Is C. S. Lewis’s Theory of Gender and Sexuality Worth Investigating?
C. S. Lewis is one of those enigmatic public figures who is widely read but hard to pin down. To a general audience, he is known as the author of the Chronicles of Narnia. In religious spheres, he is the writer of Mere Christianity, The Screwtape Letters, Miracles, The Problem of Pain, and other works of Christian apologetics and imagination.
But hardcore Lewis disciples, those who have gone “further up and further in” enough to study his complex vision of reality and his background as a scholar of medieval literature and philosophy, know that he left not only traces of Platonism in his work, but a syncretistic Christian imaginarium. He blends ancient philosophy, pagan myth, and medieval lore, producing a cosmology teeming with deities and extraterrestrials, which needs much elucidation for the modern reader.
This is the Lewis we encounter in Joshua Herring’s Sons of Adam, Daughters of Eve: C. S. Lewis’s Images of Gender. In a rather mind-bending but fascinating argument that challenges both secular and sacred dogma, Herring claims that Lewis saw gender as the Platonic ideal, with sex being merely one expression. Herring’s Lewis is an interesting offering for Christian academics seeking to navigate the fallout of the ever shape-shifting modern landscape of gender ideology, providing a philosophical framework by which to counter secular academic arguments.
In the first chapter, “Ideas Have Consequences: The Cost of a False Theory of Gender,” Herring takes on two of the central thinkers who he claims laid the foundation for “transgender ideology.” He argues that what radical feminist philosophers like Simone de Beauvoir and Judith Butler offer in their arguments about gender and sexuality is not scientific reasoning or convincing philosophy, but mythology based on an almost religious belief in radical individualism and perpetual self-creation. Herring posits that Oxford professor of English, C. S. Lewis, an expert in mythology, recognized this about the feminist thought of his day (he was a contemporary of de Beauvoir) and offered a literary alternative. Herring gives a summary of de Beauvoir’s work accompanied by quotations that feel rather archaic in today’s landscape of political debate. Although Herring doesn’t make this argument explicitly, de Beauvoir comes across as the ultimate dupe of predatory capitalism, ready to sacrifice human companionship and family life for the sake of market participation. Herring spends less time on Butler, but his boldness in taking on her ideas and highlighting how dependent they are on de Beauvoir’s questionable reasoning is admirable. In the secular academic sphere, challenging Butler is highly taboo ,as if she is beyond questioning; her theories are enshrined as secular dogma. To be offered another take—any alternative take—is refreshing.
Chapter two takes a bit of a pivot. Here, Herring makes a truly original contribution to the realm of academic scholarship, particularly in the sections about Spenser. He claims, for instance, that Spenser’s influence on Lewis’s work is underexplored because of the difficulty of reading Spenser, which will become apparent to anyone who makes it through this chapter. It is not an essential read for understanding the rest of the book and will mostly appeal to scholars already familiar with the material.
The third chapter builds on the foundation set in the first: it is mainly an exploration of gender in Lewis’s Space Trilogy, or as Herring refers to it, the “Ransom Trilogy.” The Space Trilogy is one of the strangest bodies of literature one can read by Lewis, or possibly by anyone; it is a far cry from Narnia. The final novel culminates in a gory scene that was tailor-made for you—if you are a radical animal rights activist who also hates pretentious academics. However, it contains some of Lewis’s most interesting critiques of modernism and its perceived mission to distort reality and replace it with ideology.
Herring begins the chapter by bringing in one of Lewis’s works of cultural commentary from the same period, proposing that the author’s understanding of gender in his fiction functions in the same way as his conception of “the Tao”—or his reification of morality—in The Abolition of Man: “The Tao is made up of universal principles and moral laws that each culture recognizes and then contextualizes; rather than being culturally constructed, morality is itself part of the fabric of reality.” Herring effectively presents the Space Trilogy as exemplifying the degrading effects of rebellion against these limits, by efforts to transcend morality, gender, or mortality. Herring writes: “In seeking ultimate freedom, Lewis contends, it is entirely possible that humanity could free itself from the very limitations that define it.”
Chapters four and five explore the complex and pervasive references to gender throughout Lewis’s most famous series: The Chronicles of Narnia. These chapters are incredibly illuminating even for those of us who consider ourselves familiar with this series. Here, Herring presents Lewis’s views on gender as less concerned with sex than with symbiosis: how humans might best thrive in community. Each of the siblings, two male and two female, is given a gift and role that promote creaturely flourishing in the realm they rule. Herring argues that Lewis presents reality as a creation that is to be submitted to, even by its creator. Aslan works within the frameworks of time and human choice in Narnia, just as Christ submitted to natural laws and the human execution of his own crucifixion. Herring’s keen eye for detail and understanding of Lewis’s theological and teleological beliefs add depth and richness to his exposition of the world beyond the wardrobe.
Herring’s great accomplishment in this book is that he has done so many specific things. But this is also the book’s greatest weakness. Herring gives a critique of radical feminist theory, an exposition of the influences of Spenser and Milton, literary analysis of some of Lewis’s most interesting novels, and an invitation to Christians to reject the binary of either egalitarianism or complementarianism in favor of a more balanced and positive view of gender differences. However, as with Lewis’s Space Trilogy, the book lacks a cohesive structure, which could easily be improved upon. It would also be richer if he teased out some of the themes, such as Christian views of marriage and secular views of the transgender movement, a little more.
My main criticism of Herring’s approach, however, is that he has not made this book more accessible to the average reader. It would have been helpful, for instance, for him to give basic plot summaries of Narnia and the Space Trilogy That is not to say that the average reader is incapable of understanding this book; it will, however, take some preliminary work if one is to fully appreciate Herring’s analyses throughout. My recommendation would be for interested readers to tackle one or both of these series and then approach this book. For readers already familiar with Lewis’s works, Herring’s review is incredibly thought-provoking and would serve well as a reading companion, either for personal edification or in the graduate seminar or college lecture hall.
Overall, what Herring has given us is not only an analysis of C. S. Lewis’s depictions of gender, but an exposition of a Lewisian conception of the real. Lewis’s view, as Herring explains, is that reality is a given entity that has limits. It is not a human construction. As a theist, Lewis saw reality as a creation given by a Creator who has designed this gift to be used in certain ways according to certain laws. The mission, for creatures, is to accept this gift and seek to understand its exciting and varied possibilities in the realm of its limitations. This, Herring notes, is not a rigid living-out of preordained roles, but a creative endeavor marked by enjoyment and even ecstasy when combined with a right view of the created order. In Herring’s telling, Lewis gives a vision of collaborative leadership shared by men and women and the beauty of symbiotic communal life over prideful self-assertion. It is by rejecting this balance, by rebelling against the created order—against reality and its limits—that humans find themselves in the most dangerous self-imposed prisons of suffering.
In his autobiography, C. S. Lewis claimed that, long before he converted to Christianity, his imagination was “baptized” by entering the mystical dreamworld of George MacDonald’s Phantastes. This is the experience Lewis attempts to impart to his reader time and time again in all of his works, believing that the ultimate human experience on earth is found in an evocation of the unquenchable longing for the real. To become a Lewis disciple is, to some extent, to surrender to mysticism. This is one reason his work is not widely read in secular academic spheres these days. But for those of us who tire of the endlessly predictable squabbling between sacred and secular, right and left—particularly those who had our imaginations baptized by Lewis—Herring offers a refreshing break from the mundane, a sort of punk rock alternative to gender orthodoxy. He reminds us again that, even as Lewis championed tradition and order, he refused to be conventional.