The Beauty of Susan

For a long time, I read very little else other than Narnia.

When I was young and first experiencing Narnia, Lucy and I explored it together. Through her, I learned to love Tumnus and the Beavers and Aslan and Peter.

As I grew older, I saw more and more of myself in Edmund, and his redemption brings me so much relief, even as the cost of it scares me more than I'm willing to admit.

The beautiful Susan I never understood. How could she not enter Narnia with excitement? And how could she abandon it?! I was sad and confused and felt her loss as her siblings did, but the joy of Aslan's Country eclipsed those feelings. 

Gradually, I myself moved on to other books, some by Lewis, some not. I read Tolkien's Lord of the Rings, I read Burke's Reflections on the Revolution in France, I read biographies, essays, short stories, and anything else I could get my hands on. Narnia remained a beloved memory and an encapsulation of my childhood. Susan remained an enigma.

But then...

One day I needed Narnia again. A week before my 18th birthday, I decided I was going to reread the whole series, one book per day. I was going to go back to Narnia as a child one last time. I know that the "18 years old equals adulthood" is an arbitrary convention of our culture, but it still seemed significant and as I read the series again, it really did feel as though I was saying goodbye to my childhood.

Because suddenly, I understood Susan. I related to the fretful way she behaved, the way she took care of her siblings with almost too much attention, and I felt her need to be respected by adults and to act like a grownup, even in a world that catered decidedly toward a childlike attitude. I recognized the way she responded to the magic of Narnia, but lost it so quickly back in her own world. 

I hadn't seen that before. And that understanding made her character so much more important to my perspective on the outcome of Narnia. C.S. Lewis didn't write a "happily ever after" so much as a truly realistic allegory for the real world. Narnia certainly isn't a tragedy--good defeats evil, and all is as it should be--except for Susan. Through the second-eldest Pevensie, Lewis revealed how there are tragic figures even in a happy ending. 

When I finished the story for the umpteenth time, I needed reconciliation for Susan's character. I needed her back in Narnia! Lewis never gave her that redemption, nor did he close her story. The reader presumes that Susan lived on after the crash that killed her siblings and her parents. Perhaps she had to identify the bodies. Perhaps she became successful in Our World, recalling Narnia only as often as she remembered her siblings, who never fully reached adulthood. 

However, for the audience, the rest of Susan's story remains shrouded in the "perhaps" and we'll never know what became of her. And yet, even as her tragedy cautions readers against deserting the faith of childhood, her ambiguity delivers us hope. Because perhaps she did remember Narnia later in life. Perhaps she remembered Aslan's words; that the children were pulled into Narnia so that, in the real world, they would come to know him better under another name. 

That ambiguity is the true beauty of Susan. The tiniest speck hope is there, despite her tragic arc; it is buried in the "perhaps" that finishes her story in the minds of Lewis' readers.

Part of me still needs Susan's redemption.

Best wishes,

Nicole Pendragon