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The Skeleton in the Wardrobe: C.S. Lewis's Fantasies: A Phenomenological Study
- GenresLiterary Criticism
298 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 1991
About the author
David Holbrook
120 books6 followersDavid Holbrook was an English writer, poet and academic. From 1989 he was Emeritus Fellow of Downing College, Cambridge.
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Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
February 25, 2017
I read the Narnia books with great delight as a child. Escaping to a better world; living a meaningful life; mocking the pretty girls; defeating death – oh, these things spoke to me. I read them as a teenager with less delight; my tolerance for gender essentialism and religious prejudice was fading, my skepticism with Christianity was growing. I read them in my 20s and then never again. The explicit racism in The Horse and his Boy and the delight in the humiliation of the defeated enemy was off-putting. The mockery of atheists and vegetarians (viz, me), and the celebration of bullying pretty much ended any lingering affection I might have had. Didn’t think much about them again until I read Neil Gaiman’s wonderful, loving, devastating short story, The Problem of Susan. And then I thought quite a bit about Narnia and the more I thought about Narnia, the less I liked it.
The Skeleton in the Wardrobe grew out of Holbrook’s exploration of why the Narnia books were creeping him out. It is s explicitly a psychological exploration in very Freudian terms. Holbrook locates Narnia’s inspiration in the death of Lewis’s mother when he was very young; the bullying he received at boarding school; his contempt for women (he strongly resisted opening Oxford more broadly to women); and his sexual hang ups.
There are things in this book that made me roll my eyes. But there were also some diamond sharp criticisms of the text. For example, his exploration of The Problem of Susan is brilliant. I hadn't even thought about the timing of the revelation that Susan was not welcome in Narnia. After the “tremendous last battle, the resurrection of the children as kings and queens, and their tasting of the fruit of Paradise," (200), we make time for these kings and queens to attack Susan for growing up and making different decisions than them. He also marches through all the celebrations of bullying our heroes do between the loving paws of Aslan.
Holbrook was a leftist academic who, who dated George Orwell’s housekeeper. He was on the beaches at D-Day. He was an education reformer who wanted to teach everyone, not just the best and the brightest. He wanted to make the world a better place. Lewis mocked educational reforms and celebrated military enthusiasm.* Not surprising Holbrook didn’t like him.
A good read.
* Holbrook quotes a passage in a talk Lewis gave during the war where he said:
“What I cannot understand is this sort of half-pacifism you get nowadays which gives people the idea that though you have got to fight, you ought to do it with a long face as if you were ashamed of it. It is that feeling which robs los of magnificent young Christians in the Services of something that they have a right to, something which is the natural accompaniment of war – a kind of gaiety and wholeheartedness.” (280, quoting Broadcast Talks). I agree with Holbrook. “It is hardly possible to endorse this, unless one has subjected the ‘enemy’ to ‘contemptuous devaluation.’ His morality is very much one of giving a dog a bad name and then hanging him.” (280).
The Skeleton in the Wardrobe grew out of Holbrook’s exploration of why the Narnia books were creeping him out. It is s explicitly a psychological exploration in very Freudian terms. Holbrook locates Narnia’s inspiration in the death of Lewis’s mother when he was very young; the bullying he received at boarding school; his contempt for women (he strongly resisted opening Oxford more broadly to women); and his sexual hang ups.
There are things in this book that made me roll my eyes. But there were also some diamond sharp criticisms of the text. For example, his exploration of The Problem of Susan is brilliant. I hadn't even thought about the timing of the revelation that Susan was not welcome in Narnia. After the “tremendous last battle, the resurrection of the children as kings and queens, and their tasting of the fruit of Paradise," (200), we make time for these kings and queens to attack Susan for growing up and making different decisions than them. He also marches through all the celebrations of bullying our heroes do between the loving paws of Aslan.
Holbrook was a leftist academic who, who dated George Orwell’s housekeeper. He was on the beaches at D-Day. He was an education reformer who wanted to teach everyone, not just the best and the brightest. He wanted to make the world a better place. Lewis mocked educational reforms and celebrated military enthusiasm.* Not surprising Holbrook didn’t like him.
A good read.
* Holbrook quotes a passage in a talk Lewis gave during the war where he said:
“What I cannot understand is this sort of half-pacifism you get nowadays which gives people the idea that though you have got to fight, you ought to do it with a long face as if you were ashamed of it. It is that feeling which robs los of magnificent young Christians in the Services of something that they have a right to, something which is the natural accompaniment of war – a kind of gaiety and wholeheartedness.” (280, quoting Broadcast Talks). I agree with Holbrook. “It is hardly possible to endorse this, unless one has subjected the ‘enemy’ to ‘contemptuous devaluation.’ His morality is very much one of giving a dog a bad name and then hanging him.” (280).
November 28, 2012
This was such a ridiculous piece of trash written by a pompous academic who was so full of himself. In his introduction he claims that his friends discouraged him from writing the book because it might damage C.S. Lewis' reputation. They probably asked him not to write it because they knew he would make a fool of himself. He took so many passages out of context in order to prove points that were completely invalid. One that sticks in my mind is when he quotes Professor Kirke's criticism on contemporary (to the book) British education. Holbrook stops his quote of Lewis' text just before Kirke's line about how British schools no longer teach logic, and then Holbrook complains that the professor is in favor of an education that is not logical. Seriously, anyone who knows the book well enough to know the very next line in the book, would also know that Holbrook is full of you-know-what.
His assessment of Lewis' book is frankly shoddy scholarship, and yet his arrogant and pompous attitude comes across immediately in the text. Even as a nihilist, I would be much happier seeing truly intellectual writing like that Lewis produced, instead of Holbrook's ridiculousness.
His assessment of Lewis' book is frankly shoddy scholarship, and yet his arrogant and pompous attitude comes across immediately in the text. Even as a nihilist, I would be much happier seeing truly intellectual writing like that Lewis produced, instead of Holbrook's ridiculousness.
June 13, 2008
This author has serious problems with their sexuality. They see every image in the Narnia series as some sort of sexual perversion on the part of CS Lewis. For example, when Aslan tells Peter to "clean his sword," in the Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, this author believes it to be a euphemism for cleaning yourself off after masturbating. I gave it an open read, but the author stretches too much. Stay away from this book.
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews