People who knew C.S. Lewis personally often commented that, along with his breadth of knowledge and ability, he was deeply personable. Similar sentiments have been shared about Dr. Monika Hilder. Along with being a recognized Lewis scholar, Monika exemplifies true friendship and is a life-giving presence. Along with her trilogy of scholarly books that engage deeply with the claim that Lewis was sexist (Hilder says he most certainly was not), Monika has contributed to numerous books (perhaps most pertinent to our theme, Women and C.S Lewis), journals, and has lectured internationally alongside such bright lights as Michael Ward, Malcolm Guite, and Diana Pavlac Glyer, (to name but a few), and is a beloved professor. Perhaps even more importantly, Hilder lives out a unique beauty of actually dwelling in community. She is also a mean cook and exemplifies true hospitality. What follows is a conversation that took place with Monika, Joy, and me in her living-room. (For those listening, you will even hear the gentle clank, buzz, and hum background noises emanating from the rest of the family.)
Radix: It is so lovely to be able to sit in your living room and do this. This is a real treat.
MH: Face-to-face certainly has its benefits. It’s so good to have you here.
Radix: One of the many things that my sister Joy and I value about you is that while you are a respected Lewis scholar who has various books and has lectured in a variety of places – you have the academic thing pretty well nailed down – you are also an honest-to-goodness person too.
MH: [laughs]
Radix: But seriously. You proudly proclaim that you are a wife and a mother of kids that you are friends with, that you like to cook, and that you interact in community. In other words, you are a real human being. And I don’t know how common that is for an academic. So it makes this conversation all the more valuable.
MH: Oh, thank you. I think you are absolutely right about our culture, though. So many people identify their work with their life. And, you know, you hear from those people, when they retire, that they don’t really know who they are or what they should be doing. There are a number of things at play in that, but part of it is a reductionism of the whole human being to success as it’s defined by a materialistic culture. And Lewis was so not that. He was one of the most brilliant thinkers and artists of the twentieth century, and Lewis does not do that. He really is a whole human being, and that’s why whatever he did was so amazing because he was not doing it for the accolades. In fact, his career suffered as a result of doing what he felt he was called to. So he never got the kind of recognition in Oxford that people think he ought to have had. It wasn’t until 1954 that he was made the Chair in Medieval and Renaissance English at Cambridge. But, this thing about being a whole human being that is rooted in community, this is what makes us really increasingly fully human, and the other is a dangerous way to go.
Lewis always emphasized that the individual human soul is of infinite value, against which all of culture and any cultural achievement is next to nothing. And I’ll read you a portion from this very famous sermon, from “The Weight of Glory,” which he preached during World War II.
The load, or weight, or burden of my neighbour’s glory should be laid daily on my back, a load so heavy that only humility can carry it, and the backs of the proud will be broken. It is a serious thing to live in a society of possible gods and goddesses, to remember that the dullest and most uninteresting person you talk to may one day be a creature which, if you saw it now, you would be strongly tempted to worship, or else a horror and a corruption such as you now meet, if at all, only in a nightmare. All day long we are, in some degree, helping each other to one or other of these destinations. It is in the light of these overwhelming possibilities, it is with the awe and the circumspection proper to them, that we should conduct all our dealings with one another; all friendships, all loves, all play, all politics. There are no ordinary people. You have never talked to a mere mortal. Nations, cultures, arts, civilization – these are mortal, and their life is to ours as the life of a gnat. But it is immortals whom we joke with, work with, marry, snub, and exploit – immortal horrors or everlasting splendours.
And he ends that sermon like this:
Next to the Blessed Sacrament itself, your neighbour is the holiest object presented to your senses. If he is your Christian neighbor he is holy in almost the same way, for in him also Christ vere latitat – the glorifier and the glorified, Glory Himself, is truly hidden.[i]
Radix: It’s one of those quotes that give you shivers right down your spine.
MH: Absolutely. We can’t read it enough. And I think this was one of the reasons why he had such a conviction, as Chris Mitchell has commented on, to have this evangelistic impulse and vision that he did; and it included being perfectly willing to teach many more students for far less pay at Oxford.
Radix: Obviously you’re very interested in Lewis, but what got you really interested?
MH: I found Lewis when I was a teenager and someone told me that he wrote Mere Christianity, and that I should read it. And wanting to read wise things about Christianity, I did. Then I found out, oh my goodness, he’s written fairy tales. Well, I loved this. So, yeah, I basically looked for everything I could find that Lewis wrote. When I was fourteen, I was confirmed into the Lutheran church. And when I started reading Mere Christianity, I thought, wow, this is like confirmation (catechism) class, but way better. So I thought that this was someone to really pay attention to. He was a true believer; he wasn’t just conforming to the culture or was influenced by liberal theologians. He is solid. He is orthodox.
Lewis also helped me because I wanted to study English and be a writer; he helped me think and write clearly. Over the years I have come to trust him more than most authors because he is just so sound in his thinking. Plus, he always challenges, encourages, and nourishes me.
Radix: I like that he challenges and encourages. Often we are encouraged by someone, but not necessarily challenged, and vice versa. To have both is special.
MH: It is. And Lewis says that we often cannot trust ourselves. Whether Christian or otherwise, we need to recognize that we are dealing with a fallen nature, right? We also have to deal with our hubris. But Lewis also talks to us with a good deal of compassion, too.
Radix: What can you tell us about the role that the feminine played in the life and thought of C.S. Lewis, both the ideas about or actual women themselves?
MH: I would say the role of the “feminine,” in terms of gender metaphor, and the qualities that we historically identify with the “feminine,” being humility, receptivity, and that curious one passivity – I mean, he totally identifies with that as a person. Women played a key role in Lewis’ life. Just to start, we could look at his mother, with her degree in mathematics. I think Lewis would have inherited some of his acute logic from his mother. We could also look at the “feminine nature” of his father, who was soft and caring, but we aren’t talking about his father.
Radix: [Laughter]
MH: And then there are the other women in his life: Janie King Moore, mother of Paddy Moore, who died in WW I; along with Mrs. Moore’s daughter, Maureen Moore, who was in the same house. Then there were all the younger female evacuees that were invited to live in the household for a time. He had female students and female colleagues, and of course his brilliant wife Joy. Then there were people like Dorothy Sayers and his many female correspondents. I mean, the idea that Lewis didn’t know anything about women? Well, I guess that some people just don’t read. And I am trying to be kind! So of course he was aware of the socio-political dynamics of being a female. He talks about this kind of thing in his writing. In general, he is annoyed with males who talk down to women. Actually, in a moment of cheek in one of his letters, he comments that maybe the Statue of Liberty is turning her back on America because of the sexism! So, yes, he is incredibly aware of all that. He is aware of how the sinful human condition can tend to abuse. And he is concerned about abuse within family and gender relations.
To get away from the literal and towards the metaphorical, I want to quote the phrase that the Dorothy Sayers scholar Barbara Reynolds used, “theological feminism.” It’s a brilliant phrase, and I think that Lewis understands and actually identifies with the “feminine.” Now, we have to put “feminine” in quotations, just as we do with “masculine,” because all human beings have gendered human characteristics. Lewis says that the gender metaphor is the most common kind of imagery used in Scripture to depict the relationship between the divine and the human. And let’s not forget the gender imagery in other traditions: in Greek, the soul is considered “feminine”; reason is depicted as the goddess Athena. Really, gender metaphor has been used throughout the centuries. It’s pervasive.
Let’s also keep in mind that Nietzsche despised Christianity because it was “feminine.” To speak of Wordsworth, he applauded “feminine softness,” saying that it was absolutely intrinsic to being an ethical human being. As Wordsworth says in The Prelude of the characteristics of the ethical human being:
. . . he whose soul hath risen
Up to the height of feeling intellect
Shall want no humbler tenderness; his heart
Be tender as a nursing mother’s heart;
Of female softness shall his life be full,
Of humble cares and delicate desires,
Mild interests and gentlest sympathies. (bk.14, lines 225-31)
The truth is that people in times past had no trouble swapping “he” and “she” in gender metaphors. But now, in the twenty-first century, we have actually become more literally minded. Maybe that is because the twentieth century had been a century of wars, and we’ve had less time to think. Just a thought. Add to that the extensive focus on Marxist power relations and identity politics that we are currently dealing with. All of this makes it difficult for contemporary people to grasp what people have actually thought throughout the centuries, and to be able to actually think metaphorically. It’s really very sad.
Sometimes it’s hilarious too. We think we are so ahead in our time. You know, I think it’s absolutely lovely and most noteworthy that Lewis, back then, would call himself “the old woman of Oxford.” Elsewhere too he applauds the “old maid” as superior to others. So he is using the sexist language of the time, and putting himself in that camp of those who are so maligned. We ought to pay attention to that.
Radix: Part of your scholarly work, especially the books Surprised by the Feminine: A Rereading of C.S. Lewis and Gender, The Gender Dance: Ironic Subversion in C.S. Lewis’s Cosmic Trilogy, and The Feminine Ethos in C.S. Lewis’s Chronicles of Narnia, focuses on the two Western heroic models. Can you talk about that a bit?
MH: Throughout Western history, we have had two heroic paradigms: the classical, meaning the Greco-Roman, and the spiritual, which could also be called the biblical. I’ll add here that even though we call them Western, they are really global. So the classical virtues include self-reliance, pride, aggression, conquest, autonomy, and even hatred. This is why – and I am paraphrasing the philosopher Alasdair MacIntyre – if Jesus were to have walked down the streets of ancient Athens, the Greeks would have said, “Uh, who is this loser?” Jesus did not embody the classical virtues. With biblical heroism, we have the opposite qualities of the classical: we have humility, care, interdependence, and love.
Milton actually created the best classical hero, who demonstrates the contrast perfectly; he was called Satan. And when we look at that classical hero we can ask ourselves, do we like what we see? Do we like the pride or the hatred? Through Milton’s work we can see that motivation is terribly important. We are brought to the important question: are we motived by pride or by love? I mean, if you read Lewis’s book A Preface to Paradise Lost, he brilliantly describes the classical mindset, which Milton clearly depicts in the satanic figure.
Essentially Lewis is saying that we are cultural chauvinists to the extent that we have bought into – hook, line, and sinker, and continue to uphold – self-reliance and the other classical virtues. And, let’s think about it: culturally we do applaud the Superman, to borrow Nietzsche’s phrase. And of course he wasn’t the first one to come up with that. So Lewis is telling us that we need to really investigate and examine our motives the best we can. And then we need to repent. We need to begin the journey to healing and we need to become spiritual heroes. So, it’s super important to recognize that classical heroism is in fact misogynistic, not only theoretically, but also practically. And as I’ve said before, it’s not Lewis who is sexist, it’s us.
Speaking of sexist, I’ve always thought of Lewis as a kind of “housewife.”
Radix: [uproarious laughter] And what a curse word that is today, right? How terrible!
MH: I know. I’ve always found it so hilarious that people say that housewives, especially if they are mothers, are passive! Like, wow, who knew taking care of a house or an apartment, having a child, maybe more, means you do nothing all day long. Wow. How sexist and misogynistic! We could say more things, couldn’t we? Anyway, I’ve always thought of Lewis as a kind of housewife when one considers the level of domestic chores that he was responsible for. Amazing. And yet he managed to achieve so much despite being constantly interrupted. From the time of his boarding school and how that system worked, to living with Mrs. Moore. I think that’s probably one of the reasons that he so highly esteemed the housewife, many of whom also held down paying jobs outside the home. He knew all about it. The point is that he knew what it was to be a full human being, and to be a member of the Body of Christ; that’s why I think his writing is so powerful. But just to get back to women, I think in terms of how he compared them to others is fascinating. He compares women who work both inside and outside the home to soldiers. Cleaning women are like poets. Pregnant women are like authors. Housewives are like college professors because their work is never-ending. So it’s not just that he identifies himself with the “feminine,” he applauds women! Like, how could people miss this? Honestly, I think that if people would read Lewis more carefully I would never have had to write the books I have written. I could have written other books – which I still have to. But, my goodness.
Radix: I appreciate your books! Maybe a personal question, but what often surprises you about fellow Lewis scholars? What are some persistent blind spots that you notice?
MH: I am surprised by scholars who are Christian who do not seem to notice when their frame of reference is not biblical. It’s like saying, Jesus plus the latest idea that we think will help save the world. It’s hubris, really. And we can see it when people talk about the past as if it is the thing that is causing all of our problems today. Blatantly not realizing that the same thing will be said of us by future generations. For me this is connected a good deal to the current Marxist-based paradigms which are committed to thinking only in terms of power relations. Everything is about power.
I often find that people are easily tripped up by the Marxist patterns that they expect to find. So they don’t read without prejudice, and then they see what they expect – which is often nasty. The proper way to read, and many academics go the wrong way, is to go to the primary texts first. Submit yourself to what the author is saying. You have to if you are to authentically judge something. The same goes for reading Marxist writers, too. For instance, the Marxist educator Paulo Freire is one of my favorite authors. But if I were to go, “Oh my goodness, he is a Marxist so I won’t read him,” I would have missed some truly wonderful ideas. I think we have to get over ourselves and be honest about our paradigms and where they come from. As for Marx, he does ask some very good questions, and I appreciate them. I just find his answers to be problematic.
I’ll just say one more thing though about the importance of reading through the lens of Marxism and other power lenses. We often speak out of our pain and personal hurt. So, while I come from a very privileged place because all the men in my life – my father and my husband, my brother, my son, you know, the primary ones – they’ve always totally supported me and seen me as a whole human being. I don’t come from that place of hurt. But others do. There are those who have been hurt by sexist males. We need to have listening ears for that. And be agents of healing
Radix: I really appreciate that you mentioned listening. This is so important because it means we are turning to the other person. And that can be healing. Also, when we listen there is the risk that we might change our mind. So yeah, deep listening has the potential for creating a healing space. But finding a place of harrowingly scary intimacy can be especially difficult.
MH: There is the additional benefit too: that when we are listening to those we disagree with we are challenged. And being challenged isn’t bad. So we need to be willing to be challenged. Also, we need to be discerning. There is the very real voice of the Accuser; for that we need to use the full armor of God.
Radix: Your books on Lewis and feminism are full of examples of misreading done by “experts.” Can you give us some pertinent examples?
MH: Okay, in The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, people will often point out the sexist language: it’s Mrs. Beaver who is cooking dinner – how terrible. Didn’t they notice that Aslan, who is male, also made a meal too, and provided a feast, in fact? Critics will snipe at the so-called silliness of Mrs. Beaver because she is loathe to leave the sewing machine behind when they are forced to flee. But didn’t they notice that it is the same Mrs. Beaver who is clearly the more calm and logical one when compared to Mr. Beaver? Plus, I suspect that no one would have complained if she had wanted to save her smartphone! The fact is that the sewing machine is a very important tool. But many think it merely “domestic.” That’s pretty sexist. Shouldn’t we remember that there is a long tradition of male tailors? Another favorite example of mine is of Margaret Dimble from That Hideous Strength. Okay, so if we look at her husband, Dr. Cecil Dimble, we see that he has the besetting sin of many academics in that he is given to abstract thinking; in other words, he can’t see the whole picture. But Mrs. Dimble does, and she sees the whole picture historically and wholistically. In addition, she is also a maternal figure. So not only does she see the whole picture, unlike her husband, but she exemplifies true motherhood, which is the nurturing of others. And she is a nurturing presence to all the others.
Lewis, George MacDonald, Charles Williams, not to mention Milton and Wordsworth, along with many others, will all praise the nature of “female softness.” That, along with passivity, which is also associated with the “feminine.” Do we want a good example? Christ dying on the cross – it’s the ultimate act of passivity. In The Space [or Cosmic] Trilogy, Ransom has to learn to wait upon the celestial powers, to be filled by them. And if that isn’t a psychosexual metaphor. If we look at Lewis’s Till We Have Faces, we could totally regard Psyche as being passive: she submits to the god, among others. Yet she is very active in her choice to do this. She is also part of Orual’s salvation. And if we look at Orual herself, she is the perfect arch-classical hero. She wants to be better than her father, she goes to war, and she is prideful, not patient. However, she comes to the place of being a spiritual hero like Psyche.
Another thing not to miss in this whole discussion is that Lewis is highly critical of how women themselves can buy into and become perpetrators of chauvinism. I mean, anybody can do it, but females can buy into chauvinism by becoming the so-called pretty dolls or the trophy wives. For instance, look at the female character Lasaraleen in The Horse and His Boy. She is foolish because she wants to be a trophy wife. Whereas Aravis chooses freedom: she’s not going to ruin her life by a mere life of fanciness.
This brings me to Susan Pevensie. By the time we get to The Last Battle, in book seven, she’s not there. Why? Because she is back in England and into parties and physical appearance. Now Lewis is not saying, unlike some famous authors, that he doesn’t like sex. That, you know, Susan was sent to hell because she liked nylons and lipstick. Well, surprise, she is not in hell. She is actually in England, and while the weather is probably not Mediterranean Blue, it’s not Hell. The trouble with Susan is that she gets amnesia; she has put her own physical appearance—trying to stay young for a really long time and all that—as the first thing in her life. Is there anything wrong with socializing, or being your own age, and not aging prematurely? Of course not. And there is certainly nothing wrong with sex. There’s lots of sex in Narnia. Only, it’s done tastefully.
And speaking to the other females in Narnia, I mean, there are lots of strong characters. These are strong moral agents: they can fight in war; they can heal others; they can lead; and they can still hit targets even if they are crying. In my opinion, the Chronicles of Narniais teaching children to avoid sexism – and to be fully human. Again, I have to ask myself, what are the Lewis critics reading?
Radix: Do you have any projects that you are currently working on or wrestling with?
MH: Yes I do! It’s called Letters to Annie: A Grandmother’s Dreams of Fairy Tale Princesses, Princes, & Happily Ever After. It’s scheduled to come out in April 2022. It’s kind of a coming-of-age story in which the grandmother figure interacts with her granddaughter on what we love about fairy tales, what we can learn from them, ways that fairy tales can be misread or even dismissed, and how they can help us grow into better and stronger human beings. The book comes out of my years of teaching fairy tale and fantasy stories, including Narnia, as well as being the mother of three grown children.
I kept on wondering how I could write something like this for a general readership. I mean, I have fun writing academic articles and I think that is important work, but it’s a limited readership. One day while I was invigilating the final exam for one of my children’s lit classes, I was just feeling that some of them really had just dismissed fairy tale. Of course, this shouldn’t be. And I thought, “Oh my goodness, Lewis did it with Prayers to Malcolm. I’ll do it with letters from a grandmother to a granddaughter.”
Radix: That sounds lovely, lovely. In a recent commencement speech, you offered the words that Lucy from Narnia hears when she and her friends are in need: “Courage, dear heart.”
MH: Courage to your heart is something that I think the Holy Spirit is saying to us all the time. Covid has brought a kind of collective truth to all of us to some extent. Lewis gave his sermon “Learning in War Time” where he said, “I think it important to try to see the present calamity in a true perspective. The war creates no absolutely new situation: it simply aggravates the permanent human situation so that we can no longer ignore it. Human life has always been lived on the edge of a precipice.”
In God in the Dock he says this:
Imagine a set of people all living in the same building. Half of them think it is a hotel, the other half think it is a prison. Those who think it a hotel might regard it as quite intolerable, and those who thought it was a prison might decide that it was really surprisingly comfortable. So that what seems the ugly doctrine is one that comforts and strengthens you in the end. The people who try to hold an optimistic view of this world would become pessimists: the people who hold a pretty stern view of it become optimistic.[ii]
Now I, personally, always find The Problem of Pain helpful. Some people might think, what’s wrong with you? Are you morbid? And I’m like, no, Lewis is actually dealing with reality. And that helps me better deal with reality. It gives me courage. I really love how Lewis says in the preface to The Problem of Pain, “when pain is to be borne, a little courage helps more than much knowledge, a little human sympathy more than much courage, and the least tincture of the love of God more than all.”[iii] So I think Lewis would say, and has said really, that we must be courageous; because of course the Lord is saying to us, “Courage, dear heart.” So, yeah, we must be courageous, but more than that, I think he’s saying, let’s show some human sympathy, perhaps especially when we disagree with people. And above all, let’s remember that God’s love never fails and that we ought to receive God’s love and show God’s love.
[i] C.S. Lewis, The Weight of Glory (New York: HarperCollins, 2001), 45-46.
[ii] C.S. Lewis, “Answers to Questions on Christianity,” in God in The Dock (Grand Rapids, 1970), 52.
[iii] C.S. Lewis, The Problem of Pain (New York: HarperCollins, 2001), xi-xii.