Explanation:
The Problem of Susan depicts its protagonist, Professor Hastings (who strongly resembles an adult version of Susan), dealing with the grief and trauma of her entire family’s death in a train crash, as she is interviewed by a college literature student regarding her opinion on Susan’s place in the Narnia books. Gaiman himself has said of the story that there is much in Lewis’s books that he loves, but each time he read them (or read them aloud to his own children) he found the disposal of Susan to be intensely problematic and deeply irritating. Dealing with this problem was one inspiration for the story, while the other was, in Gaiman’s own words “to talk about the remarkable power of children’s literature”. Hence Professor Hastings comments on “the Victorian notion of the purity and sanctity of childhood [which] demanded that fiction for children should be made… well… pure… and sanctimonious”. This observation is important because, while the story is primarily focused on the ‘problem of Susan’, through it Gaiman also illustrates that Lewis’s beliefs seem to be similar to those of the Victorians. Lewis’s Narnia tales are, on the surface, moralistic adventure books – but they also rely heavily on Christian allegory, and this is what Gaiman and other critics seem primarily to have taken issue with.
It is left ambiguous whether Susan’s absence from Narnia is permanent, especially since Lewis stated elsewhere that: “The books don’t tell us what happened to Susan. She is left alive in this world at the end, having by then turned into a rather silly, conceited young woman. But there’s plenty of time for her to mend and perhaps she will get to Aslan’s country in the end… in her own way”. What has caused Gaiman and other critics to question this is that Lewis is not consistent enough with his characterisation of Susan for his insistence upon her lack of faith (in Aslan, meaning Jesus) to be supported. Certainly, Susan is shown to be the most doubting character in the books. Upon first entering Narnia, she says, “I-I wonder if there is any point going on” and she also has a moment of doubt in Prince Caspian. In both instances, however, she overcomes her fears and in this sense doubts are part of her overall journey – indeed she is forgiven for them by Aslan. But Susan’s lack of faith and willingness to doubt do not emerge in the conversation wherein the Kings and Queens in The Last Battle discuss her exclusion from Narnia – she dismisses Narnia as “all those games we used to play as children”. Is Susan’s lack of belief in Narnia therefore linked, not to lack of faith, but to a different transgression – the desire to “grow up”? Or is it something else altogether?
