Wednesday, February 11, 2015

Day 42 of Feminist Joys: Mending Stories We Love -- Narnia

This is really part 2 of yesterday's post about criticizing stories we love. Recreating those stories -- imagining alternate narratives that satisfy us more, or speaking up for characters who were treated badly in text -- is both criticism and creation. 

Inky does this really really well. I love everything she writes, but these especially spoke to me, maybe because I had loved the source stories so well.

Most of all, the series about Susan Pevensie, who was good enough to be a queen of Narnia, but is later banished because she is almost grown up and thinking about lipstick and stockings.

Can we talk about Susan’s fabulous adventures after Narnia? The ones where she wears nylons and elegant blouses when she wants to, and short skirts and bright lipstick when she wants to, and hiking boots and tough jeans and big men’s plaid shirts when she feels like backpacking out into the mountains and remembering what it was to be lost in a world full of terrific beauty.
Part 2:
"You’ve all grown so much," their mother says.Edmund is too young to register, but older now than he was at his first war; Lucy, who had been so young when they had left, grew into herself in a world filled with magic. All of them, they have responsibility pressed into their shoulders, old ropes they can’t even grasp for. No one is asking them to take that mantle on their shoulders, and that’s the hardest part. You get used to the weight. You build your world around it, build your identity into the crooks and crannies of the load you carry. 

Part 3:

Lucy kept faith. Peter kept steady. Edmund chose, again and again, to earn his title every day of his short/long life, trying to make up for a sin that everyone but himself had forgiven him for.Susan lives. 
Part 4:
They say Susan forgets Narnia, but she doesn’t forget all of it. She puts it aside. She forgets faces and names, tax rates and the color of her favorite court shoes. Susan never forgets the weight on her shoulders that came from that responsibility, that power, that loss. She sometimes forgets she is strong enough to carry it. 
Sometimes she remembers. 

No comments: