In my more reductive moments, I think Charles Williams and Joy Davidman were both exactly the kind of manipulative assholes that for some reason Lewis was most vulnerable to. But I do really think there were sides to both of them that you could well understand someone falling for. (Dorothy Sayers was very taken by Williams as well, of course.)
There is actually an Arthur in the book, Arthur Denniston, but he and his wife Camilla don't really do that much apart from helping get Jane to St. Anne's. Oh, and incidentally, why on earth is Miss Ironwood, who is a physician, not called Dr Ironwood? There are so many backstories we don't get (I remember something about Ransom reassuring Miss Ironwood that he won't tell hers).
Dorothy Sayers praised THS quite a bit to Lewis, but later, to a friend, wrote "C.S. Lewis spoilt a good idea by cramming in all that Merlin stuff. ... I did venture to hint mildly, about That Hideous Strength, that I thought Ransom had become less interesting since he took to being the Heir of Redclyffe fading away on a sofa. But what irritated me from my point of view (the sordidly literary) is the half-hearted attempt made at one point to connect him with the Fisher King, on the strength of the wound in his heel. After all, I do know my Graal stuff well enough to know that, though the Fisher King was 'lame', he was wounded, not in the heel, or in the leg, but entre les cuisses [between the thighs] - a euphemism so common in the Middle Ages that Lewis cannot be ignorant of its meaning. The thing is a fertility myth, and as such one must take it or leave it. ... It's all wrong to try and turn the Keeper of the Hallows into some sort of avatar of Arthur, and Lewis would have done better to keep the Fisher King right out of it, since he makes no intelligible use of the theme."
There was more, but I am getting tired of typing it out. It comes in the third volume of Sayers's letters, p. 264-5, and the nice things she said to Lewis are on p. 177. I don't agree with her about Merlin, and am too ignorant to take sides on the fertility myth question, but I think she was right that throwing the Fisher King business in there was no particular use to anyone.
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2023-08-04 12:56 am (UTC)There is actually an Arthur in the book, Arthur Denniston, but he and his wife Camilla don't really do that much apart from helping get Jane to St. Anne's. Oh, and incidentally, why on earth is Miss Ironwood, who is a physician, not called Dr Ironwood? There are so many backstories we don't get (I remember something about Ransom reassuring Miss Ironwood that he won't tell hers).
Dorothy Sayers praised THS quite a bit to Lewis, but later, to a friend, wrote "C.S. Lewis spoilt a good idea by cramming in all that Merlin stuff. ... I did venture to hint mildly, about That Hideous Strength, that I thought Ransom had become less interesting since he took to being the Heir of Redclyffe fading away on a sofa. But what irritated me from my point of view (the sordidly literary) is the half-hearted attempt made at one point to connect him with the Fisher King, on the strength of the wound in his heel. After all, I do know my Graal stuff well enough to know that, though the Fisher King was 'lame', he was wounded, not in the heel, or in the leg, but entre les cuisses [between the thighs] - a euphemism so common in the Middle Ages that Lewis cannot be ignorant of its meaning. The thing is a fertility myth, and as such one must take it or leave it. ... It's all wrong to try and turn the Keeper of the Hallows into some sort of avatar of Arthur, and Lewis would have done better to keep the Fisher King right out of it, since he makes no intelligible use of the theme."
There was more, but I am getting tired of typing it out. It comes in the third volume of Sayers's letters, p. 264-5, and the nice things she said to Lewis are on p. 177. I don't agree with her about Merlin, and am too ignorant to take sides on the fertility myth question, but I think she was right that throwing the Fisher King business in there was no particular use to anyone.