Poor Susan
Repeating his warning…
SPOILER ALERT: TO THE FIVE OF YOU OUT THERE WHO HAVE NOT FINISHED READING THE CHRONICLES OF NARNIA AND DON’T WANT CERTAIN CRITICAL PLOT POINTS OF THE FINAL BOOK GIVEN AWAY, CONSIDER YOURSELF WARNED.
Okay then. So, the thing with Susan never bothered me that much. Not enough to pull a Philip Pullman and write my own children’s books (with boys and lipstick!), that is. But when I think about it, I get really, really sad. It’s just so unfair. And not because she got “sent to hell” or whatever for “growing up” or whatever, but because it just shouldn’t have happened to her.
Shrine of the Holy Whapping - Whatever Happened to Susan Pevensie?
The problem is really vanity and conceit. As Polly puts it, her “whole idea is to race on to the silliest time of one’s life as quick as she can and then stop there as long as she can.” The absurdities of adolescence hardly count as maturity. Lewis wrote to a young reader, “The books don’t tell us what happened to Susan. She is left alive in this world at the end, having by then turned into a rather silly, conceited young woman. But there’s plenty of time for her to mend and perhaps she will get to Aslan’s country in the end… in her own way.”
But that’s just it. Susan already grew up. She was Queen Susan. Susan the Gentle, the sure-sighted archeress. She did grow up and she was good. So it’s like he suddenly made her bad in order to leave her behind.
May 30th, 2008 at 7:31 pm
I know I am reiterating points in the post, but I’m wondering about the source of these speculations. Where does anyone get the idea Susan goes to hell? You have to die to go to hell, and she’s very much alive.
May 31st, 2008 at 4:53 am
Lewis showed his thinking in a book dedication where he noted that little girls grow up faster than books and are perhaps now too grown up to be interested in a children’s book, but that some years hence she may return to it and find something of interest. So, I would say that he would have had Susan eventually return if, heaven forbid, the series had gone on and on.
May 31st, 2008 at 8:53 am
But that’s not the point. Why didn’t she get to come tooooo?! I mean, she WAS Queen Susan, and then he dropped her like rock.