Bobance and Bounce

In chapter 5 of The Silver Chair, Puddleglum assures the children he will join on them on what he sees as their grim and hopeless quest:

I'm not going to lose an opportunity like this.  It will do me good.  They all say -- I mean, the other wiggles all say -- that I'm too flighty; don't take life seriously enough.  If they've said it once, they've said it a thousand times. 'Puddleglum,' they've said, 'you're altogether too full of bobance and bounce and high spirits.  You've got to learn that life isn't all fricasseed frogs and eel pie.  You want something to sober you down a bit.  We're only saying it for your own good, Puddleglum.'  That's what they say.  (Lewis 75-76)

From this use of bobance, bounce, and high spirits, I had the impression that the three words were connected.  After all, bounce suggests physical energy -- a natural result of high spirits.  And to my mind, partly from context and partly from the sound of the word, bobance suggested a sort of buoyant cheerfulness, in mood and/or energy.   

I first got an inkling of my misjudgment from the opening passage of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight (ll. 8-10):

Fro riche Romulus to Rome ricchis hym swyþe; 
With gret bobbaunce þat burȝe he biges vpon fyrst,
& neuenes hit his aune nome, as hit now hat;

[From the time noble Romulus swiftly directs himself to Rome;
With great bobbaunce that city he establishes first,
& names it his own name, as it now has;] 

So what is bobance/bobbaunce, then?  The OED advises the word is Obsolete, apparently overlooking its use in a 1953 children's book that has remained continually in print ever since.  Starting with the glossaries provided with the poem:

• SGGK, 1940 Early English Text Society edition: "bobbaunce, boast, 9; OF. bobance" (Gollancz 137)
• SGGK, Tolkien/Gordon second edition: "bobbaunce n. pomp, pride 9. [OFr. boba(u)nce.]" (Davis 167)

The sole meaning the OED provides for the singular form is: "Boasting, pride, pomp."  The five references offered range from c1380 to a1533.  One is from the poem Cleanness: "Bobaunce & bost & bolnande priyde."  Another is from Chaucer's Wife of Bath's Prologue, though I'd note that Riverside Chaucer perfunctorily glosses this as "boast" (Chaucer 112).  

Do the other Marsh-Wiggles think Puddleglum is too full of pride/pomp?  Or too full of boasting?  They think he needs to become more serious-minded, to understand that life isn't easy.  I think pride may work better here, but since a person who is too prideful may be prone to boasting, maybe we can hedge our bets and render their remarks as follows:

'Puddleglum, you're altogether too full of boastful pride and bounce and high spirits.  You've got to learn that life isn't all fricasseed frogs and eel pie.  You want something to sober you down a bit.  We're only saying it for your own good, Puddleglum.' 

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Additional ruminations on OED entries:

Significantly, perhaps, the word bob in the current sense of buoyancy is a relative newcomer.  The oldest senses of the verb (c1320 and c1280) had to do with cheating/deceiving/defrauding and hitting/striking with a fist or a rounded thing.  The first noun form (c1400) involved a knob or cluster, but the sense of trick/deception is attested c1540, and a blow of the fist followed c1566.  

The noun bob, n.4 seems to have emerged around 1550 with a sense of "1. An act of bobbing, or suddenly jerking up and down; a light rebounding movement." (Although the OED provides no attestations for this usage.)

The verb bob, v.3 seems to be first attested around 1568, although the OED finds one dubious earlier reference in Chaucer in 1386. "1a. intransitive. To move up and down like a buoyant body in water, or an elastic body on land"

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"bob, n.4." OED Online, Oxford University Press, March 2023, www.oed.com/view/Entry/20791. Accessed 29 May 2023.

"bob, v.3." OED Online, Oxford University Press, March 2023, www.oed.com/view/Entry/20801. Accessed 29 May 2023.

"bobance, n." OED Online, Oxford University Press, March 2023, www.oed.com/view/Entry/20811. Accessed 29 May 2023.

Chaucer, Geoffrey, and Larry Dean Benson. The Riverside Chaucer. 3. ed., [Nachdr.], Oxford Univ. Press, 2006.

Davis, Norman, editor. Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, Edited by J.R.R. Tolkien and E.V. Gordon. 2nd ed., Clarendon Press, 1968.

Gollancz, Israel, editor. Sir Gawain and the Green Knight. Oxford University Press, 1940.

Lewis, C. S. The Silver Chair. 1st Harper Trophy ed., HarperTrophy, 2000.

Perelandra & Theological Debate

I have in my notes a response to some superficial/snarky characterization of the fact that Ransom ultimately takes his "debate" with the Un-man to the physical plane in Perelandra.   (As best I can reconstruct it, the claim must have been that Lewis seems to suggest that Christianity cannot be defended by logic and reason, but only by physical violence.)   I've adapted my thoughts here for sharing.

===

Preliminarily, I would acknowledge that few believers of any faith are capable of winning philosophical debates with outsiders in real life. 

That said, Ransom is never really engaged in a philosophical debate with the Un-man; both of them are addressing their arguments to the Lady, and the purpose is to create or prevent a Fall on her planet.  Critically, they are not discussing or debating Christianity, which has absolutely no relevance to unfallen Perelandra.  Indeed, Ransom believes that a Fall on Perelandra would prompt divine grace in some terrifyingly different, unimaginable form.†

Rather, the Un-man is looking to tempt the Lady to rebel against Maleldil, and it is not limiting itself to logic and reason.  Appeals to emotion and self-image are entirely fair game.  For example, at one point, the Un-man starts telling seemingly interminable stories which Ransom eventually realizes are designed to play on the Lady's altruism and nobility of spirit to trigger dangerous pride or vanity.  The Un-man seeks to manipulate the Lady by any means available.

Ransom is playing defense.  He is trying to expose and guard against the Un-man's temptations and thus prevent a new Fall.  But he simply cannot win the contest for persuasion of the Lady, because he's human.  He, unlike the diabolical agent animating the Un-man, needs food and sleep, and has only a few decades' experience to draw on.

I would also note that the Un-man literally can't be bothered to debate Ransom.  It doesn't need to persuade him of anything, so it's perfectly content to torment him by repeating his name incessantly at intervals for no reason.*  This passage from chapter 10 explains the peculiar relationship between the Un-man and rationality itself:  

[The Un-man] showed plenty of subtlety and intelligence when talking to the Lady; but Ransom soon perceived that it regarded intelligence simply and solely as a weapon, which it had no more wish to employ in its off-duty hours than a soldier has to do bayonet practice when he is on leave.  Thought was for it a device necessary to certain ends, but thought in itself did not interest it.  It assumed reason as externally and inorganically as it had assumed Weston's body.  The moment the Lady was out of sight it seemed to relapse. 

===

FN† From chapter 11: 

If [Ransom] now failed, this world also would hereafter be redeemed.  If he were not the ransom, Another would be.  Yet nothing was ever repeated.  Not a second crucifixion: perhaps--who knows--not even a second Incarnation . . . some act of even more appalling love, some glory of yet deeper humility.  For he had seen already how the pattern grows and how from each world it sprouts into the next through some other dimension.  The small external evil which Satan had done in Malacandra was only as a line: the deeper evil he had done in Earth was as a square: if Venus fell, her evil would be a cube – her Redemption beyond conceiving.  Yet redeemed she would be. 

FN* Luckily for readers, Lewis explains the concept in a few pages rather than reporting the entire monologue journalistically.

Good But Dangerous

In the popular imagination, labeling a person as "good" can be a way to dismiss them.  The playground taunts of someone as a "goody-goody" or a "goody two-shoes" imply that they are over-scrupulous or even over-concerned with the appearance of goodness as if to curry favor with those in power.  The stereotype is perhaps to say that a "good" person is an obedient rule-follower, boring and insipid, lacking in imagination and drive; they are predictable and easily taken advantage of.  They will surely finish last.  Indeed, there can be something almost offensive in their seeming inoffensiveness. 

But Lewis and Tolkien, each in their own way, decouple the ideas of goodness and safety in their fiction – both naturally and implicitly in the worlds they have created, and also expressly in reported dialogue.  

Here the Beavers are telling Peter, Susan, and Lucy about Aslan (whom we have not yet met) in chapter 8 of The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe (emphasis added):

"Ooh!" said Susan, "I'd thought he was a man. Is he – quite safe? I shall feel rather nervous about meeting a lion."

"That you will, dearie, and no mistake," said Mrs. Beaver; "if there's anyone who can appear before Aslan without their knees knocking, they're either braver than most or else just silly." 

"Then he isn't safe?" said Lucy. 

"Safe?" said Mr. Beaver; "don't you hear what Mrs. Beaver tells you? Who said anything about safe? 'Course he isn't safe. But he's good. He's the King, I tell you."

(The idea comes back in various forms throughout the Narnia books.  In The Silver Chair, for example, Jill Pole asks Aslan to "promise not to – do anything" to her, if she comes and drinks from the stream; he declines, and proceeds to tell her "I have swallowed up girls and boys, women and men, kings and emperors, cities and realms."  We repeatedly hear that Aslan is not "a tame lion.")

And here's where Gandalf tells Aragorn, Legolas and Gimli about Fangorn, in book III, chapter 5 of The Lord of The Rings (emphasis added):

"But you speak of him as if he was a friend.  I thought Fangorn was dangerous."  

"Dangerous!" cried Gandalf. "And so am I, very dangerous: more dangerous than anything you will ever meet[...].  And Aragorn is dangerous, and Legolas is dangerous. You are beset with dangers, Gimli son of Glóin; for you are dangerous yourself, in your own fashion. Certainly the forest is perilous [...] and Fangorn himself, he is perilous too; yet he is wise and kindly nonetheless."

Trumpkin's Alliterative Exclamations: A Collection

From Prince Caspian:

1. Beards and bedsteads! (332) - trochaic 
2. Horns and halibuts! (345) - mixed (troche + dactyl) 
3. Bulbs and bolsters! (346) - trochaic 
4. Whistles and whirligigs! (347) - dactylic 
5. Soup and celery! (357) - mixed 
6. Thimbles and thunderstorms! (360) - dactylic 
7. Lobsters and lollipops! (361) - dactylic 
8. Giants and junipers! (365) - dactylic 
9. Tubs and tortoiseshells! (372) - mixed 
10. Bottles and battledores... (377) - dactylic 
11. ...bilge and beanstalks... (383) - trochaic 
12. Cobbles and kettledrums! (384) (in thought) - dactylic 
13. Wraiths and wreckage! (385) - trochaic 
14. Weights and water-bottles! (395) - trochaic 
15. Crows and crockery! (403) - mixed 

And, in loving mockery by an owl in The Silver Chair: Crabs and crumpets! (574)

I didn't notice much connection between the exclamation and the surrounding passage, with one rather significant exception.  When Aslan confronts Trumpkin, we get: 'Wraiths and wreckage!' gasped Trumpkin in the ghost of a voice.  So here we have alliteration both on the R sound and also on the hard G, and then the two alliterative pairs are connected semantically, if you will, with wraith and ghost.  I think this emphasizes the devastation Trumpkin experiences in encountering the very Lion in which he disbelieved.  One might say this is the last gasp of his former Aslan-free life; his disbelief has been wrecked on the body of Aslan, and if the smug skepticism at the center of his being has been killed, there may be nothing left of it but a ghost or wraith.

Edition:

C.S. Lewis. The Chronicles of Narnia. 1st American ed, HarperCollinsPublishers, 2001.

The Rule of Three

Just noticed something cool in C.S. Lewis's use of triads to bring readers around to a viewpoint they might otherwise resist.

Here's one from Prince Caspian (p. 355), where the approach is essentially point, counterpoint, and deeper truth:

'Pah!' said Nikabrik. 'A renegade Dwarf. A half-and-halfer! Shall I pass my sword through its throat?' 

'Be quiet, Nikabrik,' said Trumpkin. 'The creature can't help its ancestry.' 

'This is my greatest friend and the saviour of my life,' said Caspian. 'And anyone who doesn't like his company may leave my army at once.'

And another from The Silver Chair (p. 608), when Jill, Eustace, and Puddleglum realize they've been eating a Talking Stag and we're led further up and further in (so to speak) to a fully Narnian perspective:

This discovery didn't have exactly the same effect on all of them.  Jill, who was new to that world, was sorry for the poor stag and thought it rotten of the giants to have killed him.  Scrubb, who had been in that world before and had at least one Talking Beast as his dear friend, felt horrified; as you might feel about a murder.  But Puddleglum, who was Narnian born, was sick and faint, and felt as you would feel if you found you had eaten a baby.  

Only Puddleglum's comment is provided verbatim.  It's followed by: "And gradually even Jill came to see it from his point of view."


Edition:
C.S. Lewis.  The Chronicles of Narnia. 1st American ed, HarperCollinsPublishers, 2001.

The Right Books

Remember in The Voyage of the 'Dawn Treader' how unprepared Eustace Clarence Scrubb is for his dragon adventure because he has "read none of the right books" (p. 463)?  Indeed, he has "read only the wrong books" (p. 464).

Well, already in the first chapter of Prince Caspian we can see that Edmund Pevensie has (thank goodness!) read exactly the right books.  He and his siblings have been magically jerked out of a semi-deserted English railway station (with "hardly anyone on the platform except themselves") onto a deserted island.  They are taken by surprise and certainly ill-equipped, as they have only two sandwiches among them and all the wrong clothes -- and they quickly grow thirsty under the hot sun.  But fortunately:

'It's like being shipwrecked,' remarked Edmund.  'In the books they always find springs of clear, fresh water on the island.  We'd better go and look for them.'  (p. 319)

After their thirst is assuaged, they start worrying about food and "[o]ne or two tempers very nearly got lost at this stage" (p. 321).  But again Edmund draws on his book-learning:

'Look here.  There's only one thing to be done.  We must explore the wood.  Hermits and knights-errant and people like that always manage to live somehow if they're in a forest.  They find roots and berries and things.'  (p. 321) 

So, to summarize.  The right books involve dragons (p. 463), hermits and knights-errant (p. 321), and shipwrecks (p. 319).  The wrong books are "books of information" with "pictures of grain elevators or of fat foreign children doing exercises in model schools" (p. 425) and "a lot to say about exports and imports and governments and drains" (p. 464).

I can see how this might rub some people the wrong way, much like Lewis's quite useful distinction between the "literary reader" and the "unliterary reader" (despite the seeming whiff of snobbery in the phrase, the key is not what someone reads, but why and how they read; the tell-tale is re-reading).

Here, I think the crux is that the right books prepare you for an encounter with Narnia and the Deeper Magic, even helping you, perhaps, build resilience by developing imaginative and/or spiritual resources for the curveballs life may throw your way.  The wrong books can only prepare you for things foreseen.

---

Postlude:
This is perhaps further underscored by the narrator's comment (p. 408): "The sort of History that was taught in Narnia under Miraz's rule was duller than the truest history you ever read and less true than the most exciting adventure story."

---

Edition Referenced:

Lewis, C. S. The Chronicles of Narnia. 1st American ed, HarperCollinsPublishers, 2001.

An Echo of Lewis Carroll in Prince Caspian?

Just re-read this passage in Prince Caspian (ch 7):

The gloomiest of all was Giant Wimbleweather. He knew it was all his fault. He sat in silence shedding big tears which collected on the end of his nose and then fell off with a huge splash on the whole bivouac of the Mice, who had just been beginning to get warm and drowsy. They all jumped up, shaking the water out of their ears and wringing their little blankets, and asked the Giant in shrill but forcible voices whether he thought they weren’t wet enough without this sort of thing. And then other people woke up and told the Mice they had been enrolled as scouts and not as a concert party, and asked why they couldn’t keep quiet. And Wimbleweather tiptoed away to find some place where he could be miserable in peace and stepped on somebody’s tail and somebody (they said afterward it was a fox) bit him. And so everyone was out of temper.

In Alice's Adventures of Wonderland, a giant Alice weeps a pool of tears, which dampens a hapless mouse:

Poor Alice! It was as much as she could do, lying down on one side, to look through into the garden with one eye; but to get through was more hopeless than ever: she sat down and began to cry again. 'You ought to be ashamed of yourself,' said Alice, 'a great girl like you,' (she might well say this), 'to go on crying in this way! Stop this moment, I tell you!' But she went on all the same, shedding gallons of tears, until there was a large pool all round her, about four inches deep and reaching half down the hall.

She then shrinks down again (by means of a fan with which she has absent-mindedly been fanning herself) and suddenly slips and then --

splash! she was up to her chin in salt water. He first idea was that she had somehow fallen into the sea, 'and in that case I can go back by railway,' she said to herself. [...] However, she soon made out that she was in the pool of tears which she had wept when she was nine feet high. 

'I wish I hadn't cried so much!' said Alice, as she swam about, trying to find her way out. 'I shall be punished for it now, I suppose, by being drowned in my own tears! That will be a queer thing, to be sure! However, everything is queer to-day.' 

Just then she heard something splashing about in the pool a little way off, and she swam nearer to make out what it was: at first she thought it must be a walrus or hippopotamus, but then she remembered how small she was now, and she soon made out that it was only a mouse that had slipped in like herself.

Alice's efforts to befriend the Mouse are not well-received.  She addresses it in French with "the first sentence in her French lesson-book" (Ou est ma chatte?) and quickly apologizes for her faux pas (I quite forgot you didn't like cats).  The Mouse expresses his indignation in "a shrill, passionate voice."

Eventually a motley assortment of bedraggled animals exit the pool, "all dripping wet, cross, and uncomfortable."

That Hideous Strength: Lewis Boosts His Friends

I (ahem) still haven't gotten around to discussing C. S. Lewis's references to "Numinor" in any detail.

But I think it's important to note that he wasn't only cross-promoting Tolkien in That Hideous Strength -- he was also cross-promoting Williams:

   "I  wish you'd read the poem I'm reading," said Camilla. "For it says in one line just what I feel about this waiting:
Fool,
All lies in a passion of patience, my lord's rule."

   "What's that from?" asked Jane.

   "Taliessin through Logres.”

Jill Pole: from Lost Girl to Lodestar

The Silver Chair, ch. 1:

"It's an extraordinary thing about girls that they never know the points of the compass," said Eustace.
"You don't know either," said Jill indignantly.
"Yes I do, if only you didn't keep on interrupting."

The Silver Chair, ch. 2:

Scrubb was quite right in saying that Jill (I don't know about girls in general) didn't think much about the points of the compass.  Otherwise she would have known, when the sun began getting in her eyes, that she was traveling pretty nearly due west.

Apparently "more than a year" later, in The Last Battle, ch. 6:

And after that [...] it was hard to pick up their bearings.  It was Jill who set them right again: she had been an excellent Guide in England.  And of course she knew her Narnian stars perfectly, having traveled so much in the wild Northern Lands, and could work out the direction from other stars even when the Spear-Head was hidden.  As soon as Tirian saw that she was the best pathfinder of the three of them he put her in front.

Mrs. Beaver and the Great Escape

As a kid, and even as a young adult, I reacted to Mrs Beaver's pottering around in the little house on top of the dam much the same way as the children and Mr Beaver do.  I was impatient with her and anxious for them to just leave already!

Now I'm seeing it a little differently.  Mrs Beaver is perfectly clear-headed and practical, and she's thinking several steps ahead of everyone else.

It starts in Chapter 8, when she is the one who points out that what Edmund can tell the White Witch depends on when he slipped away.  This gets them thinking and remembering in useful ways; they realize Edmund did hear about Aslan's return before he left.  And they can't be sure if he heard about the plan to meet him at the Stone Table.

Mr Beaver immediately assumes the White Witch will go directly to the Stone Table and they will be cut off from Aslan.  Mrs Beaver more shrewdly reckons on her knowledge of the White Witch's character and predilections:

"The moment that Edmund tells her that we're all here she'll set out to catch us this very night, and if he's been gone about half an hour, she'll be here in about another twenty minutes."

She's right, of course, and Mr Beaver acknowledges it without hesitation.  Indeed, he urges everyone "we must all get away from here. There's not a moment to lose."

At that, everyone except Mrs Beaver begins bundling themselves into coats (ch. 10).  I won't say they're panicking, but they are certainly not stopping to plan or even consider anything beyond getting out of the house and heading to the Stone Table.  But Mrs Beaver, cool as a cucumber, starts packing five sacks with food and supplies.  She has thought several steps ahead of her companions, and has an answer for everything:

• They aren't in imminent danger, because the White Witch "can't be here for quarter of an hour at least."
• They don't need a big head start, because "we can't get [to the Stone Table] before her whatever we do, for she'll be on a sledge and we'll be walking."
• But it's not hopeless to get through even though the White Witch will get there first, because "we can keep under cover and go by ways she won't expect."

She even takes the time to proportion the five loads to the members of the party, saving the smallest one for Lucy as the smallest of the group.

And what about the sewing machine, which is probably the lightning rod for her seeming sentimentality and impracticality?  Mrs Beaver does not, in fact, actually attempt to bring it, but only mentions it wistfully after her packing is complete and the loads are distributed:  "I suppose the sewing machine's too heavy to bring?"  Her desire not to leave it behind is, of course, largely sentimental (she doesn't want the witch "fiddling with it, and breaking it or stealing it, as likely as not"), but both the phrasing and the timing of the question flag it as strictly rhetorical, and the brief exchange with Mr Beaver on the subject does not appreciably delay their departure. 

The narrator does mask her wisdom a little at the end, apparently adopting the children's impatient perspective with a twice-repeated "at last" sandwiching the sewing machine interlude (it's prefaced by "'Well, I'm nearly ready now,' answered Mrs Beaver at last, allowing her husband to help her into her snow-boots." and followed by the children begging her to hurry "And so at last they all got outside...").  But we shouldn't let that distract us from the underlying reality: Mrs Beaver was right.  They absolutely had the time to bring food with them for the journey.  And I would note that Mr Beaver, for all his own impatience, likewise takes the time to stop and lock the door before they actually set off.

* * * 

Coda: It occurs to me now that there is something special about Mrs Beaver's post-packing sewing machine comments.  The children have been impatient all along, and were quite wrong about it.  But when Mrs Beaver expresses her regrets at leaving the sewing machine behind, I think that is also symbolic -- or perhaps more precisely, an instance of synecdoche.  Her sphere is largely a domestic one, and she is leaving her hearth and home behind with no assurance that it will be there safe and sound for her return.  To the contrary, it will surely be violated by the White Witch.

And from that perspective, Mr Beaver's locking the door -- ineffective as he knows it will be even to slow down the White Witch -- is perhaps also a symbolic gesture of acknowledgment, sympathy, and support.

Foreshadowing in LWW?

I just noticed that Edmund humiliates and mocks a defenseless stone lion when he arrives at the White Witch's courtyard in chapter 9 -- although only once he realizes he is safe, of course:

And he stood there gloating over the stone lion, and presently he did something very silly and childish.  He took a stump of lead pencil out of his pocket and scribbled a mustache on the lion's upper lip and then a pair of spectacles on its eyes.  Then he said, 'Yah! Silly old Aslan! How do you like being a stone? You thought yourself mighty fine, didn't you?'  

This perhaps foreshadows, or establishes a pattern for, the greater humiliation and mockery unleashed by the White Witch and her minions in chapter 14, once they realize the mighty, much-feared Aslan is genuinely at their mercy.

In both cases, their fear, once assuaged, seems to goad them into acts of desecration; as if they could avenge themselves for their own timorousness on the object of their fear.

And in both cases, the humiliations or desecrations do not necessarily achieve what is hoped; certainly, despite Edmund's scribbles, "the face of the great stone beast still looked so terrible, and sad, and noble, staring up in the moonlight, that Edmund didn't really get any fun out of jeering at it."

The Magician's Nephew: Who Displays Sexist Attitudes, and Why?

Just a few quick notes on The Magician's Nephew around the halfway point, since I think Lewis is very deliberately bringing in sexist attitudes into the story.

1. It is Uncle Andrew who first articulates such attitudes in order to pooh-pooh Digory's (somewhat Chestertonian) idea that if magic is real, the old fairy tales must be too - and thus the wicked old magician Uncle Andrew will get his comeuppance.

Uncle Andrew initially quails, but then dismisses fairy-tale justice as "a natural thing for a child to think--brought up among women, as you have been. Old wives' tales, eh?"

In other words, to allay his own fears, he must attack Digory as a mere child, and more specifically as a child subject to the particularly foolish/credulous influence of women, and he must attack the idea of fairy-tale justice as "old wives' tales." Because of course, old wives are not worth listening to; they cannot possibly pass down useful bits of folk-wisdom for the ages.

2. Next up is Digory.  We have already seen that Polly "was quite as brave as he about some dangers (wasps, for instance) but she was not so interested in finding out things nobody had ever heard of before."  So it is established that her reluctance generally reflects different values rather than lack of courage; that is, for both of them, the uncertainty and danger of exploring is weighed against the reward, which she typically values less than Digory.  When they come to something on Charn that interests her more than it interests Digory, she takes the lead.

Now, when Polly rightly tries to discourage Digory from striking a bell in the midst of the hall of statues (after he himself has advised that they must be very quiet to avoid triggering collapse of the ruined walls!), Digory immediately resorts to sexism:

"That's all you know," said Digory.  "It's because you're a girl.  Girls never want to know anything but gossip and rot about people getting engaged." 

"You looked exactly like your Uncle when you said that," said Polly.

3. The third instance involves two would-be sources of law and order in the London of Polly and Digory's time, once Jadis starts rampaging there.  A policeman asks Uncle Andrew "Are you in charge of that there young woman?" and a Cabby speaks kindly but patronizingly to Jadis: "Now, missie, let me get at [the horse's] 'had, and just you get off.  You're a Lidy, and you don't want all these roughs going for you, do you? You want to go 'ome and 'ave a nice cup of tea and a lay down quiet like; then you'll feel ever so much better."

Here, the assumptions of the policeman and the Cabby are laughably off-base; the reader already knows Jadis is strong, ambitious, and utterly ruthless -- far beyond Uncle Andrew's control or the calming influence of tea and a lie-down.

~ ~ ~

So, Uncle Andrew wields sexism against Digory and the idea of justice; Digory wields it against Polly and common prudence.

The policeman imagines Jadis must be in someone's charge (and that someone must be a man, no matter how weak and ineffectual); the Cabby imagines Jadis must be overwrought because she does not conform to the cultural expectation of ladylike behavior.

In none of these does Lewis invite the reader to sympathize with narrow, gender-based expectations or criticisms.

Quick Tangent Follow-Up: Wasting All Her School Time

In The Last Battle (ch. 12), Polly Plummer says Susan Pevensie “wasted all her school time wanting to be the age she is now.”   In my previous post, I suggested "There is perhaps a subtle implication that this longing may have caused her to neglect her studies and not get as much out of her 'school time' as she might."

This reading is actually supported by a passage in The Voyage of the Dawn Treader (ch. 1):

Grown-ups thought [Susan] the pretty one of the family and she was no good at school work (though otherwise very old for her age) and Mother said she 'would get far more out of a trip to America than the youngsters.'

Of course, we do know from Prince Caspian (ch. 3) that Susan won swimming prizes at school, so there's that.

* * *

Coda - Approximate dates of composition and publication (courtesy of Joel Heck's chronology):

• Prince Caspian - finished by Dec 1949 and given to RGL to read, with comments back on Dec 31; in typescript by end of Feb 1950.  Published Oct 1951.
• The Voyage of the Dawn Treader - ready for RGL to read by end of Feb 1950.  Published Sept 1952.
• The Last Battle - Lewis is "attempting to complete" it in Dec 1952; finished by Mar 1953.  Published Mar 1956.

Susan Pevensie

I was recently re-reading That Hideous Strength, and came across several passages that further underscore and buttress my views on Lewis's treatment of Susan Pevensie (spoiler alert: she's not necessarily damned, and Lewis doesn't necessarily object to adult female sexuality).

Surprisingly, it seems that I've not previously published a post on Susan, and more specifically the passage in The Last Battle on which so many people hang their own issues with Lewis:

“Sir,” said Tirian, when he had greeted all these.  “If I have read the chronicles aright, there should be another.  Has not your Majesty two sisters?  Where is Queen Susan?” 

“My sister Susan,” answered Peter shortly and gravely, “is no longer a friend of Narnia.” 

“Yes,” said Eustace, “and whenever you’ve tried to get her to come and talk about Narnia or do anything about Narnia, she says ‘What wonderful memories you have!  Fancy your still thinking about all those funny games we used to play when we were children.'” 

“Oh Susan!” said Jill, “she’s interested in nothing now-a-days except nylons and lipstick and invitations.  She always was a jolly sight too keen on being grown-up.” 

“Grown-up, indeed,” said the Lady Polly.  “I wish she would grow up.  She wasted all her school time wanting to be the age she is now, and she’ll waste all the rest of her life trying to stay that age.  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.” 

So a few thoughts here.

First, these are the thoughts and reflections of other human characters -- neither Aslan himself nor an omniscient narrator.  They can be taken with a grain of salt, as they are filtered through the characters' ordinary human knowledge and perceptions.  I would also note that the three who share their opinions are not Susan's siblings, who presumably know her best, since they have known her the longest and actually traveled to Narnia with her.*

Second, we are not told Susan's fate -- not by the narrator, not by Aslan, not even guessingly by her siblings and friends or anyone else.  As far as we know, she is still alive when Lewis draws the Chronicles of Narnia to an end.  We have no reason to assume she is damned.  Indeed, Lewis's other works suggest that we cannot possibly know if someone who is still alive is or will be damned.

For example, in parts IV-VI of chapter 16 of That Hideous Strength, we see the final moments of Wither, Feverstone, and Frost, each of whom are damned.  Yet Lewis makes clear this is a moral choice, even though it may seem inexorable at the moment of choosing.  Thus, in chapter 16, part IV:

[Wither] had willed with his whole heart that there should be no reality and no truth, and now even the imminence of his own ruin could not wake him. The last scene of Dr. Faustus where the man raves and implores on the edge of Hell is, perhaps, stage fire. The last moments before damnation are not often so dramatic. Often the man knows with perfect clarity that some still possible action of his own will could yet save him. But he cannot make this knowledge real to himself. Some tiny habitual sensuality, some resentment too trivial to waste on a blue-bottle, the indulgence of some fatal lethargy, seems to him at that moment more important than the choice between total joy and total destruction. With eyes wide open, seeing that the endless terror is just about to begin and yet (for the moment) unable to feel terrified, he watches passively, not moving a finger for his own rescue, while the last links with joy and reason are severed, and drowsily sees the trap close upon his soul. So full of sleep are they at the time when they leave the right way.

And then in part VI, Frost (who has deliberately rejected free will and all of reality as an illusion) finds himself going to a garage and locking himself in irrevocably with "all the inflammables he could think of."  His bodily fate is sealed, but even now, at the bitterest of ends, he is given awareness of moral choice and a chance of salvation:

That tiresome illusion, his consciousness, was screaming in protest: his body, even had he wished, had no power to attend to those screams. Like the clockwork figure he had chosen to be, his stiff body, now terribly cold, walked back into the Objective Room, poured out the petrol and threw a lighted match into the pile. Not till then did his controllers allow him to suspect that death itself might not after all cure the illusion of being a soul--nay, might prove the entry into a world where that illusion raged infinite and unchecked. Escape for the soul, if not for the body, was offered him. He became able to know (and simultaneously refused the knowledge) that he had been wrong from the beginning, that souls and personal responsibility existed. He half saw: he wholly hated. The physical torture of the burning was hardly fiercer than his hatred of that. With one supreme effort he flung himself back into his illusion. In that attitude eternity overtook him as sunrise in old tales overtakes trolls and turns them into unchangeable stone.

Nor is this an anomaly in Lewis's writings; we see him explore similar ideas in The Great Divorce.

Third, the core concern about Susan's non-friendship with Narnia, as explained by Eustace, is clearly her dismissal and outright denial of something she knows, from personal experience, to be factually true.  Although she has been there many times, she now pretends it was just "funny games" and quite literally child's play.  She even claims -- by praising the others' "wonderful memories" -- to barely remember it.  All this, even though she has personally spoken with Aslan and received counsel from him, has personally seen Aslan voluntarily suffer humiliation, torture, and death to save her treacherous brother Edmund, and has rejoiced and romped with him in his glorious resurrection and triumph over forces of evil.

Now we can see that the comments of Jill and Polly, which follow, explain their view of why Susan has turned away from Narnia.

People often take Jill's reference to "nylons and lipstick" (in conjunction with the reference to Susan being "too keen on being grown-up") as code for adult female sexuality; a form of metonymy, if you will.  Such readers or critics apparently assume that being grown-up and a sexual female results in Susan being cast out of Narnia.**  Of course, as we have already seen, Susan has chosen -- at this time -- to turn away from Narnia, but we do not know her ultimate fate.

(a) Is Sex Bad?

But we might still ask: does Lewis have a problem with sex and/or sexually active females?  Here, I think it's helpful to notice how sexuality takes center stage in That Hideous Strength.  Among the good guys, in chapter 14, part II, Jane Studdock and Margaret Dimble prepare the marital bed for two spouses who will soon be reunited, and we see the scene from Jane's modern, non-Christian*** perspective:

In Mrs. Dimble's hands the task of airing the little house and making the bed for Ivy Maggs and her jail-bird husband became something between a game and a ritual. It woke in Jane vague memories of helping at Christmas or Easter decorations in church when she had been a small child. But it also suggested to her literary memory all sorts of things out of sixteenth-century epithalamions--age-old superstitions, jokes, and sentimentalities about bridal beds and marriage bowers, with omens at the threshold and fairies upon the hearth. It was an atmosphere extraordinarily alien to that in which she had grown up. A few weeks ago she would have disliked it. Was there not something absurd about that stiff, twinkling archaic world--the mixture of prudery and sensuality, the stylised ardours of the groom and the conventional bashfulness of the bride, the religious sanction, the permitted salacities of fescennine song, and the suggestion that everyone except the principals might be expected to be rather tipsy? How had the human race ever come to imprison in such a ceremony the most unceremonious thing in the world? But she was no longer sure of her reaction. What she was sure of was the dividing line that included Mother Dimble in that world and left her outside. Mother Dimble, for all her nineteenth-century propriety, or perhaps because of it, struck her this afternoon as being herself an archaic person. At every moment she seemed to join hands with some solemn yet roguish company of busy old women who had been tucking young lovers into beds since the world began with an incongruous mixture of nods and winks and blessings and tears--quite impossible old women in ruffs or wimples who would be making Shakespearean jokes about codpieces and cuckoldry at one moment and kneeling devoutly at altars the next. It was very odd: for, of course, as far as their conversation was concerned the difference between them was reversed. Jane, in a literary argument, could have talked about codpieces with great sang-froid, while Mother Dimble was an Edwardian lady who would simply have ignored such a subject out of existence if any modernised booby had been so unfortunate as to raise it in her presence. 

In Chapter 16, part VI, the humans comment as bears, jackdaws, horses, and other animals start to pair off.  It is the agnostic bachelor MacPhee -- rather than the married Christian Mrs. Dimble or the bachelor Christian Ransom -- who is least comfortable with the increasingly inescapable signs of the animals' mating urges:

"Another love affair," said Mrs. Dimble. "It sounds as if Jack had found a Jill. . . . What a delicious night!" [...] "This," said MacPhee with great emphasis, "is becoming indecent!" 

"On the contrary," said Ransom, "decent, in the old sense, decens, fitting, is just what she is.  Venus herself is over St. Anne's."

Indeed, Ransom soon blesses not only the new ursine mates, but also the humans, as Ivy Maggs is finally reunited with her husband:

"[...] Now, Ivy, you want to go and talk to Tom.  Mother Dimble has put you both in the little room half-way up the stairs, not in the lodge, after all." 

"Oh, sir," said Ivy, and stopped. The Director leaned forward and laid his hand on her head. "Of course you want to go," he said. "Why, he's hardly had time to see you in your new dress yet. Have you no kisses to give him?" he said, and kissed her. "Then give him mine, which are not mine but by derivation. Don't cry. You are a good woman. Go and heal this man. Urendi Maleldil--we shall meet again."

So Ransom strongly hints here that the healing Ivy will offer Tom is both sexual in nature -- he will admire her new dress and receive kisses from her -- and most emphatically good.

Soon, there is a tremendous tumult outside -- "an ear-splitting noise from beyond the window" -- as a pair of elephants begin their courtship.  Again, it is MacPhee who is uncomfortable with this and wishes to draw the curtains as "there are ladies present."  Grace Ironwood sharply contradicts him:

"No," said Grace Ironwood in a voice as strong as his, "there will be nothing unfit for anyone to see. Draw them wider.[...]"

Likewise, birds, bats, mice, and hedgehogs are all apparently driven to copulate, and Ransom implicitly blesses them.  As his time on earth is waning, Jane asks if she may stay with him "to the very end." He instead gently tells her she should not stay because she is being "waited for":

"Me, sir?"
"Yes. Your husband is waiting for you in the lodge. It was your own marriage chamber that you prepared. Should you not go to him?"
"Must I go now?"
"If you leave the decision with me, it is now that I would send you."
"Then I will go, sir. But--but--am I a bear or a hedgehog?"
"More. But not less. Go in obedience and you will find love. You will have no more dreams. Have children instead. Urendi Maleldil."

Indeed, That Hideous Strength ends with Jane and Mark about to reunite, and with the hint that things will be very different between them -- that they, too, will find the eros and love that has formerly somehow eluded them.

There is nothing here to suggest a view that sex is bad, unwholesome, or in any way associated with evil.  Indeed, it is one of the evil-aligned characters, Professor Filostrato, who speaks against sex, and explains his opposition (ch. 8, part III):

"What are you driving at, Professor?" said Gould. "After all we are organisms ourselves." 

"I grant it. That is the point. In us organic life has produced Mind. It has done its work. [...]  We must get rid of it. By little and little, of course; slowly we learn how. [...] Learn how to reproduce ourselves without copulation." 

"I don't think that would be much fun," said Winter. 

"My friend, you have already separated the Fun, as you call it, from the fertility. The Fun itself begins to pass away. Bah! I know that is not what you think. But look at your English women. Six out of ten are frigid are they not? You see? Nature herself begins to throw away the anachronism. When she has quite thrown it away, then real civilisation becomes possible. You would understand if you were peasants. Who would try to work with stallions and bulls? No, no; we want geldings and oxen. There will never be peace and order and discipline so long as there is sex. When man has thrown it away, then he will become finally governable."

So there is something about the sexual impulse which, in the bad guys' view, makes humans "ungovernable," resistant to outside control or domination.

Again, I think these views toward sex are consistent with what we see in The Great Divorce.  I'm thinking in particular of the episode involving the tormenting "little red lizard" of lust which is – with the Ghost's very reluctant and agonized permission – killed, and immediately resurrected into "the greatest stallion I have ever seen, silvery white but with mane and tail of gold."  MacDonald, as teacher and guide, characterizes this stallion as the "richness and energy of desire."


(b) What Might "Nylons and Lipstick" Refer To, Then, if Not Female Sexuality?

Initially, we should notice the phrase is "nylons and lipstick and invitations" -- not just nylons and lipstick.  The word "invitations" here suggests an interest in being invited to parties where people get dressed up, or at least social events of some kind where one can see and be seen.

Next, we should notice that Jill claims Susan is "interested in nothing now-a-days except" those three things.  The problem, then is not necessarily having an interest in those things, but being exclusively interested in those things, at the expense of everything else -- especially the things that matter most.  We might also suspect that Jill is exaggerating somewhat; for example, presumably Susan has at least a sufficient interest in eating to keep herself alive.  That is, she is really pointing to Susan's over-prioritizing these things; it's question of mistaken priorities.

Is Jill's diagnosis that Susan "always was a jolly sight too keen on being grown-up" correct?  That is, are we to accept that "nylons and lipstick and invitations" necessarily stand for "being grown-up"?

Well, no -- not according to Polly, who stresses Susan's immaturity:

“Grown-up, indeed,” said the Lady Polly.  “I wish she would grow up.  She wasted all her school time wanting to be the age she is now, and she’ll waste all the rest of her life trying to stay that age.  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.” 

What is Polly getting at here?  She claims Susan "wasted" her childhood wanting to be a young adult, and thus raced on to the "silliest time of one's life."  (There is perhaps a subtle implication that this longing may have caused her to neglect her studies and not get as much out of her "school time" as she might.)  What is the nature of such adult silliness?  Well, for a male-specific version, we might turn to The Magician's Nephew (ch. 6):

Children have one kind of silliness, as you know, and grown-ups have another kind.  At this moment Uncle Andrew was beginning to be silly in a very grown-up way.  [...] "Andrew, my boy," he said to himself as he looked in the glass, "you're a devilish well-preserved fellow for your age. A distinguished-looking man, sir." [¶] You see, the foolish old man was actually beginning to imagine the Witch would fall in love with him.  The two drinks probably had something to do with it, and so had his best clothes.  But he was, in any case, as vain as a peacock; that was why he had become a Magician.

So here, grown-up silliness seems to involve vanity -- a preoccupation with one's physical appearance and attractiveness, and a desire to be admired for these superficial qualities.

All in all, it appears to me that the phase Susan is in, the one that Polly considers "the silliest time of one's life," is young adulthood.  I would agree that this phase is characterized by a preoccupation with superficial matters such as one's physical appearance (here, nylons and lipstick) and popularity (here, invitations).  And it is not at all unusual for immature young men and women to strive desperately to appear "grown-up" -- perhaps taking up smoking or drinking or other "adult" activities, which mature adults might enjoy in moderation or even do without, since they know their status as grown-ups does not depend on such things.

Would this work for a male character?  I say yes.  Men too, especially in young adulthood, may be preoccupied with superficial matters such as their physical appearance (perhaps symbolized by pomade and cummerbunds, or close-fitting jeans, or over-attention to curating their facial hair) and popularity (whether invitations, or getting to various "bases" with the ladies).  And if they race to that stage and seek to linger there, rather than maturing, I think they should likewise be held up for scorn at their silliness.

But again, I don't think we have to credit Polly's prediction that Susan will "waste all the rest of her life trying to stay that age."  Who knows what Susan will do and what she will choose, over time?  Indeed, the death of her siblings in a train wreck might be quite sobering in and of itself.  But even without that, she might well outgrow her focus on transitory and superficial things -- life has a way of doing that, as one learns to balance the siren call of pleasure with the practical necessities of paying bills.  Or perhaps she will -- like many men and women in real life -- find deeper meaning in love, a career, children, or intellectual pursuits.

In sum, Susan Pevensie's story is not written, and we will never know what would have happened.  It is deliberately left open, like the fate of the Entwives, and I think that those who condemn Lewis for this are not seeing what he wrote, but are instead bringing their own prejudices to bear.



====FOOTNOTES=====
*  Then again, Jill and Eustace have actually met Tirian before and had adventures with him over the course of the book.  So perhaps it's not surprising they'd speak up.

** Of course, in one sense, everyone is cast out of Narnia in The Last Battle, since Narnia itself comes to an end.  But heaven contains all worlds as they should have been, including Narnia.  Or, to be more precise, the Narnia they have known "was not the real Narnia.  That had a beginning and an end.  It was only a shadow or a copy of the real Narnia which has always been here and always will be here: just as our own world, England and all, is only a shadow or copy of something in Aslan's real world." (ch. 15, Digory speaking)

*** In That Hideous Strength, ch. 15, part IV, we learn "Jane had abandoned Christianity in early childhood, along with her belief in fairies and Santa Claus."

Narnia: What Would Have Happened?

Twice, when Lucy messes up, she wants to know what would have happened had she done the right thing -- and Aslan declines to tell her.  But when Digory very reluctantly does the right thing, Aslan consoles him (in a sense) by telling him what would have happened had he done the wrong thing.

As I have summarized it here, we can see a certain philosophical approach that might reconcile Aslan's decision to tell, or not tell, the foreclosed alternative future.  And ordinarily I'd say Aslan's approach need not be consistent -- for example, it could simply vary depending on the circumstances and his relationship with the person he's talking to.

But unfortunately, Lewis complicates the matter by having Aslan tell Lucy -- twice -- that people are never told what would have happened.  Aslan announces this as a categorical rule in Prince Caspian and The Voyage of the Dawn Treader, but three years later, Lewis does not in any way acknowledge this prior statement or even attempt to carve out an exception as Aslan breaks this "rule" for Digory in The Magician's Nephew.

"Oh, Aslan," said Lucy.  "You don't mean it was [my fault]?  How could I--I couldn't have left the others and come up to you alone, how could I?  Don't look at me like that ... oh well, I suppose I could.  Yes, and it wouldn't have been alone, I know, not if I was with you.  But what would have been the good?"

Aslan said nothing. 

"You mean," said Lucy rather faintly, "that it would have turned out all right--somehow?  But how?  Please, Aslan!  Am I not to know?" 

"To know what would have happened, child?" said Aslan.  "No.  Nobody is ever told that."

 (Prince Caspian, ch. 10 [published 1951])

"Spying on people by magic is the same as spying on them in any other way.  And you have misjudged your friend.  She is weak, but she loves you.  She was afraid of the older girl and said what she does not mean." 

"I don't think I'd ever be able to forget what I heard her say."

"No, you won't." 

"Oh dear," said Lucy.  "Have I spoiled everything?  Do you mean we would have gone on being friends if it hadn't been for this--and been really great friends--all our lives perhaps--and now we never shall." 

"Child," said Aslan, "did I not explain to you once before that no one is ever told what would have happened?" 

(The Voyage of the Dawn Treader, ch. 11 [published 1952])

"I--I nearly ate one [of those apples] myself, Aslan," said Digory.  "Would I--" 

"You would, child," said Aslan.  "For the fruit always works--it must work-- but it does not work happily for any who pluck it at their own will. [...] And the Witch tempted you to do another thing, my son, did she not?" 

"Yes, Aslan.  She wanted me to take an apple home to Mother." 

"Understand, then, that it would have healed her; but not to your joy or hers.  The day would have come when both you and  she would have looked back and said it would have been better to die in that illness."  [...]  But now Aslan was speaking again, almost in a whisper: 

"That is what would have happened, child, with a stolen apple.  It is not what will happen now.  What I give you now will bring joy.  It will not, in your world, give endless life, but it will heal.  Go.  Pluck her an apple."  

(The Magician's Nephew, ch. 14 [published 1955])

I suppose we could invent a silent condition to the "rule" -- perhaps Aslan meant, "no one is ever told what would have happened, if they have the temerity to ask about it" or "no one is ever told what would have happened, if they had done the right thing."

But I suspect this is more of an indication that Lewis was going with what made sense in the moment for the story and characters and whatever points he wished to make... rather than worrying about developing or maintaining "the inner consistency of reality" which so preoccupied Tolkien.

C.S. Lewis & Terry Pratchett

Vimes talking to Carrot about the light:

"Vetinary sits up half the night writing, and in the morning the candle's burned down.  Poisoned by the light.  The light's something you don't see. Who looks at the light? [...]  We don't look at the light because the light is what we look with."  (Pratchett, Feet of Clay 289)

Opening passage of CSL's "Meditation in a Toolshed":

I was standing today in the dark toolshed. The sun was shining outside and through the crack at the top of the door there came a sunbeam. From where I stood that beam of light, with the specks of dust floating in it, was the most striking thing in the place. Everything else was almost pitch-black. I was seeing the beam, not seeing things by it. 

Then I moved, so that the beam fell on my eyes. Instantly the whole previous picture vanished. I saw no toolshed, and (above all) no beam. Instead I saw, framed in the irregular cranny at the top of the door, green leaves moving on the branches of a tree outside and beyond that, 90 odd million miles away, the sun. Looking along the beam, and looking at the beam are very different experiences.

Books: Hoarding vs Re-Reading

About five years ago, after being reunited with my Dr Who books, I realized that reading them no longer brought me joy.  Instead, it left me a little depressed at the loss of that childhood pleasure.  I thought about keeping them for the sake of having an impressive collection -- I'd picked most of them up at second-hand bookstores in the UK over a three-year period during my early teens, and supplemented them with another half-dozen novelizations in the US edition on our return.  But I'm not really a collector at heart; I'm a re-reader.  So I chose five to keep, gave the rest away, and felt a lot freer at the end of it.

Book hoarding is, for me, hanging on to books for the sake of owning them, with no realistic expectation of reading or referencing them in future.  I'll generally make an effort to keep books that were given as gifts, but otherwise, I'm trying to make room for books I love.

As usual, C. S. Lewis is good on re-reading:

"The re-reader is looking not for actual surprises (which can come only once) but for a certain surprisingness. [...] It is the quality of unexpectedness, not the fact, that delights us. It is even better the second time. Knowing that the 'surprise' is coming we can now fully relish the fact that this path through the shrubbery doesn't look as if it were suddenly goingto bring us out on the edge of the cliff. [...] The children understand this well when they ask for the same story over and over again, and in the same words. They want to have again the 'surprise' of discovering that what seemed Little Red Riding Hood's grandmother is really the wolf. It is better when you know it is coming: free from the shock of actual surprise you can attend better to the intrinsic surprisingness of the peripeteia."

-- Lewis, Of Other Worlds: Essays and Stories, "On Stories" (1947)

Hats in Literature: A few examples

Dunsany - The King of Elfland's Daughter

"They listened spellbound to the ways of men; and every now and then, as when he told of hats, there ran through the forest a wave of laughter."

Tolkien - The Fellowship of the Ring

"Presently Sam appeared, trotting quickly and breathing hard; his heavy pack was hoisted high on his shoulders, and he had put on his head a tall shapeless felt bag, which he called a hat."

* * * 

"There was another burst of song, and then suddenly, hopping and dancing along the path, there appeared above the reeds an old battered hat with a tall crown and a long blue feather stuck in the band."

* * * 

"So [Tom Bombadil] sang, running fast, tossing up his hat and catching it, until he was hidden by a fold of the ground: but for some time his hey now! hoy now! came floating back down the wind, which had shifted round towards the south."

* * * 

"[The hobbits] begged [Tom Bombadil] to come at least as far as the inn and drink once more with them; but he laughed and refused, saying:

Tom's country ends here: he will not pass the borders.
Tom has his house to mind, and Goldberry is waiting!

Then he turned, tossed up his hat, leaped on Lumpkin's back, and rode up over the bank and away singing into the dusk."

* * * 

"Arrows fell among them.  One struck Frodo and sprang back.  Another pierced Gandalf's hat and stuck there like a black feather."

Chesterton - "On Running After One's Hat"

"[T]here is a current impression that it is unpleasant to have to run after one's hat. Why should it be unpleasant to the well-ordered and pious mind? Not merely because it is running, and running exhausts one. The same people run much faster in games and sports. The same people run much more eagerly after an uninteresting little leather ball than they will after a nice silk hat. There is an idea that it is humiliating to run after one's hat; and when people say it is humiliating they mean that it is comic. It certainly is comic; but man is a very comic creature, and most of the things he does are comic [...]. And the most comic things of all are exactly the things that are most worth doing [...].

Now a man could, if he felt rightly in the matter, run after his hat with the manliest ardour and the most sacred joy. He might regard himself as a jolly huntsman pursuing a wild animal, for certainly no animal could be wilder. In fact, I am inclined to believe that hat-hunting on windy days will be the sport of the upper classes in the future. There will be a meet of ladies and gentlemen on some high ground on a gusty morning. They will be told that the professional attendants have started a hat in such-and-such a thicket, or whatever be the technical term. Notice that this employment will in the fullest degree combine sport with humanitarianism. The hunters would feel that they were not inflicting pain. Nay, they would feel that they were inflicting pleasure, rich, almost riotous pleasure, upon the people who were looking on. When last I saw an old gentleman running after his hat in Hyde Park, I told him that a heart so benevolent as his ought to be filled with peace and thanks at the thought of how much unaffected pleasure his every gesture and bodily attitude were at that moment giving to the crowd."

Lewis - The  Magician's Nephew

"'Womfle - pomf - shomf,' came Uncle Andrew's voice from inside the hat.

'None of that now,' said the policeman sternly.  'You'll find this is no laughing matter.  Take that 'at off, see?'

This was more easily said than done.  But after Uncle Andrew had struggled in vain with the hat for some time, two other policemen seized it by the brim and forced it off."

(Note: The hat in question just happens to be Uncle Andrew's "best tall hat" which he'd polished up to impress Jadis.)

Borrowing, Homage, Influence

Tolkien fans like to quote Lewis's comment that “No-one ever influenced Tolkien – you might as well try to influence a bandersnatch” (a claim that Diana Glyer has worked to soften or refute in The Company They Keep and Bandersnatch).

Some of them also like to sneer at Lewis for making references to Numinor in That Hideous Strength in homage to Tolkien's Númenor, apparently interpreting this either as a sign of an unoriginal mind, or even as outright "plagiarism" (a claim I find implausible, since Lewis acknowledges the source in his preface and seems to be merely attempting to situate his own original story in the same world with other legends - both the Arthurian and the Tolkienian). 

Still, in this context, it is interesting to consider the following passage from Tolkien's essay "Beowulf: The Monsters and the Critics":

For it is of their nature that the jabberwocks of historical and antiquarian research burble in the tulgy wood of conjecture, flitting from one tum-tum tree to another.  Noble animals, whose burbling is on occasion good to hear; but though their eyes of flame may sometimes prove searchlights, their range is short.

(Source: The Monsters and the Critics and Other Essays.  Ed. Christopher Tolkien. HarperCollinsPublishers, 2006, at 9.)

This is, after all, heavy and unattributed copying from the 3rd and 4th stanzas of Lewis Carroll's 7-stanza poem, "Jabberwocky," including several distinctive words that Carroll himself invented.  Moreover, some are slightly misspelled (tulgy/tulgey, tum-tum/Tumtum), just as with Numinor/Númenor:

`Twas brillig, and the slithy toves
  Did gyre and gimble in the wabe:
All mimsy were the borogoves,
  And the mome raths outgrabe. 

"Beware the Jabberwock, my son!
  The jaws that bite, the claws that catch!
Beware the Jubjub bird, and shun
  The frumious Bandersnatch!" 

He took his vorpal sword in hand:
  Long time the manxome foe he sought --
So rested he by the Tumtum tree,
  And stood awhile in thought. 

And, as in uffish thought he stood,
  The Jabberwock, with eyes of flame,
Came whiffling through the tulgey wood,
  And burbled as it came! 

One, two! One, two! And through and through
  The vorpal blade went snicker-snack!
He left it dead, and with its head
  He went galumphing back. 

"And, has thou slain the Jabberwock?
  Come to my arms, my beamish boy!
O frabjous day! Callooh! Callay!'
  He chortled in his joy. 

`Twas brillig, and the slithy toves
  Did gyre and gimble in the wabe;
All mimsy were the borogoves,
  And the mome raths outgrabe.

(Source: Through the Looking Glass, in The Annotated Alice.  Ed. Martin Gardner.  New York: Bramhall House, 1960, at 191-97.)

To be clear, I do not criticize Tolkien for invoking "Jabberwocky" in this way; it strikes me as a fair use, just like Lewis's reference to "Numinor."  Indeed, although Tolkien (unlike Lewis) does not mention the original author/source, he clearly expects his audience to recognize the reference and infer that the critics he is criticizing are spouting nonsense.

I do think there is more room for nuance in the discussion.  I happen to like both Lewis and Tolkien, but surely one can love Tolkien and detest Lewis, as a matter of personal taste, without being monstrous in one's own criticism.

Wonder: encounters of the first or second kind

Continuing to reflect on Mythmoot IV.

Experiencing Wonder

The panel shared some of their earliest or profoundest experiences of wonder.  Michael Drout remembered being so taken with Wes þu hal? that he changed his major.  Verlyn Flieger was blindsided by the "Window on the West" in LotR, specifically that moment when "The level shafts of the setting sun behind beat upon [the thin veil of water], and the red light was broken into many flickering beams of ever-changing colour. It was as if they stood at the window of some elven-tower, curtained with threaded jewels of silver and gold, and ruby, sapphire and amethyst, all kindled with an unconsuming fire." John DiBartolo remembered his mother singing away his fear of the dark, an experience that may have led to his own career in music.

My own experiences of wonder most often involve natural beauty -- which can be present even in an urban environment -- and a certain quality of light that strikes me to the core.  C.S. Lewis perhaps came close to capturing its essence.

• Perelandra's light, filtered by an opaque roof like the golden backdrop of a medieval painting,  is "rich and dim," so that Ransom's "eyes fed upon it undazzled and unaching.  The very names of green and gold, which he used perforce in describing the scene, are too harsh for the tenderness, the muted iridescence, of that warm, maternal, delicately gorgeous world.  It was mild to look upon as evening, warm like summer noon, gentle and winning like early dawn."
  -- C.S. Lewis, Perelandra (1944).
  (Source: C.S. Lewis. Perelandra: A Novel.  New York, London, Toronto, and Sydney: Scribner, 2003.  32.)

Indeed, hundreds of photos posted on this very blog, and thousands more on my computer, reflect my attempts to capture and share this particular luminous beauty, limited only by the quality of the equipment (point-and-shoot) and the skill of its operator (an untrained amateur).

Other memorable experiences of wonder:

• One extraordinary night on the beach in southwestern Florida in November 2001 with my family, watching the Leonid meteor shower.  The dark sky was filled with shooting stars everywhere.  We started out excitedly pointing them out to each other, but lapsed into awed silence.  We stared up as if in dream, eyes wide, unsleepy.
  "Every star shining brightly / Just like a million years before / And we were feeling very small /Underneath the universe." -- Eurythmics, "When Tomorrow Comes" (video)
• The day I rushed from the bookstore to a local park and read Stanislaw Lem's The Cyberiad   cover to cover, each story more dazzling than the last.* 
• My favorite poems, which all do something extraordinary with language.
• That feeling when you suddenly notice that you've been fully immersed and absorbed in the task at hand, to the exclusion of all other things.  And then you return to it with a sense of wonder that only enhances clarity and focus.  
• The day I tested for my yellow belt in karate.  I'd forgotten my gi.  I'd forgotten the test had been scheduled for that day.  And then the test started, and I forgot that I didn't know how to do karate.
• Sleeping out under the stars, in the open air, in the Grand Canyon.
• The night during that Grand Canyon trip when I awoke thinking it was noon.  But the air was still and the sky above was dark; only the low, unseen moon had sent a shaft of light horizontally through some slot or crevice to my left (out of sight around a sharp bend in the river) to illuminate the entire cliff wall to my right.  
• A production of Macbeth at the Park Avenue Armory, where we walked across the blasted heath, past a ruin with three tall arches, to reach our seats all around the long dirt stage.  In the opening scene, the witches levitated in those arches, gently bobbing up and down.  
• My first time seeing The Lion King musical live.  I entered at intermission, not knowing what to expect, and suddenly the air was filled with birds and with song, as the cast walked down the aisles waving puppets on long poles and singing.   As the story unfolded, the puppetry was magical -- I'd suddenly notice a puppeteer next to a life-sized puppet and think "When did he get there?" and then immediately be re-immersed and lose awareness of the puppeteer again.  It was like Faerian Drama for me.**
• Seeing The Lion King again with my little nieces.  
• When fireflies light the actors' final bows at the end of a peripatetic Shakespeare performance.
• Dazzling wordplay, and brilliant parodies that transform an irritating pop song into something truly original, endlessly delightful and clever.   Weird Al's "Ebay," for example.  I'm always in awe of the line "I'll buy your tchotchkes; / Sell me your watch, please!"
• The "surprisingness" (to use C.S. Lewis's term) of a well-remembered turn in The Lord of the Rings or other favorites.
• A performance of Beethoven's Fifth by the Budapest Festival Orchestra at Lincoln Center this past March.  
• Seeing a river otter in the wild - it darted across our path to safe cover at the water's edge, only to reascend the bank and cavort in front of us.
• The islands of the Galapagos - each one an alien landscape with its own character and fauna.
• Sycamore trees on a winter afternoon:  Their bark is "silvery white, and yet it seems simultaneously to glow gold in the afternoon light.  On a sunny day, against the bright winter sky, with snow on the ground, the quality of the light is arresting."
• So many magical evenings at the Brooklyn Botanic Garden.  Here's a memory from September 2009:

Sounds of insects (crickets and others) swelled, at times drowning out the traffic noises. Bats swooped raggedly in the dusk. And I wandered off following the will-o-the-wisp fireflies among the trees.... Thinking, of course, of the Owl City song ("I'd get a thousand hugs from ten thousand lightning bugs as they tried to teach me how to dance. A fox trot above my head, a sock hop beneath my bed; a disco ball is just hanging by a thread...").

Origins of Wonder

Tell me where is fancy bred, / Or in the heart, or in the head? / How begot, how nourishèd  / Reply, reply.

-- William Shakespeare, The Merchant of Venice 3.2

Since the panelists and most of the audience were more steeped in Tolkien than Lewis, some of them suggested that wonder is inherent in the human observer, rather than the thing observed.

It's true enough in one sense, especially for the materialists.  But those whose minds are open to the possibility of some kind of higher power and objective Truth may find Lewis persuasive on this issue.

He starts by recounting the de-constructive commentary of a pair of textbook authors who

comment as follows: 'When the man said This is sublime, he appeared to be making a remark about the waterfall.  Actually he was not making a remark about the waterfall, but a remark about his own feelings.  What he was saying was really I have feelings associated in my mind with the word "Sublime" or shortly, I have sublime feelings.' [...]   They add: 'This confusion is continually present in language as we use it.  We appear to be something very important about something: and actually we are only saying something about our own feelings.'  

Lewis, "Men Without Chests," at 2-3 (omitting Lewis's ellipses).

Virtually the entire essay is a reaction against this claim and an exploration of its implications.  I've attempted to assemble the core of Lewis's correctives here for convenience:

Even if it were granted that such qualities as sublimity were simply and solely projected into things from our own emotions, yet the emotions which prompt the projection are the correlatives, and therefore almost the opposites, of the qualities projected.  The feelings which make a man call an object sublime are not sublime feelings but feelings of veneration.  If This is sublime is to be reduced at all to a statement about the speaker's feelings, the proper translation would be I have humble feelings.
[...]
Until quite modern times all teachers and even all men believed the universe to be such that certain emotional reactions on our part could be either congruous or incongruous to it -- believed, in fact, that objects did not merely receive, but could merit, our approval or disapproval, our reverence or our contempt.  [...] The man who called the cataract sublime was not intending simply to describe his own emotions about it: he was also claiming that the object was one which merited those emotions.  But for this claim there would be nothing to agree or disagree about.
[...]
To say that the cataract is sublime means saying that our emotion of humility is appropriate or ordinate to the reality, and thus to speak of something else besides the emotion; just as to say that a shoe fits is to speak not only of shoes but of feet. 

"Men Without Chests" at 3, 14-15, 20.

Defining Wonder

The panelists grappled with definitions and near-synonyms (e.g., "marvel"), coming up with ideas such as: wonder is something that defies explanation and cannot be captured; it may be a way of perceiving the world and gaining Recovery; it may be aligned with mystery, curiosity, and awe; in literature, it may be something that is evocative rather than detailed. Words such as awesome and terrible came up as well, in their earlier or classical senses (something that inspires awe or terror).

For me, there is a fine line between delight and wonder.  Wonder is clearly not limited to delight, but it might be that wonder (in its positive sense) encompasses a particularly intense and overpowering experience of delight.

My own tentative working definition, after hearing everyone's experiences, sharing my own, and re-reading Lewis, is something along the lines of:  Wonder is what we call it when something -- at least momentarily -- shakes us out of complacency into humility, reverence and awe.  The encounter cannot leave us entirely unchanged.  It forcibly reminds us of our smallness, and may jolt us out of self-awareness entirely.  It arrests us, takes our breath away, or moves us to laughter or tears.  If nothing else, it leaves us more susceptible to the next attack.  In the most extreme cases, we may find ourselves unable to resume exactly the lives we led before, and we will be all the richer for it.

"You are a very fine person, Mr. Baggins, and I am very fond of you; but you are only quite a little fellow in a wide world after all!”
“Thank goodness!” said Bilbo laughing, and handed him the tobacco-jar.

--J.R.R. Tolkien, The Hobbit, ch. 19.

----

FN* There was an element of eucatastrophe to my acquisition of The Cyberiad.  Once I'd noticed that every single quote that I loved from my quote-of-the-day macro just happened to come from the Very Same Book, I went to hunt down a copy.  This bookstore was not the first place I'd looked, but it was my last great hope.  I searched the shelves.  It was not there.  In desperation, I went to the counter to ask if perchance they might have a copy in the back.  The clerk said No, everything was on the shelves, but on seeing my disappointment, he went off to check anyway and - to his surprise and mine - returned triumphant.  It was a sudden, joyous turn: a sudden and miraculous grace: never to be counted on to recur.  (Then again, this was before amazon.com was a thing.  Or maybe it was a thing and I wasn't aware of it.  In any event, an online transaction would have deprived the clerk of the radiant smile he received from a girl who was thrilled and delighted beyond words at buying a book she'd almost despaired of finding.) 

FN** Serendipity got me in to The Lion King.  It was about 9 p.m. and I'd been peering in through the glass at the theater lobby, idly wondering if the musical was any good, when some guy walked up to me and asked whether I'd like to see the show.  When I said yes (wondering what he was up to), he handed me a ticket and walked away.  The seat next to mine was vacant, so it may have been that his date stood him up.  They were really nice seats, too.