In our last post we saw that, at the end of the Chronicles, Queen Susan was no longer a friend of Narnia. A priori, this means she stopped believing that her Narnian experience was real, instead coming to the belief that the adventures were simply games played as a child. We noted that in fact the situation was much worse. It is not simply that Susan denies the "historical" occurrence of the children's time in Narnia, but she exclaims, "Fancy your still thinking about all those funny games we used to play when we were children." Even if the visits to Narnia were not true, Susan could think about them, learn from, be guided by, and be inspired by the "fairytales" of her childhood. But she does not.
All of us on this blog think of Narnia a great deal. Yet, none of us, I presume, have been to Narnia (though if you have been please let me know). In fact, I would suppose none of us even believe that there is or ever was such a place as Narnia. And, yet WE are inspired by Narnia, while Susan who was actually part of the fairytales is not.
This is Susan's greatest fault. Not denying the existence of Narnia, but not being inspired by Narnia, not letting herself see the truths of our world through her experiences in Narnia. Not finding Aslan "by another name" in our world. Or perhaps we can say, paraphrasing Lewis' dedication of The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe," Susan's chief fault is not growing old enough to read fairytales again."
This takes us to the end of the exchange about Susan, at which point the Lady Polly declares, "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 the silliest time of one's life? Well, based on Polly's words (which we assume Lewis agreed with) it's clearly not childhood, because you have to get there. It must be somewhere around where Susan is in The Last Battle, which is about 21. Why that time?
Interestingly, the Talmud (Kiddushin 30a) homes in on that same time period. As explained by (the second interpretation) of Rashi, the Talmud explores what is the time for parents to go full throttle on providing a child with ethical and moral teachings to include a system of reward and punishment. There are two opinions offered: from 16 - 22 or from 18 - 24. Rashi explains that younger than this a child is not ready to understand, and older the child may simply ignore, or even rebel against, the parents. Susan is right in the middle.
I don't think Lewis is thinking along these lines. Nevertheless, I think the Talmud's perspective does weave its way into the story. Namely, I think we do see some failure in the Pevensie parents with respect to Susan.
At the start of The Voyage of the Dawn Treader, Susan, though only 14 at the time, is described as, "Grown-ups thought her the pretty one of the family and she was no good at schoolwork (though otherwise very old for her age)..." That doesn't sound like a very good prognosis, and yet the Pevensie parents seem to think that's a good reason to take Susan to America. I don't quite understand that line of thinking. It seems to me she would be better off enrolled in tutoring over the summer.
Still, I don't think that Lewis is looking at this age range from the Talmud's perspective. Rather, Lewis believes that Susan's age is lacking something fundamental that is found both in children and more mature adults.
More on that in our next...
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