A Girl With a Sword

it hurts to grow up (but is it bad?)

I was distracted from my work in the library the other day by an article in Mythlore, the journal of The Mythopoeic Society called "A Darker Ignorence." I haven't read the whole article yet, since I've been so busy with the play and stuff, but the beginning of it was talking about how Phillip Pullman, prize-winning children's author, was disgusted with C. S. Lewis because he left Susan out of Aslan's Country. Now this started me thinking, because in my childhood I was always a little perturbed about Susan being left out, but the reasons given were quite sufficient--Susan had become more interested in grown-up things and had given up Narnia. Reading Pullman's thoughts on this (see the nice little quote on the side there) made me think about the idea that I have had, and may still have, of growing up as a sin. In the books I read as a child there was usually something wrong about grown-ups (I mean, think about Saint-Exupery's The Little Prince, and then there's E. Nesbit's books and Enid Blyton and Roald Dahl). There was always a clear division between the grown-up world and the child world. I see a lot of authors continuing this grand tradition today, Lemony Snicket (of A Series of Unfortunate Events), J. K. Rowling, who doesn't do this with grown-ups, really, but with Mr. and Mrs. Dursley and Muggles in general. I really do think this is a grand tradition and I'll tell you why.

Susan has allowed her mind to be limited by small things, nylons and lipstick. She is focusing all her energy on growing up and she has dismissed Narnia as a childish game. She has limited and darkened her mind. Grown-ups often do this. They have more trouble seeing beyond their world. Children see that there can be more. I don't know why and how, and in a way I think children are losing this now, but authors like Snickett and Rowling and trying to keep this alive. While children can live in more than one world, adults have more solid, more stiff minds. Susan sins because she wants this stiffness and coldness. She thinks this is the life worth living for, but she is chosing an illusion, like the dwarves in the stable. She is chosing an illusion over reality, as Puddleglum refused to do in The Underworld in Silver Chair.

There's a veil between this world and the other world. The sin is to see this veil as a wall or to pretend the other world doesn't exist at all. It is narrow-mindedness that is the sin; it is being easily contented, like the child in the mud. There's so much more, it's like Puddleglum explains, there's a sun, there's another world. King Miraz is a picture of this grown-up narrow-mindedness in Prince Caspian. He wants to pretend that the dryads and naiads and talking beasts don't exist. He refuses to deal with anything outside his world, outside his understanding.

The evilness in growing up lies in closing the mind. Susan has done this. The others have kept their priorities straight, they remember being kings and queens of Narnia. Susan has given up her royalty for this other world and is trying to be a petty, cheap queen with her nylons and lipstick.