{"id":31258,"date":"2016-12-15T05:00:39","date_gmt":"2016-12-15T09:00:39","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/admin.patheos.com\/blogs\/lovejoyfeminism\/?p=31258"},"modified":"2016-12-14T13:29:54","modified_gmt":"2016-12-14T17:29:54","slug":"i-am-susan","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/lovejoyfeminism\/2016\/12\/i-am-susan.html","title":{"rendered":"Why Susan Pevensie Has Defenders"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

Like every other good evangelical child, I grew up reading the Chronicles of Narnia, by C. S. Lewis. I was so fascinated with the books that my siblings and I made green and yellow rings and used them to travel through the pools in the wood between the worlds and explore imaginary worlds. (If you have no idea what I\u2019m talking about, you need to reread the Magician\u2019s Nephew.) In my family, the four oldest children were two boys and two girls, so it was only natural that we would play as Peter, Susan, Edmund, and Lucy. Because I was the oldest, I played as Susan.<\/p>\n

And we all know what happened to Susan.<\/p>\n

The amount of digital ink spilled on the problem of Susan has only grown<\/a> in recent years. Susan, as we know, was lost to Narnia because she became interested in lipstick and nylons and invitations.\u00a0Even Harry Potter author J. K. Rowling has weighed in<\/a>: \u201cThere comes a point where Susan, who was the older girl, is lost to Narnia because she becomes interested in lipstick. She\u2019s become irreligious basically because she found sex. I have a big problem with that.\u201d Susan\u2019s problem was that she grew up, others have argued. I\u2019m left thinking of my own journey.<\/p>\n

I\u00a0was\u00a0homeschooled through high school, and then left home to attend\u00a0college. Once there, my horizons broadened, and I stood outside the evangelical bubble of my upbringing for the first time. My parents believed I was ready for this; so did I. Initially all seemed well.\u00a0I attended Campus Crusade for Christ meetings and made friends with other evangelical students. But I also had the freedom, for the first time, to sort through what I believed, and what I did not.\u00a0Things changed. I<\/em> changed.<\/p>\n

There\u2019s a reason I\u2019m bringing my own journey into this. While Susan has her defenders, she has accusers, too. A bevy of<\/a> bloggers<\/a> and writers<\/a> have shouted down the words of Rowling and others, arguing that Susan condemned herself with her own\u00a0actions,\u00a0that Lewis faulted her not for growing up but for becoming vain, that Susan\u00a0became so deluded that she\u00a0actually forgot<\/em>\u00a0Narnia. They quote Lewis\u2019s own words about Susan, from a letter he wrote later:<\/p>\n

\u201cThe books don\u2019t tell us what happened to Susan. She is left alive in this world at the end, having by then turned into a rather silly, conceited young woman. But there is plenty of time for her to mend, and perhaps she will get to Aslan\u2019s country in the end\u2014in her own way.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Whose lens do we use to evaluate Susan? I find myself drawn back to my own story.<\/p>\n

As I began to change during my college years, my mother blamed it first on my boyfriend. I was \u201cblinded by love,\u201d she said. My father\u2014I\u2019m not even sure what he thought. It would have been too painful to directly ask. But they talked about me, to others in the community, and visiting my hometown became only more painful. I was refusing to obey\u00a0my parents, others\u00a0were told, I was leaving the faith, I was rebellious and brainwashed and refusing to listen. And so the stories spread. No one asked me<\/em> what was happening. No one wanted to hear my side.<\/p>\n

It matters who controls the narrative. Lewis says Susan was vein and conceited, Lewis says Susan cared only about material things and appearances, Lewis says Susan was a \u201crather silly\u201d young woman. But did anyone ask Susan? What was Susan\u2019s story? Where is Susan\u2019s voice? It\u2019s absent. She\u2019s silent. She is given no opportunity to defend herself, to tell her side of the story. And that, quite frankly, is why many young women in my situation identify with Susan. It\u2019s not that we didn\u2019t realize Lewis said Susan\u2019s problem was conceit. It\u2019s that we know what it\u2019s like to have authority figures lie about what happened to us.<\/p>\n

But what about the fact that Susan doesn\u2019t remember Narnia, and refers to\u00a0it just a game they played as children?\u00a0I am reminded, again, of my own journey.<\/p>\n

As I began to change, my mother would often remind me of who\u00a0I was as a girl, and as a teen. Growing up, I was devout and passionate in my evangelical beliefs. I went on missions trips and protested abortion. I studied Greek\u00a0and Hebrew so that I could read the Bible in its original texts. I read apologetics books voraciously, and spent my own money to buy creation science materials. It was who I was. My mother wanted to know\u00a0what had happened to change all of this.\u00a0How could I have\u00a0forgotten my\u00a0faith, which meant so much to me?<\/p>\n

We are not obligated, as adults, to be who or what we were as children. I know how frustrating it is to have your childhood passions thrown in your face in an effort to invalidate who you have become. But the truth is, we are allowed to make different choices. So Susan tired of Narnia. So Susan decided to go in a different direction. That is allowed<\/em>. Susan should be able\u00a0to choose the direction of her own life without someone throwing who she was as a girl in her face every time she turned around. \u2018But Susan, when we were kids you loved<\/em> Narnia.\u2019 \u2018But Susan, Narnia was the most important thing in your life when you were twelve.\u2019 \u2018But Susan\u2014\u2018 Enough<\/em>.<\/p>\n

I suppose what I\u2019m really trying to explain is why Susan has her defenders. Yes, we know that the Chronicles of Narnia is fiction. Yes, we know that C. S. Lewis created Susan. We know how literature works. We also know that\u00a0Susan is written the way good evangelical girls who defect would be written, if their parents were the authors. And that makes us wonder what really<\/em> happened. It makes us doubt Lewis\u2019s lens, even though he is the author. It makes us want to liberate Susan from his pen.\u00a0And it makes us feel, regardless of the rules of literature, that Susan was surely a kindred spirit.<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Yes, we know that the Chronicles of Narnia is fiction. Yes, we know that C. S. Lewis created Susan. We know how literature works. We also know that Susan is written the way good evangelical girls who defect would be written, if their parents were the authors. And that makes us wonder what really happened. It makes us doubt Lewis’s lens, even though he is the author.<\/p>\n

Click through to read more!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":845,"featured_media":31265,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[40,25],"tags":[245],"class_list":["post-31258","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-evangelicalism-fundamentalism","category-christian-patriarchy","tag-narnia"],"yoast_head":"\nWhy Susan Pevensie Has Defenders<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Susan is written the way good evangelical girls who defect would be written, if their parents were the authors.\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/lovejoyfeminism\/2016\/12\/i-am-susan.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Why Susan Pevensie Has Defenders\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Susan is written the way good evangelical girls who defect would be written, if their parents were the authors.\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/lovejoyfeminism\/2016\/12\/i-am-susan.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Love, Joy, Feminism\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2016-12-15T09:00:39+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:modified_time\" content=\"2016-12-14T17:29:54+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"https:\/\/wp-media.patheos.com\/blogs\/sites\/166\/2016\/12\/lipstick-1500073_1920.jpg\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:width\" content=\"768\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:height\" content=\"512\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:type\" content=\"image\/jpeg\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Libby Anne\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"Libby Anne\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"Est. reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"5 minutes\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\/\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"WebPage\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/lovejoyfeminism\/2016\/12\/i-am-susan.html\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/lovejoyfeminism\/2016\/12\/i-am-susan.html\",\"name\":\"Why Susan Pevensie Has Defenders\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/lovejoyfeminism\/#website\"},\"datePublished\":\"2016-12-15T09:00:39+00:00\",\"dateModified\":\"2016-12-14T17:29:54+00:00\",\"author\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/lovejoyfeminism\/#\/schema\/person\/fae465c1bbb5cbdf26c9e73bfd1b73d2\"},\"description\":\"Susan is written the way good evangelical girls who defect would be written, if their parents were the authors.\",\"breadcrumb\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/lovejoyfeminism\/2016\/12\/i-am-susan.html#breadcrumb\"},\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"ReadAction\",\"target\":[\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/lovejoyfeminism\/2016\/12\/i-am-susan.html\"]}]},{\"@type\":\"BreadcrumbList\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/lovejoyfeminism\/2016\/12\/i-am-susan.html#breadcrumb\",\"itemListElement\":[{\"@type\":\"ListItem\",\"position\":1,\"name\":\"Home\",\"item\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/lovejoyfeminism\"},{\"@type\":\"ListItem\",\"position\":2,\"name\":\"Why Susan Pevensie Has Defenders\"}]},{\"@type\":\"WebSite\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/lovejoyfeminism\/#website\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/lovejoyfeminism\/\",\"name\":\"Love, Joy, Feminism\",\"description\":\"\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"SearchAction\",\"target\":{\"@type\":\"EntryPoint\",\"urlTemplate\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/lovejoyfeminism\/?s={search_term_string}\"},\"query-input\":\"required name=search_term_string\"}],\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\"},{\"@type\":\"Person\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/lovejoyfeminism\/#\/schema\/person\/fae465c1bbb5cbdf26c9e73bfd1b73d2\",\"name\":\"Libby Anne\",\"description\":\"Libby Anne grew up in a large evangelical homeschool family highly involved in the Christian Right. 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