spreading the gospel of the Problem of Susan (except not, since I don't believe in it)

[edenfalling]

Random ff.net review for my Narnia/Stargate SG-1 crossover remix ficlet, plus reply:

Review: I love this. I thought I was the only person who wondered about Susan.

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Reply: Oh no, MANY people wonder about Susan! My personal take is that she's actually the person who exits the series in the best shape, seeing that she's the only major character who isn't dead. +wry+ A lot of other people think she was hard done by, though, and are angry at Lewis for shutting her out of heaven or some-such. This has never made sense to me, because of the whole "she's not dead! how is survival a punishment?" issue, and also because Lewis's own theology is pretty explicit on the notion that as long as you're alive, there is always time to find god or whatever, but a number of people seem to interpret getting into Aslan's country as a one-shot deal -- you miss your single chance in "The Last Battle" and too bad, so sad, no heaven for you!

...

I dunno, mostly I just think Susan is awesome and practical and if she wanted to live in England while she was stuck living in England, so what? That's just rolling with what life threw at her. But anyway, the Problem of Susan is such a big issue in Narnia fandom that, as you can see, it has its own name complete with Ominous Capital Leters of Portentous Doom. Pretty much everyone who writes Narnia fanfic has a take on it and has probably written a story dealing with the issue at some point.

Cheers,
Liz

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It's always a little shock to remember that no, fandom is NOT mainstream culture, and even within fandom, things that are taken for granted by one subset will be completely obscure to most other subsets. I mean, the Problem of Susan is a phrase I knew before I even knew about Narnia fandom... and yet. Clearly not a universal constant!

(Also clearly not a universal reaction -- as you can see, I mostly consider Susan's survival a problem because of other people's reactions to it, not because I think being alive is an inherently awful fate when compared to, say, dying in a hideously painful train crash. But maybe that's just me.)

Comments

[cofax7]

Well, I think the problem of Susan's survival is that her entire family is dead. And that kind of sucks. She would have a right to be pissed royally off.

[edenfalling]

Oh, unquestionably! The world (and/or Aslan) played a shitty, shitty trick on her. I just think that everyone else came out even worse off. I mean, Lewis can go on about the wonders of heaven all he likes, and the beginning of... hang on, let me find my copy of LB.

"But for them it was only the beginning of the real story. All their life in this world and all their adventures in Narnia had only been the cover and the title page: now at last they were beginning Chapter One of the Great Story, which no one on earth has read: which goes on for ever: in which every chapter is better than the one before."

He can preach that all he likes, but the fact remains, they're dead. And dead is dead is dead. I do not and cannot see that as a happy ending (for them or for Susan, as you say), but at least Susan can grow and change and sprout anew, as it were; everyone else is burned and salted ground. So I guess it's more that, given an ending that is basically rocks fall, everyone dies, I think Susan got the least bad of a universally lousy spread of outcomes.

[branchandroot]

(Jumping in, because, well, fun meta!)

I've always seen the Problem as the fact that Lewis, in his not-at-all-disguised narrative voice, is very clearly presenting dying and the hypothetical what-comes-next as the opportunity to grow, and presenting Susan growing up and living in the world she's in as the salted ground. You escape that problem by personal application of hard-headed empiricism and telling the narrative voice to fuck right off. I applaud this, because the Author is indeed Dead, but that doesn't change the reading Lewis was really, really obviously trying to impose. And that reading is Problematic. Also creepily necrophiliac for a book directed toward young children.

*pauses to burn Lewis in effigy one more time for good measure*

[rthstewart]

"He's dead Jim." Sorry, I could not resist. Snacky addresses this over on the LJ side and really if you take the text as written, at his word, it's ugly for everyone. Everyone is dead except for Susan and yes, happily ever after, but still dead and they are happy about it. For Susan, everyone is dead and the implication, while redemption and all is possible, is that by doing what Aslan ordered her to do (live in this world) and developing the beauty she was praised for at the end of LWW, she somehow doesn't deserve the cookie the rest of them did. Bah.

[branchandroot]

"Damn it, Jim, I'm a doctor, not a lion!"

Yes, somehow beauty, in LWW, is only laudable if it's chivalric. And chivalric romance was always about not actually having anything you want. It was the pining and the untouchableness that was supposed to be uplifting. (Honestly, you have to wonder about some courtly movements.) Really, it's no wonder fic for Narnia is so persistent, because some work really has to be done to recuperate where that story went by the end. I prefer to think the Last Battle and associated events just never happened.

[edenfalling]

I prefer to think the Last Battle and associated events just never happened.

You are FAR from alone in that. :-)

[edenfalling]

Also creepily necrophiliac for a book directed toward young children.

Yes, this! Which I think may be why I disliked it even as a child (along with the whole thing where Aslan comes off as a petulant bully kicking over everyone's sandcastles because they don't meet his aesthetic standards or whatever and he can't be arsed to fix them), because kids know perfectly well that death is the BAD ending, not the good one! Trying to convince them otherwise turns you into a snake oil salesman.

[branchandroot]

You know what it reminds me of? That "children's prayer" that starts "now I lay me down to sleep" and includes "and if I die before I wake". Which is just... I mean, who /teaches/ a kid to say that every night?! *shudders*

[gramina]

FWIW, I have never defined "the Problem of Susan" as being that she lived when everyone else of much significance ended up in Aslan's country. For me, the Problem here is that Susan seems to illustrate Lewis' conviction that you can't *both* be interested in boys etc. *and* be a devoutly religious person or a mystic (the way he presents say Lucy).

Susan gets "silly" about boys and makeup and whatnot and at the same time denies her own experiences that fall outside the main stream of her culture. IMO&X, those don't necessarily go together. *wry*

I would like to see an AU where Susan grows up, is beautiful and sexy and uses makeup and goes dancing with boys *and* sees the Godhead in everything around her and chooses compassion (almost) every time she has a choice, and loves the world around her and the divine that she first saw in Aslan and now sees in everything - including the boys and the dances and the joy of using yourself as a canvas for more art and more beauty.

[lady_songsmith]

I got so fed up with what the fandom did to Susan that I wrote a whole fic about how she could go on and live happily and be a good person without ever believing in any god at all, and still get to the happily ever after anyway, so there.

My issues with Narnia fandom, let me show you them.

[edenfalling]

It is not as if one needs to be a theist to be a moral person! (I like to think I am a case in point. *wry*)

[edenfalling]

Yeah, as I said to someone over the on LJ crosspost, I think Lewis meant to say that Susan's problem is not liking makeup and boys at all; it's liking those things instead of Narnia rather than liking them along with Narnia. And even that I take with a grain of salt, because the description of Susan comes not via Lewis-as-narrator, but via Polly, Jill, and Eustace griping about her. They are the characters in the Stable who know Susan least well. In contrast, her siblings either say nothing (Lucy and Edmund) or cut off the character assassination with the most awkward and blatant change of subject ever (Peter).

I would like to see that AU too. :-) Someday, if I am feeling more spiritual than usual, I might even try writing it.

[rahirah]

I'd bitched quietly to myself about Susan long before I knew there was term for it, and found the term for it long before I knew there was a Narnia fandom. (Which I'm still ambivalent about; there are some canons where I just do not want to know that people are writing Pevensiecest.)

[edenfalling]

Yeeeah, I am kind of squicked by Pevensiecest myself, probably because I got attached to the characters and world as a child and therefore have no emotional distance or perspective in a lot of ways. And then again, I can get equally turned off by some of the other side of the fandom, which is less storytelling and more blatant religious proselytizing. :-/ Narnia fandom, in many ways, is really two separate fandoms with the same name that get along like two cats in a sack drowning in a river. (Badly, in other words.)

[rahirah]

Uh huh. It's a really prickly text for me to engage with fannishly.

[nopenniesplease.livejournal.com]

Maybe because my family isn't very religious, or because I tend to ignore much of the religious connotations within the series, but my take on the Problem of Susan and why I always hate that she stayed alive is because she was the only one who survived. Her mother, father, all of her siblings, her cousin, they all died. Even that kooky best friend of her cousin's that she kind of knew peripherally, and that lovely substitute-Aunt and substitute-Uncle who used to visit every now and again. All the family she's left with, that we know for certain, are Eustace's parents.

I'm not saying that death is better than life, but that's a pretty grim place to be, even without the issue of Narnia/Heaven in the equation.

[edenfalling]

Yes, it's not a happy ending for her either. I just think it's less bad than dying, because dying (no matter what Lewis wants to convince his readers of) is the end of potential. Life, on the other hand, can always become something better.

And you know, by implication if nothing else, Susan must have had friends. They presumably enjoy parties and dressing up and romance and so on, but that doesn't mean they would automatically desert her in a time of crisis. There is probably a story to be written there, come to think of it... *wards off plot bunnies*

[hungrytiger11.livejournal.com]

I had always assumed The Problem of Susan was not that she survived, but was Either a) that she was No Longer a Friend of Narnia and/or b) the make up and silly age issue. Some ppl being mad that she became persumably so silly and others being annoyed that having an interest in such things( often they interpret it as having sexuality at all) as something that barred her from heaven or at least from her siblings approval. Like you I have never thought her fate bad because she is still alive, and thought the message was not that liking make up is bad but focussing on other things and not your faith and not being yourself was bad....

[edenfalling]

The 'no longer a Friend of Narnia' thing does bug me, but it's not actually inconsistent with Susan's character as seen in LWW and PC. In PC, particularly, she admits to Lucy that she did believe her about Aslan being there, but shoved that down for various reasons and sided with Trumpkin and empiricism instead.

The makeup and silliness is also a less clear-cut thing than a lot of people portray it as, I think. Note that Lewis-the-narrator says nothing about that issue; it's all hearsay from Polly, Jill and Eustace... who are the three characters who know her least well. Edmund and Lucy say nothing, and Peter cuts the whole 'rag on Susan' session off with an abrupt and awkward change of subject. And while Lewis does expect his characters to generally serve as examples, he doesn't make them flawless. Even Lucy, the faithful one, screws up a few times. So the condemners' judgment is not necessarily absolute truth, which gives a bit of wiggle room for interpretation. *grin* I tend to assume that turning away from Narnia is the only real reason Susan wasn't with her family, and that the problem with lipstick and parties is not enjoying them at all; it's enjoying them instead of Narnia, rather than enjoying them along with Narnia.

[hungrytiger11.livejournal.com]

It is consistent with Susan's character, I agree.

And I also agree with the idea that its more the "not being a Friend of Narnia" is the reason she's not there as well. Though I've always thought something Polly says about hurrying to get to certain age and trying to stay that age in a way had interesting points (and what what the remarks about make-up was meant to underline). Of course, fanfic writers do an excellent job about the age issues, but I don't think Lewis ever saw that as a problem. And so, that line always seemed to me to be about not being happy with yourself and your life either, which seems a sad side affect of ignoring Narnia (instead of, as you said, enjoying the other things along with Narnia)...

[snacky]

I was shocked when I starting participating in online Narnia fandom and found that many people read LB and came away with the idea that Susan was dead and going to hell, that she was on the train, of course, and when it crashed, she was killed along with everyone else, and because she wasn't in Narnia, she must be in hell. Because she liked boys and makeup. *boggles*

Still not over that one.

But yeah, imo, Susan is alive, so she comes out of things considerably better than everyone else. Devastated? Absolutely. Rightfully angry at Aslan/God? Maybe - he certainly pulled a number on her. But she's alive and she still has a life to live, as hard as that might be. And I, personally, never thought that it was "one chance at Heaven and it's on this train" - I figure Susan just got there later than everyone else, and with a life well-lived behind her. Which is more than most of her family got, which is kind of the real tragedy, isn't it? I mean, you can look at it from the POV that the others were totally unsuited to living in the real world, and only could think of being, and living, in Narnia, so Aslan had to take them because they just couldn't deal with real life.

I also think, in a way, C.S. Lewis undermined what he was trying to do with Narnia as a Christian allegory/introducing children to the concepts of Christianity (Aslan/God loves and accepts everyone who is good as long as they don't like makeup) with The Last Battle, because he ended it with such finality (Narnia is destroyed, no more Narnia for you!). One of the greatest things about the Chronicles was that he created this entire world, and told the readers he was just telling some of the stories - that there were other stories to be told, basically. And kids could imagine themselves in Narnia, in the stories he told, or in others they made up themselves. Because Narnia wasn't just a place for the children in the books, right? It was a place for everyone, if you could find your way in! But with the LB, he ends its - there's no more stories about Narnia, no chance for any other kids to get to Narnia (metaphorically or literally, I suppose), because it's Done. Sure, he says there are lots more stories and adventures had in the Real Narnia/Heaven, but he's not going to tell those stories, and they only way to get to those exciting stories and adventures is to die.

So he basically puts paid to the idea that Narnia is for everyone - it's not. It's just a special world for the Pevensies and their friends to go to and get to know Aslan better, and you just got to read a little bit of that, but now it's done, so no more because you're not special enough for it. And LB casts Aslan in a creepy light too - he destroys Narnia when he's tired of it and decides it's too much work to fix it, and while he's at it, he'll take out everyone who ever knew about it even if they're not in Narnia at the time, just because he can. God moves in mysterious ways, indeed.

Er, I got a little tl;dr there! My issues with LB, let me show you them. ;)

[rthstewart.livejournal.com]

Those are wonderful points about how awful the message of TLB is -- that Narnia is closed even to those who might want to fantasize about going there because Aslan took his toys, destroyed the sandbox and only invited a very few select to join him. That segment of Narnia fandom that goes on and on about how Narnia is a children's story seems awfully content with the dreadful, nihilistic vision of it. But then I suppose that is their view of the world too -- cookies only for God's chosen people which happen to be Me and the other people in the church pew next to me, so who care what happens to the rest of you?

My issues with Narnia fandom, let me show you them. :)

I embarrassed to say that I never even thought about the problem of Susan until I entered the fandom and was horrified by what they did to Susan. It is the enlighted fen who have really deepened my own thoughts on Susan and it is heartening how really troubled some are by her fate and the real contradictions in Lewis' treatment of her and the End. There's a reason the only part of TLB I pay attention to are the words about Emeth and Eustace's conclusion that who goes through the door is none of his business.

AU! Everybody lives! Nobody dies!

[edenfalling]

Yeeeah. The thing is, while Lewis's Christianity is integral to how he built the Narnian world and told his stories, it's not necessary for an enjoyable reading experience. It's not even necessary for a deeply moving and inspirational reading experience! I mean, some of what he says in the Chronicles shaped my childhood understanding of the world on a deep level, without my ever noticing that Aslan was meant to be Jesus. He was obviously meant to be a god, but I spent several hours here and there wondering what pagan lion god he might be and how I could find myths about him on Earth. (Trufax!) I did not twig to the Christian allegory stuff until it was explicitly pointed out to me years later. Whereupon it immediately became impossible to unsee, but even so. Narnia is not a story that any segment of any religion can claim as their sole property, nor does any one religious perspective have authority over any hypothetical 'correct' interpretation of the stories. No matter what some people like to think.

Even as a child, I didn't like LB. Because how am I supposed to love and trust an authority figure who does the equivalent of stomping into a kickball game, grabbing the ball out of my hands, and saying, "You're doing it wrong so I'm taking the ball and going home" instead of, you know, taking the ball and saying, "You seem a little disorganized. Let me show you the rules, and then the game will be more fun and you can play instead of arguing all the time." Or something like that, I dunno, the analogy's a little strained. :-/

...

There is a wonderful icon I saw somewhere that I wish I had space for on a free account. It's a fake MS Office error window message that says something to the effect of "Canon Error/ Apply fanfic?" and then an "OK" button. Fixit AUs are always the answer! :-)

[edenfalling]

I was shocked when I starting participating in online Narnia fandom and found that many people read LB and came away with the idea that Susan was dead and going to hell, that she was on the train, of course, and when it crashed, she was killed along with everyone else, and because she wasn't in Narnia, she must be in hell. Because she liked boys and makeup. *boggles*

*boggles along with you* I mean, I am fairly sure that if she'd been on the train, Lewis would have said so. It's not the kind of extraneous detail one just leaves out of a story!

Which is more than most of her family got, which is kind of the real tragedy, isn't it? I mean, you can look at it from the POV that the others were totally unsuited to living in the real world, and only could think of being, and living, in Narnia, so Aslan had to take them because they just couldn't deal with real life.

Wow. And doesn't that just undermine his message in all KINDS of ways, if being good screws you up so badly you have to die to retain that goodness instead of, say, trying to make the world around you a better place. Sheesh.

I have many, many issues with LB myself, as you may have noticed, starting with the idea that it's okay to end the world when one tiny part of it screws up and all the other thousands (or millions!) of people living there have no agency in that decision whatsoever. And then the mood whiplash where we go from the solemn horror of the apocalypse to "but yay happy joy we're in heaven now so who cares that a world was destroyed!" Especially when set in comparison to the way the end of Charn was treated in MN. And yeah, the idea that Lewis couldn't leave his world open for other people to dream in; he had to... to stick a pin through it and fasten it to a display board, like a preserved butterfly, instead of letting it fly free in the garden to grow and change and live. (That analogy may have gotten away from me somewhere.) Gnrgh.