It’s common for people to read Susan Pevensie as condemned to Hell or forever locked out of Heaven at the end of the Narnia books, giving the fact that she does not appear in Aslan’s Country in The Last Battle as evidence of her damnation, all for the sin of liking gossip and lipsticks and nylons and her social life.
This, I think, is a misreading of the text. Susan does not appear in Aslan’s Country because she is not dead. She was not killed in battle or the apocalypse that destroyed Narnia, nor in the train accident that killed her parents, siblings, cousin and their friends. She doesn’t appear in Heaven because she’s alive and well. And as long as she is alive, her salvation is possible.
Earlier in the book, Aslan meets a young Calormene man named Emeth, who is good, noble, honest, brave, and a worshipper of Tash, the evil demon that the Calormenes consider their god. Emeth prepares to die at Aslan’s hands, because he has worshipped Tash his whole life as he was taught and not Aslan, but Aslan calls him his son, and says that no evil service can ever be done in his name, and no good service can ever be done in Tash’s name, and if a man is good and honest and virtuous in the name of Tash, he is actually doing it in the name of Aslan even if he does not know it, and it is Aslan that rewards him even if he does not believe it.
This is a clear statement that in the moral universe of Narnia, it doesn’t matter what you specifically believe about gods and spirits and religions and worlds: it matters that you are a good person who is honest. We have no reason to believe that Susan turned to wickedness when she grew up, only that she became more interested in fun and worldly pleasures than spiritual pursuits, to the point of remembering Narnia as a childhood game she played. She is misguided and shallow, and perhaps foolish, but these are not sins, or at least not sins worthy of eternal separation from God, and even if they were, she is a young woman whose entire family was hideously killed in a horrific train accident. She will not remain that way for long. To be sure, the writing is sexist - her preoccupations with nylons, lipsticks and gossip are dismissed as silly and frivolous - but not “condemned to Hell for being girly” sexist. Puzzle the donkey was the literal Antichrist and Edmund betrayed his family to the Witch, leading to Aslan’s torture and execution, and they both made it in; I cannot believe that Queen Susan the Gentle would not. Once a King or Queen of Narnia, always a King or Queen of Narnia; not all the water in the rough rude sea can wash the balm off from an anointed queen; the breath of worldly men cannot depose the deputy elected by the Lord.
Susan Pevensie will go to Heaven. It is undeniable; every part of the book’s theology and morality points to it. She just has a long life to live before she gets there.
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