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Gender swapping heroes in literature


Elfknitter.#
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What I find interesting is that I'm a lot older than many of the members of this forum, and even when I was growing up, I never had trouble finding stories with girl characters, and it never once occurred to me that girls weren't as important or as interesting as boys.

 

I think the only way kids get that impression is when adults make a big deal out of things like there not being enough female characters in stories and books. I don't think most kids would ever even notice it.

 

I think people are making this into a far bigger issue than it really is.

I agree. Times 10.

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The fact that it's harder for girls to find books with girls in them, especially at the very young ages with animal characters, clearly sends a message that girls aren't as important or as interesting as boys. To me the link is so clear that I have trouble why other don't see it as a big deal. I think it's a very big deal.

 

Alex, I'll take, "What is an effect of Patriarchy on society" for $100.

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What I find interesting is that I'm a lot older than many of the members of this forum, and even when I was growing up, I never had trouble finding stories with girl characters, and it never once occurred to me that girls weren't as important or as interesting as boys.

 

I think the only way kids get that impression is when adults make a big deal out of things like there not being enough female characters in stories and books. I don't think most kids would ever even notice it.

 

I think people are making this into a far bigger issue than it really is.

Girl characters aren't removed from books. That's not the point. How many of those girl characters were adventures or leads? What were their roles?

 

Times change and I think children will want to see themselves reflected in what they read.

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Alex, I'll take, "What is an effect of Patriarchy on society" for $100.

Now this is going to be about patriarchy? :svengo:

 

I can't help but wonder if anyone would feel differently if the situation had been about a boy who insisted on changing female characters to male, because he wouldn't read any books about girls.

 

I can already imagine the outcry over how horrible the parent was for allowing her son to be so sexist, and how it's important for boys to understand and relate to female characters. :rolleyes:

 

I'm not pro-patriarchy at all, but I still see this as essentially a non-issue.

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Now this is going to be about patriarchy? :svengo:

 

I can't help but wonder if anyone would feel differently if the situation had been about a boy who insisted on changing female characters to male, because he wouldn't read any books about girls.

 

I can already imagine the outcry over how horrible the parent was for allowing her son to be so sexist, and how it's important for boys to understand and relate to female characters. :rolleyes:

 

I'm not pro-patriarchy at all, but I still see this as essentially a non-issue.

Nope, I wouldn't. However, there are more boy leads in children's literature so I find this outcome to be less likely. Not improbable, just less likely.
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I totally agree with people about the lack of strong female protagonists, and it is something my girls and I discuss.  However, I have to admit I am so thankful none of my girls asked me to turn Bilbo into a female.  It's not that I'm opposed to people doing whatever they want when they personally interact with a book, and under other circumstances, I could probably easily do it.  I just don't think I have it in me to change Bilbo's gender.  Perhaps I would have suggested they read it to themselves.  I don't know.  I'm just so glad I didn't have to face that.  I also get that the characters are not reality, but in a sense some of those characters were more real to me than people I frequently interacted with.  Probably something to do with the unbalanced childhood I had where I lived in bookland more of the time than in reality.  It's funny how my children, the unsocialized homeschoolers that they are, seem to have a better balance between fantasy and reality than I did, or still do.  

 

Sorry for derailing the topic.

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Now this is going to be about patriarchy? :svengo:

 

I can't help but wonder if anyone would feel differently if the situation had been about a boy who insisted on changing female characters to male, because he wouldn't read any books about girls.

 

I can already imagine the outcry over how horrible the parent was for allowing her son to be so sexist, and how it's important for boys to understand and relate to female characters. :rolleyes:

 

I'm not pro-patriarchy at all, but I still see this as essentially a non-issue.

Actually, that's reality for some people.  I've seen tons of blog posts and posts on here about appropriately masculine literature that boys will relate to (like reading Farmer Boy and skipping the other Laura Ingalls Wilder books) because boys relate to boys more than female characters.  And we're talking about different issues-helping kids relate to books, sure-make Coraline a boy.  Whatever.  But in this case we're talking about a statistical lack of strong female characters in books that clearly relates to a male-oriented society and literary base.  Why is it wrong to desire more female characters that are strong in their own right?  I'd sure like to see more Hermione-types that are main characters, myself.  

 

ETA: For more mature teens, the Brandon Sanderson books often contain very strong female lead or co-protagonists.  I am really pleased with his work because it's not always easy to find in fantasy or high fantasy. They're maybe not for younger kids and I would pre-read them (Elantris may be the best suited for middle school, but pre-read). I am a voracious reader and I do not encounter all of these strong female characters as often as some people are commenting on here.  Maybe we read different genres? Maybe it depends on what you mean by strong female characters or what we're looking for in that description?

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Actually, that's reality for some people. I've seen tons of blog posts and posts on here about appropriately masculine literature that boys will relate to (like reading Farmer Boy and skipping the other Laura Ingalls Wilder books) because boys relate to boys more than female characters. And we're talking about different issues-helping kids relate to books, sure-make Coraline a boy. Whatever. But in this case we're talking about a statistical lack of strong female characters in books that clearly relates to a male-oriented society and literary base. Why is it wrong to desire more female characters that are strong in their own right? I'd sure like to see more Hermione-types that are main characters, myself.

I don't think it's wrong to want more strong female characters -- as a female myself, I'm all for it! :)

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ETA: For more mature teens, the Brandon Sanderson books often contain very strong female lead or co-protagonists.  I am really pleased with his work because it's not always easy to find in fantasy or high fantasy. They're maybe not for younger kids and I would pre-read them (Elantris may be the best suited for middle school, but pre-read). I am a voracious reader and I do not encounter all of these strong female characters as often as some people are commenting on here.  Maybe we read different genres? Maybe it depends on what you mean by strong female characters or what we're looking for in that description?

 

I had someone recommend him to be before, and I had forgotten.  I'm going to see what our library has.

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The fact that it's harder for girls to find books with girls in them, especially at the very young ages with animal characters, clearly sends a message that girls aren't as important or as interesting as boys. To me the link is so clear that I have trouble why other don't see it as a big deal. I think it's a very big deal.

I'm an actual real live girl and I never got that message.

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Now this is going to be about patriarchy? :svengo:

 

It already is. That even some women can't see it and advocate a continuation of conventional gender conformity based on traditional and unreasonable arguments is the giveaway.

 

I can't help but wonder if anyone would feel differently if the situation had been about a boy who insisted on changing female characters to male, because he wouldn't read any books about girls.

 

I can already imagine the outcry over how horrible the parent was for allowing her son to be so sexist, and how it's important for boys to understand and relate to female characters. :rolleyes:

 

I'm not pro-patriarchy at all, but I still see this as essentially a non-issue.

 

Let's not exaggerate here, and let's not assume potential accusations where none are founded. No one is insisting books be changed. Someone wrote about the value of changing a character's gender upon request, and her and her child's response to this change. But I'll take your point and take it one step further. If a boy wanted to change a female character, or a male character to female, or a character to an androgynous character, or anything that suggests not conforming to conventional gender conformity, the only reason to balk at that is because this tradition, this conventional way of interpreting the world, suggesting "that's just the way things are," is an effect of patriarchal ideology, in my opinion.

 

 

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The fact that it's harder for girls to find books with girls in them, especially at the very young ages with animal characters, clearly sends a message that girls aren't as important or as interesting as boys. To me the link is so clear that I have trouble why other don't see it as a big deal. I think it's a very big deal.

 

I think it isn't a big deal because of the vast number of books out there available to us.  If there were only 10 books in the world, maybe.  But even using the numbers in the linked article (6000 children's books), that leaves 1860 books with girls as the central character.  Is it really hard to find books to read when you have 1860 to choose from?  I think it is a manufactured issue.  Who would know there are more books in the world with boy central characters unless we were told?  Who here has read all 6000 books available?  A more useful statistic would be what is the ratio of boy to girl central characters in books at your library or in your own personal library.  Those are the books your kids are reading. 

 

As a girl, I can say that some girls don't care if the central character is a girl or boy, depending on the story.  Girls and boys both can connect to a story where the central character is the opposite gender than the reader.  I never felt deprived when going to the library and choosing books as a kid.  I wasn't comparing how many boy characters to how many girl characters.  I was looking for interesting stories. 

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So I never thought that boys were more important than girls because patriarchy? :confused:

 

Patriarchy is no doubt a complex ideology. Like many ideologies, there is no objective source to which one can point and say, "You're doing it wrong. Look here for the right way."  Nevertheless, there are certain themes and assumptions that can be consistently extrapolated from it, and one is a perceived value of the preservation of conventional gender roles. That girls should be happy with their expected roles of caring for and nurturing families is a nice ideal for girls who freely choose to embrace it. However, not all girls do, and they shouldn't be compelled to accept it, either through obvious tactics like limited opportunities and emotional manipulation, or through more subtle means like not inviting them to share in the imaginative roles traditionally reserved for men. I'm not suggesting books forcefully obstruct imagination, but when information and ideas are not offered, there is a limitation their ability to influence. Why not open the doors and share what has been traditionally provided to boys? And conversely, why not open the same opportunity to boys that has been traditionally reserved for girls? In other words, render the ideology of patriarchy / conventional gender roles to be as unhelpful and impractical and outdated as other cultural ideologies long since abandoned (like the "divine right of kings" and its role in contributing to a strong society). 

 

I suspect patriarchy isn't the obvious connection for those who value it as a means by which moral and ethical stability is expected to be secured (a major claim made about patriarchy). In other words, those who value and embrace it aren't likely to interpret it as a bad thing. Because it's so subtle, it's difficult to point out a glaring example that is obvious to all, but this particular discussion is an example I would consider to be a good illustration of the effects of patriarchy: Most admirable characters are boys isn't a big deal to many, and is glaringly obvious and problematic to others. I can only imagine this separation between opinions would also reflect our interpretation and respect for patriarchal ideologies. 

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I think it isn't a big deal because of the vast number of books out there available to us.  If there were only 10 books in the world, maybe.  But even using the numbers in the linked article (6000 children's books), that leaves 1860 books with girls as the central character.  Is it really hard to find books to read when you have 1860 to choose from?  

 

I wonder how well this argument might work if it was removed from literature and applied to say, clothing for preteen girls.

 

"I think it isn't a big deal that there aren't a lot of modest girls clothes available to us. If there were only two outfits in the world, maybe. But even using the numbers of outfits provided by clothing manufacturers in 2014, that leaves 1860 outfits that are modest. Is it really hard to find an outfit to wear when you have 1860 to choose from?"

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There is no way I'd ever switch pronouns in a book I was reading aloud.  I mean, is anyone else here able to read aloud on autopilot?  Like you're able to think of something else entirely while reading aloud?  Having to switch pronouns would make me have to think far too much.

 

That aside, I have to say that my unscientific feeling about the books that I read to my now 18yo old son over the course of his existence was that there were actually more female leads than male.  So I did an equally unscientific poll of the books I read to him, and sure enough, of the ones I remembered (and it's frightening how many of them I don't remember the details of), there were more female leads than male.  Maybe I just found female leads to be more memorable than the male ones, I don't know.

 

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The study is also claiming that only ONE Caldecott winner has a "standalone female character."

 

Just one Caldecott winner (1985's Have You Seen My Duckling? following a mother duck on a search for her baby) has had a standalone female character since the award was established in 1938.

 

What about Mirette on the High Wire? What about Baboushka and the Three Kings? What about Madeline? And - there are lots of others! Caldecott Winners

 

 

Edited: (Am I misreading the article? 1985's Caldecott was King George - Have You Seen My Duckling was an honor / runner-up.)

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There is no way I'd ever switch pronouns in a book I was reading aloud.  I mean, is anyone else here able to read aloud on autopilot?  Like you're able to think of something else entirely while reading aloud?  Having to switch pronouns would make me have to think far too much.

 

 

 

Yeah, I can do reading on autopilot too. Especially if it's not a book that holds my interest or one I've read several times.

 

I personally don't see the point in changing a pronoun while reading aloud. But that's just me. I wouldn't change it in any book I was reading to myself either. If I felt I needed a book with a strong female character, I would find one to read. However, I don't even look at books in that way and in my imagination I am almost always a strong, female lead.

 

I also don't think it's a big deal if someone else chooses to change stuff up while they're reading aloud to their children or to themselves. Whatever. That doesn't affect me in any way.

 

For my son -- well, I guess gender is just is a non-issue. We both know there are strong female and male people in real life as well as in books. We also know there are rude, deceitful, unkind, weak-willed,  etc, people of both genders in books and in real life.

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Yeah, I can do reading on autopilot too. Especially if it's not a book that holds my interest or one I've read several times.

 

I personally don't see the point in changing a pronoun while reading aloud. But that's just me. I wouldn't change it in any book I was reading to myself either. If I felt I needed a book with a strong female character, I would find one to read. However, I don't even look at books in that way and in my imagination I am almost always a strong, female lead.

 

I also don't think it's a big deal if someone else chooses to change stuff up while they're reading aloud to their children or to themselves. Whatever. That doesn't affect me in any way.

 

For my son -- well, I guess gender is just is a non-issue. We both know there are strong female and male people in real life as well as in books. We also know there are rude, deceitful, unkind, weak-willed,  etc, people of both genders in books and in real life.

 

This.  

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What I find interesting is that I'm a lot older than many of the members of this forum, and even when I was growing up, I never had trouble finding stories with girl characters, and it never once occurred to me that girls weren't as important or as interesting as boys.

 

I think the only way kids get that impression is when adults make a big deal out of things like there not being enough female characters in stories and books. I don't think most kids would ever even notice it.

 

I think people are making this into a far bigger issue than it really is.

 

I so agree with this.  Have any of y'all asked your daughters what they think? 

 

This is completely non-scientific but when I was doing a lot of reading aloud to my kids (one girl, one boy), so often it seemed that the female characters were the ones who were smart and resourceful, while the males were doofuses or worse.  Berenstain Bears, anyone?  

 

 

 

 

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I still think it's just way too weird and strange. Strikes much too close for comfort for me to all the weird gender things going on

The "weird gender things " probably needs more explanation but I am initially inclined to disregard your perspective on this issue based on that phrase.

 

I don't understand your seemingly vehement reaction to the pronoun switch or lack of empathy for why a person might find the switch to be a good idea.

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Right. That was my initial point. She gets interested in nylons, lipstick and invitations (sexual awakening) and therefore falls from grace and cannot return. It is a problematic situation for girls.

 

No, just, no. That is the strangest, most inaccurate interpretation that I have ever read. 

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That is very gracious of you. :)

 

I feel like the Eustace comment comes after Susan has been rejected by Narnia first for being interested in claiming her womanhood.

 

I don't really even understand how anyone can reject the idea that Lewis's ideas of how a woman should handle her sexuality is part of the issue here. Childhood=innocence, adulthood=sexuality comes into play. It seems like a very natural connection to me.

 

Because it is terribly out of context in the Narnia story. Simply because Lewis had ideas of how a woman should handle her sexuality does not mean that those ideas were part of the Narnia story. 

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It's a fiction book set in a fantasy world.  It doesn't involve reality.

 

The book exists in reality - I have a copy of it. It's real.  In reality, Tolkien wrote Bilbo Baggins as a male. Therefore, in reality, the fictional character in a fictional book, Bilbo Baggins is a male. 

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What I find interesting is that I'm a lot older than many of the members of this forum, and even when I was growing up, I never had trouble finding stories with girl characters, and it never once occurred to me that girls weren't as important or as interesting as boys.

 

I think the only way kids get that impression is when adults make a big deal out of things like there not being enough female characters in stories and books. I don't think most kids would ever even notice it.

 

I think people are making this into a far bigger issue than it really is.

 

:iagree:

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I'm with the people who would have a hard time reading Bilbo as a girl, just because it would be hard for me to sustain changing that through a book the length of The Hobbit. I would find it jarring to try and read-aloud that way. I can't remember what book it was but I once changed the names in a book to fit the names of my kids. It was a short picture book but then ever-after they wanted it read that way and it was kind of an annoying way to read that I regretted doing it in the first place. I tend to get lost in the story I'm reading aloud and I'd find it hard to do that instead of remembering to change every he to she. 

 

I think there's a little bit of "if you're a hammer then it's a nail" kind of thinking with literary criticism. I took a lot of women's studies and English classes in college and it always struck me that the reader's point-of-view seemed to be as important as the author's. I think if you want to find gender-bias in literature, it's there.  And if you're convinced that it doesn't exist, you won't find it.

 

With my own kids, my approach has been to encourage them all to appreciate books with characters of the opposite gender or their own gender and books with kids of different races or different cultures as well as their own. I find they identify more with the story and the actions of the character than needing the main character to somehow be like them. My boys are almost done listening to The Princess and the Frog series by E.D. Baker. They have LOVED It, and the main characters are definitely strong women. My oldest has enjoyed other books with girls as the main characters (Tuesdays in the Castle, Calpurnia Tate). I asked him once if he cared if the main character was a boy or girl and he said he didn't care as long as the story was good. My middle son loves Clementine and Ramona and Nim from Nim's Island. My daughter likes any book that is read to her at this point. :)

 

As for Lewis and Susan, I think he probably did have ideas about women's roles that were more traditional and normal for his time. I think maybe there is some discomfort with Susan growing up and becoming a woman, he is dismissive of the normal changes that occur. But I also think that those that have taken that argument to the point of saying that it was only because she was sexually awakened that he doomed her to damnation (Gaiman, Pullman) are ignoring the bigger story in Narnia. It's clear to me that her interest in things of this world is accompanied by a lack of interest in Narnia, and that's what ultimately excludes her from Narnia. And Lewis himself said that the end of the series doesn't tell us what happens to her in the end. Narnia was always meant to be a way for the characters to be able to go back to their own world and know Christ better (there is a quote to that effect in Dawn Treader but I can't find it now). At the end of The Last Battle, the other Pensevies die and go on to heaven or Aslan's country. Susan is excluded from Narnia and left behind in our world, but that doesn't mean that she is excluded from Aslan's country/heaven. 

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I think it is a fun idea to read a novel with genders changed, and I doubt it will confuse this child in any way. I lived inside Watership Down with obsessive intensity for a season in life and tried hard to make everyone call me 'Hazel." I knew I wasn't a rabbit. And I knew Hazel wasn't a girl.

 

I think Men have been permitted more freedom of adventure and danger traditionally, and those who took advantage of their freedom had more interesting experiences, if you consider 'action' and adventure more interesting than a rich inner life (as most kids do). I absolutely thought boys/men had more interesting and important lives when I was a girl. It made me angsty. I knew it was not because males were inherently more interesting but because they were permitted more freedom and also required to take risks. I simply didn't buy what my mother tried to sell me - that romance was interesting, that domestic life was interesting, that we kids were her grand adventure. That made for boring reading as a kid.

Anyone could see that it was almost always boys who stowed away on ships, got caught up with pirates, went off to war, warded off bandits, fought Indians (or fought white guys), and went on covert missions. There were exceptions of course - Narnia for one. And I loved those books, but they were fantasy. In my mind, boys and were more likely to do things worth reading about in real life or in literature fixed in the real, non magical, world.

 

The kind of stories that interested me as a child were mostly adventure stories and they mostly featured boys. And boys seemed more interesting because they did more interesting things. You could write a book with a girl doing these things, but I knew mostly it would really have been boys and men. I don't think biology is destiny, but I do think it impacts women's options and choices even now. And I also have learned to like literature that is not so action based. The range of thngs that seem interesting to me has expanded so that women's experiences actually are more interesting. But I still think a kid prone to action and adventure books has to deal with the reality that until recently, it was simply far more likely that a male would go on a journey of physical risk, challenge, and discovery.

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The book exists in reality - I have a copy of it. It's real. In reality, Tolkien wrote Bilbo Baggins as a male. Therefore, in reality, the fictional character in a fictional book, Bilbo Baggins is a male.

I asked my kids what they would think of me reading The Lord of the Rings to them but making Frodo a girl. Everything would stay the same but I'd just say 'she' instead of 'he'. My one boy who wants everything to be "right" was highly disturbed by that. He kept saying to call him a girl was wrong because he was a boy! One of my dds loved the idea of the main character being a girl but we'd definitely have to change the name because Frodo isn't a girl. My younger dd couldn't figure out why anyone would call a girl Frodo when it's so obviously a boys name. Lol--characters in books are most definitely real to my kids!

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Susan loses her ability to go to Narnia because she no longer believes. 

 

 

No, just, no. That is the strangest, most inaccurate interpretation that I have ever read. 

 

 

Within the context of The Chronicles of Narnia, this doesn't even make any sense. 

 

 

How boring the study and interpretation of good literature would be if we limited ourselves to such simplistic analysis. The fact that you came away with only that interpretation doesn't mean it is the only way to interpret this bit of literature, and it certainly doesn't dismiss any other analysis as "inaccurate." And, as Mrs. Mungo already pointed out (with several sources of contemporary analysis on this very subject), many would disagree with you--it's not all that strange to think there is basis for other interpretations.

 

I last read the Chronicles of Narnia as a tween. At the time, I came away with the same conclusion you did--that Susan couldn't go back because she stopped believing. Kind of like in the Polar Express when the boy's sister stops believing in Santa and she can't hear the bell anymore. Simple as that. If I read the stories again now, I would be approaching them with a different perspective (as an adult, more aware of Lewis' Christian allegory, etc.), and I would likely interpret some themes very differently. Would any of that be wrong? Would my interpretation as an adult completely negate my experience with the books as a child? Not necessarily. and I certainly wouldn't feel the need to completely dismiss others' analysis of the same themes. It's not so black and white.

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Deep reader here since early childhood and I can't ever think of a time when I thought boys had better, more interesting characters than girls. I know growing up in the '70s, '80s and '90s where much more time was taken finding and connecting girls to female protagonists helps this view. 

 

 

I think this article has some interesting points. And this one has a discussion between Campbell's Heroes Journey and Murdock's The Heroine's Journey. 

 

 

It is not my preference to trade genders for characters, any more than it would be to change races. If a character is well written the gender or race or religion or sexual identity or special need status are a part of them and can't really be changed without changing the book as a whole. 

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Ds sometimes asks me to change the characters to penguins. Sigh. Takes quite a lot of editing on the fly.

 

He listened to one chapter of The Hobbit, remarked that Tolkien was awfully fond of long, descriptive sentences and requested we choose something livelier. So I've never had to turn Bilbo into a penguin.

Ok now I would want to read about Bible the penguin.

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How boring the study and interpretation of good literature would be if we limited ourselves to such simplistic analysis. The fact that you came away with only that interpretation doesn't mean it is the only way to interpret this bit of literature, and it certainly doesn't dismiss any other analysis as "inaccurate." And, as Mrs. Mungo already pointed out (with several sources of contemporary analysis on this very subject), many would disagree with you--it's not all that strange to think there is basis for other interpretations.

 

I last read the Chronicles of Narnia as a tween. At the time, I came away with the same conclusion you did--that Susan couldn't go back because she stopped believing. Kind of like in the Polar Express when the boy's sister stops believing in Santa and she can't hear the bell anymore. Simple as that. If I read the stories again now, I would be approaching them with a different perspective (as an adult, more aware of Lewis' Christian allegory, etc.), and I would likely interpret some themes very differently. Would any of that be wrong? Would my interpretation as an adult completely negate my experience with the books as a child? Not necessarily. and I certainly wouldn't feel the need to completely dismiss others' analysis of the same themes. It's not so black and white.

 

I read the Chronicles of Narnia as an adult, with an adult perspective. I do think that we can interpret literature incorrectly. I am not dismissing other's interpretations, I'm simply calling them as I see it - I think they got it wrong. 

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Susan loses her ability to go to Narnia because she no longer believes.

Even this is not accurate. Both Susan and Peter are told at the end of Prince Caspian that they will not be returning to Narnia, not because they have done anything wrong or become something wrong but simply because they are growing up. Edmund and Lucy are told the same at the end of Dawn Treader "You are too old, children," said Aslan, "and you must begin to come close to your own world now."

 

NONE of the Pevensie children returns to Narnia after Dawn Treader. In the last battle, we find them in Aslan's country, the Real country, heaven if you will, after being killed in a train crash. Susan is not with them because Susan was not on the train; being no longer interested in Narnia she was not traveling with the others in their attempt to help the Narnians. But there is nothing at all to indicate she will never come to Aslan's country; the Pevensie children's parents are there, although they have never had anything to do with Narnia at all.

 

ETA perhaps in the end it is Susan who has most closely followed Aslan's own advice to draw close to her own world :) yes she has left Narnia behind, but the way into Aslan's country from our world does not pass through Narnia (as we learn in Dawn Treader).

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I read the Chronicles of Narnia as an adult, with an adult perspective. I do think that we can interpret literature incorrectly. I am not dismissing other's interpretations, I'm simply calling them as I see it - I think they got it wrong. 

 

And they think you got it wrong. They are simply calling it as they see it.

 

One thing I love about literature is that there is always grey area. Like life.

 

It's okay if someone has a different interpretation than you do. It really is. Life will continue even if someone thinks that a fictional character is barred from a magical land for whatever reason. Life will continue even if someone reads a novel swapping the gender of the characters.

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I read the Chronicles of Narnia as an adult, with an adult perspective. I do think that we can interpret literature incorrectly. I am not dismissing other's interpretations, I'm simply calling them as I see it - I think they got it wrong. 

 

Well, I kind of agree that you can interpret literature incorrectly--meaning, sure, sometimes. But with most good literature, there are so many more layers than if you just took the words on the page at face value that I don't think you can often say there's a clear-cut "right" or "wrong" in cases like this.

 

As for the bolded, maybe we have a different definition of dismissing, but "No. Just no. That is the strangest, most inaccurate interpretation..." is definitely dismissive, unhelpful, and downright rude, IMO, because it effectively shuts down (i.e., dismisses) any discussion or dialogue. Would you want to have a conversation with someone whose first reaction to your statement was "No. You're wrong"? Yeah. Me either. And it doesn't lend credibility to your opinion. Now, I don't think your interpretation is wrong, not at all--I arrived at the same conclusion that you did when I last read it--but I do think there is more to it than just "Susan didn't believe any more," and I am open to discovering and reading supporting evidence one way or the other. Do you have any links or whatnot that support your interpretation as the "right" one?

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Well, I kind of agree that you can interpret literature incorrectly--meaning, sure, sometimes. But with most good literature, there are so many more layers than if you just took the words on the page at face value that I don't think you can often say there's a clear-cut "right" or "wrong" in cases like this.

 

As for the bolded, maybe we have a different definition of dismissing, but "No. Just no. That is the strangest, most inaccurate interpretation..." is definitely dismissive, unhelpful, and downright rude, IMO, because it effectively shuts down (i.e., dismisses) any discussion or dialogue. Would you want to have a conversation with someone whose first reaction to your statement was "No. You're wrong"? Yeah. Me either. And it doesn't lend credibility to your opinion. Now, I don't think your interpretation is wrong, not at all--I arrived at the same conclusion that you did when I last read it--but I do think there is more to it than just "Susan didn't believe any more," and I am open to discovering and reading supporting evidence one way or the other. Do you have any links or whatnot that support your interpretation as the "right" one?

 

I think my intentions got lost in the world of the internet. This is the way I talk in real life.  I am straightforward, my friends know and appreciate this. If someone approaches me on a matter with which I want to engage and says "no, you're wrong" and am free to say "No I'm not" or "No I'm not, here's why" or "Why do you think that?" None of these is a bad response.

 

However, at this point, I don't want to discuss my opinion because I don't have time. I have a lot going on today and this isn't even on my list of priorities. I also find it odd that I am being asked to support my opinion with outside resources. If I were writing a paper, it would need support. I'm not writing a paper. If I had time the first thing I would do would be to re-read the entire series beginning to end, only after that would I look at outside sources and then only if I wanted to do so. I guess I'm an "original document" kind of gal!

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And they think you got it wrong. They are simply calling it as they see it.

 

One thing I love about literature is that there is always grey area. Like life.

 

It's okay if someone has a different interpretation than you do. It really is. Life will continue even if someone thinks that a fictional character is barred from a magical land for whatever reason. Life will continue even if someone reads a novel swapping the gender of the characters.

 

And life will also continue if someone else prefers sticking to the story as written and dislikes swapping the gender of the characters—or the color of the main character's hair, the breed of the sidekick's cat, or the name of the hero. (It also doesn't mean they must have deep-seated issues with gender conformity or are blinded by patriarchy, as another PP suggested.)

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And life will also continue if someone else prefers sticking to the story as written and dislikes swapping the gender of the characters—or the color of the main character's hair, the breed of the sidekick's cat, or the name of the hero. (It also doesn't mean they must have deep-seated issues with gender conformity or are blinded by patriarchy, as another PP suggested.)

 

(Psst, the pp suggested the issues with gender conformity and biases towards patriarchy are illustrated in the denial of such facts like more children's books feature boys than girls, or the opinion that it doesn't matter, despite decades of direct and indirect evidence suggesting otherwise. It's not actually about preferring to read a story as written.)

Carry on...

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