Narnia vs. Prydain: An Unashamedly Biased View

[lliira]

I love Lloyd Alexander's Prydain books. I could never finish more than the first of C.S. Lewis's Narnia books. So this is somewhat unfair, as it's based on all the Prydain books vs. the first of the Narnia books and what I've read about the rest of them. Oh well! 

 

*In Narnia, there is a magic animal-god thing. He is a lion, strong and beautiful and obviously better-than-you. Kowtowing to him is how you show your goodness. 

*In Prydain, there is an animal-human thing who is part comic relief, part model of loyalty and self-sacrifice. He is dirty, ugly, smelly, and he speaks funny. Good characters are regularly exasperated by him -- but good characters also treat him well, and treat him better the more good they become. 
 

*In Narnia, the children become kings and queens of a magical land and live in perfection. Then it's ripped away from them and they're returned to childhood. In the end, the good guys, who are defined by their allegiance to the pretty and powerful magical creature, are whisked away to heaven, and everyone else can suck it. The End. No adventures possible in the future, except perhaps for Susan, whom we are supposed to scorn.

*In Prydain, Taran and Eilonwy go through horrors, give up a lot (especially Eilonwy), and eventually become the king and queen of a land that's not all that magical any more. They will have to deal with constantly-feuding nobles and a country recently wracked by a horribly destructive magical war. Their mentors sail away to a distant land, leaving them and a few friends to deal with this mess. Eilonwy and Taran know they'll make mistakes, and lots of them, but they're going to work hard and do the best they can, supporting each other. That's the end. It's not really an end.
 

*In Narnia, the person who is the most childlike (Lucy) is the most lauded.

*In Prydain, both Eilonwy and Taran struggle through horrible things and work hard to grow up. Growing up is a necessary and good thing; being childish is associated with selfishness, short-sightedness, arrogance, and black-and-white thinking. 
 

*In Narnia, the witch is bad because she's bad, and her badness is shown in tempting a boy with sweets.

*In Prydain, the witch is bad because she was a powerful sorceress and queen who ruled the land as a tyrant, and whose lands were stripped from her by a worse tyrant who was a man, and who used his sexuality to get what he wanted from her. She tempts a girl with power. The girl rejects the power, which is associated with her childhood, and that is the turning point for the girl becoming a grown-up. That rejection is extremely difficult and heroic, and something that all her friends show boundless admiration toward the young woman for doing. The witch is thoroughly redeemed in the end, but she is never happy and nice and cheerful. It's not that simple.
 

*Narnia is Better Than Earth. The people there are probably better than you, and they certainly lead more interesting lives.

*Prydain is Earth With Magic. There are creepy, strange, and hugely powerful forces who are not people, and they are most definitely not better than people, being amoral at best. But most of the characters are people, with all the strengths and failings of people. Some people in Prydain probably lead more interesting lives than you, but those lives are worse more than they're better -- more dangerous, more horrific, more tragic. Prydain's magic can leave you a soulless corpse, blindly obedient to the person who murdered you and everyone you ever knew.

*In the first Narnia book, there is a boy who is an arrogant jerk. His arrogant jerkishness is shown mostly in being on the wrong side, going after sweets that a witch offers. He comes over to the right side and all is rainbows and lollipops.

*In Prydain, there is an intolerable, arrogant jerk who thinks because he's a prince, he's better than anyone else. This jerk performs what is probably the biggest sacrifice in the whole series -- one of the biggest sacrifices in all of literature. This humbles the hero. The hero realizes that one big reason he couldn't stand this jerk is because this jerk reminded him so much of himself. The other big reason he couldn't stand the jerk is simple romantic jealousy. Both of these facts humble the hero, but not as much as the jerk's sacrifice does. The hero realizes that people can change, that being a jerk doesn't mean being evil, and that he could probably never have been as brave and selfless as this jerk was. None of this is happy. 

*In Narnia, the main protagonists are brothers and sisters. There is no possibility of romance between them, even when they're technically grown-ups. 

*In Prydain, the two main protagonists are a boy and a girl who fall in love, become a man and a woman who realize what love really means, and marry each other. 

*In Narnia, some people deserve all the good things, and those who don't, don't deserve anything at all.

*In Prydain, it's not about deserving. It's about trying to do what's right. And failing, often.
 

*In Narnia, there is one right answer. It's the pretty, powerful male creature.

*In Prydain, there are many right answers, many wrong answers, and many questions that have no answers. It all depends on circumstances. Raising an undead army is certainly always wrong, but bravery is not necessarily always right. Unselfish love is probably always right, and it's often an answer, but not always, and even it is rarely enough on its own to solve big problems. Required, but not sufficient.

The Prydain books are not perfect, but then, as is shown in the books themselves over and over, nothing is perfect. As a child, I read the Prydain books years before I opened The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe. I enjoyed that book because of the magical creatures, but I disliked all the human characters and Aslan, and C.S. Lewis's style felt condescending and preachy. I tried to read Prince Caspian a couple times, but on about the fourth try, realized I had an intense gut-rejection of it and it was all wasted effort, and my time would be better spent trying to get through The Two Towers. I never tried to read any of the Narnia books again. 
 

I have always hated -- not just disliked, hated -- stories that depend on the existence or possibility of perfect people and perfect places. The idea that stagnancy is a good thing nauseates me. Whether this came before or after I read the Prydain books (over and over and over again), I can't tell. What it means is that the thing that I despise most about the Twilight books is also the thing I despise most about the Narnia books. C.S. Lewis was a skilled writer, which Stephenie Meyer doesn't bother to attempt to be, but they each wrote a supposedly perfect and perfectly lovely worshiped and powerful male character, and their protagonists end up in exactly the same place, with stagnant, eternal, so-called "happy" endings. 
 

Life is, always has been, and always will be, messy. Stories that attempt to gloss over that fact, clean it up, or escape it, have as much appeal to me as green peppers. I'm allergic to green peppers; they activate my gag reflex. I'm just as allergic to Aslan and Edward.

 

 

Comments

[iosonochesono]

You have made me want to read Prydain, which I had never heard of before this post.

Something to look forward to when I have a job again!

[lliira]

Yay! Actually, the books are classics, so your local library should have them, if you've got a local library. The order of the series is The Book of Three -> The Black Cauldron -> The Castle of Llyr (my favorite) -> Taran Wanderer -> The High King. They're based in Welsh fantasy, so they're quite different from the typical elves and dwarves and dragons fare we're inundated with these days.

[iosonochesono]

I do have a local library. It's small, but I'll give it a shot. (I may also see if it's available on eReader for cheap, seeing as they are classics.)

[guardians_song]

Ah, THIS is the series with the Black Cauldron? I actually remember really liking the Disney film as a kid, so now I'm interested in picking it up. Thanks!

[redsixwing]

It's about trying to do what's right. And failing, often.

You are reminding me how much I loved the Prydain books, and that I maybe ought to go read them again. (Because Hen Wen. 'nuff said.)

Narnia has been lauded and criticized because of its coziness- its static, perfect magical land (unless, of course, it's been overrun by Bad People). Thinking on it a little more, Prydain is almost a polar opposite - it's forever changing, a long way from perfect, downright dangerous in the right places, and somewhat less than magical.

[lliira]

I totally forgot about Hen Wen. How did I forget about Hen Wen? I need to re-read the books!

[chocolatepot]

Kind of a tangent, but - it just occurred to me that if Susan's at an age where she's getting interested in boys and makeup, Peter must have also been getting interested in girls and drinking and things. I wonder if there's a fic out there that deals with how he navigated that while not dismissing Narnia as imaginary (and I mean, of course it can be dealt with as "Lewis only thought womanliness was bad" but that seems a bit simplistic to me and "he didn't think about it" makes more sense and leaves me feeling more interested in a fic, if that makes sense).

Everything you've said here is so right. I like the Prydain Chronicles as books; I like the Chronicles of Narnia as childhood nostalgia.

[lliira]

The problem with Lewis (one anyway) is that he wrote other things in which he made clear how icky he found sexual femininity. He seems to have possibly gotten over it when he married Joy Davidman in his 60s, but when he wrote Narnia he was of the "female sexuality is bad and gross and dumb and airheaded" school. Also, Lewis had that worshiping girls while despising women thing going on through all the books, with their sainting of Lucy and punishing of Susan -- it wasn't only in the last book.

I don't know that, these days, I could enjoy any story about Narnia that keeps Lewis's ideas Narnia and Aslan intact. I might enjoy an au that turns the whole thing on its head, though.