I’ve been thinking a lot lately about treasured childhood reads that lose their luster for us as adults, for whatever reason. I’ve written about this a little before. More recently I’ve ruminated upon books that seemed harmless or innocuous enough when I read them as a kid but that I recognize are very problematic as an adult reader.

For me specifically, this is about the Narnia books, which I loved so much as a child but have a very contentious relationship with as an adult. I loved the PBS television adaptations that my family recorded to VHS tapes, and I loved the whole series of books, though I held most of my fondness for the first two or three. I still remember how smart and awed I felt when I discovered that the professor from The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe was the same person who had all those adventures in The Magician’s Nephew.

I’m not a religious person, so when someone told me that the Narnia books were a Christian allegory, I was shocked and didn’t believe it at first. I quickly learned it was true, of course, and it didn’t bother me a whole lot, really, once I got over my initial surprise. (I think I was around 12 years old, maybe younger.) The books functioned really well for me just as stories, and I didn’t care so much that they were allegories for something I didn’t believe in. Biblical stories are interesting too, after all, and it was a sort of fun treasure hunt for me to take my then-limited knowledge of the Bible and try to discover the parallels in the Narnia books. As a kid, I didn’t feel like Lewis was preaching to me.

I still feel that way about most of the books. I decided to re-read them all a few years later, probably when I was in my late teens or early twenties. I remember being fine with them all, still quite enchanted by most of them, until I got to the very last book, The Last Battle. Here, the Pevensie children – excepting Susan – all die in a train accident (something I found very unjust as a child and didn’t understand until I was older – I still have big problems with it, but for different reasons). Susan isn’t on the train, which is lucky for her, until we consider the fact that Lewis writes that Susan doesn’t get to go to Aslan’s Narnia like her siblings did when they died. Looking at this as a Christian allegory, as it clearly is, this means Susan doesn’t make it to heaven – not alongside her siblings in the train accident (which can be seen as a good thing), but also not when her death eventually comes in whatever form it takes (unless she undergoes a major personality change, at least).

And why doesn’t Susan go to heaven? According to Peter: “My sister Susan is no longer a friend of Narnia.” According to Jill: “She’s interested in nothing nowadays except nylons and lipstick and invitations. She always was a jolly sight too keen on being grown up.” And Polly says: “I wish she would grow up. She wasted all her school time wanting to be the age she is now, and she’ll waste all the rest of her life trying to stay that age.” (Pages 134-135 in my versions)

Many people, including JK Rowling, have extrapolated these lines to mean that Susan became interested in sex and therefore couldn’t be religious, much less let into heaven. Others believe that they more broadly mean Susan grew up (of which sex is a part), which is interesting considering that Lewis chose to kill off the most faithful of his characters – Lucy – before she had a chance to grow up. In any case, the second line is quite clearly a sexist critique, attacking Susan for doing things that a lot of adult women do.

How much do the ideas contained within The Last Battle affect my overall feelings about the series? (And here I mean not only that Susan is excluded from paradise, but also that Lewis had to kill off the entire Pevensie family to prove his point in the first place.) Is it possible to love a story with such deeply problematic ideologies, ones that contradict our own ideologies as adults? More to the point, should a childhood favorite still be loved despite problems like these? Is reconciliation possible – or even desired?

This is something librarians have been grappling with for a long time. The Little House on the Prairie books continue to be widely loved by (mostly white) children, despite their fundamental problems with their depiction of Native Americans. Public libraries still carry these books, of course, and librarians know when to recommend them to the right readers. Part of being a public librarian is carrying out these tasks. Fellow librarian Angie Manfredi attempts to mitigate some of the issues with the books by also recommending The Birchbark House at the same time a patron asks for the Little House books – it’s good reader’s advisory and brings a wider audience to a book that deserves it. 

But this is a professional task, and it doesn’t answer the question of how to personally approach books we may have once loved. Can we love them while recognizing their problems at the same time; should we even try? The answer will vary from person to person, but I don’t think I’d be wrong in saying that it’s tough for a lot of adults to completely abandon a book that made them feel so excited and enchanted, that helped awaken them to the possibilities of the written word at such a young age. (And of course, not all problematic books are equivalent in their level of awfulness.)

As for myself, I still love the way the Narnia stories made me feel as a child, but I don’t know if I’ll ever read them again. It would be difficult to read about Susan’s adventures as a queen knowing that Lewis chose to use her in the way he did, knowing what he tried to say about women who choose such things in his books for children. The movies are a little easier – a lot of spectacle, over more quickly, simpler not to dwell on any greater meaning there. But the books? They’ll never be the same.

For a lovely epilogue to Susan’s story that may serve as a balm to other readers like me, check out this tumblr post.