Into the Wardrobe

... as many will know, this comes from That Hideous Strength, and a lot of head-scratching has gone on among Lewis enthusiasts as to where (if anywhere) Lewis was quoting from. But I've recently come across a site which cites this quotation as appearing in A.S. Byatt's Possession. I wonder if;

a) this could just be the site's author misremembering
b) if correct, is Byatt quoting Lewis, or
c) has Byatt read it in another, or its original, source, and attributed the source?

Has anybody read this book, and if so, can they comment on the context and attribution of the quote?

I've just borrowed the Letters of C.S Lewis from some friends and was reading it - for the first time - this morning. In a letter (addressed 'to a lady' I think) Lewis brought up the issue about 'the beauty of the female' - without making any quotations, but his own words were fairly close to those quoted in That Hideous Strength. Unfortunately, I now can't find the letter in question. I haven't finished the collection yet, but I'm fairly close to the end - it can't be right at the beginning (I read that yesterday). I have the impression in my mind that it was earlier than the writing of the Cosmic Trilogy (because when I read it I noticed the connection and it struck me as interesting that it was so early). My quick efforts at scanning the pages back this up, though I might have missed it somewhere.

Personally (speaking as a 'female') I think it is a good point and quite probably a true one. I've just run it past my Mum briefly and she agrees. If you look at advertisements you'll see that beautiful (and semi-naked) women are often used to sell something that only a woman might buy - not just clothes (for which you would obviously choose a good-looking model) but things like shavers for legs. Women in general find the idea of beauty in women attractive, and cultivate it in themselves. A girl will notice if her sister has brought a new top of had a haircut far more quickly than their brother will notice the same thing. Besides, if a woman's beauty is a gift, then it is naturally given to be shared - her instinct to do so just as naturally involves love of what she is sharing.

Somehow the thought of beauty being only linked to male responses on females and female responses on males seems very reduced and insufficient to me. Beauty is so much more, things that men and women know in the same way. I don't have a brother, but I know that my father and I find the same kind of beauty in music or a sunset. It's probably something that our society has made up, that beauty is just linked with the females one can see on the covers of magazines, but it is so much more!

Steve,

Your post made me think of Lewis' Abolition of Man, especially the first section, "Men without Chests."

Here Lewis challenges the idea that predications of value are statements merely about the one making the statement.

In line with this, I suspect that Lewis' notion of Beauty is much more in line with classical, specifically Platonic, thinking.

Regards,

Adam Linton

As a follow-up to my post of a few minutes ago, I think that Lewis would say that the perception of Beauty (however impefectly) involves a participation/connection greater than our reaction to the one perceived.

Rather, our capacity to so perceive is itself an important clue to the nature of reality.

My copy of THS is at my other office, so I can't check right now, but I suspect that this may be an issue at hand in Jane's conversation with Ransom.

I was talking with a friend about beauty not too long ago and I asked him if we were to see what Adam and Eve looked like, would we today think that they were the epitome of beauty?? or have we been so tainted by society that we would think they were other than beautiful?

God made all things beautiful...and for our enjoyment. He created within us all a desire and passion for beauty...attraction is a response to human emotion...beauty is an essence...would a flower be as beautiful if it didn't smell as such?