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I have always wondered about Lewis’ treatment of the kids becoming adults. Susan gets dumped on because she has an interest in the opposite sex whereas the other kids are ostensibly celibate. Susan has a normal ness that more folks relate to, but missed the train to paradise because she wanted a normal life in the real world. With husband and children.

“I have always wondered about Lewis’ treatment of the kids becoming adults. Susan gets dumped on because she has an interest in the opposite sex whereas the other kids are ostensibly celibate. Susan has a normal ness that more folks relate to, but missed the train to paradise because she wanted a normal life in the real world. With husband and children.”

It’s legitimate, but a concern for children and young people older than the target audience, young people whose imaginations are first being formed, who are in the old Latency Perdiod dismissed by sexual radicals, who are still enjoying virginity and the ability to with chastity form healthful, non-sexualized crush attachments to same-sex role models, to learn how to be adults who are not, to use a concept from C.S. Lewis’ adult space trilogy (Out of the Silent Planet, Perelandra and That Hideous Strength), “bent” (warped, twisted, corrupted).

When children are formed in innocence, they naturally transition into adult, child-bearing Susans, who can devote themselves to the most important job in the world, Mothers.

"Susan has a normal ness that more folks relate to, but missed the train to paradise because she wanted a normal life in the real world."

Take a look at the world around. Single parent homes are "normal." Cruising cyberporn is "normal." Gay marriage is "normal."

I think Lewis was evoking Matthew 22:14. In a world corrupted by sin, "normal," simply doesn't make the cut. We are called to rise above, "normal," and the tedium of our daily lives.

Years ago, as a teen, I attended a presentation in which the presenter drew an X-Y graph. "Normal" behavior was all the way to the right, "Abnormal," all the way to the left. "Healthy," was all the way to the top, "Unhealthy," all the way at the bottom.

For example, relatively few people engage in rigorous daily physical workouts, although that's a very healthy behavior, so that would be plotted quite far to the left, but up toward the top. Eating garbage fast food for every meal, every day would not be considered, "normal," and would certainly be, "unhealthy," and plotted in the lower left.

This presentation has informed much of my life in the ensuing decades, and it applies not just to physical health, but also fiscal practices, and spiritual and moral behaviors, etc. The more I've reflected upon and plotted my behaviors, the more I've come to recognize that things considered, "normal," and things considered, "healthy" are often at great variance.

I disagree - and as a typical if somewhat tomboyish young girl, I understood completely what Lewis meant. It was not that she was interested in the opposite sex, or normal, or "real" - it was that *all* she thought about was lipstick and makeup and parties and boys (not any particular boy, just "boys") . . . i.e. the meaningless trappings of a fast-living teenage party girl. "Normal" or "real" would be having good solid friend that you share real-life, meaningful experiences with, whether books or music or athletics or just talking about life. Some of those friends are male, and often that progresses to courtship, but in a natural and less frenetic way.

But then, maybe like Lewis, I'm a dinosaur.

No, it was not because she was interested in boys but because boys and her appearance were all to her. In fact boys came in second.

Being interested in your appearance is not bad but when it becomes all consuming you have diminished yourself.

This was a time when advertisements were pushing the concept that appearance was all. What was inside was not important, surface was the only thing that mattered. This was Lewis way of telling girls that you are worth more then your flesh.