Narnia: Good Hair, Bad Hair

Content Note: Racism, Murder, Rape, Domestic Violence, Violent Deities, Animal Attacks

Narnia Recap: Prince Caspian has been told (in flashback form!) about the peoples of Narnia. 

Ana's Note: Instead of my usual sprinkling of links in-text, I'm going to place many of them at the end because some of them require content notes. Also be aware that this is a post about racism in the context of (among other things) hair texture. If that statement drew a total blank for you, please note the links at the end of the post and check your privilege before posting. I appreciate your help in keeping this a safe space.

Prince Caspian, Chapter 5: Caspian's Adventure in the Mountains

Today I'd like to talk a little about Proximate Causes and Ultimate causes. A proximate cause is a cause which is closest to an event, with an ultimate cause being an underlying or "real" cause under the proximate one. (And an "ultimate" cause can itself be "proximate" for a deeper ultimate cause. Nested causes!) So if someone says "why did the abandoned warehouse burn down", the proximate cause would be (if I understand my terms correctly) "because gasoline and accelerant and matches", but the ultimate cause would be "because the government wanted to cover up the evidence of the badly-scaled alien invasion". They're both causes but they're causes that answer the question from an entirely different point of view.

And this is important in literary analysis! Because one thing that is fun to do in literary analysis is to point out trends. So if, say, you notice a trend like Feminists Being Frequently Portrayed As Evil In Literature [1], and you then point out as an example that Queen Constantina Charlotte Ermintrude Gwinyvere Maisie Marguerite Anne [2] is of course Evil "because she's a feminist", then someone is going to pop up and helpfully explain that QCCEGMMA is evil because she bathes in the blood of her murdered servants every morning, and the fact that she's a feminist is just incidental.

When this happens -- as it inevitably does -- the important thing to remember here is that we're talking proximate causes versus ultimate causes. Yes, the proximate cause of QCCEGMMA's evilness is because she's a murderer who bathes in the blood of innocents. But the ultimate cause of her evilness, or so the deconstructer is asserting, is that the author didn't understand feminism and so decided to combine "feminism" with "evil". (Or even just made a mistake, and accidentally furthered to a disturbing trend!) And that this happens a lot.

So when I now say that Chapter 5 introduces us to Nikabrik the Dwarf and when I then assert that Nikabrik is Evil because he's a Black Dwarf with Bad Hair and a Marginalized Person who refuses to give cookies to Prince Caspian for meeting a bare minimum of decency, that is me making a statement about ultimate causes. I'm fully aware that the more proximate causes of Nikabrik's evilness are that he has no qualms about killing wounded human children, he is intensely racist towards half-dwarves, he wants to resurrect the White Witch, and he consorts with people who are Not Very Nice. And now I've made everyone else aware of those things well ahead of time (spoilers!) so we're all on the same page.

Now let's dive into the text.

   AFTER THIS, CASPIAN AND HIS TUTOR had many more secret conversations on the top of the Great Tower, and at each conversation Caspian learned more about Old Narnia, so that thinking and dreaming about the old days, and longing that they might come back, filled nearly all his spare hours. [...]
   After some years there came a time when the Queen seemed to be ill and there was a great deal of bustle and pother about her in the castle and doctors came and the courtiers whispered. This was in early summertime. And one night, while all this fuss was going on, Caspian was unexpectedly wakened by Doctor Cornelius after he had been only a few hours in bed.


Just to fill you in on the background, Caspian has learned all sorts of things like History and Archery and Music, and he's also noticed that his aunt the queen hates him and that his uncle the king is a dreadful ruler with high taxes and stern laws and general wanton cruelty. How he noticed that is not directly mentioned, and it's kind of a shame since it's a rare case of a privileged character in literature learning to see things from another point of view, and it would be nice to see it, but we're on a schedule and I respect that. FULL SPEED AHEAD.

   "Hush!" said the Doctor. "Trust me and do exactly as I tell you. Put on all your clothes; you have a long journey before you."
   Caspian was very surprised, but he had learned to have confidence in his Tutor and he began doing what he was told at once. When he was dressed the Doctor said, "I have a wallet for you. We must go into the next room and fill it with victuals from your Highness's supper table."
   "My gentlemen-in-waiting will be there," said Caspian.
   "They are fast asleep and will not wake," said the Doctor. "I am a very minor magician but I can at least contrive a charmed sleep."
   They went into the antechamber and there, sure enough, the two gentlemen-in-waiting were, sprawling on chairs and snoring hard.


The queen has delivered a baby boy and now suddenly Prince Caspian is unsafe. Miraz had been keeping him around and alive and groomed for the position of king because he preferred his nephew be king than a stranger, but now that he has his own son, he wants to murder Caspian as soon as possible. Cornelius is bravely risking his life and limb to help the prince escape, and he's doing it in a fashion so sensible that Mrs. Beaver would be proud: he's getting the boy properly clothed and fitted with food and provisions.

Of course, it's a shame that Caspian's gentlemen-in-waiting will almost certainly be punished for letting him slip away. I mean, if Cornelius honestly believes Miraz will take his head off just for telling the crown prince about Old Narnia, and if Miraz is as cruel as Caspian observes, then I'm sure that Miraz will torture or kill the guards who let his nephew slip away and mount a civil war against him. But those men are spies and tools of Miraz, no doubt, and even were they not, it's not like Caspian and Cornelius should be held responsible for what Miraz does to them -- it's on Miraz's head if he chooses to behave evilly, and Caspian and Cornelius should not be blamed for that choice which they have no control over. Victim-blaming is not good, is what I'm saying.

But...wait. I've seen this before, haven't I? Hang on, where's my copy of The Horse and His Boy?

   "Then I called the maid who was to go with me to the woods and perform the rites of Zardeenah and told her to wake me very early in the morning. And I became merry with her and gave her wine to drink; but I had mixed such things in her cup that I knew she must sleep for a night and a day. As soon as the household of my father had committed themselves to sleep I arose and put on an armor of my brother's which I always kept in my chamber in his memory. I put into my girdle all the money I had and certain choice jewels and provided myself also with food, and saddled the mare with my own hands and rode away in the second watch of the night. [...]"
   "And what happened to the girl -- the one you drugged?" asked Shasta.
   "Doubtless she was beaten for sleeping late," said Aravis coolly. "But she was a tool and spy of my stepmother's. I am very glad they should beat her."

Huh. Well, you know, I'm not going to blame Lewis for recycling a good escape scene. Sleeping drugs all round and food provisioning and... what's this?

   "Draw near, Aravis my daughter. See! My paws are velveted. You will not be torn this time."
   "This time, sir?" said Aravis.
   "It was I who wounded you," said Aslan. "I am the only lion you met in all your journeyings. Do you know why I tore you?"
   "No, sir."
   "The scratches on your back, tear for tear, throb for throb, blood for blood, were equal to the stripes laid on the back of your stepmother's slave because of the drugged sleep you cast upon her. You needed to know what it felt like."

Well! That's...weird. I think I missed the part in The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe where Edmund was turned into stone so that he would know what it felt like, or betrayed to an enemy so that he would know what it felt like, or put over to death as a traitor because it would be a good character lesson for him what with him (supposedly) having such a bad attitude all that time. And I must have missed the part in Prince Caspian -- I'm sure it's coming! -- where Cornelius the Dwarf is beaten or tortured or mauled or even executed so that he would know what it felt like when Miraz ordered the same done to the drugged guards he so cavalierly magicked and never thought twice of again.

I mean, it must be that I made a mistake and missed those punishments against Edmund and Cornelius, punishments based on things they didn't do, punishment based on things that evil people did to other people, evil people whom Edmund and Cornelius had no power to stop and were forced to make terrible bargains in order to escape and survive. Because I'm pretty sure that Aslan is always the same and steadfast and doesn't just make up new rules on the spur of the moment, so if he visits an eye-for-eye punishment on Aravis on behalf of her drugged guard, then he surely will do the same to Cornelius on behalf of his drugged guards. I have faith that Aslan will be consistent on this matter.

Of course, I could make the case that there are differences between the two situations. I could argue that Cornelius is saving a boy from being murdered, whereas Aravis is merely saving herself from the minor inconvenience of being raped repeatedly for the rest of her life by a husband she detests (and in a culture that seems a little chill about domestic violence). I could argue that Cornelius is merely indifferent to the fate of the human guards, whereas Aravis seems a little uppity and defensive in her indifference. I could argue that Cornelius is male, and Aravis is female.

But I'm not going to argue those things, because those supposed "differences" are immaterial to me. Murder and "lifetime rape and domestic violence" are not something I place on the Scale O' Equivalency so that I may measure which one is "worse" because they're both abominably bad things. Indifference to the fate of people you can't save is a psychological defense mechanism that I'm not going to berate when we're talking about murder and lifetime-rape-and-domestic-violence, and it's a psychological defense mechanism that isn't suddenly made so much worse by being a little snitty and defensive about what you've done when you're in a conversation with someone who isn't taking your lifetime-rape-and-domestic-violence situation seriously because he's interrupting you and calling you unfair for doing the only thing you could think to do to avoid a lifetime of rape and domestic violence. And I'm not going to point out the difference in gender, because I believe that any god worth being called so wouldn't use that in the Sliding Scale O' Proportionate Justice.

So I'm just warning ya'll now not to get too attached to Cornelius, because I'm pretty sure he'll be killed by Aslan before the book is over. It's the only way to be fair.

   "Shall I never see you again?" said Caspian in a quavering voice.
   "I hope so, dear King," said the Doctor. "What friend have I in the wide world except your Majesty? And I have a little magic. But in the meantime, speed is everything. Here are two gifts before you go. This is a little purse of gold -- alas, all the treasure in this castle should be your own by rights. And here is something far better."
   He put in Caspian's hands something which he could hardly see but which he knew by the feel to be a horn.
   "That," said Doctor Cornelius, "is the greatest and most sacred treasure of Narnia. Many terrors I endured, many spells did I utter, to find it, when I was still young. It is the magic horn of Queen Susan herself which she left behind her when she vanished from Narnia at the end of the Golden Age. It is said that whoever blows it shall have strange help -- no one can say how strange. [...]"


I want to take this moment to point out just how devoted Cornelius is to the Magical Minority role in this book. Years and years and years ago, he suffered multiple terrors and expended all his wits and strength and magic into finding one of the lost treasures of Narnia: the Horn of Help. This horn could bring great help to anyone in dire need, help that might include the shining old Kings and Queens or even Aslan. (Cornelius knows this; I cut it for brevity.)

So then, in a land plagued by hundreds of years of tyranny and genocide, the plucky and resourceful Cornelius... sat around twiddling his thumbs and daily dodging discovery and death as he tried to blend into society. He didn't use the lost sacred treasure to try to lessen the plight of the Narnian peoples -- his people -- because he knew that one day a privileged white human would need the horn. And you really don't want to waste the charge on those things.

   And now they entered a dark and seemingly endless pine forest, and all the stories Caspian had ever heard of trees being unfriendly to Man crowded into his mind. He remembered that he was, after all, a Telmarine, one of the race who cut down trees wherever they could and were at war with all wild things; and though he himself might be unlike other Telmarines, the trees could not be expected to know this.

Have we mentioned this week that Caspian is awesome because he doesn't agree with genocide? Because he is. It's just a shame that his radiant awesomeness isn't evident to all the pissed off trees. In plot-related news, Caspian rides through the menacing woods, smacks his head, and comes to in a cave. 

   When he came to himself he was lying in a firelit place with bruised limbs and a bad headache. Low voices were speaking close at hand.
   "And now," said one, "before it wakes up we must decide what to do with it."
   "Kill it," said another. "We can't let it live. It would betray us." [...]
   "Horns and halibuts!" exclaimed the third voice. "Of course we're not going to murder it. For shame, Nikabrik. What do you say, Trufflehunter? What shall we do with it?"
   "I shall give it a drink," said the first voice, presumably Trufflehunter's. A dark shape approached the bed. [...] It was not a man's face but a badger's, [...] And Caspian knew that he had found the Old Narnians at last. Then his head began to swim again.
   In the next few days he learned to know them by names. The Badger was called Trufflehunter; he was the oldest and kindest of the three. The Dwarf who had wanted to kill Caspian was a sour Black Dwarf (that is, his hair and beard were black, and thick and hard like horsehair). His name was Nikabrik. The other Dwarf was a Red Dwarf with hair rather like a Fox's and he was called Trumpkin.



And now: Nikabrik.

Nikabrik is evil. Nikabrik is evil because he wants to murder Caspian. He wants to murder Caspian because he believes that letting Caspian live will lead to their discovery and death, but Caspian is the helpless protagonist and murdering him is evil. Nikabrik is evil because he hates half-dwarves like Cornelius. He hates half-dwarves because he believes they share secrets about full-dwarves -- dwarves who can't survive by passing in human society -- to the humans and that these secrets lead to the deaths of innocent dwarves, but Cornelius is our Magical Minority and hating him is evil. Nikabrik is evil because he wants to resurrect the White Witch to fight Miraz. He wants that because he barely knows anything about history (his companion dwarf doesn't even believe that Aslan exists, nor King Peter and the rest) but he recalls tales that the White Witch was powerful and good to his people, and additionally he doesn't trust Aslan and the Pevensies because they are humans (or allied with humans) and humans have nearly wiped out his race and oppressed him his entire life. Nevertheless, we know that the White Witch is evil and Aslan is good, and so Nikabrik is evil for loving the one and hating the other.

Nikabrik is also evil -- and this is an ultimate cause, a theory, an opinion, a trend in literature at large that troubles me -- because he is Black. Not black-skinned, but black-haired, and distinctively black-haired enough to be called a Black Dwarf. And this evil dwarf, this Black dwarf, has black hair that is thick and hard and coarse, not fine and soft and thin. This Black dwarf has Bad hair.

The United States' Civil Rights Act of 1964 protects individuals against employment discrimination on the basis of race and color as well as national origin, sex, or religion. The prohibition against race-based discrimination includes "race-related characteristics" and notes: "Discrimination on the basis of an immutable characteristic associated with race, such as skin color, hair texture, or certain facial features violates Title VII, even though not all members of the race share the same characteristic."

And this is where a lot of white people -- including myself, not too many years ago -- kind of double-take. Hair texture? Who discriminates based on hair texture? And the answer is: quite a lot of places and people, actually.

In isolation, Black women’s preferences to straighten their hair may seem simply to be a choice of adornment; however, when coupled with all the other available "self-improvement" choices in which they sometimes engage -- such as wearing colored contacts, lightening their skin, reducing the size of their lips, and decreasing the size of their noses -- it is clear that the standard of beauty in the U.S. is in direct opposition to the natural features and characteristics of most Black women. It is also important to consider these grooming choices in the context of societal norms. Black women do not have the luxury of mere preferences; their choices are colored by a historical lens that includes negative stereotypes and lowered expectations. Throughout American history, skin color, eye color, and hair texture have had the power to shape the quality of Black people’s lives, and that trend continues today for Black women in the workplace. [3]

Did you know that? Chances are that if you didn't, you are a person of privilege. I am, too, for the record. Like Caspian -- and like his author -- we may not be directly responsible for the discrimination and hatred against marginalized people, but also-like-Caspian, we don't get cookies and milk for being blissfully ignorant in our cozy privilege blanket. We get to sit up and learn what everyone else has already known, and has been frequently taught at great personal cost.

Privilege is insidious. People who are wrapped in it can sometimes grow up so blissfully ignorant of so many terrible things that marginalized people face, to the point where hearing about things like "hair prejudice" provokes shock, even anger and umbrage: How can we live in a world like this? This cannot be so!

[White] Mary exclaimed, "Some of us have straight hair that we perm, and some of us have curly hair that we get straightened. So what? In the end, we're all the same whether black, white, green, or purple. Aren't we all the same?"

[Black] Sarah sighed, saying that she often finds herself in the wearying position of educating whites about ordinary black life. Then she explained that 'good hair' is hair that is straight and European in appearance. 'Bad hair' is hair that is African, nappy, kinky. [4]

Nikabrik's hair is coarse and black and thick and hard. Trumpkin's hair is soft and red and like fox-fur. One of these dwarves has "good hair"; one of them has "bad hair". One of them is brutish and murderous and evil; one of them is noble and good and admirable. This may or may not be a coincidence, but it is certainly a trend.

   "And now," said Nikabrik on the first evening when Caspian was well enough to sit up and talk, "we still have to decide what to do with this Human. You two think you've done it a great kindness by not letting me kill it. But I suppose the upshot is that we have to keep it a prisoner for life. I'm certainly not going to let it go alive -- to go back to its own kind and betray us all."
   "Bulbs and bolsters! Nikabrik," said Trumpkin. "Why need you talk so unhandsomely? It isn't the creature's fault that it bashed its head against a tree outside our hole. And I don't think it looks like a traitor."


And this dialogue reads to me like someone who has never had to think about life from a truly marginalized position.

Caspian doesn't have to be (or look like!) "a traitor" in order to put all their lives at stake. He has only to be found, or rescued, or to escape. Even if he intends to keep their secrets, he may well say something damaging in the company of humans. And he can -- and very likely will -- be in the company of humans again someday, seeing as how he is one, and is additionally a child, and may well be missed by someone.

No, that doesn't make it right to murder an innocent, unarmed child. But to insist that he looks totally honest and trustworthy is to miss the point, and to additionally miss it in order to beat home once more that Caspian Deserves Cookies. Caspian is great, Caspian is good, Caspian is an ally, merely because he doesn't go in for that whole genocide thing. It's a pat on the back for being a privileged person whose only interest in marginalized people has been romanticizing them, and while that is understandable, it shouldn't be rewarded with a billion narrative back-pats.

   Nikabrik sulkily promised to behave, and the other two asked Caspian to tell his whole story. When he had done so there was a moment's silence.
    "This is the queerest thing I ever heard," said Trumpkin.
   "I don't like it," said Nikabrik. "I didn't know there were stories about us still told among the Humans. The less they know about us the better. That old nurse, now. She'd better have held her tongue. And it's all mixed up with that Tutor: a renegade Dwarf. I hate ‘em. I hate ‘em worse than the Humans. You mark my words -- no good will come of it."
   "Don't you go talking about things you don't understand, Nikabrik," said Trufflehunter. "You Dwarfs are as forgetful and changeable as the Humans themselves. I'm a beast, I am, and a Badger what's more. We don't change. We hold on. I say great good will come of it. This is the true King of Narnia we've got here: a true King, coming back to true Narnia. And we beasts remember, even if Dwarfs forget, that Narnia was never right except when a son of Adam was King." [...]
   "As firmly as that, I daresay," said Trumpkin. "But who believes in Aslan nowadays?"
   "I do," said Caspian. "And if I hadn't believed in him before, I would now. Back there among the Humans the people who laughed at Aslan would have laughed at stories about Talking Beasts and Dwarfs. Sometimes I did wonder if there really was such a person as Aslan: but then sometimes I wondered if there were really people like you. Yet there you are."
   "That's right," said Trufflehunter. "You're right, King Caspian. And as long as you will be true to Old Narnia you shall be my King, whatever they say. Long life to your Majesty."
   "You make me sick, Badger," growled Nikabrik. "The High King Peter and the rest may have been Men, but they were a different sort of Men. This is one of the cursed Telmarines. He has hunted beasts for sport. Haven't you, now?" he added, rounding suddenly on Caspian.
   "Well, to tell you the truth, I have," said Caspian. "But they weren't Talking Beasts."
   "It's all the same thing," said Nikabrik.
   "No, no, no," said Trufflehunter. "You know it isn't. You know very well that the beasts in Narnia nowadays are different and are no more than the poor dumb, witless creatures you'd find in Calormen or Telmar. They're smaller too. They're far more different from us than the half-Dwarfs are from you."
   There was a great deal more talk, but it all ended with the agreement that Caspian should stay and even the promise that, as soon as he was able to go out, he should be taken to see what Trumpkin called "the Others"; for apparently in these wild parts all sorts of creatures from the Old Days of Narnia still lived on in hiding.


My eyes and fingers are tired, so I'll leave counting the Caspian back-pats as an exercise for the comments.

And now, some final thoughts.

I know that sometimes I give the impression that I'm contrary, or just looking for Alternate Character Interpretations for the sake of mischief. If ever I have done that before, I am definitely not doing that here. I understand Nikabrik, even if I don't agree with him or his methods. I understand why he's angry. I understand why he's frightened. I understand why he feels the way he does, why he says the things he does, why he does the things he does. I don't agree with those actions, I don't condone those actions, and I agree that he is not a good person. But he's an understandable person to me.

Trufflehunter I do not understand. Oh, I understand him as a literary trope, like I understand Cornelius. He's here to reassure Caspian that all those bad things people say about him aren't real, aren't true, aren't his fault. He's there to tell Caspian -- and thereby the audience -- that he's the real king, the true king, the one who should mount a civil war and let Narnians fight and die for him to take the throne and have all the nice things. I get why he exists. But as a real person, I don't understand him because I don't understand welcoming a the privileged son of my oppressor in with open arms and immediately reassuring him -- without knowing anything about him -- that he is my rightful liege and sovereign, by virtue of his privileged background.

I'm not saying he's wrong to do so, I'm saying I don't understand it.

---

[1] Straw Feminist on TV Tropes. Page requires significant clean up, and there is misogyny in the example text for several examples, including the B-word.

[2] Queen Constantina Charlotte Ermintrude Gwinyvere Maisie Marguerite Anne is not actually Evil; I'm just borrowing her name here. The most recent example I've seen for this particular discussion is this comment here. Note that all the usual Song of Ice and Fire triggers apply, including rape, torture, and murder. Also note that I have not read the series, just that this is a good example of a Proximate vs. Ultimate conversation over Unfortunate Implications in Evil characters.

[3] The Hair Dilemma: Conform to Mainstream Expectations or Emphasize Racial Identity. A very valuable article that struggles with the dilemma of conforming in order to survive or confronting and risking serious consequences. There are no easy answers.

[4] The Politics of "Good Hair" makes some good points about privilege-induced ignorance and the undue burden on marginalized peoples to educated privileged peoples, but commits some frustrating and basic Fail errors, saying that black people "collude" with white people to perpetuate stereotypes.

Final Note: This post is scheduled for 5/29 at 9 am CST. I will be in surgery on 5/29 from 7:30 am to whenever it gets done. Thoughts and well-wishes and prayers and secular good-tidings are all welcome and appreciated. I will try to post here briefly as soon as I'm conscious and can persuade someone to hand me my Android phone.

79 comments:

EdinburghEye said...

Links [3] and [4] are broken.

Fixed (I hope)

[3] THE HAIR DILEMMA: CONFORM TO MAINSTREAM EXPECTATIONS OR
EMPHASIZE RACIAL IDENTITY

[4] The Politics of Good Hair

Dezster said...

Prayers and good wishes for your surgery to go well, Ana.

Random thought as I was reading: Nikabrik accuses Caspian of hunting beasts for sport, as if the Pevensies never did anything like that, but they left Narnia hunting a stag for sport, which may or may not have been a Talking Beast, but was definitely still a beast...

Susan B. said...

Secular good tidings from me!

The idea of hunting normal animals (especially for sport), in the knowledge that Talking Animals exist, makes me extremely nervous. Even though the Talking Beasts are supposed to be larger than their nonsentient cousins, there will always be size variations among them. Surely there are going to be a few Rabbits whose small stature makes them look like large rabbits. Combine this with the possibility of being shy and quiet, and you can never be sure that that beautiful specimen of a stag or duck or rabbit you're pointing your arrow at isn't just an especially timid and small Stag or Duck or Rabbit who, in the shock and terror of the situation, can't find hir voice to shout "Don't shoot!"

Nina said...

Best wishes on your surgery, Ana!

I noticed reading this that Trufflehunter declares Caspian to be the rightful king because he is a "Son of Adam" and says that Narnia was never right unless a Son of Adam was on the throne, but...aren't the Telmarines Sons of Adam? I mean, they are human, they don't originally come from Narnia, they fit all the apparent requirements. Clearly, it isn't enough to have a Son of Adam on the throne. It has to be the right Son of Adam, the Aslan-ordained one, presumably. I didn't notice that hole when I was reading these as a kid, but it really stuck out to me this time, the fact that Trufflehunter seems to completely gloss over the Telmarine kings as Sons of Adam.

Silverbow said...

Yes, the whole "Sons of Adam" thing is pretty problematic, especially as there's a Son of Adam on the throne right now, isn't there? Miraz is human, so he'd fit the bill just as well as Caspian. And he's just had a son, too, so technically Miraz's son would be a better fit for ruler than Caspian here, who is only Miraz's nephew.

You'd think Aslan would've made the rules a little less vague in his True Narnian Ruler Selection Criteria. Even something like, "A Son of Adam/Daughter of Eve with a noble and compassionate heart" would've been better than what we've got.

Oh wait, I was forgetting that Caspian has hunted beasts for sport, so we can't even say Caspian is noble and compassionate since he has blood on his hands already. But it's beast blood and not Beast blood, and apparently beasts don't count. Or something. And that kinda bothers me, to be honest. Trufflehunter sounds like he protests too much when he's so adamant about how Beasts are completely different from those "poor dumb witless creatures". I guess if you're poor, dumb and witless, then it's okay to enjoy hunting you down and killing you for entertainment? Ugh.

Brin Bellway said...

And finally he persuaded the seven noble lords, who alone among all the Telmarines did not fear the sea, to sail away and look for new lands beyond the Eastern Ocean, and, as he intended, they never came back.

Oh, so that's who those guys were.

My eyes and fingers are tired, so I'll leave counting the Caspian back-pats as an exercise for the comments.

Hmm...three or four, in the part you just quoted? Maybe five? "True king of Narnia", "You're right, King Caspian", "you shall be my King, whatever they say". I'm not sure about "long life to your Majesty" and "no, no, no, you know it isn't [the same thing as hunting Talking Beasts]".

Kirala said...

I haven't even read the post yet; I just had to stop and squee over "Queen Constantina Charlotte Ermintrude Gwinyvere Maisie Marguerite Anne". The 1965 version was a Major Part of my childhood. It also resolved my greatest problem with Disney's Cinderella: how can Cinderella marry a nameless Prince? Rodgers and Hammerstein assure us that the prince does, in fact, have not one name, but 12: Christopher Rupert Windermere Vladimir Karl Alexander Francois Reginald Lancelot Herman Gregory James. Possibly enough for every nameless version. *goes back to actually read post*

Susan Beckhardt said...

I have to concur: references to R&H's Cinderella are indeed squee-inducing! The song with the names of the king, queen, and prince is my favorite!

Makabit said...

And that kinda bothers me, to be honest. Trufflehunter sounds like he protests too much when he's so adamant about how Beasts are completely different from those "poor dumb witless creatures". I guess if you're poor, dumb and witless, then it's okay to enjoy hunting you down and killing you for entertainment? Ugh.

There is, and I believe Trufflehunter has a point here, a distinct difference between hunting animals (for food; no matter how much of a party they make of it, if the Telmarines match their cultural source material, they're bringing the prey back to the kitchens), and hunting down Animals. Whether this should be true is another argument, but since no one in Lewis's books is an ethical vegetarian, I can't fault Trufflehunter for making the distinction. Badgers hunt small prey, and culturally, Trufflehunter is making sense to both himself and Caspian. I'm sure he wouldn't eat a Frog, but a frog is another matter.

Kirala said...

Okay, now have read post. I think the difference between Caspian's escape and Aravis' might have three possible sources.

First, and most generously, there are three years between the publication of PC and the publication of HHB. Perhaps Lewis grew more aware of taking responsibility for the effects of one's actions in the intervening time.

Second, I get the impression that Caspian's gentlemen-in-waiting are considerably older than Caspian and certainly outnumber him, whereas Aravis' maid might be the same age. The power differential is considerably different - Caspian can't afford to try to make allies or sound out their loyalties, while Aravis might have been able to do so with her maid.

Third, Caspian is an Innocent Naive Boy and Aravis a Catty Self-Centered Girl.

I like the first two explanations better, but YMMV.

Re: the hair thing - wow, how widespread is that trope in Europe? It makes too much sense to be pure coincidence, but Europe doesn't have quite the same history with racial prejudice that we have in the former colonies. It's also complicated by the fact that a person with straight European hair can get a very coarse (if not African) look by neglect, which is how I always viewed Nikabrik. Would "unkempt" be a sufficiently neutral adjective for the lack-of-grooming look, or would one have to think in another direction to describe it?

Stuart Armstrong said...

Good luck and best wishes on your operation!


What we didn't get to see what the conversation that happened when Caspian was unconscious:

Trufflehunter: Ah, another human oppressor caught in the tree-trap - I call decapitation first!

Nikabrik: Wait a sec. I recognise him. He's the Prince!

T: Ah, they all look the same to me. But so what?

N: So? Think ahead Truf. When the revolution happens, what are we going to do with all the humans?

T: Kill them, of course.

N: Maybe eventually. But we have to keep them pacified, at least at first. What better way than to use a quasi-legitimate prince? You know how humans take all this kingship and inheritance nonsense seriously.

T: You think we can turn him?

N: He's young, impressionable, and my half-brother Cornelius has already started on him. We can try, and then kill him later if we fail - what's the risk? (Nikabrik produces a coin) call it.

T: Heads.

N: Sorry, it's tails. So I get to be bad cop.

T: No fair! I'm always the good cop!

N: Shush, he's waking up, and thinks that if he stays immobile, we won't notice.

T: What's my line?

N: (quietly) "And now, before he wakes up we must decide what to do with him."

T: (loudly) And now, before it wakes up we must decide what to do with it.

Makabit said...

English (from England) writing of the nineteenth and twentieth century is rich in comments about the texture and appearance of non-European hair. (I haven't read widely enough to tell you about other languages.) When speaking of African hair, 'wooly' is the adjective of choice. I suspect, however, that a quick perusal through Lewis's childhood reading matter would turn up some references to 'horsehair' in connection with either Indian or Native American hair.

'Unkempt' would be fine, I think, but that doesn't seem to be (directly) what Lewis is describing. He focuses on the color and texture, not the condition. It's not a screaming 'oh good Lord, look at the racism' moment, but it's very predictable somehow.

Diana Wynne Jones, in "The Tough Guide To Fantasyland" did quite a little piece on color-coding of skin, eyes and hair, and how you could assess people you met 'on tour' in this manner. (Blue eyes, brown hair, tan face: Nice.) She commented not to try this in our own world, as you are apt to be disappointed.

All this chat about hair and Aravis is reminding me of a pair of books I both loved and had mixed feelings about the racial coding of, Robin McKinley's Damar books. Anyone here a fan/reader?

Laiima said...

Yes, I'm a fan of McKinley's work. When I first read the Damar books years ago, I was not aware of the Unfortunate Implications of some of her racial tropes. I loved the books because they were about women who were 'fish out of water' and found a place for themselves, in land that they loved (or grew to love).

Once I started *noticing* descriptions of human coloration in fantasy, the racism is hard to miss. I hate that. :-/

Silverbow said...

Whether this should be true is another argument, but since no one in Lewis's books is an ethical vegetarian, I can't fault Trufflehunter for making the distinction. Badgers hunt small prey, and culturally, Trufflehunter is making sense to both himself and Caspian. I'm sure he wouldn't eat a Frog, but a frog is another matter.

IIRC, "sport hunting" is not about food at all, it's about hunting for the thrill of the chase and the kill. Hence fox hunting, which is the cultural English example. No one takes the fox back to the kitchen or expects to eat the fox.

Badgers hunting for food and Princes hunting for sport therefore appear to be different things.

Also, Beasts don't tend to hunt for food in these books. They eat bread, butter, cheese, pudding and pie like humans do. We're told they also eat meat, but there's no indication whatsoever that the meat was from a creature they hunted themselves.

Which is kind of a good question: Do Predator Beasts hunt the same way as predator beasts? Or have they culturally evolved beyond that whole messy hunting-for-food thing?

Hunting in general seems to be a Sport of Kings in these books -- not something one does to survive. When someone important is hungry in Narnia, fate leads them to overgrown orchards ripe with delicious fruit, or they find someone generously willing to share from their well-stocked pantry (such as Mr. Tumnus and Mrs. Beaver).

Silverbow said...

This is pure win. :D

Will Wildman said...

Also, Beasts don't tend to hunt for food in these books. They eat bread, butter, cheese, pudding and pie like humans do. We're told they also eat meat, but there's no indication whatsoever that the meat was from a creature they hunted themselves.

Which is kind of a good question: Do Predator Beasts hunt the same way as predator beasts? Or have they culturally evolved beyond that whole messy hunting-for-food thing?


Well, I don't think it's coincidental that the White Witch had wolves for her secret police - admittedly, they are tireless stalkers and trackers, but they're also very noticeable; you'd think that in comparison sparrows would be a far more insidious network. The main purpose of bringing wolves on side would presumably because they individually represent a threat, and I don't think there's any indication that they don't eat meat, so tracking enemies of the state is just an extension of their normal hunting practices (which may or may not exclude Beasts).

Also, as much as it's made a big deal of in these analyses, I read the end of LWW as implying a huge amount of power on the part of the White Stag, such that the adult Pevensies 'hunting' it through the woods is less 'terrifying your subject for your personal entertainment' and more 'playing tag with the forest god'.

Now I'm imagining growing up as a Beast during the reign of the Pevensies:

Wolf pup: Hey, who wants to play Predator'n'Prey?
Bear cub: Yeah!
Deer foal: All right, but I want to be the predator this time. You guys always make me be prey.
Wolf pup: Yeah... 'cos you're a deer...
Deer foal: That's racist!
Wolf pup: Okay, okay, I'll be prey and you can be the predator this time! Stop rearing at me!

It raises all sorts of fascinating societal questions.

Laiima said...

That is made of awesome win, Will!

Marie Brennan said...

I suspect that for Lewis and his immediate audience, the phrase "Black Dwarf" may have conjured up "Black Irish" -- that is, Irish people with dark hair, rather than Irish people of African descent. (Especially since it's paired with a contrasting Red Dwarf type.)

Which in now way changes the fact that it also carries overtones of anti-African prejudice, nor the fact that it's racism any way you slice it.

Marie Brennan said...

@Will -- yes, there's quite a lot of European folklore that makes the White Stag a supernatural thing, rather than just a deer that happens to be white. I know that Mary Gentle's series The Book of Ash implies there's a whole chivalric Thing around the Hunting of the White Stag, but I have a cold right now and for the life of me can't remember if there's some particular source she was pulling that from.

Silverbow said...

Also, as much as it's made a big deal of in these analyses, I read the end of LWW as implying a huge amount of power on the part of the White Stag, such that the adult Pevensies 'hunting' it through the woods is less 'terrifying your subject for your personal entertainment' and more 'playing tag with the forest god'.

Yes, I understood that the Hunt of the White Stag at the end of LWW was meant to evoke a more otherworldly, mythical sort of feel. I deliberately avoided mentioning it because thinking about it in the context of Narnia creates more problems (at least for me).

If it's a forest god type of stag, wouldn't that make it a Stag?

Is it ethical to hunt Stags? If it's like a game of tag, did the Pevensies have some kind of agreement with the Stag that they wouldn't use their weapons, or perhaps handicap themselves in some other way that would allow the Stag to go unharmed?

What did the Pevensies plan to do with the Stag if they captured it?

Does the Stag get to chase them back?

If the White Stag is like a deity of the wildwoods, then what is it in comparison to Aslan? Is it merely a Stag that happens to be white? Or is it more like Father Christmas, the White Witch, the Giants, or even Tash?

I feel as if Lewis is trying to blend Christianity with elements of Arthurian legend and Classical mythology, but they don't always blend well together -- and when they don't, he just kind of brushes it off and scurries on ahead with the plot, hoping the reader won't notice. The satyrs in Narnia, for example, always kind of bring me up short. They just seem so out of place in a children's Christian novel, kind of emasculated, as it were... ;)

Makabit said...

IIRC, "sport hunting" is not about food at all, it's about hunting for the thrill of the chase and the kill. Hence fox hunting, which is the cultural English example. No one takes the fox back to the kitchen or expects to eat the fox.

Riding all over hell and gone after a fox is a late Renaissance development though. I'd expect the Telmarines to go after deer or boar, which were more classic medieval quarries, and edible.

I don't imagine Caspian is hunting for survival, but I sincerely doubt the Telmarines are the only ones in the country hunting for meat.

Loquat said...

Regarding the White Stag:

After taking a quick glance at Wikipedia, I expect Lewis was alluding to the Arthurian legend of the White Stag as a creature that shows up for the specific purpose of leading knights to new quests/adventures, and is never caught itself. So if you're an English child who's been raised on the stories of King Arthur, it's obvious as soon as the hunt for the White Stag is mentioned that the Pevensies are going to lose track of it but in the process be led to whatever new place Aslan wants them to go.

Regarding bad hair:

Anyone familiar with H. P. Lovecraft already knows there's plenty of racism that pops up in his stories, but there's one in particular, Medusa's Coil, that really ascribes importance to hair. The story concerns a post-civil-war scion of a southern planter family who goes to Europe and brings home a wife of unknown origins who turns out to be a priestess of Ancient Evil, and also part African. One of the primary "sinister" things about her is that she has extremely long and voluminous black hair that she habitually spends lots of time applying exotic hair-care products to - the narrator claims that the hair eventually becomes a disembodied malevolent organism, and that her hair-care habits were intended to nurture it to that status, but if you're at all familiar with the way African hair works it's hard not to think that she's just trying to straighten it so she can keep passing for white.

Fluffy_goddess said...

Arthurian legend of the White Stag as a creature that shows up for the specific purpose of leading knights to new quests/adventures, and is never caught itself

I'd always wondered why it was a *white* rabbit Alice was chasing when she fell into wonderland, as I'd only ever seen brown rabbits wild in the sort of climate where you could wear a dress without a coat outdoors. Wonder if it's the same thing.

I remember glossing over THaHB, but there's an element of personal choice here, too. Aravis chooses to set up her maid to save herself; Cornelius sets up the guards to save his friend/student. Caspian capitulates, but he doesn't really have time to do it any other way, and he's portrayed as the kind of naive boy who wouldn't think to question Cornelius while Cornelius is still panicking anyway. Doing questionable things to protect yourself is treated as distasteful in a lot of literature/history, but doing questionable things to protect your young charge isn't. I'm not sure I like either situation, but I don't think they're identical, just similar.

And finally: if you're a Badger talking to two dwarves and still trying to figure out what you want to do with your young human prisoner, wouldn't jollying him along make total sense? If you change your mind and later decide to kill him what's the harm -- that you've been misleading? And if you decide he's useful in the end, isn't it going to be easier to work with him if he thinks you were on his side all along, rather than that you narrowly chose not to let him die?

Beroli said...

C.S. Lewis was undeniably racist and sexist. And, I think, Aravis being female played a significant role in why he wanted her to feel guilty for drugging the maid: Men are allowed to be pragmatic, women are supposed to be compassionate. However, I'd guess a larger role was played by Lewis just not thinking very much about the actions of a minor character whom he didn't even bother to give a first name, compared to Aravis, a protagonist. I could be forgetting something, but every one of Aslan's "lessons" that I remember our seeing is directed at a protagonist--there's a fair chance that if Aslan did decide Dr. Cornelius needed to be punished for putting the guards to sleep, it would happen offstage and we'd never hear about it, any more than we get four chapters devoted to how Dr. Cornelius got away from the castle.

Oh wait, I was forgetting that Caspian has hunted beasts for sport, so we can't even say Caspian is noble and compassionate since he has blood on his hands already. But it's beast blood and not Beast blood, and apparently beasts don't count. Or something. And that kinda bothers me, to be honest. Trufflehunter sounds like he protests too much when he's so adamant about how Beasts are completely different from those "poor dumb witless creatures". I guess if you're poor, dumb and witless, then it's okay to enjoy hunting you down and killing you for entertainment? Ugh.
It does not appear that Lewis sees anything wrong with hunting for sport, indeed.

no one in Lewis's books is an ethical vegetarian,
Actually, Lewis is really snotty about the Scrubbs being vegetarians, in Voyage of the Dawn Treader.

Also, Beasts don't tend to hunt for food in these books. They eat bread, butter, cheese, pudding and pie like humans do. We're told they also eat meat, but there's no indication whatsoever that the meat was from a creature they hunted themselves.
The giants in the Silver Chair serving venison isn't something Eustace or Jill or Puddleglum see anything wrong with until they find out it used to be a Talking stag. Pretty sure there's a lot of hunting going on.

Makabit said...

C.S. Lewis was undeniably racist and sexist.

Undeniably, when you dig into this roots of all of this, and yet, I feel a need to jump in on the man's behalf. He reflected--and reflects more, in this sort of casual writing for children--the culture in which he was raised, and lived.

But he is also part of the generation that faced down the Nazis. When evil far more real than anything that ever comes to Narnia showed up, they didn't blink. Lewis was relentless in his mockery of fascism, and genuinely wondered, when it seemed as though an invasion of Britain might be imminent, if he would pay for that. He was supportive of his wife's son's desire to be a practicing Jew in his home. And in his science fiction he attacked colonialism head-on.

So, while I am happy to point straight at the more problematic issues of Narnia and name them, Lewis was, and is, far more than just a writer who let the racist, sexist tropes of his world go tap-dancing into his children's literature.

(And Philip Pullman, with his jolly river gypsies helping the adorable white child heroine can close his mouth...)

Makabit said...

Anyone familiar with H. P. Lovecraft already knows there's plenty of racism that pops up in his stories, but there's one in particular, Medusa's Coil, that really ascribes importance to hair. The story concerns a post-civil-war scion of a southern planter family who goes to Europe and brings home a wife of unknown origins who turns out to be a priestess of Ancient Evil, and also part African. One of the primary "sinister" things about her is that she has extremely long and voluminous black hair that she habitually spends lots of time applying exotic hair-care products to - the narrator claims that the hair eventually becomes a disembodied malevolent organism, and that her hair-care habits were intended to nurture it to that status, but if you're at all familiar with the way African hair works it's hard not to think that she's just trying to straighten it so she can keep passing for white.

Somehow, this strikes me as completely hilarious. I knew straighteners were evil, I just didn't imagine they were...sentiently evil.

I now am envisioning a fanfic of this that involves Madame C.J. Walker as a sort of Slayer type.

Anton_Mates said...

I could argue that Cornelius is merely indifferent to the fate of the human guards, whereas Aravis seems a little uppity and defensive in her indifference.

Well, we don't know that Cornelius is indifferent. We simply know that he didn't discuss the matter with Caspian. For all we know he was Deeply Regretful but felt that he had no choice. Aravis, on the other hand, claims to positively approve of the maid's punishment. The maid and guards probably wouldn't care about that distinction much, but Aslan would. (Here, of course, we're talking about proximate causes. As opposed to why Lewis would happen to assign these attitudes to the wise older male and the sassy younger female, respectively.)

I do think Kirala's suggestion is a likely one. Lewis wrote the Aravis scene a few years later, and his attitude on the subject may have changed by then. (Indeed, perhaps he brought up the issue of collateral damage precisely because he'd neglected it before.) He may also have gotten more interested in showing Aslan's penchant for corrective punishment; in the first two books Aslan relies on severe looks and stern words, but in Dawn Treader and The Silver Chair he hands out more physical pain.

Nikabrik is evil because he wants to resurrect the White Witch to fight Miraz. He wants that because he barely knows anything about history (his companion dwarf doesn't even believe that Aslan exists, nor King Peter and the rest) but he recalls tales that the White Witch was powerful and good to his people

And he's perfectly correct on this point; the White Witch was indeed powerful and did favor the Dwarfs.

But even if you're not a Black Dwarf, resurrecting the White Witch is a pretty smart tactic. Trufflehunter claims that she was "a worse enemy than Miraz and all his race," but that's crap. Jadis' reign was far briefer and less bloody than the Telmarine occupation; the Beavers were having trouble getting a new sewing machine, but they weren't dead in a ditch. When Jadis was defeated, the environmental damage she caused was quickly and magically reversed, and her petrified victims were restored to full health (though she also had a bunch of people killed in permanent ways).

Plus, if resurrected she'd almost certainly be much weaker. The Deep Magic she relied upon has been reversed, her personal weapons are destroyed or lost on distant islands, and the Chaotic Evil races who formed her army are almost extinct. If she went to war with the Telmarines, she might well lose but leave them weakened in the process; and if she won, she'd be easier to overthrow than last time. I suppose there's a risk of her allying with Miraz, but she'd certainly try to destroy him in the end, since humans are the primary threat to her rule. And enslaving him via Turkish Delight wouldn't work too well, given the resentful Telmarine nobles just waiting to overthrow him if he starts acting wonky.

So yeah, go Nikabrik. Raise the White Witch, throw her at Miraz, then finish off whoever survives!

Theo said...

First, good luck with the surgery!

I found it interesting to put the whole Red Dwarf/Black Dwarf thing together with the Irish connection (which was completely new to me as of the last post :)), but it's worth noting that Lewis had used "red" and "black" dwarfs much earlier in a different context. In his weird 1933 allegorical novel The Pilgrim's Regress rival tribes of Black and Red Dwarfs are featured; the Black Dwarfs are fascists, minions of the over-the-top villain Mr. Savage, and the Red Dwarfs are communists. Here there isn't a clear good/bad divide since both are portrayed as bad guys, though IIRC the fascist Black Dwarfs do come off worse.

Kit Whitfield said...

Well, we don't know that Cornelius is indifferent. We simply know that he didn't discuss the matter with Caspian. For all we know he was Deeply Regretful but felt that he had no choice.

And indeed, we don't know that they will actually be punished. Maybe they stay in a charmed sleep long enough that they're still clearly bespelled when the king discovers them. Maybe Aravis's maid was punished largely because she let herself be drugged - she did accept the cup - while the guards did nothing even incautious. Maybe Miraz has a different policy towards offending staff than Aravis's stepmother. It's possible that they'd be punished, but it's equally possible that they wouldn't; you can read the text in more than one way.

Bificommander said...

I agree the comment about Narnia being so much better off under Sons of Adam is really stupid. The Persives were supposedly okay, but they were at it 10, maybe 20 years before being whisked away. We have no notion of how much of the 3000 years were spend under the rule of 'Sons of Adam' (Why not under Daughter's of Eve? We know the two girls were queens too, and they seemed perfectly legitimate. We're gonna notice things like that when the narrative insistently uses those phrases, as if they aren't Sons of Eve and Daughters of Adam just as much as they are vice versa) And if Caspian is a legitimate ruler, then so was his father. Who may have been murdered by his slightly less legitimate brother, but I don't recall any indication that he wasn't a genocidal tyrant. Or perhaps the father was good, just like Caspian, cause he didn't spent quite so much time exterminating the last remnants that his equally legitimate predecessors didn't kill the first time around, without doing anything to fix the problems, natch.

Beroli said...

He reflected--and reflects more, in this sort of casual writing for children--the culture in which he was raised, and lived.
Mm...there was a lot of room to Lewis's left in the culture in which he was raised and lived. Indeed, it is manifestly obvious from his writing that he saw a lot of people who were to his left, and found them quite dreadful for being so. He couldn't make fun of Eustace's parents for being "vegetarians, non-smokers and tee-totallers," who will not correct their son by beating the awful out of him and so--of course, because corporal punishment is vital and good--he's well on his way to turning into a monster, of Eustace for "[liking] books if they were books of information and had pictures of grain elevators or of fat foreign children doing exercises in modern schools," of the school where Eustace went for being coeducational, having a female head, and, also, not using corporal punishment, if the ideas Lewis was mocking didn't exist in the culture where he lived. That's before we get to the how-dare-anyone-suggest-that-Muslims-worship-the-same-god-as-Christians metaphor/screed in the Last Battle.

I believe in taking historical context into account. But, as someone said in a debate about C.S. Lewis on the Slacktiverse a while ago, in any time there are people who are better and worse, and C.S. Lewis was one of the worse ones.

Gray Woodland said...

Ana: best wishes for your surgery and recovery!

On Narnia:

I can't believe I hadn't noticed the Aravis/Cornelius parallel on my last re-read. My first thought (in-world) is that Cornelius is acting to save somebody else's life and restore his nation - with dubious expectations of surviving the resulting disaster himself. Aravis is acting solely on her own behalf, and couldn't care less what happens to the maid even in retrospect. In Aslan's terms, she's in much worse danger than Cornelius. Why Lewis sets her up for things like that and never somebody like Caspian, now...

Actually, I could make a much better case for Aslan's chastizing Caspian than Cornelius. It's Caspian's loyal partisan who does the deed for him; Caspian who accepts it, so that he can afterwards fight and kill another day to get his revenge and his rights; Caspian who, as Cornelius's liege lord, surely at the end of the day ought to then come forward and volunteer to bear the price for his man. That would be a very, well, Aslan-like thing to do IMO, which seems to be what one would want in a world of kingship sacred to the Lion. Instead, and characteristically, everybody just forgets about it.

This by the way is a prime example of my main problem with Caspian. In this book, he's a good-guy-by-fiat-and-intention who has a pleasant personality, a few conventionally kingly virtues, and otherwise even less individual character than Peter. He's not just White Saviour, he's Vanilla Saviour. Lewis pivots the book on him without ever giving him enough ground of his own to stand on. And I think that has more than a little to do with the Default White Guy of Awesome vibes. The defaultiness is awesome.

There are so many ways in which it didn't need to be. Eh well.

The Black Dwarf/Bad Hair thing leapt out at me (white English guy) as, shall we say, kind of unfortunate. Actually almost everything to do with Dwarfs in the whole series manages to get up my nose on some level or other, though only here in this particular sense. As to the question of Lewis's familiarity with African-type hair, what I've read from his day and before suggests that the British awareness exceeded the direct experience by quite a bit.

Gray Woodland said...

I'd forgotten about the Red/Black dwarves in Pilgrim's Regress. That kind of resonates with Nikabrik's racial purism and weakness for necromancy. The Thoughts of Chairman Trumpkin remain a closed Little Red Book to me at present.

Makabit said...

But I think if Nikabrik is anything, he's Romani. And looking at the picture, cooking in his checked shirt over a campfire, I think that's what the illustrator thought too.

I think you may, er, have something there. I don't think he directly 'maps', but your connection is closer.

JonathanPelikan said...

(Getting through these decons, even more so than Twilight, for me mostly involves skipping a lot of the quoted original text. Gods' names, I just can't get through that much Lewis; it so often feels like wading through quicksand. That's just a style thing, though, and I'm definitely not the age range target for him anyway. Or culture target, either.)

Do you believe that someone who hunts for sport cannot be noble or compassionate? I'm from Missouri and I don't hunt at all but my dad and grandfather, grands having served in the United States Navy during World War II, were part of the hunting culture, even if they didn't do it much, as well. Grands' old cabinet in his house has lots of his rifles and camo stuff and all that hunting business, though. Hell, Dad took me to... I think the store's called Cabala's? Once. It was pretty cool.

I can also offer you personal assurance that both men are noble and compassionate, and if there is a Heaven, Grandfather's there, watching History channel specials and enjoying the barbecue.

I'm not saying you're wrong to be uncomfortable with hunting for sport or have feelings that differ from my family; I'm never going to go out and start shooting stuff for fun, but please consider that there are others who do not share your viewpoint and who remain capable of just as much nobility as you.

Makabit said...

I think taking this as 'left and right' is not at all what this is about, nor am I at all suggesting Lewis was 'as far left as you could get' for his time.

What I'm suggesting is that his casual racism and sexism in his children's writing is quite culturally embedded, and I suspect you'd find the same in the Scrubbs' children's books, if they'd written anything worth looking at.

I think that, given the actual rest of his life, hell, even just taking Narnia, defining Lewis as 'one of the worse ones' is unjust. Compared to whom, exactly?

Thomas Keyton said...

This is the true King of Narnia we've got here

So... is he suddenly accepting the legitimacy of Caspian's house's* claim here? Or are the Old Narnians so desperate for any source of hope that they'd proclaim any minimally-decent human the true monarch? (Also, now that I think of it, since when was descent from Lilith a disqualifier for even part-human identity? I agree with Anton_Mates - temporary figurehead!Jadis is a far more sensible scenario than kid-from-the-family-genociding-us-right-now).

And good luck with the surgery!

*On that note, does any royal house in Narnia beside the Pevensies actually have a family name?

Makabit said...

If they do map to those earlier Dwarfish color schemes, though, it's sort of amusing that the Communist Dwarf ends up running the country. On behalf of a king, of all things.

Makabit said...

Now I'm thinking about whether the Calormenes are Muslims.

I've got two arguments roughed out, one for, and one against, and HHB is still like three books away.

:)

Theo said...

That's before we get to the how-dare-anyone-suggest-that-Muslims-worship-the-same-god-as-Christians metaphor/screed in the Last Battle.

I agree with some of the other stuff in your post, but I think this is pretty wide of the mark. I see how it might look that way today, but in context I think it's unlikely that the legitimacy of Islamic beliefs was very high on Lewis' list of bugbears in 1955.

Taking it in the context of his nonfiction writing on other religions it's pretty clear that the syncretistic 'Tashlan' religion has nothing at all to do with Islam (or any other specific non-Christian religion) but what Lewis saw as a tendency to blur the lines of good and evil, particularly spiritually. Most of the time, Lewis actually seems to have considered non-Christian religions as kinda-sorta 'allies' against perceived secular nihilism. His few direct references to Islam IIRC are not particularly unfriendly.

Beroli said...

His few direct references to Islam IIRC are not particularly unfriendly.
You mean, "Islam is only the greatest of the Christian heresies"? That's not particularly unfriendly?

I didn't see it when I first read the Last Battle, but it's seemed mind-bogglingly obvious ever since it was first pointed out to me. It should be interesting to see what comes out when we get to the Last Battle.

Deird said...

Britain was certainly a racist culture before then, but specific malice against Afro-Caribbean people really got underway when there were enough of them living in the country for bigots to start noticing them.

*nods*

Like Australia. We're a very racist country in many ways - but we're not really racist about African-descended people, because until very recently there were hardly any of them here...

Gray Woodland said...

I assumed they were as a kid, but now they seem to me much more like imperial alt-Carthaginians with an overlay of Arabian Nights Orientalism. They're polytheistic, big on idols, hyper-mercantile... Alternatively and less creditably, I could make a case for their being the Alternate Reality Muslims of European chivalric fantasy, with their idols and their anti-trinity and their limitless numbers (complete with outcroppings of Christian virtue, tragic heroic-villainy, and tendency to raise Lost Christian Heirs in ignorance of their heritage until Providence/Plot has a job for them).

I'll join you in the detail of that one when we get to HHB.

How we got to any of this from the descendants of a white Christian Cockney taxi-driver and his wife, is one of those mysteries we were evidently not meant to fathom.

Gray Woodland said...

From each according to their ability! The worker's leader organizes everybody's serious business; the aristocratic leader organizes the swanning around looking pretty, and his formal sovereignty prevents the corruption of the objectively empowered worker's collective by deviationist personality cults. Hence, the Dawn Treader and no doubt many other such boondoggles.

Another one for the "Caspian as figurehead" pile, methinks.

Silverbow said...

I think you may be taking my statement a bit too personally. When I said that, it was in the context of the fictional world in the books. Narnia has Beasts and beasts, and I would expect a noble and compassionate ruler of Narnia to be interested in the well-being of all his subjects, including the "poor dumb" ones. I would think that having Beasts to rule would make one more aware of the welfare of less intelligent beasts as well, philosophically speaking, and one might hesitate to hunt them for sport.

That said, since you asked...

Hunting for sport itself, yes, that can make me quite uncomfortable. My mother lives in the north woods of Canada, and every year she hears local reports about hunters who ignore the law, head into the bush and shoot anything that moves just for the hell of it. Sometimes they take trophies (e.g. the head of whatever they killed), other times they don't bother and just leave the carcass where it lies.

One year the authorities found a pile of animal carcasses at the edge of someone's cottage property. It was estimated that about seven deer and five moose had been shot, dragged into one big pile and left there to rot. The hunt had taken place out of season and by the time it was discovered, the remains were in a state of considerable decay (hence why it was an estimation). As far as I know, they never did find out who was responsible.

I think we can agree that this type of hunt is neither sporting, noble, or compassionate.

Nothing against your family, but sport hunting is actually a big problem in some areas. I realize not all hunters are this irresponsible, but the ones who are certainly give it a bad name.

Kit Whitfield said...

As to the question of Lewis's familiarity with African-type hair, what I've read from his day and before suggests that the British awareness exceeded the direct experience by quite a bit.

I think you've slightly missed my point. I'm not saying that Lewis would have been unaware that Afro-Caribbean people have tight-curled hair (generally speaking, obviously with variation). I'm saying that it's very unlikely that this would have had anything like the same significance to him that it would have to a modern American reader.

It's one thing to be 'aware' of something in the sense of having it rattling around in your mental loft somewhere; it's another thing to have it be present in your awareness in any significant way. He certainly would have known what an Afro-Caribbean person looked like (after all, Britain had been energetically invading and exploiting Afro-Caribbean peoples for some generations) ... but an oppressed people abroad is not the same thing as an oppressed people in your own country. He wasn't exactly subtle or obscure when he came to his stereotypes, and the stereotypes about 'good' and 'bad' hair would have been a lot more obscure to a man of his class and kind than they are now. Prejudice and stereotypes sharpen when their objects are nearby.

More to the point, his stereotypes were generally animated by some kind of antagonism, usually political or theological in nature. The whole 'Oriental despotism' thing was an issue because India and Asia in general were recognised as having a culture sufficiently long-established, sophisticated, and theologically advanced to present a genuine rival to the culture Lewis loved: there's a motivation for maligning it. Calling it evil is a way of dismissing a competitor. African culture? Well, that wasn't considered anything like as serious a rival; ignorantly, it was assumed that African people were just primitive and not worth worrying about in that way. As long as Afro-Caribbean people weren't actually present in Britain, they weren't a challenge - and hence not a target for Lewis's pen.

On the other hand, Romani people were noticeably present in Britain at the time . Their nomadic way of life was a threatening alternative to mainstream culture's notions of settled property; their lack of desire to integrate was a threat to mainstream culture's desire to consider itself both normal and superior. There was a reason to pick on them.

A writer of Lewis's disposition writing about rough black hair now would almost certainly be employing stereotypes against Afro-Caribbean people. But I think in this case, given the demographics of the era and the physical description of Nikabrik, 'gypsy' makes more sense than 'black person' when it comes to rude remarks about his hair. There were stereotypes about gypsy hair too. It's not just that poem; consider The Mill on the Floss, where little Maggie Tulliver is insultingly compared to a gypsy by her family because she has 'brown' skin and straight hair that won't curl. And that straight hair is a major point of pain in her childhood: she is constantly criticised for it and harried to have it curled; when she cuts it off in frustration she is told she looks 'more like a gypsy nor ever'; the gypsyishness of her hair is emphasised so often she actually runs away and tries to join the gypsies, under the impression that her tan complexion and straight hair will be welcome there.

And prejudice against Romani people is by no means gone, certainly not in Britain. In just the last few years the BBC had to apologise for broadcasting a joke about them being dirty and smelly* and Channel 4 got into trouble for stereotyping*. It's another subject we need to bring to light.


*http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2006/jan/05/raceintheuk.bbc
*http://www.metro.co.uk/tv/890502-big-fat-gypsy-weddings-ad-campaign-racist-say-travellers

Timothy (TRiG) said...

Kit, I really think you're onto something there.

TRiG.

Ana Mardoll said...

Posing to the latest comment.I'm out of surgery but still in ICU, I'm sorry.

Will Wildman said...

It's good to hear from you, Ana - still sending All Of The Good Wishes your way. And I am quite sure no apologies are needed for anything.

mmy said...

Good wishes Ana

redcrow said...

Best wishes to you, Ana. And you don't need to feel sorry.

Theo said...

You mean, "Islam is only the greatest of the Christian heresies"? That's not particularly unfriendly?

It's condescending, to be sure, but it doesn't seem as hostile in intent compared to how Lewis expressed himself about stuff he seriously disliked. It seems more or less intended as a (again, condescending) backhanded compliment.

There's a lot of orientalism in Lewis' writing, occasionally with quite a nasty edge to it, but i haven't found anything to imply that he saw Islam as something threatening.

Silverbow said...

Wishing you a good recovery, Ana! Don't worry about a thing -- we'll keep the blog warm for you. :)

Ken said...

I believe in taking historical context into account. But, as someone said in a debate about C.S. Lewis on the Slacktiverse a while ago, in any time there are people who are better and worse, and C.S. Lewis was one of the worse ones
.
Hardly: Lewis was in many things ahead of his time. Many books back then, for example, would never portray girls as main charachters, even nonviolent. Susan, for all her problems, is way more an action girl than most girl charachters of that time (Hummelchen, Heidi etc) Remember, say, Annika from Pippi Longstocking (not pippi herself)? That was a typical girl! In fact I am reading a book now with a "strong female charachter" (as define by Newbery), which knows awesome powers - but never uses them herself, content with her love interest doing so and rescuing her.

By the way, one really can argue that Susan outgrew Narnia, just like Wendy outgrew Neverland.. Now what does that mean for others?

depizan said...

Good to hear you're out of surgery! Hopefully all continues to go well. :)

Kirala said...

By the way, one really can argue that Susan outgrew Narnia, just like Wendy outgrew Neverland.. Now what does that mean for others?
Now THERE's an interesting solution to the Problem of Susan. "Okay, you Friends of Narnia really, really missed the boat on the whole 'getting to know me in your own world' thing, but I guess you're not totally smiteworthy, so I'm gonna just remove you from the planet since you'd be useless anyway. Susan, you actually have a life, ergo you get to keep it."

Anton_Mates said...

Many books back then, for example, would never portray girls as main charachters, even nonviolent. Susan, for all her problems, is way more an action girl than most girl charachters of that time (Hummelchen, Heidi etc)

That's not true at all. The "back then" of the Narnia series is the 1950s; Heidi was published in 1880! Lewis was preceded by the Secret Garden, Alice in Wonderland, The Princess and the Goblin, Five Children and It, Mary Poppins, Little House on the Prairie, several Moomin books, and yes, Pippi Longstocking. The two authors who influenced Lewis' fantasy writing the most were George MacDonald and E. Nesbit, both of whom created many female characters more positive, more powerful, and more central to their stories than Susan.

Even The Lord of the Rings was written (though not published) earlier, by a close friend and literary companion of Lewis'. And while it isn't exactly bursting at the seams with female characters, Galadriel would be burned at the stake in Narnia and Eowyn would be sent home for making battles too ugly. Heck, Lewis himself wrote a few positive and moderately authoritative female characters a few years earlier, in the otherwise horribly reactionary That Hideous Strength.

So no, Lewis was not breaking new ground with his female characters in Narnia; he was deliberately turning back the clock. (And I'd say that even with Jill and Aravis, whom I consider leaps and bounds ahead of Susan or Lucy.)

Evan said...

You know, you might be on to something there!

I wouldn't call it "outgrowing" per se (at least in-universe), because there are adults in the Narnian world, but given that Aslan did tell them to get to know him in this world, it's a definite point.

Stuart Armstrong said...

All the best wishes, Ana!

Pierre Cloutier said...

The easy way Prince Caspian slips into being the leader of the marginalized because he is "legitimate" is certainly annoying. One would think that Prince Caspian would have to prove it. Certainly the fact that 2 of the three just accept Prince Caspian has a natural leader despite the past is frustrating. Again it would have been interesting to read about Prince Caspian having to prove himself to them and the other native Narnians. Instead his right to lead and rule is simply assumed.

Yeah that is privilige.

malpollyon said...

Secular good-tidings to you Ana.

hf said...

Hope you feel well!

Ken said...

He wasn't breaking new ground, but he wasn't turning the clock back, either. Masry from "Secre Garden" is noncombatant. Wendy from "Peter Pan" is the only one who doesn't usually fight on Neverland. Pippi Longstocking is super-cool, but she is also super-strong and Annika, for example, is stereotypically girly. And those are the good , progressive examples. Standard girl books back then, like "Huemmelchen", "Trotzkopf" ("Dickhead") or "Gisel & Ursel" fron the 1960-1970-s featured girls that couldn't hold their own in verbal smackdown with boys. let alone in a fight, and would probably faint had they even seen something like an actual battle. Back then, a girl (or woman) who, while unable to physically fight back against the villan, would at least rebuff his sleasy talk with a steel resolve, and endure captivity without breaking (ditto Wendy), would be considered a "strong female charachter" already, so Susan and Lucy, let alone Jill, are a vast improvement.
As for Tolkien, he simply was a different league, what with being the Trope Codifier for Fantasy. Also note that Eowin became a warrior partially to defend herself against Grima and once she found Faramir, she decided she no longer wants to fight. Tolkien's portrayal was realistic (women uslually don't fight, but then can do it if they really want it) - but that was a Genius comparable to Shakespeare, imho. Lewis wasn't turnuing the clock back - he was just perpetuating texisting stereotypes. Nothing more, nothing less.

Ursula L said...

Slightly off topic for this thread, but a while back we were speculating on how Narnians kept themselves fed during the One Hundred Year Winter. I think I have it figured out.

Narnia, the world, doesn't have the global climate patterns we have. For example, you have Narnia, the nation having a northern European climate, sharing a border with Calormine, which has a Mediterranean climate. And Narnia, the nation is quite small, in both size and population.

So, during the Hundred Year Winter, Narnia, the nation, supported itself by exporting ice to Calormine as a luxury item.

The decadent Calormine elites which Lewis tells us about, at least those within a few days journey from the Narnian border, enjoyed cool drinks and frozen desserts, year round, thanks to a constant shipment of block ice, packed in straw or sawdust to insulate it and slow down melting.

And the White Witch created the constant winter to support the ice export industry.

The Dwarfs support the Witch because they're the ones running the ice industry - they're known as skilled craftsmen, and they make the metal tools to cut the ice, and the wagons and ships to transport the ice. The larger carnivores accept the Witch because their food supply is only indirectly affected by the winter - as long as there are at least some herbivores and smaller carnivores to hunt, they'll do okay, and a herbivore weak from a poor diet is easy to catch. But the herbivores and smaller carnivores are the ones who get the worst of the winter, with imported food rationed to them being enough to stay alive, but not enough to thrive, unless they can find some way to collaborate with the Witch and the robber barons of the ice export industry.

So Tumnis obtained plentiful food by being an informer. And the Beavers had plentiful food because their skills at building dams was useful for creating pools from which ice could be cut. The Beavers did not consider themselves to be "working for the Witch" because they were working for the dwarfs who ran the ice industry. But the political and social reality was that the Witch and the ice industry were closely tied (as government and big business too often become entwined to the detriment of the general population), so that supporting one was supporting the other.

Froborr d'Wiggy said...

This may have already been mentioned (I haven't read all the comments), but South Africa, where Lewis' good friend J.R.R. Tolkien was from, enshrined discrimination based on hair texture in law. Under apartheid (which I don't know the start date for, so it's certainly possible this was after the books were written) one of the tests for distinguishing "colored" people (meant to be people of Indian or mixed descent) from "black" people (meant to be people of primarily African descent) was hair texture.

Froborr d'Wiggy said...

Having now read Kit's comments: Yes, Romani make a lot of sense as a source for Nikabrik.

Another possibility, which I think clearly influenced Tolkien's dwarves and the dwarves in The Last Battle, and *may* have influenced Nikabrik, is Jewish stereotypes. Coarse, tightly curled hair (tight relative to Northern Europeans, anyway) is not the most common but it is a common hair type on Jews, and big black bushy beards (less commonly, brown bushy beards) are typical on Hasidic men because of religious prohibitions on shaving.

Not to mention, you know, selfishly and stubbornly denying the kingship of the King--that's not how anti-Semitic Christians view Jews *at all.* /sarcasm

Rikalous said...

"I do think of the 'Dwarves' like Jews: at once native and alien in their habitations, speaking the languages of the country, but with an accent due to their own private tongue." -Tolkien.

Apparently he even based the Dwarven language and calender off of the Jewish version. The love-of-gold Fedex arrow, however, seems to come from the Norse mythology dwarves.

Makabit said...

Hilarious. Never thought of Tolkien's dwarves as Jewish. I had never considered that Tolkien's Dwarvish had a Semitic sound to it, but now that I read bits aloud...I can see what he's doing. Also, the use of the three-letter roots. The dwarves themselves don't seem terribly Jewish, but I can relate to the tough little bearded guys. Let them be vaguely Jewish if they like, with their Norse names and all.

Then, there's what Wagner does with the same material...and then, not to mention them in the same breath, there's J.K. Rowling and her GDF bank-running hook-nosed goblins...

Steve Morrison said...

What an odd coincidence; I just took part in a Usenet discussion of the Jewish traits of Tolkien's Dwarves. And one of the sharper posters there offered the closest thing I've seen to an explanation of Tolkien's missing the "Fedex arrow", namely that he frequently did miss the constructions which could be put on his names (e.g. Teleporno!), and perhaps something similar is at work here.

Ken said...

Before going into detail, let's agree that Lewis was not a good or progressive writer with regards to gender equality. I just think he was "Fair for his day" and definitely wasn't one of the worst.
The actual trouble with Lewis was that he did understood the progressive viewpoint, he just considered it evil. He quite believable portrays Susan as a sceptic and world-centered girl who ultimately concentrated on the world rather than on Narnia, and he does so even in greater detail and more believeable than Barri did with Wendy - and then he declares her behaviour "silly and conceited", worthy of scorn and and ridicule. He gives Nikabrik quite a realistic portrayal of a disgrunted rebel, who doesn't care about prophecies, just about freedom - and makes him basically evil. So yes, he did reject strong women examples deliberately, even though he definitely understood them. But I don't think this makes him one of the "worst" ones during times when most authors couln't even conceive of a genuinely strong female charachter, except as a depraved villain. As for counter-examples, well we have the counterpoint of Lucy and Edmund in LWW, where Lucy is ultimately Right, whereas Edmund is ultimately Wrong , and again in Dawn Treader, where Lucy overcomes her temptation but Eustace does not. While Lucy is too trusting, she is definitely a strong charachter, combining "being like a boy" with a deeper spiritual understanding than any of the boys. And Jill is a fighter and quite brave, even compared with boys.So Lewis >b> did make a better job than many other authors.

Everyone in "The Secret Garden" is a noncombatant; wars against evil are not a big part of the book. I gave it merely as an example of a pre-Lewis popular children's book with a positively-portrayed female protagonist.
...
[Wendy is] also the primary protagonist, with as much authority over the boys and as much control over their games as Peter has. She's the oldest, the wisest, and almost always right. She's the most successful character at balancing Neverland and the real world.

That is clear. The point is they are both so called "Plucky Girls", meaning they like adventure, are ready to do things, don't give up and are resilient in the face of danger. Such heroines existed quite a while before Lewis, and here he backpedaled quite a lot from the best examples. And in a general books those charachteristics are "the top", that is those charachters are as strong as needed for gender equality.
But in a fantasy story about fighting (like "Peter Pan" or Narnia),. you also need "Action Girls", that is girls and women that can adequately fight. Now realistically not everybody (man or woman) is a good fighter, but non-fighter guys are usually not in focus of the story, whereas girls often are regardless of fighting ability. And here Lewis is smack in the middle: he definitely makes girls inferior fighters to boys, and even proclaims that girls shouldn't fighjt (ideology again), but portrays girls as ultimately able to fight: Susan fought once (Wendy: none) and Jill fought quite effectively later. And their fighting skills are (sarcasm on) even sometimes relevant! (sarcasm off) When contrasted with stories where the "positive" and "strong" female protagonist is allowed to counsel and animate the male hero, but is completely unable to fight herself (more to it in a later post), this isn't so bad .
As for Pippi Longstocking, the problem is that Pippi is like she is in great part due to her own privilege - she has plenty of money and is super strong, which mostly cancels out being a girl. Readers envy her, but I don't think they identify with her. They identify with Tommy and Annika, and those are portrayed as weakm, especially Annika.
More later.

Anton_Mates said...

So, during the Hundred Year Winter, Narnia, the nation, supported itself by exporting ice to Calormine as a luxury item.

This works very well, and not just for ice; a temperate country in constant winter could produce lots of stuff that the Calormenes would find exotic and valuable. Jadis could export maple syrup, the white furs of rabbits and ermines and foxes, whale and seal meat, coldwater fish, and, I dunno, mistletoe or something.

Indeed, Narnia might have exported cold itself. Northern Calormen is largely desert; perhaps winds from a permafrosted Narnia cooled its climate and rendered it a temperate paradise. Perhaps there was a constant, magically-replenished snowmelt along Narnia's southern frontier, adding to Calormen's fresh water supply. I'm sure the Calormenes would pay any price if Jadis could make a big chunk of their empire more livable and farmable.

Ursula L said...

This works very well, and not just for ice; a temperate country in constant winter could produce lots of stuff that the Calormenes would find exotic and valuable. Jadis could export maple syrup, the white furs of rabbits and ermines and foxes, whale and seal meat, coldwater fish, and, I dunno, mistletoe or something.

I like this! Winter is not a nonproductive season. It is productive in different and more subtle ways than summer. So Narnians, in order to survive, would have to focus on the things associated with winter.

I'm not sure about the maple syrup and maple sugar. That's a product of the earliest part of spring, not winter proper. It may still feel like winter, in terms of the temperature, but it is part of the sugar maple tree's cycle of moving through the seasons, and moving from winter to spring. The sap rises as the tree prepares to start its spring growth. Deciduous trees like maples would probably die during a Hundred Year Winter, starting on their spring regrowth cycle during every thaw, but never able to properly resume their summertime photosynthesis.

Thinking more on it, a lot of life forms have seasonal shifts in their appearance and way of life.

How does sunlight and the length of day factor into a constant winter? Are the days constantly winter-short? Does the length of day and amount of sunlight still cycle every year, with the small area that is Narnia, the nation, being kept artificially cold?

Deciduous trees have green leaves for photosynthesis in summer, but are dormant in winter. Can they survive for decades without summer sunshine to feed them? Do they grow leaves and have summertime photosynthesis because the days are long, despite magically created cold, or do they gradually starve as they cannot produce their food through photosynthesis?

Is the continual winter an effect of the White Witch changing the pattern of the time of sunrise and sunset so it is constantly winter-like? Or does she manipulate the air temperature and humidity to keep things winter-like despite the changes in sunshine?

What about evergreen trees? Have they evolved to thrive in conditions which match the worst of winter year round? Or do they require the conditions of summer to survive, even if they continue to take advantage of the shorter daily photosynthesis opportunities in winter, rather than going completely dormant as deciduous trees do?

Some animals, such as the rabbits you mention, shift between summer furs of brown and winter furs of white, for reasons of camouflage. How would they fare in a constant winter? Would they stay winter-white? Would their bodies be triggered to change to brown on schedule, leaving them vulnerable?

The idea of a "Hundred Year Winter" is intellectually fascinating. There are so many variables that could go into that level of climate change.

And it ought to lead to a nuanced understanding of the climate and the way it can be changed. The way in which changes in the climate affect ordinary life.

And it tells that story in ways that are compatible with conservative evangelical Christianity. (To tie back to Fred's theology and blogging.)

The world was created good. But intervention by the sinful can cause environmental problems. Because they abuse their stewardship of the world. So good people will work to keep the world in its original, created, state, rather than letting it be damaged by sinful human activity.

Timothy (TRiG) said...

Interestingly, similar things have been said about Pratchett's dwarfs. Pratchett himself says he didn't intend them to be Jewish analogues, but he can see where people get the idea. (Source: a comment in the Illustrated Guide.)

TRiG.

Rikalous said...

I was going to say that altering the temperature of Narnia sounds more feasible than mucking about with a planet's rotation, especially if said mucking about is to only affect one country. Then I remembered that Narnia-world's flat.

It still seems to me that it would take less power to keep the temperature down in the country where you live than to change the movements of a celestial body, though.

Ken said...

Returning to Lewis' place between authors:

Well, no, he was quite literally in C.S. Lewis' league. They were extremely close friends, collaborated on worldbuilding, and Tolkien would read drafts of "The Lord of the Rings" to the Inklings in Lewis' apartment. If Lewis had a different approach to his female characters than Tolkien had to his, it's not because he didn't know about the latter.

Under "different League" I actually meant "vastly different skills". Tolkien was a writing genius. Lewis just a good writer. Note that while Lewis revered Tolkien's work, Tolkien repeatedly criticised Lewis for sloppy worldbuiling. and charachterisations.
In German, there is a word "Transferleistung", meaning "an achievement would let you pass at a test at a level higher than your current syllabus". In broader sence it means "an achievement that persons who manage should be applauded for, but those who fail shouldn't be scolded for failing". I consider that back in 60-s portrayal of Action Girls would be such transferleistung - applause for Tolkien for doing it, but even halfway portrayal by Lewis shouldn't be ridiculed.

I don't know too much about those series; they've never been translated into English, have they? (Which, no offense, makes them not terribly relevant to whether Lewis was a regressive/progressive writer for his time and place.) The only "Huemmelchen" and "Trotzkopf" books I know are from the turn of the century; were there later retellings of them, or are you talking about totally unrelated works?

Huemmelchen actually got new installments in 60-s, but this is not the point. No, "Trotzkopf" and "Huemmelchen" are the books from turn of the century It is just so that in those books were among the books which were most popular between German girls in the year 1970. They are relevant because those books provide a baseline: girls in Germany found those books most compelling in 1960-s and read them very often, which means that they were used to read books similar to those , and also that books written in 1960-s often copied those books, and rest assured, girls in England read books with different titles, but exactly the same levels of plots / charachterisations.

The "Gisel and Ursel" books are extremely light (~60-page) reading for fairly young girls, with no fantasy elements or moral philosophizing, correct? And according to some folks (feel free to disagree, I know nothing about it), they're almost unreadable by a modern audience because of their sexism.

But this is the whole point: books that were expremely popular (and considered good, "above average" by critics) then, are now "unreadable by a modern audience because of their sexism". This just shows how bad the baseline was back then. One essay essentially criticised more progressive books books because "the girl charachters there are too strong, wich makes them no longer enjoyed by the target audience" Would you say that Narnia books are unreadable by modern audiences because of this? Or would you sey that compared to books like "Gisel and Ursel" , Narnia books are quite progressive?

P.S. I suggest we move furter discussion into the new Narnia thread, as it is not related to this particular chapter.

Anton_Mates said...

P.S. I suggest we move furter discussion into the new Narnia thread, as it is not related to this particular chapter.

I have no problem with that, but Ana might prefer it to be contained here rather than diverting the conversation in multiple threads. Do you care, Ana?

Ana Mardoll said...

I care not! Rambles should ramble however they are best pleased to ramble. :D

Kit Whitfield said...

Everyone in "The Secret Garden" is a noncombatant; wars against evil are not a big part of the book. I gave it merely as an example of a pre-Lewis popular children's book with a positively-portrayed female protagonist.

And in fact, in terms of plot and personality Mary is a fighter, far more so than the boys in the book. Colin is a neglected, neurotic child whose physical and spiritual recovery are entirely precipitated by the way Mary stands up to him; Dickon is a mild, agreeable child of nature. It's Mary who makes her way into the garden and revitalises it against adult opposition and brings Dickon into the garden as a playmate-consultant under her leadership; it's Mary who forces Colin to understand that he's not sick. Even Mary's own recovery is female-driven: Mary exercises and gardens and explores herself into health as an instinctively positive reaction to boredom and neglect, and the things that help her along - an interest in the moors, her skipping-rope, even Dickon's friendship - are the gifts of her maid Martha, who, far from being subservient, treats her with no-nonsense kindness and refuses to be put upon.

Even the garden itself is fundamentally female: it's the beloved treasure of Colin's mother, and shut up by his father when she dies. A woman sustains it; after she's gone, a man doesn't have the strength to keep it flourishing; a girl breaks in, brings it back to full bloom, and uses it to replenish the woman's neglected child.

If you compare Mary to little Lord Fauntleroy - the stories are structurally very similar: a child from abroad is brought to an English mansion and brings life back to it - she's a powerful antagonist. What Cedric cures by innocence and faith, Mary cures by work and will. Frances Hodgson Burnett's heroines have more grit than her heroes. Consider A Little Princess, for example, which is also structurally similar to Little Lord Fauntleroy - cossetted, wealthy child acts as benefactor to all around him/her, suffers a fall from fortune, endures it with dignity and is eventually restored to former glory. But where Cedric suffers a temporary separation from his mother, Sara's beloved father dies. Where Cedric suffers the loss of a title but is quickly assured that he'll be as precious to his grandfather as ever, Sara becomes a semi-slave and has to drag herself through a whole winter burdened with hard work, clothing that doesn't keep out the cold, and near starvation. Cedric is saved by news coming from adults; Sara is saved because she skilfully captures a monkey and takes the trouble to return it to its owners.

The struggles in Frances Hodgson Burnett's books are moral ones, which you'd think a moralist like Lewis would take seriously. And in those terms, her girls are far tougher than her boys. I like Little Lord Fauntleroy - it's very sentimental, but still touching - but there's no question where the true agency lies.

Ken said...

The discussion about this now moved to the next Narnia thread. In order not to repeat the full thing, here just an outline: Lewis backpedaled on Plucky Girls (strong non-combat girls), but he had Action Girls (girls who can fight), which was quite rare for that time.
And really, Sara is just a glorified Cinderella. Though it would be interesting to see how Susan will fare after Last Battle, when she is stuck in similar circumstances (whom will she live with? The Scrubbs? Alone?)
The discussion continueds in the next Narnia thread.

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