Retaining Childhood

In our quest to define valiance we have temporarily shifted our focus from Reepicheep to Lucy. The adult Lucy was called Queen Lucy the Valiant it seems, because she always “remained gay and golden-haired.” Perhaps unlike the other Pevensies she did not change as she grew older, she retained childhood. This, I claimed, displays her valiance. However, to demonstrate this we must examine whether retaining childhood is desirable for religious man. 

The adult is too clever. Utility is his guiding light. The experience of God is unavailable to those approaching it with a businesslike attitude. Only the child can breach the boundaries that segregate the finite from the infinite. Only the child with his simple faith and fiery enthusiasm can make the miraculous leap into the bosom of God... When it came to faith, the giants of Torah, the geniuses of Israel, became little children, with all their ingenuousness, gracefulness, simplicity, their tremors of fear, their vivid experiences and their devotion to them... Whenever [Moses] fell before God, he cried like a child. Who can fall before his father, raise his eyes to him alone, to seek consolation and salvation, if not the child! ... The mature, the adult, are not capable of the all-embracing and all-penetrating outpouring of the soul. The most sublime crown we can give a great man sparkles with the gems of childhood. (Divrei Hagut Ve-ha'arakha, pp.159-160; in English: Shiurei Harav, pp.63-64)

In the above passage. R’ Joseph B. Soloveitchik speaks of the childlike nature necessary for one to truly trust, pray to, and devote themselves to God. An adult is too practical, too sophisticated. Only one with emotional purity and unbridled enthusiasm can reach out to the Infinite. 

And, indeed, Lucy’s childness reveals itself in just those occasions. When seeing Aslan for the first time in Prince Caspian, Lucy, “Never stopped to think whether he was a friendly lion or not. She rushed to him. She felt her heart would burst if she lost a moment.” Similarly, when Aslan reveals himself to Lucy in the Magician’s house in The Voyage of the Dawn Treader Lucy, “Ran forward with a little cry of delight and with her arms stretched out.” And finally, when unable to escape the Dark Island Lucy (and only Lucy) prays a childlike prayer, “Aslan, Aslan, if ever you loved us at all, send us help now.” Like a child demanding the purchase of a toy saying, “If you don’t buy it for me, it shows that you don’t love me.” 

But Aslan listens. Aslan rejoices in Lucy’s unbridled love, trust, and hope as a father rejoices in every action of his children. Therefore, at the end of time it is Lucy who, “was drinking everything in even more deeply than the others.” It was she who could integrate more fully into the true Narnia. 

Lewis himself notes the importance of retaining childhood at the end of the Silver Chair. In a parenthetical comment he notes, “Even in this world, of course, it is the stupidest children who are most childish and the stupidest grown-ups who are most grownup.” He expands on this in Mere Christianity:

[Christ] wants a child's heart, but a grown-up's head. He wants us to be simple, single-minded, affectionate, and teachable, as good children are; but He also wants every bit of intelligence we have to be alert at its job, and in first-class fighting trim. 

In An Experiment in Criticism Lewis enumerates other positive characteristics of childhood:

If we are to use the words ‘childish’ and ‘infantile’ as terms of disapproval, we must make sure that they refer only to those characteristics of childhood which we become better and happier by outgrowing. Who in his sense would not keep, if he could, that tireless curiosity, that intensity of imagination, that facility of suspending disbelief, that unspoiled appetite, that readiness to wonder, to pity, and to admire?”

Like R’ Soloveitchik, Lewis provides a list of childhood characteristics that have value, and should be held on to, even by a grownup. While not exactly the same, and perhaps disagreeing on R’ Soloveitchik’s tremors of fear, the lists appear to complement each other. 

Lucy, by not changing as she has grown up, presumably retains these characteristics. And indeed, we see manifestations of these characteristics even in the short time the Chronicles relate to Lucy as an adult. For example, in The Horse and His Boy it is Lucy who is willing to give Rabadash another chance and it is Lucy who retells the adventures of her and her siblings entrance into Narnia. In The Last Battle, it is Lucy who pities the dwarfs who cannot see the grandeur that surrounds them, and Lucy is the one described as “drinking everything in even more deeply than the others.” 

Our next step is then to determine how to concretize these characteristics into “valiance.” For this, we need to define one more term. In the context of her being titled Queen Lucy the Valiant we are told that she remains, “gay and golden-haired.” So, our next step is to understand how Lewis utilizes the term “gay.”