When I was a little girl I came upon some books I loved to read by the author C.S. Lewis. The books in question were "The Chronicles Of Narnia". I've always read a lot. For different reasons as you veterans of yon Lipstick Fetish blog know ;-)
And as I've grown I've been in utter awe and wonder as how some stories grew with me. I grew wiser and the tales grew deeper. One such book that has never let me down, that always made me pause each time I came to reread it again and reconsider my view of life, the universe and everything, was one of the title "The Little Prince", by Antoine de Saint-Euxpery. Sadly, I've had to exclude "The Chronicles of Narnia" from this list.
As a child, I had loved these stories because they told me that was more to the world than the eye can see... that there are worlds in worlds and it can be a great adventure to explore them... But as I grew older, people started telling me that the stories' author had another story
to tell us, under the guise of the childrens' adventures in the lands of Narnia. It was a story about Good and Evil, Christianity... They told me the lion Aslan was actually Jesus Christ. At first, I was angry at the people who told me this (remember, I grew up in a stake-burning, pitchfork-toting, religious-zealot town), I thought they were imposing their beliefs on the stories (which should be inviolate and allowed to exist in their own right)...But I've grown a little more now, though in many respects I still feel like I'm a child, and I've had to redirect that first impulse of anger.
They were right.
And, in realising they were right, I've realised why there was one part of the story that has always lingered in the back of my mind troubling me, feeling like it didn't fit...
I refer to The Problem Of Susan.
It all makes sense now.
In the last of the seven books, "The Last Battle", Lucy, Edmund and Peter return to Narnia...and are even granted passage to the land of "further up and further in", Paradise. Heaven. Susan, the oldest of the girls is excluded. And the only reason we are offered as to her
exclusion is because... you might want to sit down before you read this... "she's grown too fond of lipstick and nylons and invitations..."Yeah?
Well, with all due respect, fuck you C.S. Lewis.
The problem is not that she's lost "the innocence of children" (a rather weird concept in my not so humble opinion, who says time has to rob us of aspects of our being? Who says learning more is a sin?) because if this were the case Peter would have been excluded too, being the very oldest of the four.
"Lipstick"...
Her exclusion is gender specific. Her feminine sexuality is dawning, golden and
strange and wonderful on the horizon. She is being excluded for "the sin of Eve".I could never understand why she was left behind...
Furthermore, towards the end of the book, we find out the rest of her siblings were killed in a train crash (being the reason why they get taken to live in the glorious land of "further up and further in"...hmmm... sounds like kinky-speak to me :-P ).
This made me think, even when I was just a child, that our girl Susan, mentioned but once in this concluding book, was also left to identify the bodies (which could only be a traumatising event), and left to live alone, family-less. Why? Why did Susan deserve such punishment?
And now I know the answer. C.S. Lewis wasn't punishing her. He left her to live through these tribulations to give her time to repent for her sin...
You hear that girls? Throw out your lipsticks immediately! Stop enjoying life! We must suffer this life in order to repent that we may be granted passage to Paradise!
Ye gods, this is lunacy!
I think I may have tangent-ily referred to this issue in the previous post; regarding the "idiotic concept of hell".
Mind if I share my
point of view?The way I see it, whatever your spiritual beliefs (including anti-spiritual beliefs) there's no point in there being a heaven or a hell while we are beings belonging to the realm of the living. They are all happening right here, we don't need any more of them.
We don't need to paint a heaven or hell above or below our picture of existence because we are the creators of human life here on this crazy little geoid. We create our own lives, and if enough of us create similarly-driven lives, then we create life situations on a global scale. We're *perfectly* capable of making *heaven* and hell right here. And the evidence is all around us. It surrounds
me when I wake up to my room, my sancto sanctorum and the view of trees and sky outside my window, every morning. It blares at me from the news channel on the tv.If C.S. Lewis thinks I should suffer, oh wait, but he thinks it grace... that I may have time to repent, he can kiss my cute, nicely-shaped ass (pics in next post, actually). Yes, I think my ass is cute. It's mine to think whatever I please of it, so there. And it didn't get to looking that way because I was busy on my knees praying for my soul and not engaging in "unspeakable acts with members of the opposite (oops and the same) sex". Does wonders I tell you. And you won't believe how many calories you burn...which is great to think that there's a form of exercise out there that one can *only* enjoy. I suppose that was an accident, huh?
Anyhow, enough bitching. I've got my lipstick and nylons (and an invitation to be a girl's gothic/Victorian date to her Graduation Ball) and I have every intention of making my
own *paradise*...*Right Here*.
Life's too going-on and wonderful to let it go to waste on hunting for a mysterious pot of gold at the end of some rainbow. Go out there and take what you've got and find what you need... to make your life wonderful, happy, healthy and magical. It really is all there.
There's no need to go sticking your nose in a hundred thousand wardrobes...
And I'm off to go *play* with these two lipsticks of mine...
In a bed of purple and pink bougenvilia flowers I've spent some time making.
And I promise you, not once while I'm at it will I feel like I'm "not innocent" or "old" or being promiscious or something stupid like that.
And I'll giggle as I'm about to come.
And then I'll sigh and close my eyes afterwards... with a smile of pure joy dawning all over my face.
4 comments:
Lady L:
Greetings from a member of the LipstickFetish.org group. As a long time lipstick enthusiast (started in my early teens back in the early 70's) and a reader of CS Lewis, I vividly recall the passage in the final Narnia book of which you speak.
I will preface by saying that I am the last person in the world to step in to defend CS Lewis and his (in my opinion) oddball brand of Christianity (read his book "Mere Christianity" to see what I mean). However, I think you are unfairly throwing ol' Clive under the bus regarding Susan and her love of lipstick, etc. Lewis is very upfront in his introduction to Narnia and subsequent commentaries that his inspiration for the books were children from his life or family (I honestly don't remember the specifics of the relationship - I don't think they were his kids but perhaps nieces/nephews/neighbors). Anyway, at one point in the introduction he wistfully speaks about how the children for whom he wrote the books had grown too old for such stories and he looked forward to the day when they would be old enough to once again appreciate the magic of Narnia - in short, the kids were becoming teenagers.
The child who inspired Susan was no longer interested in her role in the Narnia series, so Lewis obligingly wrote her out. I don't think he was specifically asserting that more grown-up interests (like lipstick) were bad (although I wouldn't put it past him either) but simply that "his" Susan had become uninterested in his stories. At least, that has always been the positive spin I have always put on that passage, since I am a fan of both Narnia and the frequent and indulgent use of lipstick.
For what its worth, my Narnia would be filled with full-lipped uninhibited creatures, who rejoice in applying a rainbow of colors and textures to their magical mouths and whose nourishment came from long languorous luscious kisses, and whose richly painted and glossed lips never smeared but always looked freshly applied and irresistible.
But that's just my opinion ...
T'was a good opinion indeed.
Thanks very much for seeing fit to share! Especially as regards the information.
Sadly, regardless of the author's vision, it is one that largely belongs to him. Most people who get their hands on the Narnia books don't have access to his reasons. That's why some Christian folk are able to impose their readings on the text. Not even I knew and I own two editions of each of the books spanning a decade or more in between the editions. None of them have a foreward explaining what you have. But then again, I don't think books should, as a writer. Once they are written and on the shelf, the stories are free. They belong to the world now, not their creator: they're like children...growing up, making their own lives...
So Lewis's "Susan" grew disinterested in his stories... But this "Susan" is no longer his anyway. The very *second* he wrote her name into the story, she belonged to the readers. She was yours. She was mine. And I doubt I will ever change my mind that it was unfair to take her away from us.
Nonetheless, you can be sure I'll be keeping those books on my shelf evermore...
So many wonderful adventures for me came out of those stories...
Mmmmm such a beautiful flower with lovely red and pink blossoms. I can only dream of stopping by to smell the roses. What an exceptional delight you are my dear "Lipstick Lady"
Sara
Lady L:
You raise an excellent point: why did Lewis feel it was necessary to take Susan away from his readers? I hadn't thought of it that way before, and having read the introductions and commentaries before actually reading the books (backward, I know - but such was my education), I only looked at it through the eyes of the aging Lewis who longed for the days when the children in his life were enchanted by his stories.
Plus, in all fairness and candor, as a male I likely did not identify as strongly with Susan so the unfairness of her omission did not have the same impact as it perhaps had for you. I'll have to revisit the books sometime and see how your observations color (pun intended!) how I feel about the Last Battle.
Thanks ...
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