#jane studdock

[nothinggold13]

So. The single best thing about That Hideous Strength is the female friendships. (The male friendships are good too, but they are mostly seen from an outsider’s perspective, whereas we witness Jane’s interactions with her friends from her point of view.)

First we have Jane gabbing her friend’s hand in excitement. 

“‘He’s been telling you?’ said Camilla, as the two girls went together down the passage. Moved by a kind of impulse which was rare to her experience, Jane seized her friend’s hand as she answered, ‘Yes!’”

Then we have all the women of St. Anne’s (except one) choosing dresses to wear, and in this scene they are all very supportive of one another, and it’s beautiful.

“‘Am I awful?’ said Mother Dimble looking in turn at the three silent faces.

‘You look lovely,’ said Ivy.

‘It is exactly right,’ said Camilla.

Jane took up the old lady’s hand and kissed it. ‘Darling,’ she said, ‘aweful, in the old sense, is just what you do look.’”

Anyways, That Hideous Strength abounds with platonic affection! I love it so much. These parts genuinely filled me with joy, they were so cute and innocent and beautiful. 

[phoenixwrites]

while you're ted talking about lewis and gender, any chance of hearing your thoughts on That Scene from the space trilogy - where what's-her-face is told she'll never be happy if she continues to reject both the male and the Masculine? i'd be more specific but it's been a few years, i just remember being... a bit weirded out by the raising of the Masculine and definitely not the Feminine to divinity (i could be totally wrong on that impression! i read it in hs and am open to correction)

I could give you a very long thesis about why the Cosmic Trilogy–specifically “That Hideous Strength”–is almost the worst thing Lewis has ever written gender-wise.  (Note I said almost…yes. There is something worse.)  Which is kind of sad, because I really love what “That Hideous Strength” tries to do (YEAH ARTHURIAN LORE) and “Perelandra” is in my top five favorite C.S. Lewis books.  (”It is not for nothing you were named Ransom” always sends me to tears.)  Of course, there are many who don’t agree with me and I’ve seen a couple of female scholars try and defend the gender problems in the trilogy, but…at least in my opinion, their arguments don’t really hold up.  

In this case, there isn’t really a good way of justifying or defending the character of Jane Studdock.  The character of Jane Studdock is essentially a tool for Lewis to play with his idea that hierarchical marriage could be a living symbol of God’s relationship to humanity.  For example, as the wife submits to the husband (and BOY do Evangelicals love this), this is a representation of humanity submitting to God, and that the only way we can truly find joy is if we fully submit to God.  (And a wife can only be truly happy if she submits fully to her husband.)  It’s a very neat little metaphor and Lewis, for as much as I love him, he was overly fond of neat little spiritual metaphors that tie everything up cleanly.  Theology is messy.  Which Lewis found out later in life.  

Anyway, it gets way more hilarious if you know anything about my fave Joy Davidman Lewis who was pretty much the antithesis of submissive.  (Sometimes I think Joy was God’s little joke to Lewis for writing so much about hierarchical marriage).  

Scholars on the egalitarian side of things usually divvy Lewis’ works into two sections:  Pre-Joy Davidman and Post-Joy Davidman.  Because yes, there is a significant shift in how he writes women (and marriage) before his marriage and after–culminating in his masterpiece “Till We Have Faces”, which is intensely progressive for its time.  Now, this isn’t a perfect system (as I discovered two years ago, during my research in Oxford for my independent study) and Lewis is more nuanced than simply “he got better after he met Joy”, but there is weight to the idea that conversations with Joy (and her own amazing editing/collaborating skills) improved his ideas on gender and how he wrote female characters.  

You guys are really improving my day, asking my analyses and criticisms on my favorite author.  This is my favorite thing to talk about.  

[ideemthatsheyetlives]

I know this is the very last thing that C.S. Lewis intended with the book but there is more than one passage in That Hideous Strength where Jane Studdock is written as if she's attracted to women and it's hilarious that Lewis had no idea that people would ever interpret it that way.

"Freud said we liked gardens because they were symbols of the female body. But that must be a man's point of view. Presumably gardens meant something different in women's dreams. Or did they? Did men and women both feel interested in the female body and even, though it sounded ridiculous, in almost the same way? A sentence rose to her memory. 'The beauty of the female is the root of joy to the female as well as to the male, and it is no accident that the goddess of Love is older and stronger than the god.' Where on earth had she read that? And incidentally, what frightful nonsense she had been thinking for the last minute or so!"

In pretty much every other way this book is, like, the most heterosexual book of all time but I'll take what I can get.

"At that moment the door suddenly opened. Jane turned crimson as she shut the book and looked up. The same girl who had first let her in had apparently just opened the door and was still standing in the doorway. Jane now conceived for her that almost passionate admiration which women, more often than is supposed, feel for other women whose beauty is not of their own type. It would be nice, Jane thought, to be like that - so straight, so forthright, so valiant, so fit to be mounted on a horse, and so divinely tall."

All. Of. This.