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Lewis and women

Comprising most of Lewis' writings.
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Lewis and women

Postby fopdoodle » February 2nd, 2005, 3:22 am

There are only two issues that Lewis ever dealt with that left me entirely dissatisfied. One was the way in which he dismisses feminism in Mere Christianity (I *think* it was Mere Christianity... I don't have it with me right now; correct me if I'm wrong). The other was the way in which he deals with "nature" in The Problem of Pain (which is why I think it remains a Problem).

I wanted to discuss the first. I know from one of his essays (sorry to be so vague here) where he addressed the question of women in the Church, that he insists that gender *matters*, that it is not a construct, that the fact that Jesus was male was a reflection of reality itself. He quotes Jane Austen to make the point that the relationship between Christ and the Church is like a dance, and it would "hardly be a ball" if nobody led. I also remember a quote, "the rough, male taste of reality" very vividly. At any rate, in Mere Christianity I got the impression that he justified the authority of husband over wife by appealing to the readers' distaste for "the bossy wife." I think that was a bit of a cop out.

Are there any other places where Lewis goes into this? The Four Loves maybe? My impression of the end of That Hideous Strength is that he is alluding to the very essence of the masculine and the feminine when Mark goes to find Jane (again, I read it a long time ago...). My question is, basically, where does "the feminine" fit into the Christian framework, according to Lewis? How is it defined?
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Re: Lewis and women

Postby Leslie » February 2nd, 2005, 4:03 am

There is an essay called "Priestesses in the Church?" in God in the Dock. In this essay he quotes Jane Austen, so it might be the one you're thinking of. It irks me as well.

The chapter on friendship in The Four Loves also bothers me in its perspective on women. He suggests that women are perhaps not capable of the true friendship he has in mind. He thinks that true friendship is about shared vision, and not about the friends themselves. I disagree with this definition of friendship. He thinks that women may not be able to be friends in his sense of the word, since they focus on the person.

Almost all of his writings about women seem to me to reflect a stereotypical view, and an unflattering one at that. We come across as shallow, ill-informed people only concerned with domestic matters. This puzzles me, because he had among his close acquaintance several women at least of strong intellectual ability and wide-ranging interests.
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Re: Lewis and women

Postby fopdoodle » February 2nd, 2005, 9:41 am

Hi Leslie.

Yes! That's the essay! I'm glad you get that general impression from the bulk of his writing, too. I thought maybe I was missing something. Maybe he made up for it by creating some very memorable female characters in his fiction, but in general I get the feeling that he didn't consider that feminism (broad as it is/was) deserved serious consideration.

Thanks for sharing,
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Re: Lewis and women

Postby Guest » February 2nd, 2005, 12:43 pm

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Re: Lewis and women

Postby Karen » February 2nd, 2005, 12:50 pm

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Re: Lewis and women

Postby Brian_Burgess » February 2nd, 2005, 1:20 pm

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Re: Lewis and women

Postby Paul F. Ford » February 2nd, 2005, 3:43 pm

I think Lewis's greatest insights about feminine and masculine, women, and man, begin in That Hideous Strength, Chapter 7, Section 3, and reach a climax in Chapter 14, Sections 5 and 6. Lewis is saying that all humans, women and men, are basically feminine in relation to God. Here he is reflecting the medieval tradition of describing the human soul as anima. This insight deeply influences Till We Have Faces, a book that Lewis writes from his own femininity, so to speak. The Psyche and Eros myth was perhaps Lewis's longest generative story; next would be the Pygmalion-Galatea story.

Yes, he was something of an old school don, but he did have dear women friends, evident in his correspondence with the poet Ruth Pitter, with Dorothy Sayers, with his women students and those who sought his spiritual direction.

Notice, too, the women characters in the Chronicles written before The Horse and His Boy are old-fashioned; after HHB, the women are more modern. The difference: the advent of Joy Davidman Gresham in Lewis's life, the real Aravis.
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Re: Lewis and women

Postby Leslie » February 2nd, 2005, 4:17 pm

"What are you laughing at?"
"At myself. My little puny self," said Phillipa.
--Rumer Godden, In This House of Brede
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Re: Lewis and women

Postby loeee » February 2nd, 2005, 8:57 pm

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Re: Lewis and women

Postby fopdoodle » February 2nd, 2005, 11:23 pm

There was a boy called Eustace Clarence Scrubb, and he almost deserved it.
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Re: Lewis and women

Postby Guest » February 3rd, 2005, 7:56 pm

One of the things that I have always admired about Lewis, and have come to appreciate even more over the past couple of weeks, is his willingness to admit that much of what we think of as proper and Christian has more to do with prevailing social trends than with the Reality of Christ. I think he failed in recognizing that weakness in himself, though. His views on feminism and on homosexuality, I think, were much more influenced by the culture he lived in. I think it's indisputable that, given his capacity to recognize his own faults and his ability to revise his thinking in light of new ideas, his viewpoint on women would be very different today than in his earlier writings.
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Re: Lewis and women

Postby Stanley Anderson » February 3rd, 2005, 9:17 pm

…on a night of rain Frodo smelled a sweet fragrance on the air and heard the sound of singing that came over the water. And then it seemed to him that as in his dream in the house of Bombadil, the grey rain-curtain turned all to silver glass and was rolled back, and he beheld white shores and beyond them a fair green country under a swift sunrise.
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Re: Lewis and women

Postby Guest » February 3rd, 2005, 9:26 pm

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Re: Lewis and women

Postby fopdoodle » February 3rd, 2005, 9:32 pm

There was a boy called Eustace Clarence Scrubb, and he almost deserved it.
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Re: Lewis and women

Postby magpie » February 16th, 2005, 2:52 pm

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