Narnia: The Pleasure of Punishment

[Content Note: Bullying, BDSM Erotica]

Narnia Recap: In which Lucy and Edmund are shown around the ship and we are introduced to King Caspian (as opposed to Prince Caspian from the previous book) and a reasonable amount of backstory is given in order to bring everyone up to speed on the plot.

Voyage of the Dawn Treader, Chapter 2: On Board the Dawn Treader

When we last left our royal children, they were discussing their route so far, in between the time they left Narnia and the time that Lucy and Edmund and Eustace were dropped into the sea.

   [...] We left Redhaven six days ago and have made marvelously good speed, so that I hope to see the Lone Islands the day after tomorrow. The sum is, we are now nearly thirty days at sea and have sailed more than four hundred leagues from Narnia.”
   “And after the Lone Islands?” said Lucy.
   “No one knows, your Majesty,” answered Drinian. “Unless the Lone Islanders themselves can tell us.”
   “They couldn’t in our days,” said Edmund.
   “Then,” said Reepicheep, “it is after the Lone Islands that the adventure really begins.”

We talked last week about the problems inherent in the framing of the voyage of the Dawn Treader as a pleasure cruise or an adventure trip rather than as an effort that Caspian is making in order to help grow and enrich his kingdom. And I want to reiterate that there is nothing inherently wrong in finding pleasure in one's duty -- I can easily imagine that someone like Caspian or Lucy could find considerable pleasure in a sea trip while still maintaining first and foremost in their mind that what they are doing, they are doing for the good of their people.

But this is an Arthurian adventure, and so there will not be much (or really any) mentions of the people they have left behind and how, precisely, this trip is meant to benefit them. And this saddens me somewhat, because it changes the entire tenor of the book. When Aslan crowned Caspian in Prince Caspian, he made a point of asking Caspian if he felt ready to be king. Caspian told him that he was not, and Aslan pronounced his approval, saying that his answer proved he would be a good king. But there were no kingly lessons imparted to the ruler chosen by the god-lion, none of the usual "being a king means living for the good of your people" morals that often accompany chivalric tales.

I cannot help but contrast Narnia with Mercedes Lackey's Valdemar, which is a another fantasy property where benevolent spirits chose the country's rules. Valdemar is not without its problems, but it does at least try to impart the lesson that the Ideal Benevolent Monarch lives hir life for the people instead of for hir own pleasure:

Although I am the head of state, in truth I am the least,
The true Queen knows her people fed, before she sits to feast.
The good Queen knows her people safe, before she takes her rest,
Thinks twice and thrice and yet again, before she makes request.

Of course, even in the ideal version the queen isn't going to bed hungry just because there's a beggar in the kingdom, and she's not constantly in danger of disenfranchisement against her person just because the powerless in her realm are vulnerable to these things. But -- in theory at least -- she is supposed to be aware of these things and is supposed to be constantly working to address and redress these wrongs, and to leave the realm a better place than she found it. That is where the "ideal" part of the Ideal Benevolent Monarch comes from.

We've talked about how the voyage of the Dawn Treader could help Narnia, but there's not really an emphasis in the text on these things, nor any real reminders that Caspian is doing this as a duty instead of as a pleasure. And, indeed, by the end of the book he will have to be scolded quite a bit for wanting to sail on over the edge of the world into Aslan's country and never return because, hey, adventure. So I guess I'm glad that point was made, but I wish it were made a little more forcefully and with more idealistic reasons (i.e, because of Country and Duty and Responsibilities and Marginalized Peoples) than just because Aslan Says So.

Anyway, I digress. 

   Caspian now suggested that they might like to be shown over the ship before supper, but Lucy’s conscience smote her and she said, “I think I really must go and see Eustace. Seasickness is horrid, you know. If I had my old cordial with me I could cure him.”
   “But you have,” said Caspian. “I’d quite forgotten about it. As you left it behind I thought it might be regarded as one of the royal treasures and so I brought it—if you think it ought to be wasted on a thing like seasickness.”
   “It’ll only take a drop,” said Lucy.

So the magic cordial is a royal treasure that is invaluable to the Narnian state, and must be handled with care and never wasted, so Caspian brought it along on a sea cruise into the unknown where they have every real expectation of never returning. Of course.

What's even more interesting here is Caspian's contempt for sea-sickness, given that apparently not a single Telmarine on-board was a sailor before Caspian's coronation three years ago. I suppose three short years is enough time to build up a small navy -- the Dawn Treader, though small and spare, is supposed to be the biggest and finest ship Caspian has built -- and weed out those Telmarines which were brave enough to volunteer for the job but didn't have the constitution for sea life, but it's a pretty accelerated schedule, and you'd think Caspian would have a little more respect for debilitating sea-sickness than he actually does here.

Anyway, they go below deck to see Eustace and they see the oars:

   Of course Caspian’s ship was not that horrible thing, a galley rowed by slaves. Oars were used only when wind failed or for getting in and out of harbor and everyone (except Reepicheep whose legs were too short) had often taken a turn. At each side of the ship the space under the benches was left clear for the rowers’ feet, but all down the center there was a kind of pit which went down to the very keel and this was filled with all kinds of things—sacks of flour, casks of water and beer, barrels of pork, jars of honey, skin bottles of wine, apples, nuts, cheeses, biscuits, turnips, sides of bacon. From the roof—that is, from the under side of the deck—hung hams and strings of onions, and also the men of the watch off-duty in their hammocks. 

And now you know what they have to eat on-board, and that everyone on-board is either human or has the manual dexterity to row an oar (except our Token Animal, Reepicheep). Interestingly, there's not a lot there that Eustace will probably want to eat. We don't know if he's a vegan in addition to being a vegetarian, but he definitely won't want the beer, pork, wine, bacon, or ham and he may not want the honey or cheeses. The biscuits may have been made with animal fat, and therefore would also be out of his diet. And since this route is the only way to reach his bunk, presumably the stumbling and sick Eustace was forced to pass the pit of bacon and the swinging hams in order to get to bed.

   Eustace, very green in the face, scowled and asked whether there was any sign of the storm getting less. But Caspian said, “What storm?” and Drinian burst out laughing.
   “Storm, young master!” he roared. “This is as fair weather as a man could ask for.”
   “Who’s that?” said Eustace irritably. “Send him away. His voice goes through my head.”
   “I’ve brought you something that will make you feel better, Eustace,” said Lucy.
   “Oh, go away and leave me alone,” growled Eustace. But he took a drop from her flask, and though he said it was beastly stuff (the smell in the cabin when she opened it was delicious) it is certain that his face came the right color a few moments after he had swallowed it, and he must have felt better because, instead of wailing about the storm and his head, he began demanding to be put ashore and said that at the first port he would “lodge a disposition” against them all with the British Consul. But when Reepicheep asked what a disposition was and how you lodged it (Reepicheep thought it was some new way of arranging a single combat) Eustace could only reply, “Fancy not knowing that.” In the end they succeeded in convincing Eustace that they were already sailing as fast as they could toward the nearest land they knew, and that they had no more power of sending him back to Cambridge—which was where Uncle Harold lived—than of sending him to the moon. 

It's kind of subtle there in that paragraph, but in case you missed it: Eustace is wrong about things.

He's wrong about thinking that fair weather is like a storm, just because he's so susceptible to sea-sickness. (And once again it is a very strange thing that the land-native Telmarines would be so blase and unsympathetic about sea-sickness, given that absolutely none of them were raised on ships, but RETCON ACCOMPLISHED, I guess.) And he's presumably meant to be wrong for not wanting a bellowing laughing man in his room while suffering from the sea-sickness version of a migraine, although I personally sympathize. ("Baby, can we pretend Mommy is hungover?" is not an uncommon sentiment in this house when debilitating headaches hit, and is frequently directed at whichever cat is being noisy at the moment.)

Eustace is also apparently wrong about the cordial because it smells "delicious", although I would point out that the cordial is made from a flower extract and there are a number of flower extracts which smell terribly yummy and yet which are not remotely palatable (to my tastes, anyway). And of course he seems to get a little better in that he manages to start talking, and if he were really ill he wouldn't be able to demand that he be put off the ship and returned home, now would he? Oof.

I think we're also supposed to suspect that Eustace doesn't really know what it means to "lodge a disposition" and that he's just parroting something he's heard, given that he has no real answer for Reepicheep. Yet it strikes me that I'm not sure I would know how to explain, to pick something at random, the Texas Department of Motor Vehicles to a talking mouse, were I called upon to do so. There's so many things that need to be explained just in order for the conversation to take place at all, that it seems an almost insurmountable task.

It's interesting to me that no one ever mentions or again thinks on the wardrobe door that they know is in the Narnian forest near the lamp-post. Now, we don't exactly know what happened to Kirke's wardrobe out here in England, but the children must be reasonably certain that the doorway exists on the Narnian side, and they have presumably no reason to believe it has been closed. But there's no mention of turning around and heading back to Narnia, nor is there any idea that the children will go home via that route once the voyage of the Dawn Treader has successfully been completed. Apparently Narnia robs you so much of agency that you no longer consider these things and you just figure you'll go home whenever Aslan shows up to banish you.

   The name of the ship was Dawn Treader. She was only a little bit of a thing compared with one of our ships, or even with the cogs, dromonds, carracks and galleons which Narnia had owned when Lucy and Edmund had reigned there under Peter as the High King, for nearly all navigation had died out in the reigns of Caspian’s ancestors. When his uncle, Miraz the usurper, had sent the seven lords to sea, they had had to buy a Galmian ship and man it with hired Galmian sailors. But now Caspian had begun to teach the Narnians to be sea-faring folk once more, and the Dawn Treader was the finest ship he had built yet. She was so small that, forward of the mast, there was hardly any deck room between the central hatch and the ship’s boat on one side and the hen-coop (Lucy fed the hens) on the other. But she was a beauty of her kind, a “lady” as sailors say, her lines perfect, her colors pure, and every spar and rope and pin lovingly made. Eustace of course would be pleased with nothing, and kept on boasting about liners and motorboats and aeroplanes and submarines (“As if he knew anything about them,” muttered Edmund), but the other two were delighted with the Dawn Treader, 

Also, Eustace knows nothing about modern travel. Although I suppose Edmund is saying that he knows nothing about them in the sense that he lacks direct experience with them, rather than having no theoretical knowledge of them, since Eustace's passion for non-fiction books has already been well-established.

Incidentally, though I am familiar with the tradition of calling ships "she", I can find nothing on Google about calling ships "ladies". But I guess it's all well and good that the children aren't sailing on one of those slutty ships whose colors aren't pure and whose ropes were made for money rather than with love. (Oof, the sexual issues that I could unpack from that paragraph. Let's move on, instead.)

Although I will note that they brought live hens on board but couldn't be arsed to bring some Talking Birds that could serve as advance scouts. Why? It wouldn't have cost more to feed them; they already have bird feed on-board.

Anyway, let us move on to Eustace's diary:

   “August 7th. Have now been twenty-four hours on this ghastly boat if it isn’t a dream. All the time a frightful storm has been raging (it’s a good thing I’m not seasick). Huge waves keep coming in over the front and I have seen the boat nearly go under any number of times. All the others pretend to take no notice of this, either from swank or because Harold says one of the most cowardly things ordinary people do is to shut their eyes to Facts. 

Of course, this establishes that Eustace is either a knowing liar or is self-deceitful since the narrator has already informed us through Drinian that there is no storm except in Eustace's imagination.

   It’s madness to come out into the sea in a rotten little thing like this. Not much bigger than a lifeboat. And, of course, absolutely primitive indoors. No proper saloon, no radio, no bathrooms, no deck-chairs. I was dragged all over it yesterday evening and it would make anyone sick to hear Caspian showing off his funny little toy boat as if it was the Queen Mary. I tried to tell him what real ships are like, but he’s too dense. 

This, in itself, is a spiteful observation but not entirely an incorrect one. It is very foolhardy (note: not madness) to set out in such a small ship without any kind of advance scouts or support lines to make sure that the ship doesn't run out of provisions. Eventually in the novel, the crew will face going forward into the unknown or turning back because of a lack of provisions, and Caspian will choose to keep going forward and risk starvation rather than turn back. And, of course, the ship is fairly fragile and will at one point be nearly crushed into tinder by a sea-serpent. So there's that.

   E. and L., of course, didn’t back me up. I suppose a kid like L. doesn’t realize the danger and E. is buttering up C. as everyone does here. They call him a King. I said I was a Republican but he had to ask me what that meant! He doesn’t seem to know anything at all. 

And I suppose now is as good a time as any to notice that -- as best we can tell from the sparse world-building -- the Pevensies apparently didn't import their English ideas of a constitutional monarchy and parliamentary systems into Narnia when they were acting as (apparently) absolute monarchs of the theocratic Narnian state. And I find that somewhat interesting, since some Americans tend to mistakenly think that Britain is an absolute monarchy and that Queen Elizabeth II can, for example, order someone's head off at a whim a la the Queen of Hearts from Alice's Adventures in Wonderland. Apparently -- or as best as I can tell -- Caspian and the Pevensies are absolute monarchs in Narnia in the same way that some Americans mistakenly think Queen Elizabeth II is in England. So that's kind of interesting.

   Needless to say I’ve been put in the worst cabin of the boat, a perfect dungeon, and Lucy has been given a whole room on deck to herself, almost a nice room compared with the rest of this place. C. says that’s because she’s a girl. I tried to make him see what Alberta says, that all that sort of thing is really lowering girls but he was too dense. Still, he might see that I shall be ill if I’m kept in that hole any longer. E. says we mustn’t grumble because C. is sharing it with us himself to make room for L. As if that didn’t make it more crowded and far worse. Nearly forgot to say that there is also a kind of Mouse thing that gives everyone the most frightful cheek. The others can put up with it if they like but I shall twist his tail pretty soon if he tries it on me. The food is frightful too.”

And now we come to the bullying. Eustace has telegraphed in advance to the reader that he is going to bully Reepicheep and however much he may be provoked by his circumstances -- the sea-sickness, the arrogance and brashness of Caspian, the cramped living space, and the bad food -- it is not okay for him to bully the only other smaller person on board. So this is Eustace's Moral Event Horizon.

   The trouble between Eustace and Reepicheep arrived even sooner than might have been expected. Before dinner next day, when the others were sitting round the table waiting (being at sea gives one a magnificent appetite), Eustace came rushing in, wringing his hand and shouting out:
   “That little brute has half killed me. I insist on it being kept under control. I could bring an action against you, Caspian. I could order you to have it destroyed.”
   At the same moment Reepicheep appeared. His sword was drawn and his whiskers looked very fierce but he was as polite as ever.
   “I ask your pardons all,” he said, “and especially her Majesty’s. If I had known that he would take refuge here I would have awaited a more reasonable time for his correction.”

A couple of quick things. One is that the others have the leisure to wait around for dinner to be served. We never really get a sense of what Caspian and Edmund and Lucy do on the ship, if anything. This is an interesting omission, given that a lot of Tales At Sea stories explicitly focus on the exotic and different daily life that the children are allowed to experience. Clearing the table is a tedious everyday chore, but clearing the table on a rolling, pitching ship in the midst of a rough, choppy sea can be quite interesting indeed. And clambering around in the rigging is obviously the most exciting thing ever when you're not even certain what rigging is or how one would clamber about in it.

But from an Arthurian standpoint, this omission is perhaps understandable: if Lucy was clearing plates and Edmund was swabbing decks, they wouldn't be Exalted Kings and Queens, now would they? (I think they still would be, of course, but I'm uncertain how Lewis would see the matter.) Still, on such a small ship, it seems like everyone would need to be able to do their fair share. And later, during a storm, Drinian will tell Lucy et. al. to get below because "landsmen—and landswomen—are a nuisance to the crew" and she will obey. And this is very strange indeed given that Lucy has more experience on a ship than Drinian has, but I suppose we're not supposed to remember that?

My point; I have lost it. Anyway, I note from above that Eustace still does not seem to think that Reepicheep is a sentient being, and instead sees him as some kind of trained performing animal, based on the insistence that he could have Caspian "destroy" Reepicheep as a dangerous animal. That still doesn't make the bullying right -- indeed, it may make it worse, since it's really very uncool to abuse animals who don't have the ability to speak up and complain about the abuse to others -- but it makes it a little stranger in a sense. Eustace has been described as someone who likes animals, and who may be a vegetarian for ethical reasons, but he doesn't consider anything wrong with hurting a mouse. Is it because he thinks the mouse "belongs" to Caspian, and he's acting out against Caspian, or is it because he think that mice are not worthy of protection in the same way as, say, cows and sheep? I don't know. (And that's assuming that Lewis really thought through the characterization issues at all.)

   What had really happened was this. Reepicheep, who never felt that the ship was getting on fast enough, loved to sit on the bulwarks far forward just beside the dragon’s head, gazing out at the eastern horizon and singing softly in his little chirruping voice the song the Dryad had made for him. He never held on to anything, however the ship pitched, and kept his balance with perfect ease; perhaps his long tail, hanging down to the deck inside the bulwarks, made this easier. 

I just want to note that Reepicheep would not have had this tail had he not "vainly" asked Aslan to restore it after the Telmarine battle. Also, giving credit where credit is due, I love this characterization of Reepicheep gazing ahead of the ship and singing softly to himself. I really find that very endearing and lovely, and once again I am frustrated and sad that we don't have more Animals on board for this very reason: in order to personify the marginalized Narnians that this series has ostensibly been about. 

   Anyway, as soon as he saw that long tail hanging down—and perhaps it was rather tempting—he thought it would be delightful to catch hold of it, swing Reepicheep round by it once or twice upside-down, then run away and laugh. [...] It is not very easy to draw one’s sword when one is swinging round in the air by one’s tail, but [Reepicheep] did. And the next thing Eustace knew was two agonizing jabs in his hand which made him let go of the tail; and the next thing after that was that the Mouse had picked itself up again as if it were a ball bouncing off the deck, and there it was facing him, and a horrid long, bright, sharp thing like a skewer was waving to and fro within an inch of his stomach. [...]
   “Why do you not draw your own sword, poltroon!” cheeped the Mouse. “Draw and fight or I’ll beat you black and blue with the flat.”
   “I haven’t got one,” said Eustace. “I’m a pacifist. I don’t believe in fighting.” [...]
   “Then take that,” said Reepicheep, “and that—to teach you manners—and the respect due to a knight—and a Mouse—and a Mouse’s tail—” and at each word he gave Eustace a blow with the side of his rapier, which was thin, fine, dwarf-tempered steel and as supple and effective as a birch rod. Eustace (of course) was at a school where they didn’t have corporal punishment, so the sensation was quite new to him. That was why, in spite of having no sea-legs, it took him less than a minute to get off that forecastle and cover the whole length of the deck and burst in at the cabin door—still hotly pursued by Reepicheep. Indeed it seemed to Eustace that the rapier as well as the pursuit was hot. It might have been red-hot by the feel. 
   There was not much difficulty in settling the matter once Eustace realized that everyone took the idea of a duel seriously and heard Caspian offering to lend him a sword, and Drinian and Edmund discussing whether he ought to be handicapped in some way to make up for his being so much bigger than Reepicheep. He apologized sulkily and went off with Lucy to have his hand bathed and bandaged and then went to his bunk. He was careful to lie on his side.

I want to be very, very clear here: what Eustace does here is wrong.

It was wrong for him to physically abuse Reepicheep in the manner that he did. And it was wrong of him to brush the whole incident off as "a joke" that Reepicheep just doesn't have the necessary sense of humor to appreciate. This is a common tactic used by the privileged to disenfranchise the marginalized and it is bullying and harmful and wrong.

Yet what strikes me about this passage is that none of this wrongness is really meaningfully called out -- we don't hear why this is wrong, or receive any sense of how this is a common tactic used by the privileged to harm the marginalized. Instead, we get a passage about the vital importance of corporal punishment. Eustace "of course" goes to a school where the teachers and administrators do not hit him -- why "of course"? Lewis seems to be suggesting -- both here and in The Silver Chair -- that bullying is a direct consequence of not being physically struck as a child. There seems almost to be the implication of a one-to-one ratio: children who are not struck become bullies and children who are struck do not become bullies. That some children who are not struck do not become bullies, and some children who are struck may become bullies who strike other children, seems not to be imaginable in the world of Narnia or its associated alternate-history fictional England.

So instead of having this passage be about the Badness of Eustace and a sample of why he needs salvation and what must change in him in order for him to be considered morally redeemed, we are instead treated to a passage that seems more of an invective against non-spanking parents and teachers than one against bullies and bullying; Eustace "of course" isn't used to corporal punishment, and Lewis carefully and vividly describes with an exactness that is otherwise lacking from his narrative: the blade is "thin" and "fine" and "supple", the effect is like a "birch rod", the feel is "red-hot", and Eustace lies carefully on his side because of the residual sting of the attack.

The scene has a lavishness attending on the punishment itself -- rather than the reasons why the punishment was necessary or warranted -- that reminds me almost of erotica: the scene seems to exist almost entirely for the purpose of the punishment, with any flimsy excuse for why the punishment was necessary inserted into the writing after the fact. By which I mean that when Madam Has Been A Naughty Girl, we are not particularly expected to care what precisely warranted the punishment that is about to follow. And this impression of "punishment first, offense afterward" is reinforced by the almost inconsistent randomness of characterization that caused Eustace -- who has not been shown physically bullying anyone before, and who is said to be a vegetarian who likes animals -- to suddenly attack Reepicheep in the first place.

Of course, I am not suggesting that this scene in this children's book is intended to be erotic to the reader. But I do think it's important to point out the fact that the punishment seems to be the ultimate point of the scene, rather than the sin that preceded it.

On the face of it, Dawn Treader would seem intended as a salvation story with Eustace as the sinner and his redemption into the ways of Narnia as a spiritual climax within the book. Yet Eustace's sins are all over the map: he is a vegetarian, he is a social bully, he wears special underwear, he physically bullies Reepicheep, he espouses feminist ideals which he learned from his mother. Nothing ties his sins together coherently, and neither is his redemption focused on addressing whatever "first cause" is at the root of his badness. Eustace just is bad, for a whole slew of reasons, and he just is punished, in ways that do not thematically address his sins but are very lavishly described in their tortuousness nonetheless.

Eustace's beating by Reepicheep is the climax of Chapter 2, and is vividly described; his "redemption" from his magical dragon form will be just as vibrantly painful. How these experiences are meant to make him a better person, we aren't really told, and by avoiding any sense of cause-and-effect between Badness-to-Goodness, the punishments seem less like necessary evils which were sadly required in order to properly fix Eustace and more like exotic and interesting punishments that we are invited to partake in out of enjoyment.

And if that is the case, it's difficult for me to see how punishing a character for the pleasure in it is fundamentally different from what Eustace does here and now to little Reepicheep.

37 comments:

JenL said...

I have a notion, and I apologize if this is something that's already been thrown out there, or if I make a complete mash of it, but I'm afraid if I wait until tomorrow I'll have forgotten the whole thing....

I think that Lewis has a notion that there is a set of traits that are associated with "good", especially with a good child, and that the lack of those traits defines a bad child. "Good" children have spunk (balanced with respect for their elders, I'm sure), imagination, courage (or simple lack of experience/cause to fear), and a desire for adventure.

So when Lucy goes through the wardrobe, finds it all exciting, and has an adventure - that's because she's a good kid.
Edmund goes through, but he's a bad kid. He doesn't find it an adventure - he's unhappy. So rather than wandering off and finding a nice faun, he falls prey to a scary witch. Edmund isn't bad because he eats the tainted candy, he eats the tainted candy *because he's bad*.

Likewise, Lewis doesn't think that being seasick makes Eustace bad - instead, Eustace is seasick *because* he's bad. He has no sense of adventure, no imagination, no spunk. If he were a good kid, he'd resist his parents' vegetarianism and modernism. A good kid would envy the Pevensies their imaginary world, and would be excited to be pulled into the ocean through a picture. He'd be too excited about the upcoming adventure to notice a little thing like seasickness. To Lewis, anything that Eustace does is bad because Eustace is bad. Anything bad *done* to Eustace is punishment for his being bad. Until he's redeemed into a "good" kid, at least.

JenL said...

I have a notion, and I apologize if this is something that's already been thrown out there, or if I make a complete mash of it, but I'm afraid if I wait until tomorrow I'll have forgotten the whole thing....

I think that Lewis has a notion that there is a set of traits that are associated with "good", especially with a good child, and that the lack of those traits defines a bad child. "Good" children have spunk (balanced with respect for their elders, I'm sure), imagination, courage (or simple lack of experience/cause to fear), and a desire for adventure.

So when Lucy goes through the wardrobe, finds it all exciting, and has an adventure - that's because she's a good kid.
Edmund goes through, but he's a bad kid. He doesn't find it an adventure - he's unhappy. So rather than wandering off and finding a nice faun, he falls prey to a scary witch. Edmund isn't bad because he eats the tainted candy, he eats the tainted candy *because he's bad*.

Likewise, Lewis doesn't think that being seasick makes Eustace bad - instead, Eustace is seasick *because* he's bad. He has no sense of adventure, no imagination, no spunk. If he were a good kid, he'd resist his parents' vegetarianism and modernism. A good kid would envy the Pevensies their imaginary world, and would be excited to be pulled into the ocean through a picture. He'd be too excited about the upcoming adventure to notice a little thing like seasickness. To Lewis, anything that Eustace does is bad because Eustace is bad. Anything bad *done* to Eustace is punishment for his being bad. Until he's redeemed into a "good" kid, at least.

Rakka said...

The islands apparently float. Think hydrophobic sponge, maybe, although I don't know how the weight of plants would affect them. It's not like Lewis was thinking about it overmuch, I assume, and just going with "ooh, shiny and alien" factor. It's been a long time since I read those books, but I don't remember any mega-storms, and if it's supposed to be Eden then I guess there just magically aren't any. (I read loads of crappy "science" fiction when I was 15ish. I'm still not sure if overall this or Shikasta was more annoying. Although I did reread Shikasta a few years ago, and haven't bothered to reread these... should probably see just how offensive I find Lewis this time.)

Rakka said...

The islands apparently float. Think hydrophobic sponge, maybe, although I don't know how the weight of plants would affect them. It's not like Lewis was thinking about it overmuch, I assume, and just going with "ooh, shiny and alien" factor. It's been a long time since I read those books, but I don't remember any mega-storms, and if it's supposed to be Eden then I guess there just magically aren't any. (I read loads of crappy "science" fiction when I was 15ish. I'm still not sure if overall this or Shikasta was more annoying. Although I did reread Shikasta a few years ago, and haven't bothered to reread these... should probably see just how offensive I find Lewis this time.)

Anton_Mates said...

The closest I could come to making sense of it was “Um, uh, he means her treatment of the animals made them more like human beings.”

That's how I read it, since she talks about Uplifting them a moment later. Lewis seemed to be saying that a pet doesn't actually understand its owner well enough to appreciate their superiority. When you play with a puppy, it basically thinks of you like a big weird dog, and you have to bring yourself down to its level and act like a dog to interact with it. If your pet obeys you, it does so for simplistic reasons like the food/petting it gets as a reward, or its viewing you as a more dominant member of its own species. It doesn't know that that it should be obedient because you're a wise clever ethical human and have God-given dominion over the animals and your commands are in everyone's best interest, including its own.

A willing slave or servant is more capable of appreciating your superiority, precisely because they're on your mental level. It's fun to pretend to be buddies and equals with your cat, but to do the same with your servant would be dishonest and insulting to them. They know you're better than them; they wouldn't accept your authority otherwise. So Tinidril is actually showing respect to the animals, and encouraging them to mature mentally, when she makes it clear that she's their superior.

Note that the above is my take on what Lewis is expressing. I think most people with a more up-to-date understanding of animal behavior, and without a massive authority fetish, are going to see things differently.

Anton_Mates said...

The closest I could come to making sense of it was “Um, uh, he means her treatment of the animals made them more like human beings.”

That's how I read it, since she talks about Uplifting them a moment later. Lewis seemed to be saying that a pet doesn't actually understand its owner well enough to appreciate their superiority. When you play with a puppy, it basically thinks of you like a big weird dog, and you have to bring yourself down to its level and act like a dog to interact with it. If your pet obeys you, it does so for simplistic reasons like the food/petting it gets as a reward, or its viewing you as a more dominant member of its own species. It doesn't know that that it should be obedient because you're a wise clever ethical human and have God-given dominion over the animals and your commands are in everyone's best interest, including its own.

A willing slave or servant is more capable of appreciating your superiority, precisely because they're on your mental level. It's fun to pretend to be buddies and equals with your cat, but to do the same with your servant would be dishonest and insulting to them. They know you're better than them; they wouldn't accept your authority otherwise. So Tinidril is actually showing respect to the animals, and encouraging them to mature mentally, when she makes it clear that she's their superior.

Note that the above is my take on what Lewis is expressing. I think most people with a more up-to-date understanding of animal behavior, and without a massive authority fetish, are going to see things differently.

EdinburghEye said...

There is a section of Perelandra I love more than anything else - the whole part from when Ransom falls into the seas of Venus to the line "He saw reality, and thought it was a dream". C.S.Lewis envisaged Venus as a planet that was almost all ocean, where his Adam and Eve live on floating islands, and the way he describes it made me want to go there.

There are parts of all three novels I love - even That Hideous Strength has its moments, as when the men are cooking the celebratory post-adventure dinner and the women are upstairs choosing their robes - but as a trilogy, it always seems warped even worse than Narnia with Lewis's expressed conviction that he isn't allowed just to write stories about the visions, he's got to tell an Improving Christian Story: Breathing a Lie through Silver.

Although I really cannot fathom how it's a world with NO rocks or sticks. How is this thing?

They're on a floating island made of vegetation. There are no sticks, because there are no hard woody plants on the floating islands: there are no stones, because the floating islands have no earth nor rocks. That part does make sense.

I dunno. No matter how many times Lewis described her as pretty and nice and whatnot, it really felt to me like the author hated her with a fervor that kind of disturbed me at the time.

I didn't think Lewis hated her: I'd read short stories in which Lewis really goes to town against the fictional women he hates and apparently writes stories about for the pure purpose of conveying his hatred. I thought that Lewis was genuinely trying to convey Ransom's admiration and respect for the Eve, an aspirational and unpassionate love, but he could not because this was not a feelng he himself had experienced or understood at the time of writing. Lewis couldn't really imagine what it would be like to meet a woman who was vastly his superior for whom he could feel only awed love: but that was what he was trying to convey that Ransom feels. Ironically, he might have done better if he'd switched genders and had Ransom meet the Adam, love/respect him, and have the Adam fail in obedience.

EdinburghEye said...

There is a section of Perelandra I love more than anything else - the whole part from when Ransom falls into the seas of Venus to the line "He saw reality, and thought it was a dream". C.S.Lewis envisaged Venus as a planet that was almost all ocean, where his Adam and Eve live on floating islands, and the way he describes it made me want to go there.

There are parts of all three novels I love - even That Hideous Strength has its moments, as when the men are cooking the celebratory post-adventure dinner and the women are upstairs choosing their robes - but as a trilogy, it always seems warped even worse than Narnia with Lewis's expressed conviction that he isn't allowed just to write stories about the visions, he's got to tell an Improving Christian Story: Breathing a Lie through Silver.

Although I really cannot fathom how it's a world with NO rocks or sticks. How is this thing?

They're on a floating island made of vegetation. There are no sticks, because there are no hard woody plants on the floating islands: there are no stones, because the floating islands have no earth nor rocks. That part does make sense.

I dunno. No matter how many times Lewis described her as pretty and nice and whatnot, it really felt to me like the author hated her with a fervor that kind of disturbed me at the time.

I didn't think Lewis hated her: I'd read short stories in which Lewis really goes to town against the fictional women he hates and apparently writes stories about for the pure purpose of conveying his hatred. I thought that Lewis was genuinely trying to convey Ransom's admiration and respect for the Eve, an aspirational and unpassionate love, but he could not because this was not a feelng he himself had experienced or understood at the time of writing. Lewis couldn't really imagine what it would be like to meet a woman who was vastly his superior for whom he could feel only awed love: but that was what he was trying to convey that Ransom feels. Ironically, he might have done better if he'd switched genders and had Ransom meet the Adam, love/respect him, and have the Adam fail in obedience.

depizan said...

What the ever living fuck.

There is so much wrong I hardly know where to begin. I think I'll settle for saying that I'm revolted that our hero (I assume) is more upset at having seen the sight than it having happened. Way to make it all about YOU, dick. Also, how in the hell are you so incompetent that you tried to kill it for an hour? It's like plausibility fail meets moral fail and forms an epic onion of awful. Barf.

depizan said...

What the ever living fuck.

There is so much wrong I hardly know where to begin. I think I'll settle for saying that I'm revolted that our hero (I assume) is more upset at having seen the sight than it having happened. Way to make it all about YOU, dick. Also, how in the hell are you so incompetent that you tried to kill it for an hour? It's like plausibility fail meets moral fail and forms an epic onion of awful. Barf.

Ana Mardoll said...

[CN: Torture]

If you go to Google Books, and search for Perelandra, and then look for "frog", it's the first result. (This link might work.)

Screencap attached.

Incidentally, I haven't read Perelandra in YEARS and finding this drove home to me how, well, I hate to say "shitty written" because shitty writing is in the eyes of the beholder, but I personally cannot stand this many metaphors and similes and whatnot jammed into a single paragraph. There's TWO over-wrought "It was like .... " sentences right flush against each other, and that's two too many in most cases.

And the whole "it would have been better for the whole universe to never have existed than this to have happened" rigmarole ... yeah. I mean, I get what Lewis is trying to do, but as a reader I feel like the author is being way too anvilicious about this. A lighter hand is usually better -- let the reader decide it's the worst thing ever. Once you TELL them it's the worst thing ever, a lot of readers are going to mentally rebel from being given that overwrought framing.

What I am saying is, this would not have gotten a good grade from me in a freshman creative writing exercise. But then I have said that about a lot of "classics", which just goes to show that tastes change over time. (And also that we allow more writers in than we used to. And also-also that we can learn from the mistakes of the past. Etc.)

ETA: Note that I cannot tell for sure that a stone was used. So the passage manages to be both disturbingly graphic and frustratingly vague. Oof.

Makabit said...

Actually, it says he had 'neither boots nor stone nor stick', so I am left to the unpleasant conclusion that he's using his bare hands, or his bare feet.

Makabit said...

Actually, it says he had 'neither boots nor stone nor stick', so I am left to the unpleasant conclusion that he's using his bare hands, or his bare feet.

depizan said...

CN:torture, killing

While there are probably instances in which beating someone to death with a rock is a sensible method of mercy killing, without context it sounds very much like doing it -wrong-.

I also can't help being reminded of a scene in one of the Discworld books where the protagonist has to put people who've been horribly tortured out of their misery - the entire thing happens off-camera, so to speak, which makes the idea no less horrific, but nicely avoids both being torture porn and the problematic for audience empathy issue of -showing- your hero killing innocent people. (Not that that can't be pulled off, but somehow I doubt Lewis succeeded. Mostly because I doubt Lewis's sympathies map onto anything I understand.)

Timothy (TRiG) said...

Lewis does seem to have had a rather odd attitude to pets. I read Perelandra a couple of days ago. It contains a line about beasts being "raised from the status of pets to that of slaves". This line rather tripped me up, to put it mildly. I have no idea what he was talking about.

TRiG.

Brenda A. said...

I was thinking about this, and suddenly thought of the book "Captains Courageous" by Rudyard Kipling. (If you haven't read it, you should. It's one of the classics that's still a great read.) It's about a spoiled wealthy teenage boy who falls off the big ocean liner and is rescued by a fishing boat - and upon regaining consciousness, begins demanding they take him to shore immediately (despite the long fishing season being the crew's sole source of income), calling the boat "this little tub", and when he finds his money gone from his pocket, accuses the captain and crew of stealing it. Of course, this does not go well - a blow to the face is given by the captain - but he takes it easy on him, being that the boy is obviously [redacted]. (The boy also claims to have fallen overboard during a "gale", which the captain calls "a little swell" - which is what made me think of this.)

Just an interesting comparison... Poor Harvey is in just about the same boat as Eustace, only it's a working boat and not an Adventure Cruise. He doesn't last as long before having to change - and that's all to the good.

Seriously, read it as a breath of fresh air after VotDT.

Brenda A. said...

I was thinking about this, and suddenly thought of the book "Captains Courageous" by Rudyard Kipling. (If you haven't read it, you should. It's one of the classics that's still a great read.) It's about a spoiled wealthy teenage boy who falls off the big ocean liner and is rescued by a fishing boat - and upon regaining consciousness, begins demanding they take him to shore immediately (despite the long fishing season being the crew's sole source of income), calling the boat "this little tub", and when he finds his money gone from his pocket, accuses the captain and crew of stealing it. Of course, this does not go well - a blow to the face is given by the captain - but he takes it easy on him, being that the boy is obviously [redacted]. (The boy also claims to have fallen overboard during a "gale", which the captain calls "a little swell" - which is what made me think of this.)

Just an interesting comparison... Poor Harvey is in just about the same boat as Eustace, only it's a working boat and not an Adventure Cruise. He doesn't last as long before having to change - and that's all to the good.

Seriously, read it as a breath of fresh air after VotDT.

Timothy (TRiG) said...

you cannot include the detailed backstory of every character in your work

... unless you're PD James, of course.

Timothy (TRiG) said...

you cannot include the detailed backstory of every character in your work

... unless you're PD James, of course.

octopod42 said...

Tangent: If a kingdom were to own a treasure like Queen Lucy's cordial -- a substance capable of healing literally any physical ailment, and of which there is a tiny and exhaustible supply -- I can't help but think that it would become a huge bone of contention. People who want to save it versus people who want to use it, all kinds of gnarly politics over who is important enough to be healed by it, foreign heroes trying to steal it all the time to cure their dying queen or whatever. Kind of a consumable, not-inherently-evil version of the One Ring. Given all that trouble, sending it off on a ship with the errant figurehead king might be an "out of sight, out of mind" kind of decision on the part of the Narnian regents.

(Now I want to use such an item as a motivating factor in a roleplaying game. Low-magic, obviously, and this is a gift from some high-magic place. Hmm...)

octopod42 said...

Tangent: If a kingdom were to own a treasure like Queen Lucy's cordial -- a substance capable of healing literally any physical ailment, and of which there is a tiny and exhaustible supply -- I can't help but think that it would become a huge bone of contention. People who want to save it versus people who want to use it, all kinds of gnarly politics over who is important enough to be healed by it, foreign heroes trying to steal it all the time to cure their dying queen or whatever. Kind of a consumable, not-inherently-evil version of the One Ring. Given all that trouble, sending it off on a ship with the errant figurehead king might be an "out of sight, out of mind" kind of decision on the part of the Narnian regents.

(Now I want to use such an item as a motivating factor in a roleplaying game. Low-magic, obviously, and this is a gift from some high-magic place. Hmm...)

Timothy (TRiG) said...

Aslan does indeed call dwarfs "sons of earth", the same way he calls humans "sons of Adam" or "daughters of Eve". So though Lewis's dwarfs seem quite dissimilar to Tolkien's dwarves (there are no many-pillared halls of stone in Narnia), they do share an affinity with the ground, with rock and soil.

TRiG.

depizan said...

Of course, this establishes that Eustace is either a knowing liar or is self-deceitful since the narrator has already informed us through Drinian that there is no storm except in Eustace's imagination.

I have no trouble imagining sea conditions that might look like a storm to a freaked out non-sailor. But that doesn't really help, because if that's what Lewis intended, then we're supposed to mock Eustace for not realizing that it's not a storm. Either way, it's rather nasty.

There are a couple of other disturbing aspects of the business with Eustace attacking Reepicheep. Eustace, immediately after having physically assaulted him, claims to Reepicheep that he's a pacifist. Whut. Does Lewis, like Ellanjay, think that all pacifists are actually cowards or liars? Is this just supposed to be Eustace saying whatever he thinks will get him out of trouble? Then there's the fact that not only is a duel considered between a trained swordsbeing and someone who's quite possible never held a sword in his life and has an injured hand, but the fact that Reepicheep is small is considered to outweigh his experience. Whut. We _know_ Mice can take down men because we saw it last book. It seems like that bit was thrown in to make it seem like they _weren't_ risking Eustace's life by considering the duel. (None of which is to say that I don't think that Eustace was completely 100% wrong and bad to assault Reepicheep. He was. But the whole thing is handled very strangely.)

And later, during a storm, Drinian will tell Lucy et. al. to get below because "landsmen—and landswomen—are a nuisance to the crew" and she will obey

And in the same storm, Eustace is forced to help crew the ship. Because somehow he's magically not a nuisance.

depizan said...

Of course, this establishes that Eustace is either a knowing liar or is self-deceitful since the narrator has already informed us through Drinian that there is no storm except in Eustace's imagination.

I have no trouble imagining sea conditions that might look like a storm to a freaked out non-sailor. But that doesn't really help, because if that's what Lewis intended, then we're supposed to mock Eustace for not realizing that it's not a storm. Either way, it's rather nasty.

There are a couple of other disturbing aspects of the business with Eustace attacking Reepicheep. Eustace, immediately after having physically assaulted him, claims to Reepicheep that he's a pacifist. Whut. Does Lewis, like Ellanjay, think that all pacifists are actually cowards or liars? Is this just supposed to be Eustace saying whatever he thinks will get him out of trouble? Then there's the fact that not only is a duel considered between a trained swordsbeing and someone who's quite possible never held a sword in his life and has an injured hand, but the fact that Reepicheep is small is considered to outweigh his experience. Whut. We _know_ Mice can take down men because we saw it last book. It seems like that bit was thrown in to make it seem like they _weren't_ risking Eustace's life by considering the duel. (None of which is to say that I don't think that Eustace was completely 100% wrong and bad to assault Reepicheep. He was. But the whole thing is handled very strangely.)

And later, during a storm, Drinian will tell Lucy et. al. to get below because "landsmen—and landswomen—are a nuisance to the crew" and she will obey

And in the same storm, Eustace is forced to help crew the ship. Because somehow he's magically not a nuisance.

BaseDeltaZero said...

This may be an apples and oranges comparison, but there are a lot of authors who are squicked when fan ficcers do those kinds of things to their characters, copyright issues aside, because they have an investment in those characters. They're still fictional - no actual people were harmed. But there's still an emotional response. Or, perhaps in Eustace's case, a lack of response.

We know in the real world that people will treat each other differently based on whether they consider them to be "real" people or not. It thus seems a poor idea to give authors an unthinking pass when they create characters that invite us to treat them as unreal.



But, unlike (INSERT MINORITY HERE), fictional characters aren't real people. It is not morally wrong to do bad things to fictional characters, whether for entertainment, to make some point, Perverse Sexual Lust, or because it amuses you for whatever reason. Because fictional characters are not real people. Treating your characters as unreal punching bags may not be a sign of good writing, but it doesn't make you immoral.

As for the fanfiction thing... I can understand that idea, yeah, but frankly, I'm going to file that under 'Deal with it.' (Eye-rolling optional).

BaseDeltaZero said...

This may be an apples and oranges comparison, but there are a lot of authors who are squicked when fan ficcers do those kinds of things to their characters, copyright issues aside, because they have an investment in those characters. They're still fictional - no actual people were harmed. But there's still an emotional response. Or, perhaps in Eustace's case, a lack of response.

We know in the real world that people will treat each other differently based on whether they consider them to be "real" people or not. It thus seems a poor idea to give authors an unthinking pass when they create characters that invite us to treat them as unreal.



But, unlike (INSERT MINORITY HERE), fictional characters aren't real people. It is not morally wrong to do bad things to fictional characters, whether for entertainment, to make some point, Perverse Sexual Lust, or because it amuses you for whatever reason. Because fictional characters are not real people. Treating your characters as unreal punching bags may not be a sign of good writing, but it doesn't make you immoral.

As for the fanfiction thing... I can understand that idea, yeah, but frankly, I'm going to file that under 'Deal with it.' (Eye-rolling optional).

Brin Bellway said...

which of the books in the space trilogy has the quiz about the "cold marriages" and the culture who uses real dolls for procreation? (I thought it was "Silent Planet" but Google Books isn't confirming the passage for me.

It must have been Hideous Strength, because I never read that bit first-hand and I escaped* the Space Trilogy after the second book.

*I think that's the best word for what happened, really.

storiteller said...

FYI, if you think Perelandra is weird and squicky, definitely don't read the third book in the trilogy, That Hideous Strength. It puts Narnia to shame in the C.S. Lewis's neuroses and ill-informed opinions brigade. It's his "I'm going to say everything I don't like about feminism and atheists and science and a lot of other things that I'm going to randomly squish in there" book. I like a lot of C.S. Lewis and thought it was fascinating from a psychological point of view, but neither enjoyed it or thought it was a good book.

In contrast, I thought the first book, Out of the Silent Planet, was genuinely good. It's too bad he didn't stop with that one.

Anton_Mates said...

Great! You're now in the perfect state to finish the trilogy!

This passage is of a piece with the rest of Perelandra, I think. Lewis seems to have a very traditionalist (for certain values of "tradition") take on the Garden of Eden, and he holds that Eve's primary and catastrophic sin is disobedience, pure and simple. So obedience for its own sake has to be plugged like crazy. Tor and Tinidril, like Adam and Eve, were meant to be the loyal slaves of God.

Timothy (TRiG) said...

Okay. Now I'm less confused, and more squicked.

Ikkin said...

@Silver Adept:

I'm not sure that "creat[ing] characters that invite us to treat them as unreal" is really what an author's doing, even if the character fails to have any traits that would cause the audience to see them as real.

The problem, as I see it, is this: empathy in fiction is inherently conditional because the characters aren't real, and it's essentially impossible for the author to maintain it for every single character they write.

Most obviously, of course, there's a completely normal audience apathy towards generics -- extras, NPCs, faceless crowds -- that basically comes standard with the creation of any universe with more than a few people in it. No authorial interference is required for the audience to fail to see pedestrians in Grand Theft Auto or members of the faceless crowd that the villain blew up in an action movie as individual people with whom they ought to empathize. One might feel that running over pedestrians or blowing up crowds makes the perpetrator a worse person, but most people don't have any personal feelings towards the generic victims.

A good author, then, works to overcome this lack of feeling by creating vibrant main characters. They consider the internal subjectivity of each important character and work to portray it to the reader so that the reader will be able to suspend their disbelief and relate to the character as a person rather than an abstraction and, in the process, come to feel strongly about the characters themselves. An inability to do that, tough, is (generally speaking) caused by a lack of skill or effort rather than a moral failing.

Bad guys complicate things, though, because they're important enough to deserve to be extended empathy, but doing so as an author can be highly unpleasant. Most people don't want to be in the headspace of someone who willingly abandon that person's own deeply-held moral convictions -- it can feel gross and wrong, and doesn't feel like a good place to stay. It's much easier to push one's bad characters away and deny their feelings, and once one does that, one is usually left with an unreal archetype who one can punish without remorse (in the same way that one can visit destruction and death upon generics without remorse).

...Which is basically to say that creating unreal characters is a rather understandable impulse, even if it makes for an overly black-and-white story.

Loquat said...

And I'm additionally not sure I follow how liking to study dead insects equals not wanting to worry about people's needs.

Eustace is said to "like animals, especially dead beetles" - most people IRL who "like animals" enjoy living animals, and if I saw a child in a book being described as liking animals I would expect to see that child having pets, or attempting to have pets, or otherwise trying to observe or interact with live animals. An extreme example is the animal-loving boy from Cryoburn, who's about Eustace's age, and who so loves his large collection of pets that he runs away from home when his guardians won't let him keep them, and whose primary concern when he first gets caught up in Adventures is who's going to feed his pets if he's not there. Which leads me to my point - a child who spends time around live animals should learn that they have needs. A kid who has a pet is going to learn, sooner or later, that daily feeding and cleaning and so forth are a necessary part of pet ownership. A kid who observes wild animals is going to learn that wild animals will attack or flee if approached the wrong way.

Dead beetles, on the other hand, do not need feeding, nor do they mind being handled however their owner feels like handling them. Eustace can examine them for hours on end, or stick them in a drawer and ignore them for months if he so chooses. He's not shown interacting with any living animals in England, and when confronted with what he thinks is a trained domesticated animal he finds it revolting, and later thinks he can torment it without risk of getting bitten or scratched. In other words, he clearly thinks of animals not as "living creatures with their own needs", but as "things for me to do whatever I want with, and if they don't cooperate they're bad and wrong".

Steve Morrison said...

Yes, I had a definite WTF moment when I first read that. The closest I could come to making sense of it was “Um, uh, he means her treatment of the animals made them more like human beings.”. But I wouldn’t be surprised to find there were as many interpretations/rationalizations as there were readers.

Ikkin said...

I think Lewis's personal sadistic desires are pretty well documented, and fictionally his depiction of bullying troubles me, but I think it would be wrong (sans evidence) to reason back from that and assume he was therefore a bully in real life.

I suspect sadism is the sort of thing that could end up showing up rather obviously in one's fictional works even if it's completely controlled in one's everyday life, so judging Lewis as a person based on his tendency to bully his fictional characters seems somewhat questionable.

Lewis' treatment of Eustace involves two forms of justification -- "he deserved it" and "it's for his own good" -- that are somewhat likely to be recognized as flimsy justification for sadism by someone on the lookout for such if they're able to empathize with other people. An author, however, has to create empathy for their characters before any exists, so it'd be a lot more easier to fail to recognize the justification and just let loose with the punishment on the assumption that, since they created the character as a bad person, there's nothing wrong with them for thinking he should be punished.

(Or in other words, a character being fictional could be a pretty tempting justification for focusing one's sadistic impulses on him, even for someone who's trying to avoid such justifications in real life)

Theo Axner said...

Re: the whole BDSM thing, Lewis definitely did have a sadistic sexual kink (btw, I'm truly sorry if I'm phrasing this in an insensitive way - English is not my first language). He was fairly explicit about this in some of his youthful letters to a friend, occasionally signing himself as 'Philomastix' (whip-lover). A number of scenes in his book have a definite tinge of sadism, although the sexual element is usually sublimated and I don't _think_ it was conscious. It's most obvious to me with the serial humiliations heaped on some characters, usually played for laughs but written with a particular intensity: like Eustace here, Weston in Out of the Silent Planet, Rabadash and to some extent the Vizier in THAHB, and perhaps most of all Uncle Andrew in TMN. Obviously, while Lewis was apparently wholly heterosexual, the victims in these scenes are all male, allowing the sadistic sexual subtext to be sublimated. I suspect that if he'd written a similar scene with a female character, the sexualised element would have become obvious and thus unpalatable - not to mention that he undoubtedly would have felt it unchivalrous to subject a woman to comical humiliation. The only remotely comparable thing with a female character might be Aravis' mauling in THAHB, and that isn't played for laughs at all.

(I think I wrote pretty much this whole post a year or so ago in some much earlier thread. Sorry about that.)

Makhno said...

This is a total digression, but that list of the ship types used in the Pevensies' reign is... odd.

Firstly, it's all over the place historically. Galleons superseded carracks, which had superseded cogs more than a century before (though cogs hung around a while as they were easier to build quickly and cheaply); the heyday of the dromond was much earlier. Dromonds are also Byzantine / Near Eastern,while the other three are Western European designs: and they were war galleys. To build a dromond is to sacrifice cargo capacity and open-ocean capability for speed (probably an unnecessary trade if you have galleons). Whom were the Pevensies attacking in coastal waters?

The weirdest thing for me, though, is that Narnia is a world without guns: which makes me wonder how galleons - assuming that Lewis means the word as commonly understood, and not, as it was sometimes used, as a synonym for galiot - were ever invented. The drive for a new ship design originated from the fact that carracks and other high-sided ocean-goers could only mount their cannon broadside, while galleys which could fire forwards couldn't deal with rough seas. No guns, no galleons.

Anton_Mates said...

What's even more interesting here is Caspian's contempt for sea-sickness, given that apparently not a single Telmarine on-board was a sailor before Caspian's coronation three years ago.

Wow, I just put two and two together on that. In addition to the previously-mentioned-by-everybody [stupidity] of Caspian being an expert on seamanship--when it was explicitly stated in the last book that he was taught nothing whatever on that topic during school*--this ship is built and crewed by people with at most 2.5 years of self-taught experience with sailing and boatmaking? And is supposed to sail to distant, uncharted realms over the deep ocean? Boy, they really wanted to make sure they'd end up in Aslan's country one way or another.

Here's another reason why we need Cornelius in this book. He knows how to navigate a ship, at least in theory; he wanted to teach that to Caspian but Miraz wouldn't let him. If he's not going to be regent, he should be on the Dawn Treader, alongside the Ravens and Pelicans and Otters and Water Rats** and a Badger and a mer-person in a big tub and a significant contingent of hired Galmians who've spent half their life on the sea.

*And this observation comes way late, but why was Caspian being given a medieval European courtly education in the first place? The Telmarines are [violent] warlords descended from drunken Earth pirates and their Something-nesian victims, who have now somehow acquired a Victorianish public school system--what do they care about Heraldry and Theorbo-playing and, of all things, Magic? Did they pick it all up from Archenland in the last 300 years?

**A Water Rat shows up in The Last Battle, and has experience navigating craft on the river at least.

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