I was wondering the other day(view spoiler)[ and lets not forget the time of year at the moment I've doubtless been sleeping on a full stomach, and my brain over fuelled with rich foods (view spoiler)[ Otherwise I'm really at a loss with that dream of mine in which a kitten transform into a baby girl with a lick of red hair on her head who grew rapidly and could soon talk with dreamlike wisdom (view spoiler)[ as indeed you'd expect for a red headed girl who had started off life as a kitten(view spoiler)[ or indeed a dream (hide spoiler)] (hide spoiler)] (hide spoiler)] (hide spoiler)](view spoiler)[ either that or my daily walks are leading me through some odd places (hide spoiler)] how far Lewis's sexuality determined his famously maladroit handling of the female element to his story telling.

The lion merely supplants the witch, they find no accommodation together, there is no fruitful synthesis. Rather his rejection of her and general refusal to deal with her, leaves no where for her to go than a frigid eternal winter. Hell hath no fury... as we say when we can remember too(view spoiler)[ although looking at that it seems very much the view of somebody who had spent too long in the exclusive company of middle English poetry (hide spoiler)]. Yet all this is thwarted desire I say, suspecting that she wished to sit upon his back and sink her face in to the tawny mane and no doubt get thoroughly licked by this big cat(view spoiler)[ too much Angela Carter on the brain (hide spoiler)]. I've heard somewhere that Lewis put a certain amount of effort into being unattractive, he was somewhat smelly and dirty even by the standards of his own (view spoiler)[ pre domestic shower (hide spoiler)] times and distinctly fixated on his own and other people's mothers(view spoiler)[ in particular the mother of a boyfriend(view spoiler)[ ie a friend who was also a young man(view spoiler)[ any romance was no doubt strictly Platonic (hide spoiler)] (hide spoiler)] Jane Moore (hide spoiler)].

Women in these books who in other book might be considered of an age, position, and intelligence to be love interests are here unambiguously witches. Threatening! Bizarrely malevolent! Otherwise they are safely pre-pubescent, until we get to Susan who gets to die before she becomes a witch.

Read all these separately but for convenience let's pretend I had a boxed edition.

Enjoyed these as a child, particularly the 1st one with the wood between worlds. Despite being not introduced to religion until about the age of five at school I don't recall the Christian allegory bothering me.

I know the story order of the books is not the publication order, I'm mildly curious that we move from Christian world view with Lion-God Aslan creating the world, singing it in to being (view spoiler)[ presumably borrowing the idea from Tolkien, inbetween spilling beer on himself and smoking down the pub (hide spoiler)] in the beginning to Platonism at the end: the God created world is not the real one but only a smaller imitation, the real world accessible only via death is apparently bigger and better, so much for God as blind matchmaker he is out done in his limited creative capacity (view spoiler)[ not to mention that idiot pond in the voyage of the dawn Treader whose waters turn anything into gold, wouldn't that gild and kill all the plants growing around it, and if eventually discovered would presumably crash any gold based economy (hide spoiler)] by an apparently eternal uncreated universe.

Anyway a bit odd even before one gets to the apparent absence of female centaurs(view spoiler)[ perhaps friendly mares help the population to continue (hide spoiler)] or dwarfs(view spoiler)[ I probably don't want to know (hide spoiler)]. There you go, that's children's books for you, too many unresolved sexual problems (view spoiler)[ perhaps Angela Carter is the answer? (hide spoiler)].