![]() Susan’s fate helped spur friendly neighborhood atheist Philip Pullman to write his own anti-Narnia, the ramshackle Dark Materials trilogy with its sin-as-freedom metaphysics and straw-man take on Christian morality. ![]() She is, Aslan says, “no longer a friend of Narnia.” Susan, we remember, is excluded from heaven for growing up, for liking lipstick, nylons, and parties. Yet she is conspicuously absent from the roll call of Narnian heroes we encounter in Aslan’s heavenly country. These gifts signify her strength, femininity, and prudence. In The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, she is given the representative gifts of a bow, arrows, and a magic horn that summons help wherever you might be. ![]() She is the second-eldest of the Pevensie children, the pretty one in the family, dark-haired, tender-hearted, and occasionally cautious to the point of being a bit of a wet blanket. Lewis, Aslan, maybe God-do that to dear old Su? To Queen Susan the Gentle, Susan the sure-sighted archeress? The bad news comes, almost offhandedly, as the series ends amid the cheerfully eschatological curtain-calls of The Last Battle. Susan Pevensie is no longer a friend of Narnia. It’s one of childhood’s great narrative shocks. ![]()
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