by Stanley Anderson » February 21st, 2005, 6:31 pm
This is a tough chapter to write about – it is so pivotal to the entire theme that I think of Chesterton’s comment about someone asking you why you prefer civilization – one can only look about befuddled and point to various specific comforts without getting at the whole “big picture” of it. The question is too big for simple answers. And I have something of the same feeling about this chapter. But that never stopped me before:-)
Within this important chapter, the clothing scene strikes me as the central part of it. I have mentioned before some observations about the parallel situations that Ransom and the Green Lady go through. And I wonder if another of those parallels might be that the Green Lady with clothes is not unlike Ransom’s “piebald” look when he first arrives in Perelandra. It is a sort of dividing into two separate parts, if you will of the characters. I noted this before in the Out of the Silent Planet study and it come to a sort of literary head in the “chessboard” theory I talk about in connection with the characters in That Hideous Strength.
Here we see a striking presentation of this idea when the Un-man gives a mirror to the Green Lady to see herself. When asked what is fearful about it, she says “Things being two when they are one”. This is perhaps the clearest statement of this theme so far. I am reminded of that scene in OSP where Ransom is wandering alone and talks of and to that “other” person that he realizes is himself
[Green Lady]:
“I see only a face.”
[Un-man]:
“Hold it further away and you will see the whole of the alongside woman – the other who is yourself. Or no – I will hold it.”
I’ll mention a couple side points here. I’ve often noted the “scientific” error that Lewis makes here – a common one that many people don’t realize about mirrors. It is the idea that if you hold a mirror farther from you, you can see more of yourself than if you hold it up close. This is true if you are looking at other objects with a mirror, but when you look at yourself, it is not true. Essentially, the “more image” you expect to see by holding the mirror farther away is compensated for by the fact the mirror in effect “gets smaller” by being farther away. Try it with a pocket mirror to discover that it is true (perhaps because women are more likely to carry such a mirror with them, they might be more familiar with this fact than men? Is this true?—are any of you women out there familiar with it from experience rather than being told about it?) By the way, if the mirror is a concave mirror – ie, the ones that magnify the image close up for doing make-up and such, this phenomenon is not true. And this could possibly explain Lewis’ intention in this scene, but I doubt it. It doesn’t specifically say what kind of mirror it was, but I would guess it was just a basic flat mirror. Not sure though of course.
The other side point is merely a humourous thought. When Ransom approaches the Green Lady and the Un-man with their clothes, she says “Welcome Piebald, you have slept long. What do you think of us in our leaves?”
I can’t help but think of her adding on that nemesis question that all men dread being asked from a woman and for which there is no good answer, ie, “Do you think it makes me look fat?”
Ransom in his wisdom, cleverly avoids the question by replying, “The birds, the poor birds! What has he done to them?”:-)
Anyway, back to the pivotal nature of this chapter. It is here where the Lady has come perilously close to “becoming two” that Ransom, as we shall see in the next chapter, determines that enough is enough and that he must physically fight the Unman. This is perhaps not unrelated to the idea of the forbidden fruit in Eden imparting knowledge of “good and evil” – ie dividing experience into two distinct categories, and dividing life from death.
--Stanley
…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.