The Strange Case of Susan Pevensie

I have always been a big fan of the Chronicles of Narnia. In fact, I would argue the person whose writings (both fiction and non-fiction) that have had the most profound effect upon my life is probably CS "Jack" Lewis. It started with Narnia and then the Space Trilogy and then his serious non-fiction writings and satires of all kinds. I've even read through his academic journals papers from way back. If ever there was a poster child for the profound and lasting impact a non-ordained Christian can have on the whole Church, even across denominational lines, it would be old Jack Lewis.

I have heard homilies and sermons on CS Lewis in Catholic, Anglican, Lutheran, and Evangelical churches. Even atheists have felt the need to write their own alternative fiction stories to counter the allegories of Narnia Chronicles. I can think of no other Christian writer in the 20th century onwards who has had such a profound effect on theology and culture. I remain convinced people will still be reading CS Lewis' writings for centuries in the way we now read classic homilies from St. Augustine in the 4th Century. I am not convinced people in 200 years will be reading Karl Barth's Dogmatics or very many of the Encyclicals of current Popes (John Paul II's works on philosophy being a possible exception).

But, one of the criticisms from within the Christian theology community that is often thrown at CS Lewis' Chronicles of Narnia is about what to make of the way the series ends in The Last Battle. For purposes of this piece, what do we make of Susan, the second oldest of the Pevensie children from the first few novels? She largely disappears after the second novel, Prince Caspian, when she learns along with her older brother, Peter, that they are too old to ever return to Narnia. She makes a cameo in A Horse and His Boy as an adult Queen of Narnia, but that novel is an odd throwback to the time near the end of the first novel.  Edmund and Lucy return for the third novel, Voyage of the Dawn Treader, along with their cousin, Eustace. Eustace returns for the fourth novel, The Silver Chair. That leaves The Magician's Nephew, which is a really interesting prequel novel about how Narnia came into existence through the adventures of the young boy who later becomes the wise but grizzled old Professor from the first novel.

Fast forward to The Final Battle. We come to the end of Narnian time, hundreds if not thousands of years after the events of The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe. Aslan, as an allegory of Christ's Second Coming, returns to usher in the End of Days for Narnia as those living in Narnia at that time would understand their reality in real time. It is a very deep and theologically nuanced work that really goes beyond the capacity for most young audiences to really grasp. I still read The Last Battle from time to time and find theological nuance and subtleties that I have never heretofore considered, and it has probably been at least 35 years since I first read the Chronicles of Narnia as a boy.

The curious way Lewis ends the saga of the Pevensie children is a bit of a shocker. I would proclaim here "spoiler alert," but if you haven't read the Narnia books by now after almost 75 years since they were published, you probably never will, and almost certainly will not have read this far into an article about them. As The Last Battle plays out, Peter, Edmund, and Lucy are on a train and inexplicably find themselves again in Narnia. In a 50-year precursor to the "I see dead people!" twist ending of the 1990s classic film, The Sixth Sense, we learn at the end that those three children were killed in a train crash and there is no going back to their 1940's England and remain finally unto the ages of ages with Aslan in the new Narnia.    

Susan, however, remains alive in her England in the real world. We never really get her side of the story or her reaction to the deaths of her siblings. Lewis only gives us the dry facts and we are left to imagine how Susan's life is changed forever. We have also learned earlier in the book that Susan has become an adult and forgotten about Narnia. She's more concerned with hair and boys and all the normal things young women in their late teens and early 20's concern themselves with. We are even told she has come to convince herself that all that stuff about Narnia and Aslan was all make believe child's play and it was never real. The allusion is that Susan has lost her faith in Aslan and become another lost human who has repudiated the faith.

With that, the Chronicles of Narnia largely end. The three children live forever in Narnian heaven with Aslan. Susan is left to lead her life in the real world. The inference most people take is that Susan is reputably lost forever and presumably will end up in hell when she dies, or at least will never end up in Narnian heaven with Aslan and her siblings, though the text never says this directly.  

Naturally, Christians get bent out of shape about the seeming inconsistencies here with Lewis' views on salvation. On the one hand, Aslan proclaims in the first novel that all four children are kings and queens of Narnia, that "once a king or queen of Narnia, always a king or queen.*" How can it be then, that Susan seems to renounce her faith in Aslan and lose her salvation? Was Aslan at worst lying or was this as case of legal "*void where prohibited, not available in Alaska, Hawaii, and Narnia" fine print? Was this a case of CS Lewis pulling a fast one and saying, "What President Aslan meant to say..."

One the one hand, one can dispense with this theological analysis by saying this is a case of over-analyzing a children's allegorical fiction text. There is some validity to that argument. Allegories can only go so far, and if you really are bent on picking any allegory apart, you can do it. All allegories unravel if you pull enough threads. There is a reason it is an allegory after all. Allegories are only representations, or reflections, of a greater event, story, or truth. An allegory is never quite a 1=1 scientific equation. 

Assuming for the moment, however, that this idiosyncrasy is not a blunder or oversight on CS Lewis' part, what do we make of the final case of Susan Pevensie? From the straight look at the wording of the actual text: we simply don't know what becomes of Susan in the end. Does she go on to live a long life, get married, have kids and grandkids, and eventually die of old age? Does she go down the road of rock 'n roll and drugs to cope with the loss of all her siblings and end up in an early grave? We simply do not know. Lewis never says what happens to Susan after those fateful events on the train that kills her siblings. It is totally left to the reader's imagination. 

It may be that Susan eventually comes around and comes to believe in Aslan again later in her life. Perhaps her own children one day find their way into a Narnia-adjacent world and encounter Aslan by another name in another form in that world. In doing so, remind their mother, Susan, of her own adventures in Narnia as a child. Perhaps after a long period, Susan eventually on her death bed is visited one last time by Aslan, who calls her finally home and she returns, albeit late, to become Queen of the New Narnia. 

We simply don't know, but it is an interesting thought experiment about how God is constantly at work in people's lives. You might not see God active in someone's life right this moment, but in time, you look back and see the fingerprints of the divine all over someone's path. Perhaps in this last bit about Susan, CS Lewis leaves us one last grand allegory to explore in what becomes of Susan Pevensie.  

Some allegories don't end but become open ended.