C. S. Lewis on Gender Ann Loades Introduction Riess a Well a Continuing to Work on Farms
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C. S. Lewis on Gender Ann Loades Introduction riess a well a continuing to work on farms. They worked in trans- port t and a the front, as well as at home as nurses and ambulance Cautious though one must be in thinking that one can entirely drivers,n i addition to all the other tasks they performed. It was understand someone in terms of their circumstances, C. S. Lewis not until February 6, 1918, that some women (those over thirty (CSL) virtually invites us to pay attention to his by the publica- years old, householders or wives thereof, occupiers of property tionfs o hi Surprised by Joy (1955).s Thi text, which we can now wortht a least five pounds per year, and university graduates)5 es - reads a a classic of “textual male intimacy” in religion,1 s fi one o cured the vote. Men simply had to be nineteen years or older and those resources particularly important when we try to grasp what ableo t supply an address. The age restriction for women dropped CSL meant and could not mean by “masculinity,” as will become to twenty-one in 1928. The time had come when women, married clear in the last part of this article. In addition, we need to attend or not, could no longer be regarded as legal nonentities, deprived to a whole range of his publications when we attempt to assess his of adequate education and economic resources, though much re- understanding of “femininity” and its relation to “masculinity.” mainedoe t b achieved in the twentieth century. One can hardly be understood without the other: “Gender” is not Postwar deprivation could be acute for the survivors of the simply a matter of problematizing what it may be to be female/ appalling battlefields of the First World War, which marked feminine.n I addition, quite apart from what CSL reveals about CSL’seo lif s deeply, with many men on the dole and then facing himselfs in hi publications, it is helpful to juxtapose with his self- a “means test” when already they and their families were near presentation perspectives on his context in a way not possible in starvation, with women’s pittances from earnings crucial to sur- his own times, alert though he himself was to political, social, vival. Indisputable evidence of systematic mass murder, not only and economic change. in Europe, was to emerge. Male-dominated societies were clearly The d tail en of the nineteenth century, at the very end of ripe for reevaluation; however much women had colluded in whichL CS was born, saw some thoughtful reassessments of the situations, they were powerless to do more than palliate at best. effectsf o industrialization, and on women in particular. For in- There were problems as always, not about women as “work- stance, Henry Scott Holland, one of the most perceptive Church ers” (usually low-paid), but about their entry into the profession- of England clerics of his time, insisted that the strain of the situ- al worlds hitherto the province of males.6 Those men prosperous ations wa such that “[w]e have got to secure for women an en- enougho t have the women of their households free from back- tirely new value and significance.” The point was that, while “he,” breaking drudgery, paid or not, could well be rendered uneasy by “his,” and “him” were humanly inclusive in criminal law, they continued longstanding criticism of the plight of women from were o not s in civil law, though there had been marked improve- the f days o John Stuart Mill onward, and the criticism continued ments in legislation concerned with married women especially. in a variety of genres. The aspirations of the middle class might The particular issue that concerned Scott Holland was that of well have seemed to be those of everyone. Yet, Olive Schreiner’s votes for the women whose lives, like those of men, had been The Story of an African Farm,Henrik Ibsen’s A Doll’s House, Vir- so dramatically changed by industrialization.2 Women simply ginia Woolf’s A Room of One’s Own, followedy b The Years and hadoe t b in a position where they could voice their concerns then Three Guineas, sustained criticism of women’s lot, not least themselves. Sometimes these would coincide with those of men, during the first half of the twentieth century and the period in but sometimes not. The UK was years behind, for example, New whichL CS made his distinctive contribution to radio broadcast- York State’s Married Women’s Property Act of 1848, bringing in ing about religion. Far more of the population were likely to listen a comparable act in 1885, which secured to women property and to radio than they were to read printed material, let alone books, earnings acquired after marriage. The well-to-do had been able to so a successful broadcaster had significant responsibilities. makel lega provision for women on the verge of marriage, since CSLs wa not alone in becoming a distinguished lay theolo- families obviously did not wish to see resources for their daugh- gian. For instance, Evelyn Underhill, Helen Waddell, and Charles ters squandered by feckless sons-in-law, given that they carried Williams were prominent in the first half of the century, but the burden of financial wellbeing for a whole family group. Less they were writers rather than broadcasters. Formidable compe- well-provided women could not tolerate intimidation by men fu- tition in shaping perceptions of what was and was not proper eled by alcohol paid for out of women’s earnings. for women, whether or not they were of CSL’s educational and Neither these acts nor those affecting marriage in other ways social class, came from another successful broadcaster, Dorothy were trivial in their impact, and the issue of their voting rights focused attention on the point that women had minds and wills ANN LOADES is Honorary Professorial Fellow of St. Chad’s College of their own. The Western philosophical and religious tradition and Professor Emerita in Divinity at the University had o come t understand “reason” by the exclusion of the “femi- of Durham, UK, where she was the first woman nine,”3 with bodily difference from the male symbolizing lesser to be given a chair personal to herself. She is also intellectual functioning, and appropriate “feelings” deemed to be Honorary Professor in the School of Divinity, Uni- of little significance—producing what CSL was to call “men with- versity of St. Andrews, Scotland. In 2008, she was out chests.”4 e Th result was to deem women incapable of a whole honored by a festschrift, Exchanges of Grace, ed- rangef o undertakings. Apart from industrialization in peacetime, ited by Natalie K. Watson and Stephen Burns. the First World War found women working in armament facto- Priscilla Papers ◆ Vol. 24, No. 1 ◆ Winter 2010 • 19 L. Sayers, whose writing he much admired. She was as great a finding publication in the new Penguin Classics series.9 Present writerf o letters as he was and had the advantage of having been in this fourteenth-century text and its portrayal of the hierarchi- born and bred in a clerical household, whereas CSL was in effect cal universe, so beloved by CSL, was the figure of Beatrice, once a a o convert t Christianity. She was a published poet, a playwright, living woman, mistress not only of philosophy and the science of novelist, lecturer, and profoundly orthodox Christian apologist, Dante’s day, but the perfect integration of intellectual, emotional, having been reared on the tough intellectual diet of the Church and bodily beauty and his personal mediator of grace. In particu- of England Book of Common Prayer Matins and Evensong, and lar, in Canto xxx of “Purgatory,” in the Pageant of the Sacrament formidably well read in Western Christian theology. She had (the Eucharist), she appeared with three dancing graces—faith, contributed to the revival of Christian drama for performance in hope, and charity—at one wheel of her chariot, and with the four cathedrals and had followed this up with radio plays from 1938 cardinal (“hinge”) virtues of justice, courage, temperance, and onward, most notably the set of plays The Man Born to be King prudence dancing at the other.10 ts I i worth noticing at this point (1941), which CSL much admired. He did not take to her detec- that in CSL’s discussion of the cardinal virtue of prudence (think tive fiction, though her Gaudy Night s(1935) i particularly inter- what you are doing and what is likely to become of it), he argues esting in its portrayal of academic women as much devoted to that the proper motto for a Christian is not “Be good, sweet maid, the pursuit of truth for its own sake as he was himself, and with and let who can be clever,” but “Be good, sweet maid, and don’t a clear understanding of the kind of freedom that may develop forget that this involves being as clever as you can.” He points out when intellect and emotion are integrated with one another, and both that God is no fonder of intellectual slouchers than of any awaref o the damage to women and men alike when they are not. other kind, and that Christian faith not only requires the whole Ten years on, and CSL’s That Hideous Strength yielded only the of a person, brains and all, but sharpens them too.11 e H could b characterf o Jane, who, on marriage, had, as he puts it, left the remarkably evenhanded in his illustrations, at least sometimes.