A Goodreads user asked:

Was it just me or was this book racist?

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9 years ago
6 answers

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Robert Williams Brown in this case represented dirty from sin. We are taking a book that implied no race and placing the issues of the present on it, which is unfair

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Bre Teschendorf I think brown in this sense represents "dark" as is represented by evil, as opposed to literally having brown skin. I hope anyway! I also had to chew on it a bit, wondering if it was meant as an example of a specific cultural group. But I really don't think that can be so, as there is no other cultural reference that might imply it is pointing a finger.

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Eric C 1965 I am reading it now, and I will admit, I thought the same thing when I read about the brown girl. It is definitely hard to imagine what he should have used instead that would have been better. I think this is an example of a term being used "out of it's time". That is, like Twain's use of the "N-word" in Huck Finn and Tom Sawyer, in today's society, that word is racist and our society enjoys the prideful position of judging our ancestors as racists because it makes us feel better about ourselves. From a CS Lewis website I found this:
"The term “brown girls” may sound racist to our modern ears. However, as Lewis explains in “Early Prose Joy,” the idea for the brown girls came from William Morris’s book The Well at the World’s End, which featured the romantic allure of suntanned country maidens."

Perhaps when we view it more as stumbling onto a nude beach where a women is sunbathing, thus turning tan, it will seem more palatable.

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Palesa Mbali

This answer contains spoilers… (view spoiler)

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Marysia Kosowski Not in my opinion or understanding of the symbols. It's merely unfortunate that, for a modern audience (especially in an American-centric worldview but not necessarily in other countries where they might read "brown" a different way appropriate to their culture), we conflate literal colors with skin tone and race. The brown girls do not represent race or skin color. My understanding is that they represent the common man in all his ignorance and sin, and specifically in his aspect of giving in to carnal desire.

Theologically, God made men from earth ("you were made from dust and to dust you shall return"), ergo, the color "brown" evokes the earth itself, crude matter, the animal nature of mankind above which spiritual man must elevate himself. The colors we use to describe people's skin tone are only coincidence (and an unfortunate one, given how much racial prejudice exists in the world).

(Random aside: if anyone in the room is thinking "men made from dirt--what a crock of lies!"--it's interesting to note that the science checks out; humans are made of carbon, after all. Before knowing anything about science, primitive man was telling stories that expressed symbolic truths about our universe. I find this fascinating about world religions.)

Back to the brown girls. This book is a theological allegory. It is, by the very definition of the genre, a universal book meant for everyone--or at least, those who are interested in this kind of literature. I don't believe Lewis intended this to be read in a racial context, nor even read like a literal story where the characters represent what they are on the page. Every single detail in here is a symbol for something else.

Verdict: C.S. Lewis not racist, at least not in this book.

Look, I know it's important to address problematic content in books, more so for modern writers than classic authors who may not have been aware of the prejudices of their times. I'm a liberal person. I champion own voices and diverse books. I love reading books by minority writers, especially in fantasy, my favorite genre. But we have got to stop critiquing every book, every movie, every TV show and work of media ever created, under the lens of modern American critical race theory. It's exhausting. It's a losing battle, as every author, no matter how well-intentioned, might sooner or later find themselves "called out" (wrongly, it often seems to me) for "racist" content in their books (see Amelie Zhao). There is a big difference between "author tried, but didn't quite get it right," "author lived in the 1800s," and "author is a flaming racist deserving of criticism."

Pretty soon the fear of public censorship will be so great that few authors will be brave enough to write creative, authentic stories. Everyone will be too busy trying to censor themselves lest their story come across as offensive to somebody, as it inevitably will.

Not every story even tackles race as a theme, nor should the author be expected to. How's that for an unorthodox opinion? ;) I see many of today's young readers include labels in their review about what kinds of "rep" a book has. >.< Pardon my French, but good God, what a dreary criterion for evaluating fiction. Sure, I'm happy to see representation, but that's not why I read.

This book is too broad in scope and too obscure in terms of its symbols to be taken literally.

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