me liking their work. Now I must dig out that particularly nasty passage in A Writer's Life which details exactly what Kingsley Amis and Philip Larkin thought of Tolkien's lecturing style.

[William Cloud Hicklin]

Ah, yes, Amis. Who is at least honest enough to admit he didn't give a tinker's damn about Old English and was only there because it would be on the exam. No wonder he was bored.

Surely we've all encountered a professor or two like Tolkien. The Freshman English 101 survey in the 500-seat lecture hall is not their milieu- but catch them in a seminar with a few genuinely interested upperclassmen......

[Gwathagor]

I have only read the last ten pages or so of HDM, so this is very helpful and interesting. With my limited knowledge of Pullman, I'd have to say that my first impression of him is a rather sour one, based on his criticisms of Lewis and Tolkien ("infantile", "immature", "dolts"). He comes off as pathetic, whiny, and self-centered; I am inclined to dislike and ignore him.

[Lyta_Underhill]

And remember who he is, a member of the British Chattering Classes, and one thing they Do Not Like is Fantasy. To do what Pullman has done and produce a work, nay, a trilogy of fantasy novels is tantamount to heresy.

Thanks, Lal, for enlightening this backwoods Tennessee-American about an important aspect of Pullman's personality in a cultural context. I haven't really followed the brouhaha concerning the author himself that much, but I did enjoy the books quite a lot. I think every country and culture has a version of these "Chattering Classes." My own father disparages my tendency to base many of my moral values and spiritual truths on things I read in Lord of the Rings. Truth is everywhere, whether it be nestled in Fangorn Forest or hiding in the particles of Dust along a fantastic Northern Bridge. I enjoyed LOTR, Narnia AND His Dark Materials, all for different reasons. It doesn't matter what the authors think of other authors, what personal conceits underlie a writer's personality, or what political strategems are employed by writers to cater to a niche. The words speak for themselves; the worlds shine through the words, and Pullman did accede to the idea that the story lives in the interface between reader and author. There is no critic who can stand in this realm if one truly reads the words on the page. Second-guessing by authorial temperament seems to be a dangerous business, doesn' it?

[The Squatter of Amon Rûdh]

Originally Posted by William Cloud Hickli

What struck me about HDM was how fundamentally *adolescent* its thesis was- that all good would derive from sexual liberation and casting off authority. Nietzche for bratty teenagers.

I was put off by exactly the same atmosphere of juvenile posturing. It's also evident in Pullman's comments about Lewis' treatment of Susan Pevensey in the Narnia books, in which he appears entirely to miss the point: Lewis isn't casting his character out for growing interested in boys, but for abandoning her faith in favour of parties and nylons. Sexual maturity and only thinking about clothes and social gatherings are not the same thing, and only a fool or a charlatan would confuse them.

[Bêthberry]

Originally Posted by The Squatter of Amon Rûdh

I was put off by exactly the same atmosphere of juvenile posturing. It's also evident in Pullman's comments about Lewis' treatment of Susan Pevensey in the Narnia books, in which he appears entirely to miss the point: Lewis isn't casting his character out for growing interested in boys, but for abandoning her faith in favour of parties and nylons. Sexual maturity and only thinking about clothes and social gatherings are not the same thing, and only a fool or a charlatan would confuse them.

Yes, it is so very inappropriate to show up for Sunday service in nylons, and likely directly displaying the ill after affects of Saturday night partying. If only Susan had become interested in hats and the modest covering of one's head with them, that kind of vanity (and sinful coverup) would without a doubt have escaped Lewis' chastisement.

[Bêthberry]

Originally Posted by William Cloud Hickli

Like he wasn't peddling a message? Like he didn't write a sermon? Puh-leez.

All writers--all writers--display a fundamental world view in their work. Lord of the Rings has one--one that puts off some readers because it offers a 'sanitised' version of class social structure.

The presence of world view becomes particularly apparent in science fiction and fantasy where, because the genres are designed to present imagined/alternate worlds, writers can fall into the habit of overemphasising the world view, so much so that it becomes dogmatic rather than merely assumed.

Milton had a similar problem. Swift toyed with the possibilities. It's what puts me off Heinlein. It isn't peddling a message so much as struggling with the genre.

[William Cloud Hicklin]

Of course all writers have a worldview. But the amount of didacticism with which they present it varies considerably. I was responding to Pullman's claim that he wasn't sermonising, which is blatantly untrue.

I fact, in an interview done long before he had to worry about boxoffice, he expressly said his purpose in writing HDM was to 'undermine Christianity.' Now he has every right to do so if he wants: but please don't turn around later and fib about it.


On to Susan Pevensey and her nylons: I rather suspect that if someone had pointed out to Lewis pre-pub that that line could be interpreted the way Pullman (and others) have, he would quickly have amended it. He was trying to say that Susan had become enamoured of the trivial, the 'things of this world;' and had moreover confused them with being 'adult' whereas Narnia was 'childish.' Both Jack and Tollers really, really resented that sort of thinking; and unfortunately Lewis was enough of an Edwardian bachelor-chauvanist to associate 'trivial' + 'young woman' with a sort of Seventeen magazine caricature. He could just as well have said 'records and parties' or 'soap operas' or, if he were really aggressive, 'political theory and macroeconomics.' Rather like Jane at the beginning of That Hideous Strength.

Lord of the Rings has [a worldview]--one that puts off some readers because it offers a 'sanitised' version of class social structure.

However LR isn't about 'class social structure.' Aragorn or for that matter the Shire's squirearchs aren't engaged in stamping out democracy or an anarcho-syndicalist movement or whatever: whereas HDM is specifically at its core about resisting the evil Church and ultimately killing God and overthrowing the Heavenly dictatorship.

[Lalwendë]

If you don't grasp what Pullman is about, if you're still hooked on the notion that he hates God, you'd not go far wrong than to look at the lyrics of the first two verses of John Lennon's Imagine (read them if you prefer, if you're like me you'd prefer not to listen - heresy! I prefer George Harrison and Macca... ). I'll say it yet again, Pullman isn't anti-God, he is anti-Religion.

Of course, like I've already said, he knows there is a massive market out there of people who don't like fantasy and view things like Lewis and Tolkien through narrowed eyes, and what is he doing? He's opening his big mouth and being controversial. It sells. If you stray from the path of his Big Statements, you find a gentle, thoughtful and modest man. The deep, deep irony of course is that his big mouth is in good company as Lewis and Tolkien themselves were all-mouth-and-no-trousers when it came to stirring the wooden spoon and making grand statements. Masters of hyperbole one and all.

Still, if you want to let it put you off reading something truly meaty then so be it. It's your loss, not Pullman's. There's enough people out there willing to give him a shot.

I'm really not inclined to give Lewis very much rope however. Not only is Narnia a deadly dull series of books, confusing and childish in the extreme, it's packed full of stuff I find dodgy and the old excuses just do not wash I am afraid.

What he said about Susan is this:

The books don't tell us what happened to Susan. She is left alive in this world at the end, having by then turned into a rather silly, conceited young woman.

So he clearly wouldn't have altered what he said about Susan had one of us "do-gooding feminists" raised a hand of caution, it was intended that she end up like that. The important word he used was 'conceited' - so the excuse trotted out that it was about her materialism doesn't work. Conceit hasn't got anything to do with materialism, it is about self-regard, which Susan as an attractive young woman, clearly has lots of; Lewis sets it up plainly that she was immoral to grow self-confident and assured of her own sexual attractiveness. Contrast that with the full-figured beauty of women like Arwen and Luthien, even of Rosie, in Tolkien's work.

Other distasteful rubbish is in those books too. He rails against comprehensive education, makes fun of non-smokers, vegetarians and teetotallers - what a cheap shot! He comes across like the reactionary Richard Littlejohn of the Daily Mail once you sit and look at what he was saying. Saying he was a product of his age is no excuse either. So was Tolkien but he doesn't come across as some curmudgeon who despises anyone who doesn't live exactly as he does!

The most amusing thing of all of course is all this rubbish Lewis came up with to explain his allegories. Well I'm one of millions who failed to be taken in by his method of recruiting as I failed to see the analogies and still fail to see most of them - I'd need a Masters in Theology to do so. But I don't fail to see some of his more odious Little Englander attitudes now I look with an adult pair of eyes. Perhaps that's his message? That if you are critical of Little Englanders then you're just like Susan...

Sorry, but as a woman, and as a product of comprehensive education, I find Lewis odious at times and having had 37 years of it, I'm not in the slightest inclined to listen to excuses. If he'd just written about his talking Lions and Beavers and just left it at that his work might have been a lot more charming, but then he had to say nasty things and make nasty allusions...bring on the inflated bladder!

[William Cloud Hicklin]

Lal:

You write as if I haven't read HDM. I have. And I realize that Pullman is (or can be) a pleasant tweedy sort who calls himself a 'cultural Anglican' and enjoys singing Christmas carols- but who also doesn't find anything unseemly in publicly slagging off other writers, whether he really means it or no.

None of that alters the fact that in Vol III his storytelling collapses under the weight of his preaching: and however much he wanted his finale to evoke Blake and Milton, to me at least it's more like Act III of Faust as retold by William Burroughs. So it's disingenous of him to disclaim sermonising when he so plainly is. At least Lewis, love him or hate him, never denied writing Christian apologias.

The important word he used was 'conceited' - so the excuse trotted out that it was about her materialism doesn't work. Conceit hasn't got anything to do with materialism, it is about self-regard, which Susan as an attractive young woman, clearly has lots of; Lewis sets it up plainly that she was immoral to grow self-confident and assured of her own sexual attractiveness.

There you're really, really reaching. One can be conceited about one's looks- but also about one's intelligence, wealth, athletic prowess, social status..... If Lewis were fixated on the physical he could have used, say, 'vain.' Nor would I equate 'self-confidence' with 'conceit.' The one is an excess of the other, which is perjorated and rightly so. By trying to force a feminist narrative of sexuality and female submission onto this (like your snark about 'keeping her head properly covered') you really make yourself sound like those old Freudian critics to whom a cigar was never just a cigar.

All Lewis was saying was that Susan had become self-absorbed, prideful, and obsessed with the 'things of this world' (by which is not meant the material, but rather the evanescent)- and thereby forgot and so lost Narnia. This is hardly radical or reactionary: even atheists will acknowledge that humility and selflessness are virtues.


(NB: Eustace's school was not a Comprehensive, which IIRC didn't exist in the early 50's, but a non-state 'experimental' school.)

[davem]

Originally Posted by William Cloud Hickli

(NB: Eustace's school was not a Comprehensive, which IIRC didn't exist in the early 50's, but a non-state 'experimental' school.)

Made me wonder about Waldorf Education/Steiner schools http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Waldorf_schools, & whether CSL was having a bit of a dig at Barfield....

[Folwren]

Lal, you really miss the point of Lewis' Chronicles of Narnia. You shouldn't carry on so about something you obviously don't understand. You only make yourself appear foolish and snobbish. I know better than to think that you really are foolish, but if I didn't, I'm afraid I'd have to think very poorly of you after that last post...

You'll notice I don't go on for pages about how awful Pullman's writing and beliefs are.

-- Folwren

[Lalwendë]

Originally Posted by Folwren

Lal, you really miss the point of Lewis' Chronicles of Narnia. You shouldn't carry on so about something you obviously don't understand. You only make yourself appear foolish and snobbish. I know better than to think that you really are foolish, but if I didn't, I'm afraid I'd have to think very poorly of you after that last post...

You'll notice I don't go on for pages about how awful Pullman's writing and beliefs are.

-- Folwren

Sorry Folwren, but I do have to say this is very peculiar. I do happen not to like Narnia nor Lewis (though the film and TV adaptations have been immensely enjoyable and Shadowlands has me in bits). I first picked up Narnia 23 years ago and have struggled to find enjoyment in them ever since. Yes there are nice things in them and nice passages, but they simply do not work as good literature for me, and for much of those past 23 years I have been examining why they do not work.

You're quite free to go on about how awful Pullman is, as many have done on this thread (and indeed as davem does at home) as I am quite adult enough to discuss this coherently with anyone and not think poorly of them merely for their taste in books.

If you think I have an issue with Christian writers then I must ask why I enjoy John Masefield so much...

[Lalwendë]

Originally Posted by William Cloud Hickli

There you're really, really reaching. One can be conceited about one's looks- but also about one's intelligence, wealth, athletic prowess, social status..... If Lewis were fixated on the physical he could have used, say, 'vain.' Nor would I equate 'self-confidence' with 'conceit.' The one is an excess of the other, which is perjorated and rightly so. By trying to force a feminist narrative of sexuality and female submission onto this (like your snark about 'keeping her head properly covered') you really make yourself sound like those old Freudian critics to whom a cigar was never just a cigar.

All Lewis was saying was that Susan had become self-absorbed, prideful, and obsessed with the 'things of this world' (by which is not meant the material, but rather the evanescent)- and thereby forgot and so lost Narnia. This is hardly radical or reactionary: even atheists will acknowledge that humility and selflessness are virtues.

Come on, it's really pushing it for an excuse when talking about a character who is said to be interested in 'lipstick, nylons and party invitations' - all shorthand for a young woman who is plainly interested in attracting men! If Lewis had been criticising conceit about intelligence he might have had a go at her Beatnik beret and clutch of shiny paperbacks by Sartre and Proust.

I wouldn't dare say you or any of us here would equate self-confidence with conceit, but Lewis plainly did. And I'm afraid that if someone makes a very odd and arresting comment about the nature of womanhood then it is an inevitability that women will wish to comment upon that. And we have every right to do so.

None of that alters the fact that in Vol III his storytelling collapses under the weight of his preaching: and however much he wanted his finale to evoke Blake and Milton, to me at least it's more like Act III of Faust as retold by William Burroughs. So it's disingenous of him to disclaim sermonising when he so plainly is. At least Lewis, love him or hate him, never denied writing Christian apologias.

Preaching or imagining? I'd say it rather collapses under his ambition and the whole weight of story comes down upon him here. This is something I've noticed in a lot of the best fantasy, that towards the finale the writer struggles, and sometimes just about 'loses' it. Tolkien did it, you can tell by the high falutin' language and the headlong rush of the narrative; Peake did it, with the sparse and weird third volume of Gormenghast; Rowling does it in the final volume of Potter which is seriously intense. Pullman does it too - he even loses his main protagonist somewhere along the way. What all of them have in common is that they have said things along the lines of they were 'trying to find out what happened'.

In the melee of Pullman's third book I rather found that the 'sermonising' was lost! There was so much in there that it's incredibly hard to find exactly what he is on about.

Where Pullman differs in essence to Lewis is that he does not deny that he has an agenda in there somewhere. We know some of what he's about. But not so with Lewis with his mumbo-jumbo about creating myths to lead people to something or other, which just doesn't work - and I am so not alone in thinking that!

[William Cloud Hicklin]

Come on, it's really pushing it for an excuse when talking about a character who is said to be interested in 'lipstick, nylons and party invitations' - all shorthand for a young woman who is plainly interested in attracting men!

Or rather shorthand for a Paris Hilton, a Britney Spears or an Anna Nicole Smith. Surely you're not asserting in some uber-Pagliesque way that bimbohood is the new postmodern feminism, are you?

[Lyta_Underhill]

This is something I've noticed in a lot of the best fantasy, that towards the finale the writer struggles, and sometimes just about 'loses' it. Tolkien did it, you can tell by the high falutin' language and the headlong rush of the narrative; Peake did it, with the sparse and weird third volume of Gormenghast; Rowling does it in the final volume of Potter which is seriously intense. Pullman does it too - he even loses his main protagonist somewhere along the way. What all of them have in common is that they have said things along the lines of they were 'trying to find out what happened'.

At the risk of lagging and taking off on an aside, I might address something that made me think in Lal's quoted post here: the inclusion of Mervyn Peake's Gormenghast "trilogy." I think this body of work is wrongly labeled thus, since Titus Alone is so very different from the other two preceding volumes and Gormenghast itself is conspicuously absent, as is the main (and most interesting) antagonist, Steerpike. Also, Peake was himself "fallen off" into the ravages of Parkinson's disease, which rendered him unable to finish his third volume definitively and coherently. The work we see is edited into shape by his wife, Maeve, and seems to reflect confusion of mind at work. Alas for Mervyn Peake, whose work I greatly admire!

The inclusion of Peake also put me in mind of the subversive mindset embodied by Pullman's Lyra Belacqua. While we are dazzled in Titus Groan and Gormenghast by the machinations of the careful villain Steerpike, we also see the development of Titus, himself a subversive character and original thinker. He is drawn to the Wild Girl, drawn away from the ages-old tradition represented by Gormenghast itself, drawn away from the rock of unchanging thought that, in Peake's case, seems to have represented the monarchy of Britain, but underneath this is also a hint that it might have included the "rock" of the established church as well. The clue comes in his ancillary work "Boy in Darkness," wherein the young Titus gets lost in the forest and meets archetypal animal characters who hold him captive. One, the Lamb, seems to represent acquiescence, a laying down before that which "is and always has been," an acceptance of his place as heir and the mindset that is required for him to become part of the unending "stones" of Gormenghast. Titus has what it takes to break away from tradition and to think for himself. We see that Steerpike, although he is clever and uses his vast knowledge to his advantage, is limited in this capacity, and he cannot think beyond the tradition and "stones" of Gormenghast. Titus goes beyond, and I think Peake wanted to explore this "beyond" in Titus Alone, but, alas, he himself went beyond before he could bring it to clarity for us readers.

In a sense, I get the hint that Pullman wishes to do this by the device of laying bare the veneer of the Church and the false gods it has raised to be the projections of its self-serving policy. This is an agenda, certainly, and it is rarely done perfectly; I don't think Pullman did it in a way that could separated his secondary world from the primary world he is criticising. But I admire someone who can illustrate this concept in a believable way, even if it does fall short of perfection.

I think the reason I raise Tolkien above all these authors--Pullman, Lewis, Peake and the rest--is that he evokes a delicate and fragile realm that cannot be directly looked into--Faerie comes alive in that "corner of the eye," "edge of the forest" way that keeps Samwise forever looking for Elves in the Shire in his early days. Tolkien may have his own "agenda," but he is not stuffing down anyone's throat. His world, in my opinion, is the finest for his light touch upon it. For all its "high-falutin'" language in Return of the King, the very richness of Middle Earth transcends these imperfections. I guess maybe this post should be "why Tolkien is my favorite author," eh? I am not even going to get into the Lewis thing right now!

[Bêthberry]

Originally Posted by William Cloud Hickli

On to Susan Pevensey and her nylons: I rather suspect that if someone had pointed out to Lewis pre-pub that that line could be interpreted the way Pullman (and others) have, he would quickly have amended it. He was trying to say that Susan had become enamoured of the trivial, the 'things of this world;' and had moreover confused them with being 'adult' whereas Narnia was 'childish.' Both Jack and Tollers really, really resented that sort of thinking; and unfortunately Lewis was enough of an Edwardian bachelor-chauvanist to associate 'trivial' + 'young woman' with a sort of Seventeen magazine caricature. He could just as well have said 'records and parties' or 'soap operas' or, if he were really aggressive, 'political theory and macroeconomics.' Rather like Jane at the beginning of That Hideous Strength.

Just have to ask this question here: what is the point/purpose in the narrative of having one of the children fall away from Narnia? And in the particular manner of the falling away?

If Lewis thought he was preparing minds to accept a greater story later when they came to it in adolescence, what was he doing in having one of the girls 'stray'? Why were the falling aways of the boys earlier forgiveable but not Susan's? And why is it so closely associated with , as our inestimable Lal has pointed out, things that suggest sexual coming of age? Is he preparing for readers to believe all the historically received notions of Eve being the greater sinner, and of women being morally inferior and culpable for the fall, being the more deceived? Really, was he preconditioning girls to believing that they must cover their heads in church out of their responsibility for Eve's sin? And submit to the "churching" ceremony to cleanse themselves after childbirth before they can return to public church services?

What kind of preconditioning was he about with Susan? It's got nothing to do with promoting humility and selflessness as virtues--if that's what Lewis was into, why didn't he run counter to traditional cultrual orthodoxy and demonstrate those traits in a male?

Originally Posted by William Cloud Hickli

However LR isn't about 'class social structure.'

Precisely. And its view of an idyllic social organization without any strife, where there is clearly private ownership of property rather than communal ownership, provides the kind of silence which speaks volumes.

Originally Posted by Folwen

Lal, you really miss the point of Lewis' Chronicles of Narnia. You shouldn't carry on so about something you obviously don't understand. You only make yourself appear foolish and snobbish. I know better than to think that you really are foolish, but if I didn't, I'm afraid I'd have to think very poorly of you after that last post...

Rather than dissing Lal for saying things you think are wrong, why don't you tell us what you think is the point of Lewis' Narnia? Let's keep to the books rather than to each other, shall we?

[Estelyn Telcontar]

Thank you for that good reminder to us all, Bêthberry. It's clear that this issue won't be resolved unanimously, so it's very important to let each person express personal opinions without judging them. Please state your opinion clearly and give your reasons; whether others are convinced is beyond your influence.

[piosenniel]

I'll just throw these into the mix:

Here's the link to the short story previously referred to by davem - Neil Gaiman's *The Problem of Susan*.

And here's a link to an interesting essay & discussion of The Problem of Susan on a LiveJournal site.

[William Cloud Hicklin]

Just have to ask this question here: what is the point/purpose in the narrative of having one of the children fall away from Narnia? And in the particular manner of the falling away? If Lewis thought he was preparing minds to accept a greater story later when they came to it in adolescence, what was he doing in having one of the girls 'stray'? Why were the falling aways of the boys earlier forgiveable but not Susan's?

Given that the Last Battle is of course an allegory or at least an analogy of the Christian Judgment Day, it would have been, well, dishonest for Lewis not to cover the Goats as wll as the Sheep. More specifically Lewis, who was always interested in individual faith and action as they relate to salvation (see Screwtape) was making a point which is key in Lewisian theology: that indifference is often more fatal than defiant Miltonesque sin. Satan is no atheist! Edmund certainly committed a very bad act: but it was forgivable because *everything* is forgivable- provided one wants to be forgiven. Susan had simply ceased to care.

Why Susan? Well, it had to be somebody, and Susan was really the extra one. Peter (name no accident) was the High King/Viceroy/Vicar/ Pope of Aslanism. Lucy was always the Good One, the one whose belief was purest. Edmund- well, it would have blown the point of Vol 1 if he's condemned anyway in the end. That leaves Susan, the least interesting Pevensey anyway.

Is he preparing for readers to believe all the historically received notions of Eve being the greater sinner, and of women being morally inferior and culpable for the fall, being the more deceived? Really, was he preconditioning girls to believing that they must cover their heads in church out of their responsibility for Eve's sin? And submit to the "churching" ceremony to cleanse themselves after childbirth before they can return to public church services?

Is this a deliberate strawman? Are you accusing Lewis of believing or advocating such snakehandler nonsense?

Precisely. And its view of an idyllic social organization without any strife, where there is clearly private ownership of property rather than communal ownership, provides the kind of silence which speaks volumes.

I'd like to think you're not trolling here, but I equally wouldn't want to think you're serious.

In the first place, the Shire is intended to be Home: comfortable, familiar, a little childish, even if JRRT can't help a few puckish jabs at bourgeois mentality. (Strife, if without bloodshed, clearly does take place, from Frodo's mushroom-raids to the the Bilbo/S-B feud to the very existence of lawyers.) A great statewide commune would have been as alien as Carter's Mars, and required a great deal of explanation and delving into political economy that Tolkien plainly had no interest in doing. No 'Warwickshire village about the time of Queen Victoria's Diamond Jubilee' was remotely Communard!

In the second place, the notion that 'strife' is an inevitable result of private property and can be avoided only by communal ownership is a Marxist notion which not only would have been rejected by Tolkien, but also by the overwhelming majority of rational human beings. Why should he bother to be anything but silent about a fringe theory held only by a handful of people on the looney Left? The rest of us live in a world of property ownership. Again, as I posted monts ago: Tolkien wasn't writing a political novel.

[William Cloud Hicklin]

BTW, piosenniel, thanks for the livejournal link, which includes this very apt passage (I had forgotten it):

"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 all the rest of her life trying to stay that age. Her whole idea is to race onto the silliest time of one's life as quick as she can and stop there as long as she can."

And the very comparable quote from the short-story The Shoddy Lands:

...all her clothes and bath salts and two-piece swimsuits and indeed the voluptuousness of her every look and gesture, had not, and never had had, the meaning which every man would read, and was intended to read, into them. They were a huge overture to an opera in which she had no interest at all; a coronation procession with no queen at the centre of it; gestures, gestures about nothing.

About says it all.

[Bêthberry]

Originally Posted by William Cloud Hickli

Given that the Last Battle is of course an allegory or at least an allegory of the Christian Judgment Day, it would have been, well, dishonest for Lewis not to cover the Goats as wll as the Sheep. More specifically Lewis, who was always interested in individual faith and action as they relate to salvation (see Screwtape) was making a point which is key in Lewisian theology: that indifference is often more fatal than defiant Miltonesque sin. Satan is no atheist! Edmund certainly committed a very bad act: but it was forgivable because *everything* is forgivable- provided one wants to be forgiven. Susan had simply ceased to care.

Well, of course if we are going to have an allegory of the Christian Judgement Day, we should expect the relative proportions to be slightly different. Aren't there supposed to be more goats than sheep?

Originally Posted by Mr. Quickli

Why Susan? Well, it had to be somebody, and Susan was really the extra one. Peter (name no accident) was the High King/Viceroy/Vicar/ Pope of Aslanism. Lucy was always the Good One, the one whose belief was purest. Edmund- well, it would have blown the point of Vol 1 if he's condemned anyway in the end. That leaves Susan, the least interesting Pevensey anyway.

What an intriguing trinity you postulate: Peter/ Edmund/ Lucy. But who says that the moral/spiritual worth of a human being is determined by "interest", by charm, charisma, readerly appetite?

Fact still remains that in traditional Christianity, the Fall is the female's fault and so Lewis is perpetuating that moral vision of the female's failing. Just read a few Medieval Churchmen to get a flavour of the virulent excoriation of women that is part of social history of the faith. Lewis is by no means as misogynist as the Church Fathers but he unfortunately uses traditional notions of culpability to express his idea of falling away from faith.

Originally Posted by berry

Is he preparing for readers to believe all the historically received notions of Eve being the greater sinner, and of women being morally inferior and culpable for the fall, being the more deceived? Really, was he preconditioning girls to believing that they must cover their heads in church out of their responsibility for Eve's sin? And submit to the "churching" ceremony to cleanse themselves after childbirth before they can return to public church services?

Originally Posted by Mr. Wicki

Is this a deliberate strawman? Are you accusing Lewis of believing or advocating such snakehandler nonsense?

No. Yes. If you have a philosophy/theology that develops a schism between mind and body, between spiritual and material, then it's going to be a problem handling the very material question of procreation, especially if you have a story so dependent upon virgin birth. (Wasn't it you who asked about Danae's golden showers on a thread recently?)

Originally Posted by Mr. Quickli

However LR isn't about 'class social structure.'

Originally Posted by Bb

Precisely. And its view of an idyllic social organization without any strife, where there is clearly private ownership of property rather than communal ownership, provides the kind of silence which speaks volumes.

Originally Posted by WCH

I'd like to think you're not trolling here, but I equally wouldn't want to think you're serious.

In the first place, the Shire is intended to be Home: comfortable, familiar, a little childish, even if JRRT can't help a few puckish jabs at bourgeois mentality. (Strife, if without bloodshed, clearly does take place, from Frodo's mushroom-raids to the the Bilbo/S-B feud to the very existence of lawyers.) A great statewide commune would have been as alien as Carter's Mars, and required a great deal of explanation and delving into political economy that Tolkien plainly had no interest in doing. No 'Warwickshire village about the time of Queen Victoria's Diamond Jubilee' was remotely Communard!

In the second place, the notion that 'strife' is an inevitable result of private property and can be avoided only by communal ownership is a Marxist notion which not only would have been rejected by Tolkien, but also by the overwhelming majority of rational human beings. Why should he bother to be anything but silent about a fringe theory held only by a handful of people on the looney Left? The rest of us live in a world of property ownership. Again, as I posted monts ago: Tolkien wasn't writing a political novel.

You're right, he wasn't. But that still does not mean readers cannot discuss his choice to write an a-political story, particularly since he uses the theme of regained kingship but avoids some of the concommitant situations of monarchies. And, actually, I wasn't thinking at all about Marxist theory, but thinking about pre-agrarian or early agrarian cultures, or even Viking culture--Rohan?--when I was thinking about communal ownership, trying to 'place' just where Tolkien imagined the Shire in terms of human development. In Victorian times a man could not vote unless he owned property of a certain value--not sure what the laws were in Edwardian times--and given real estate in Old Blighty at the time that stipulation certainly caused some strife in terms of a lack of political power.

But even if we take The Shire as Home, which you very interestingly and imaginatively suggest, Tolkien's assumption--or is it yours?-- that Home is always so comfortable is . . . a political statement about that form of domestic organisation. And, if you are going to argue that The Shire is Home, then that tantalizingly suggests the Ring story is almost an allegory about not wanting to grow up, Frodo wanting to save the Shire and all. Was he a kind of Peter Pan, wanting to preserve that comfortable childhood, and when he found he couldn't, he just . . . was the opposite of Susan/Wendy.

I have no idea where I'm going with this, as it's late and I've been continually interrupted. . . . Thanks, pio, for those links. They must, alas, remain unread until after this last holiday weekend. I certainly hope that does not make me sound as frivolous as Susan.