Lewis and Tolkien lived through the suffragette movement, through the creation of women's colleges at Oxford, and through the enormous social changes of the 1920s and 1930s. They were at some pains to acknowledge none of the above.
I can't speak to Tolkien, but I'm not sure Lewis didn't. For all that Susan is the most shallow of the Pevensie children, Lucy is the most noble, heroic, and faithful. Besides which, I never once took that the boys and lipstick which served as her particular distraction were significant because they were girlie things. It always read to me as if they signified worldliness, not girl cooties.
By the way, I do not mean to say that it is unlikely that this man who lost his mother while still very young, and didn't marry until he was into his 50s didn't have women-issues. I just don't think there's much odd/weird/wrong about men born at the end of the 1800s being part of a men's group, in the Inkling years. Lewis made a revision to
Miracles,
based on the critique of a woman, and although a product of him time and circumstance, I don't see any real evidence of woman hating going on. His eventual marriage to Joy Gresham, only happened because first they had a friendly correspondence.
He was, in fact, rather anti-Catholic; his friendship with Tolkien foundered on his contempt for Tolkien's religion.
C. S. Lewis: keepin' it real for bitter old men since he was a young man.
Personally, I always thought it was the underlying 'tude rather than the specific points of doctrine/politics on which we can cast aspersions. Lewis got some kind of psychological charge out of being too old-world for the brave new world, you know? Tolkien, same deal, although he managed to create a whole different old world, rather than to oldify this one.
In sum, I think 'oldify' needs to be a real world.
In other news, the Red Sox are handing out rings Right Now and I am not in a position to receive one. (Nor, for that matter, to watch them handed out to other people, except on television, which, muted on a computer in one's cube, not especially special.)
I just don't think there's much odd/weird/wrong
I have never said it was odd or weird or wrong. In fact, I started by saying that it's typical of their class and age.
What I do say, and will continue to say, is that it annoys me, just as the anti-semitic stereotyping in Sayers annoys me.
Tolkien was the Catholic.
Speaking of times changing and smoking, I just remembered candy cigarettes, which were very popular when I was very young (before 1975, for sure, and probably earlier). Now, what kind of message did those send? I'm surprised the smoking rate for Gen X isn't higher than it is.
I just remembered candy cigarettes,
I remember when they stopped having the "good" ones -- which had powdered sugar that you could puff out -- and I don't remember much prior to 1978 or so.
I loved candy cigarettes. We used to get them at the bowling alley. Which would have been when my mom was in a bowling league, so late 70s, maybe early early 80s. (eta: ooh, I never even knew about the puffy ones. Jealous)
I'm surprised the smoking rate for Gen X isn't higher than it is.
I think those were gone by the time Gen Xers really started hitting the ground. By the early 80s, anyway.
They had them into the late 80s.
