The Last Battle or In Defence of Susan Pevensie

There is a YouTube Channel hosted by Dominic Noble who has done some videos of all the Narnia Books and he’s ended with the final Narnia Book — The Last Battle, the one destined to get many (if not all) fans up in arms about his treatment of Susan. [And for those of you who have not read the books: Spoiler Alert: Susan is excluded from Narnia, and both Jill’s/Polly’s verdict is especially damning.] I won’t reiterate it here because if you do a Google Search on ‘The Problem of Susan’ said quote will come up more often than not.

I don’t believe that Aslan caused the train crash, any more than he deliberately excluded Susan from Heaven {or the Real True Narnia}, it was simply the one thing that all human beings have, Free Will. And to turn away from what we like, to follow the crowd and pander to them is something many women do — and are often forced to do, simply because they are women and society, or rather societal norms force women into certain roles, that of being pretty, charming, subservient, quiet, biddable or ornamental. Therefore in CS Lewis’s world, the role of men and women differs and Lewis has the gall to suggest that ‘God has ordained it so.’ On that note, I can truly say that this statement is the height of arrogance to assume that you (and only you) have a hotline to God. I don’t think anyone can know the mind of God — and as my husband has said many times, “That’s even pre-supposing there is a God.” Of course being an Agnostic and a Humanist, Edward is not sure he believes in God anyway. Me, I was brought up in the Anglican Faith, many ‘bells and smells’ while I was at school, and then when went to University where the full thurifer, chapel bell calling pilgrims to prayer and even Latin Blessings were the norm. So it inured in me a fear of many things, God, Hell, Eternal Damnation for stepping out of line (and even stepping out of line when you didn’t know how you’d stepped out of line) which has left me with a feeling of not being truly sure of God, but too afraid to truly renounce my Faith because I’m afraid of the punishment. One could argue that this is not a good place to be, but The Last Battle screwed me up for years, when both Jill/Polly abuse Susan for liking ‘nylons, lipstick and invitations’ that told me that these were things that I shouldn’t like as a young woman and if I did I would lose my place in Heaven (or Proper Narnia is you prefer,) it also left me praying almost every single night while I was at Boarding School, for me to die in my sleep so that I would be able to get to Aslan’s Country. I contend that this was not the most healthy of attitudes for any youngster, as if death is preferable to living a long, happy, fulfilled life.

Some readers have suggested that all of Susan’s family dying is a punishment from Aslan, I don’t believe this to be the case. If we are to believe in Free Will, and that somehow, Tirian’s heartfelt plea opened the door to those friends of Narnia who were gathered together to reminisce about their time in Narnia and their adventures there. So one could argue it was either serendipitous or possibly Aslan’s machinations. Perhaps on this occasion I could run with the latter, that Aslan did step in to manipulate the ‘Friends of Narnia’ so that they could enter Narnia and save Tirian. The train crash was just happenstance which allowed Aslan to get ihem into Narnia that much quicker. And Susan being excluded from Narnia was not a punishment, merely the result of Susan simply not being there, so she did not die.

But although Jill/Polly are quite cruel to Susan after she has been identified as no longer a ‘Friend of Narnia’ I also blame the society in which Susan found herself, her parents and even the expectations of those around her. Susan is whisked off to America with her parents before the beginning of VoDT because she’s not very clever (although, again, we’re only told this, Susan’s voice is again absent) so she could do much better learning to ‘grow up’ and socialising with older men and learning to be a proper young lady. And this seems to be something that happens to many young women of the time, they are rendered voiceless by the people around them. We simply don’t know Susan’s perspective because we never hear Susan’s voice, in VoDT it’s her parents telling the reader that Susan is no good at schooling; in TLB it’s Jill/Polly who criticise her for liking ‘lipstick, nylons and invitations’ without asking the big question, ‘Why?’ And there are so many ‘Whys.’ Why is Susan repeatedly silenced? Not in the two early books, although she takes the role of the adult a tad too seriously [but who wouldn’t? We don’t know if she was told to look after her younger siblings by her mother.] Again, Susan is seen as being naggy and timid, she expresses reluctance to remain in Narnia when they discover the Faun Tunmnus’s house wrecked, but again she’s in the unenviable position of caring [or being made to care] for her siblings.

Much of Lewis’s writing never allows Susan to speak for herself, it’s always about other people’s perception of her — this has been mitigated somewhat by fanfiction, but I think that Lewis’s major failing is that he made his readers care abut Susan and then discarded her, he often wrote that he planned for Susan’s end to follow that pattern which is why his characterization of her in TLB is so poor.

Aslan did not banish Susan to Hell, any more than he denied her entrance to Heaven, but since humans are wont to see tragedies as punishments rather than cause and effect then the loss of all of her family might actually make Susan turn away from God, at least for a while, most followers of the two youngest Abrahamic Faiths believe that God is cruel, petty and vindictive which is something that Gaiman touches on in his short story, ‘The Problem of Susan’ when the student says that there must have been something wrong with Susan for her to be excluded from Heaven. The simple answer is that there is nothing wrong with Susan. As Robert Green Ingersoll wrote, ‘In nature there are neither rewards nor punishments; there are consequences.’ The simple facts are that five people boarded a train, two others were waiting on the platform when the train derailed and collided with the platform, which resulted in their deaths. Aslan may have manoeuvred those who had visited Narnia into taking steps to revisit his country and save it (if such a thing were possible, considering Roonwit the Centaur’s prediction concerning the end of Narnia) but it could also be argued that Aslan had absolutely nothing to do with the train crash, that it was horrible and awful and absolutely devastating for Susan, but that the fault cannot be laid at Aslan’s/Jesus’s or even at the feet of the Emperor-Over-Sea {God} It was a horrible event that happened and took Susan’s family away from her, but it also took the Scrubb’s son from them and the Pole’s daughter from them, Susan while experiencing perhaps the greatest loss in the family is not the only one grieving.

Lewis did the reader, and his creation, Susan a great disservice, but he also assumed that we would understand why he did what he did to Susan. There has been some speculation that he based Susan on his own attitude as a youngster, trying to fit in with the crowd, trying to please everyone. Lewis’s problem I think is that he never explains the ‘Why’ as in ‘Why has Susan become like this?’ The only voices the reader hears are others, and they’re always critical. There is also the feeling that had any of the others fallen away, Peter perchance, Lewis would not have hesitated to explain to the reader why Peter has ‘gone off the rails.’ But with Susan her voice is notably absent. Lewis also fails because he doesn’t realise (or perhaps he never did) how much people, especially young women, identified with Susan. That we felt a kinship with her, that the world that had been carved out for us [or allotted to us] was unsatisfying and yet we were supposed to accept it, I mean even Susan’s parents obviously don’t think that their daughter will do more than grow up and get married. Their dismissal of her is quite galling from a twentieth century perspective.

But even Gaiman falls into the trap of wondering ‘What was wrong with Susan that she wasn’t there? That she was excluded from Narnia?’ And again I return to the statement I made before, There is nothing wrong with Susan, she did nothing wrong. She did what Aslan told her to do, she sought to make a life in this world. And as for being banished from Narnia, we don’t know that she is. She is simply left alive while the rest of them go to Heaven. While Death doesn’t sound like a whole lot of fun, in the books it is implied that Peter and the others never stop wishing that they could return to Narnia, even when Aslan tells them they are too old and should seek him in their world. Of all of them, Susan is the one who does what she is told, I don’t believe she turns her back on Aslan, but because all we hear of her is criticism, and never hear Susan’s own thoughts we simply don’t know. Perhaps Lewis who considered himself a devout Christian should have taken the lesson of removing the plank from his own eye before seeking to remove the mote from his brother’s.

I like to think that Susan lived a long, happy and full life. There are many Fanfics, some good, some awful which is the case with all Fanfiction I believe, while Lewis did respond to the many fans who wrote to him enquiring after Susan’s fate and he replied that she was left alive ‘a rather silly and shallow young woman’, which is a statement I don’t for one second believe, although I do believe that she was depressed for a long time, I wish that the Lewis estate would commission a book about the rest of Susan’s life to show that she did as she’d promised, that she lived a long and happy life, possibly marrying, possibly not, but I like to think that she got to Aslan’s Country her own way. Hells if Emeth (who supposedly followed Tash) can get to Aslan’s Country, surely a Queen of Narnia can?