Merely Sexist?
Women and C. S. Lewis: What His Life and Literature Reveal for Today's Culture
by Carolyn Curtis and Mary Pomroy Key
Lion Books, 2015
(287 pages, $17.95, paperback)
reviewed by S. M. Hutchens
This is a collection of twenty-nine brief essays, all appreciative of Lewis's relationships with women and treatment of them in his life and literature. Some, such as John Stonestreet's meditation on how Lewis has helped him be a more understanding father to his daughters, do not engage the question, raised on the first page of the introductory section, of whether Lewis was a sexist or even a misogynist, but many of the authors understandably find it difficult to avoid, and deal with it to a greater or lesser extent. None accuse him of misogyny, that is, find him to be a "woman-hater [with] no respect for women in general," who "holds little regard for intelligent, successful women."
Those who deal with the question of whether he was by current general standards a sexist, however, find themselves handling a hot potato. The essayists who write on it burn their pinch of incense to the egalitarian god by appearing to agree that sexism, as defined by current general standards, is wrong, but go on to say that Lewis is not really a sexist, or that he labors under personal or historical conditions that give him an excuse for being one, or that—and this seems to be the textus receptus among egalitarian Lewis fans these days—he could reasonably be accused of being one, but moved toward the view that men and women are equal in all respects as he grew older and more spiritually mature, the greatest monuments to this being his appreciation of the brilliance of Joy Davidman and their collaboration on that most feminine of books, Till We Have Faces.
A Persistent Dragon
The greatest weakness of the essays in this category is that they have not taken feminist observations about Lewis's sexism with the seriousness they deserve. In, for example, "Humanistic Psychology in C. S. Lewis's Till We Have Faces: A Feminist Critique" (Studies in the Literary Imagination 22:2, Fall 1989), Sally A. Bartlett observes,
While Lewis's Psyche shows great inner strength in resisting Orual's neurotic claim that Psyche be totally surrendered to Orual's insatiable desire for undivided allegiance, Lewis nevertheless presents as the only appropriate alternative allegiance, devotion to a masculine mate who demands an identical amount of control over Psyche's behavior. Psyche is not even permitted to view her husband's countenance. (198)
The presentation in this book of Till We Have Faces as the apotheosis of Lewis's movement toward an ever more perfect egalitarianism, stimulated by his love for his wife and his profound respect for her intellect, must finally face the very persistent dragon of a pervasive Christology—his theological understanding of the primacy of the masculine and the submissions due under it. It has not diminished where the husband-god of Till We Have Faces partakes of the qualities of both a heavenly and an earthly consort.
What all these essays could be said to show is Lewis's intense love for the feminine in the women who exemplify it, which could indeed be said to have increased as his life progressed. One might observe, however, that this is no more than his exploration of what the old Prayer Book marriage service has the man say to his wife, "with my body I thee worship," which became an increasingly intense realization for Lewis as he explored and reveled in the glory of the feminine. But to make an asymptote of the function, to imagine that as this realization increased in Lewis, it approached egalitarianism while perhaps not quite ever reaching it, is not only to misunderstand him, but to misunderstand the hierarchical aspect of the faith upon which his Christian writing is founded, and in light of which "sexism" is an inescapable aspect of his Christianity. The feminists who make this observation, and don't excuse him for it, are correct.
Worth a Look
The cult of C. S. Lewis and the sheer mass of enthusiastic secondary literature anatomizing him has become excessive and annoying. This reviewer finds himself increasingly susceptible to James Hitchcock's notorious Lewis-curmudgeonry, and inspired to adapt a rule that Lewis made for himself on the reading of old books: for every hour spent reading Lewis, spend at most two minutes reading about him. This being said, the book is worth having a look at, for while some of the contributors don't understand Lewis very well, they all know a great deal about him and have some interesting things to say. •
S. M. Hutchens is a senior editor and longtime writer for Touchstone.
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