{"id":21924,"date":"2026-06-17T08:26:45","date_gmt":"2026-06-17T15:26:45","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/jed\/?page_id=21924"},"modified":"2026-06-17T15:52:24","modified_gmt":"2026-06-17T22:52:24","slug":"some-problem-of-susan-resources","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/jed\/hodgepodge\/nonfiction\/some-problem-of-susan-resources\/","title":{"rendered":"Some \u201cProblem of Susan\u201d resources"},"content":{"rendered":"\r\n<style>\r\ndt {\r\n  margin-top: 1.5em;\r\n}\r\n<\/style>\r\n\r\n<p>In <cite>The Last Battle<\/cite>, the final Narnia book, the following passage famously appears:<\/p>\r\n<blockquote>\r\n<p>\u201cSir,\u201d said Tirian[\u2026] \u201c[\u2026] Has not your Majesty two sisters? Where is Queen Susan?\u201d<\/p>\r\n<p>\u201cMy sister Susan,\u201d answered Peter shortly and gravely, \u201cis no longer a friend of Narnia.\u201d<\/p>\r\n<p>\u201cYes,\u201d said Eustace, \u201cand whenever you\u2019ve tried to get her to come and talk about Narnia or do anything about Narnia, she says \u2018What wonderful memories you have! Fancy your still thinking about all those funny games we used to play when we were children.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\r\n<p>\u201cOh Susan!\u201d said Jill, \u201cshe\u2019s interested in nothing now-a-days except nylons and lipstick and invitations. She always was a jolly sight too keen on being grown-up.\u201d<\/p>\r\n<p>\u201cGrown-up, indeed,\u201d said the Lady Polly. \u201cI wish she <em>would<\/em> grow up. She wasted all her school time wanting to be the age she is now, and she\u2019ll waste all the rest of her life trying to stay that age. Her whole idea is to race on to the silliest time of one\u2019s life as quick as she can and then stop there as long as she can.\u201d<\/p>\r\n<\/blockquote>\r\n<p>The question of how to interpret that passage has led to decades\u2019 worth of commentary and argument. The phrase \u201cThe Problem of Susan\u201d refers broadly to that controversy\u2014questions like whether Lewis was being sexist, whether he was saying that female sexuality excludes women from heaven, what else he might have been implying, what other ways we can think about Susan\u2019s absence from Narnia in that sequence, and so on.<\/p>\r\n<p>This page attempts to provide some links to some relevant works and discussion.<\/p>\r\n<p>This page does <em>not<\/em> attempt to be a <em>complete<\/em> list of Problem of Susan resources. I suspect there are at least thousands of discussions about these issues, maybe millions. I\u2019m not going to try to list them all here.<\/p>\r\n<p>But when the topic comes up, I often find myself reaching for a resource list that doesn\u2019t (as far as I know) exist, so I figured I could make one.<\/p>\r\n<p>Content warning for inclusion of a story by Neil Gaiman.<\/p>\r\n<dl>\r\n  <dt><a href=\"https:\/\/www.narniaweb.com\/books\/ages\/\">Narnia Character Ages<\/a><\/dt>\r\n  <dd>This is only tangentially relevant, but I feel like it\u2019s useful background for the rest of the discussions. In particular: Susan was 12 at the beginning of <cite>The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe<\/cite>; she grew to age 27 in Narnia, then reverted to 12 on return to Earth; she was 21 at the time of her family\u2019s deaths in <cite>The Last Battle<\/cite>.<\/dd>\r\n  <dt><a href=\"https:\/\/www.narniaweb.com\/2021\/08\/what-c-s-lewis-said-about-susans-fate-in-the-last-battle\/\">Quotes from C.S. Lewis\u2019s letters<\/a><\/dt>\r\n  <dd>A 2021 blog post that quotes a couple of letters from Lewis to fans, including this line from a 1955 letter: \u201cThe books don\u2019t tell us what happened to Susan. She is left alive in this world at the end, having been turned into a rather silly, conceited young woman. But there is plenty of time for her to mend, and perhaps she will get to Aslan\u2019s country in the end\u2014in her own way.\u201d<\/dd>\r\n  <dt>\u201c<a href=\"https:\/\/www.isfdb.org\/cgi-bin\/title.cgi?857362\">The Problem of Susan<\/a>,\u201d by Neil Gaiman (2004)<\/dt>\r\n  <dd>Short fiction. I loved this story when I first read it, but that was a long time ago, and I don\u2019t think I had thought about the issue before that, and that was long before I knew about the problems with Gaiman. But I think it\u2019s a big enough milestone in Problem-of-Susan studies that it would feel weird to me to leave it out.<\/dd>\r\n  <dt>\u201c<a href=\"http:\/\/www.andrewrilstone.com\/2005\/11\/lipstick-on-my-scholar.html\">Lipstick on My Scholar<\/a>,\u201d by Andrew Rilstone (2005)<\/dt>\r\n  <dd>Blog post discussing various aspects of the Problem of Susan; among other things, it argues against Philip Pullman\u2019s and J.K. Rowling\u2019s complaints about Lewis\u2019s handling of Susan, and it covers aspects of what Lewis said elsewhere about heaven and hell.<\/dd>\r\n  <dt><a href=\"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/jed\/2005\/12\/13\/review-the-lion-the-witch-and\/#comments\">Comments on my 2005 review of the movie of <cite>The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe<\/cite><\/a><\/dt>\r\n  <dd>The comments on that post feature extensive debate (mostly among friends of mine) about the Problem of Susan.<\/dd>\r\n  <dt>\u201c<a href=\"http:\/\/www.anamardoll.com\/2012\/05\/narnia-susan-problems-of.html\">Susan, Problems of<\/a>,\u201d by Ana Mardoll (2012)<\/dt>\r\n  <dd>The first post in a series of posts that comprise a close reading of <cite>Prince Caspian<\/cite>; this post includes some discussion of the Problem of Susan. (Part of a longer series of <a href=\"http:\/\/www.anamardoll.com\/2011\/02\/narnia-narnia-deconstruction-index-post.html\">150+ posts<\/a> about the Narnia books, written over a ten-year period.) See also Mardoll\u2019s <a href=\"http:\/\/www.anamardoll.com\/2011\/10\/narnia-gender-essentialism-and-female.html#comment-355712369\">disentangling of some aspects of the Problem of Susan<\/a> and <a href=\"http:\/\/www.anamardoll.com\/2011\/10\/narnia-gender-essentialism-and-female.html#comment-352782775\">further comments<\/a>.<\/dd>\r\n  <dt>\u201c<a href=\"https:\/\/redwombatstudio.com\/2012\/09\/14\/elegant-and-fine\/\">Elegant and Fine<\/a>,\u201d by Ursula Vernon (2012)<\/dt>\r\n  <dd>Short fiction. \u201cThe real problem with Susan, in the end, was not that she was no longer Narnia\u2019s friend. It was that she had already been its lover.\u201d<\/dd>\r\n  <dt>\u201c<a href=\"https:\/\/ink-splotch.tumblr.com\/post\/69470941562\/there-comes-a-point-where-susan-who-was-the\">Can we talk about Susan\u2019s fabulous adventures after Narnia?<\/a>\u201d by ink-splotch (2013)<\/dt>\r\n  <dd>Short fiction, exploring Susan\u2019s later life, including connections with US postwar history. Companion piece: \u201c<a href=\"https:\/\/ink-splotch.tumblr.com\/post\/79664265175\/ifallelseperished-i-was-so-tall-you-were\">Can we talk about Susan Pevensie for a moment?<\/a>\u201d (2014).<\/dd>\r\n  <dt>\u201c<a href=\"https:\/\/www.aqueductpress.com\/books\/978-1-61976-087-5.php\">Solutions to the Problem of Susan: Reading Susan Fic<\/a>,\u201d by Janet Lafler (2015)<\/dt>\r\n  <dd>Essay about Problem-of-Susan fanfic. Link is to the book it was published in: <cite>The WisCon Chronicles (Vol 9): Intersections and Alliances<\/cite>, edited by Mary Anne Mohanraj.<\/dd>\r\n  <dt>\u201c<a href=\"https:\/\/leesmyth.blogspot.com\/2019\/07\/susan-pevensie.html\">Susan Pevensie<\/a>,\u201d by LeesMyth (2019)<\/dt>\r\n  <dd>A blog post looking mostly at some relevant things that Lewis wrote in some of his other work.<\/dd>\r\n  <dt>\u201c<a href=\"https:\/\/reactormag.com\/the-problems-of-susan\/\">The Problem(s) of Susan<\/a>,\u201d by Matt Mikalatos (2021)<\/dt>\r\n  <dd>Discussion of what Lewis may have meant, including a lovely brief piece of fix-it fic in which Lucy talks with Aslan about Susan. (This post is one installment of a 60-part series of posts titled \u201cThe Great C.S. Lewis Reread,\u201d by <a href=\"https:\/\/reactormag.com\/author\/matt-mikalatos\/\">Matt Mikalatos<\/a>, published from 2019 through 2022. Mikalatos is explicitly approaching Lewis from a progressive Christian perspective; he both praises and criticizes Lewis at various times.)<\/dd>\r\n  <dt><cite><a href=\"https:\/\/www.lunapresspublishing.com\/product-page\/nylons-lipstick-and-narnia-rewriting-susan-pevensie-in-fanfiction\">Nylons, Lipstick, and Narnia: Rewriting Susan Pevensie in Fanfiction<\/a><\/cite>, by Octavia Cade (2026)<\/dt>\r\n  <dd>Forthcoming nonfiction book; a study of Problem-of-Susan fanfic.<\/dd>\r\n<\/dl>\r\n<\/dl>\r\n\r\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":0,"parent":5482,"menu_order":330,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-21924","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/jed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/21924","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/jed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/jed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/jed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/jed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=21924"}],"version-history":[{"count":16,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/jed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/21924\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":21941,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/jed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/21924\/revisions\/21941"}],"up":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/jed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/5482"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/jed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=21924"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}