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Summer Challenge Sharing Thread
Moderators: Ariel.of.Narnia, Ajnos, White Rose, Swanwhite, kristi
Summer Challenge Sharing Thread
Thank you for the set Happy!!
Born a Daughter of Eve; Now a Daughter of the Second Adam
Re: Summer Challenge Sharing Thread
Double post, because it's almost bed-time here:
Also, I had a bit of deja vu writing this so I think I've discussed some of these points before on a forum discussion thread or something.
Day 1 (Chapters 1-2):
The Scrubbs
The Voyage of the Dawn Treader is the first of the Narnia stories (when reading in the order they were published) not to begin from the point-of-view of the Pevensie family. Instead we are introduced to the unfortunately named Eustace Clarence Scrubb and his thoroughly “modern” family. Three paragraphs in, we discover that Eustace is in fact the cousin of the Pevensie children and that the younger two children, Lucy and Edmund, are to feature in the book after all (something of a relief after the not very encouraging description given of Master Scrubb).
The Scrubb family is interesting because they seem to represent a phenomenon present in British society in Lewis’ day of which he fervently disapproved. I don’t know enough about the society of the day to know whether these types of people were common or rare and how much Lewis was basing his description on real types of people or stereotypes or even of any families he actually knew. Whatever the case, he clearly had problems with the kind of lifestyle they exhibited. I thought it might be worthwhile to consider some of the characteristics of the Scrubbs that we learn in the opening chapters.
1. Parental address:
The first thing we learn about the Scrubbs is that the parents encouraged their son to refer to them by their first names “Harold” and “Alberta” rather than “mother” and “father” (or “mum” and “dad”), which is highly unusual in the English speaking world. It strikes me as representing a kind of mindset in which children should not be treated as children or at least promotes some kind of equality or attitude about the kind of relationship children should have with their parents/adults. It seems, to one unused to the practice, as interfering with the kind of respect one expects a child to show towards adults and I think that it is in this light that Lewis uses it to characterise the “up-to-date and advanced” family of which he disapproves. It is seen as an undermining of adult authority. Addressing one’s parents by their first names, seems particularly startling when you remember this book was set in a time and place when most children would not refer to any adults by their bare first names but would prefix them with “uncle” and “aunt” (in the case of more familiar adults) and Mr and Mrs/Miss (in the case of less familiar). In fact, the only times in the book that Harold and Alberta are not referred to as “Uncle Harold” and “Aunt Alberta” is when Eustace is speaking. Even to the Pevensies, their aunt and uncle could not be addressed by their bare first name. Despite it being unusual, I do know of at least two families where the children were allowed to address their parents by their first names. They were both British (which always made me think, as a child, that it was a peculiarly British practice) and incidentally both vegetarians. I should add, however, that these families are nothing like the Scrubbs in other respects and are both actually quite nice families.
2. Eating, drinking and clothing habbits:
The next thing we learn about the Scrubbs is that they are “vegetarians, non-smokers and teetotalers” which all seem to fit into the same general category of what Lewis describes as “up-to-date and advanced” to which the parental name -alling also belongs. These were obviously three trends of the modern-type families that Lewis was seeing around him which he took issue with. To a present-day (and especially non-British) audience the three practices seem somewhat out-of-place as characterising this modern and (I think I can say) implicitly secular family. We tend to associate especially non-smoking and non-drinking with traditional Christian type families of the Pevensie kind – what are these characteristics doing in talk of the Scrubbs?
The answer, of course, is to look at the context in which Lewis was writing. Smoking was the norm in Lewis’ day and smoking tobacco was not yet proven to be harmful to one’s health. Lewis himself was a smoker (I’ve heard tell that he used to complain about the ban on smoking in Oxford’s Bodleian Library which accompanied part of the oath all library users had to take which stated that no matches could be kindled in the buildings) and we always see pictures of his friend Tolkien smoking a pipe (Tolkien even worked smoking into his masterpiece children’s stories as an important social pastime of hobbits and wizards). I don’t know the details, but I imagine Lewis saw the Scrubbs as representing an anti-smoking movement of the day in which certain “modern” (possibly “health conscious”) individuals were standing up as non-smokers; early adopters of the messages about the dangers of smoking which were just starting to come out (and disbelieved by the general population). I imagine the Scrubb’s vegetarianism and teetotalism were of a similar “health-conscious” nature and the Scrubbs could be comparable to people in the present day who jump onto the “latest” new diets and health-trends for the sake of being up-to-date and knowledgeable; rejecting traditional practices for these new things.
We also learn that the Scrubbs wore a “special kind of underclothes”. Here again we see them jumping onto a new (non-traditional) trend. I’d love to know exactly what these constituted and how they differed from the traditional underclothes of the day, but I imagine there were many revolutions going on in the clothing industry during the 50s (and of course into the 60s) in which things like elastic, synthetic fabrics and mass-produced products were being developed. I imagine the general populous weren’t entirely convinced by some of these new developments, especially perhaps developments in women’s undergarments, which may have been seen as radical or even imprudent? Whatever the details, it is clear that Lewis was trying to describe in the Scrubbs a kind of family that wasn’t big on tradition but was rather embracing “progress” in a way that the every-day man and a traditionalist like Lewis would not have enjoyed.
Other modern practices attributed to the Pevensies include a sparsity of furniture, only very basic bedclothes and open windows (how anyone could survive well in and English winter with few blankets and open windows beats me – maybe they stoked the fires higher).
3. Education and interests:
We learn about Eustace the kinds of “educational” things he is interested in and could guess that this way of approaching the world was probably encouraged by his parents. Eustace preferred a collection of “dead” beetles pinned to cards rather than having an interest in living furry animals, which one might expect from a child his age (and which, of course, his cousins had after having been to Narnia and having had talking mammals for friends). Heis also interested in books only of information (of a non-fiction sort) and which showed advanced technology and other “modern” experiences (“fat foreign children doing exercises in model schools”). The implicit message here (made clear later in the book when Lewis reminds us that Eustace had read “all the wrong books”) is that Eustace has no interest in stories, imagination and certainly no attraction for fantasy and myth (things which had been so precious to Lewis himself as a child and were important to the Pevensies and to appreciating Narnia).
4. Other Facts:
- The Scrubbs had received a painting of a Narnian ship as a wedding present from someone Aunt Alberta didn’t wish to offend. All other artworks in their house were of a very different sort.
- They possibly didn’t travel much (at least they had never taken their son farther by sea than the Isle of Wight). Despite this, Eustace apparently knew a lot about modern ships (probably from having read about them in his books of information.
- Eustace seemed to have a fair knowledge of politics (or at least knew what it meant to “lodge a disposition at the British Consul”).
- (Uncle) Harold says that “one of the most cowardly things ordinary people do is shut their eyes to Facts”. (Apparently they don’t see themselves as “ordinary” but as progressive and better than society for putting the factual ahead of other considerations)
- They are British Republicans (i.e. they don’t recognise the monarchy)
- (Aunt) Alberta has feminist tendencies (Eustace tried to explain why giving up the best room to Lucy because she’s a girl is “really lowering girls”)
They are pacifists (unless Eustace is just using it as an excuse for being a coward, but a pacifist stance seems to fit with much of the rest of their philosophies).
Also, I had a bit of deja vu writing this so I think I've discussed some of these points before on a forum discussion thread or something.
Day 1 (Chapters 1-2):
The Scrubbs
The Voyage of the Dawn Treader is the first of the Narnia stories (when reading in the order they were published) not to begin from the point-of-view of the Pevensie family. Instead we are introduced to the unfortunately named Eustace Clarence Scrubb and his thoroughly “modern” family. Three paragraphs in, we discover that Eustace is in fact the cousin of the Pevensie children and that the younger two children, Lucy and Edmund, are to feature in the book after all (something of a relief after the not very encouraging description given of Master Scrubb).
The Scrubb family is interesting because they seem to represent a phenomenon present in British society in Lewis’ day of which he fervently disapproved. I don’t know enough about the society of the day to know whether these types of people were common or rare and how much Lewis was basing his description on real types of people or stereotypes or even of any families he actually knew. Whatever the case, he clearly had problems with the kind of lifestyle they exhibited. I thought it might be worthwhile to consider some of the characteristics of the Scrubbs that we learn in the opening chapters.
1. Parental address:
The first thing we learn about the Scrubbs is that the parents encouraged their son to refer to them by their first names “Harold” and “Alberta” rather than “mother” and “father” (or “mum” and “dad”), which is highly unusual in the English speaking world. It strikes me as representing a kind of mindset in which children should not be treated as children or at least promotes some kind of equality or attitude about the kind of relationship children should have with their parents/adults. It seems, to one unused to the practice, as interfering with the kind of respect one expects a child to show towards adults and I think that it is in this light that Lewis uses it to characterise the “up-to-date and advanced” family of which he disapproves. It is seen as an undermining of adult authority. Addressing one’s parents by their first names, seems particularly startling when you remember this book was set in a time and place when most children would not refer to any adults by their bare first names but would prefix them with “uncle” and “aunt” (in the case of more familiar adults) and Mr and Mrs/Miss (in the case of less familiar). In fact, the only times in the book that Harold and Alberta are not referred to as “Uncle Harold” and “Aunt Alberta” is when Eustace is speaking. Even to the Pevensies, their aunt and uncle could not be addressed by their bare first name. Despite it being unusual, I do know of at least two families where the children were allowed to address their parents by their first names. They were both British (which always made me think, as a child, that it was a peculiarly British practice) and incidentally both vegetarians. I should add, however, that these families are nothing like the Scrubbs in other respects and are both actually quite nice families.
2. Eating, drinking and clothing habbits:
The next thing we learn about the Scrubbs is that they are “vegetarians, non-smokers and teetotalers” which all seem to fit into the same general category of what Lewis describes as “up-to-date and advanced” to which the parental name -alling also belongs. These were obviously three trends of the modern-type families that Lewis was seeing around him which he took issue with. To a present-day (and especially non-British) audience the three practices seem somewhat out-of-place as characterising this modern and (I think I can say) implicitly secular family. We tend to associate especially non-smoking and non-drinking with traditional Christian type families of the Pevensie kind – what are these characteristics doing in talk of the Scrubbs?
The answer, of course, is to look at the context in which Lewis was writing. Smoking was the norm in Lewis’ day and smoking tobacco was not yet proven to be harmful to one’s health. Lewis himself was a smoker (I’ve heard tell that he used to complain about the ban on smoking in Oxford’s Bodleian Library which accompanied part of the oath all library users had to take which stated that no matches could be kindled in the buildings) and we always see pictures of his friend Tolkien smoking a pipe (Tolkien even worked smoking into his masterpiece children’s stories as an important social pastime of hobbits and wizards). I don’t know the details, but I imagine Lewis saw the Scrubbs as representing an anti-smoking movement of the day in which certain “modern” (possibly “health conscious”) individuals were standing up as non-smokers; early adopters of the messages about the dangers of smoking which were just starting to come out (and disbelieved by the general population). I imagine the Scrubb’s vegetarianism and teetotalism were of a similar “health-conscious” nature and the Scrubbs could be comparable to people in the present day who jump onto the “latest” new diets and health-trends for the sake of being up-to-date and knowledgeable; rejecting traditional practices for these new things.
We also learn that the Scrubbs wore a “special kind of underclothes”. Here again we see them jumping onto a new (non-traditional) trend. I’d love to know exactly what these constituted and how they differed from the traditional underclothes of the day, but I imagine there were many revolutions going on in the clothing industry during the 50s (and of course into the 60s) in which things like elastic, synthetic fabrics and mass-produced products were being developed. I imagine the general populous weren’t entirely convinced by some of these new developments, especially perhaps developments in women’s undergarments, which may have been seen as radical or even imprudent? Whatever the details, it is clear that Lewis was trying to describe in the Scrubbs a kind of family that wasn’t big on tradition but was rather embracing “progress” in a way that the every-day man and a traditionalist like Lewis would not have enjoyed.
Other modern practices attributed to the Pevensies include a sparsity of furniture, only very basic bedclothes and open windows (how anyone could survive well in and English winter with few blankets and open windows beats me – maybe they stoked the fires higher).
3. Education and interests:
We learn about Eustace the kinds of “educational” things he is interested in and could guess that this way of approaching the world was probably encouraged by his parents. Eustace preferred a collection of “dead” beetles pinned to cards rather than having an interest in living furry animals, which one might expect from a child his age (and which, of course, his cousins had after having been to Narnia and having had talking mammals for friends). Heis also interested in books only of information (of a non-fiction sort) and which showed advanced technology and other “modern” experiences (“fat foreign children doing exercises in model schools”). The implicit message here (made clear later in the book when Lewis reminds us that Eustace had read “all the wrong books”) is that Eustace has no interest in stories, imagination and certainly no attraction for fantasy and myth (things which had been so precious to Lewis himself as a child and were important to the Pevensies and to appreciating Narnia).
4. Other Facts:
- The Scrubbs had received a painting of a Narnian ship as a wedding present from someone Aunt Alberta didn’t wish to offend. All other artworks in their house were of a very different sort.
- They possibly didn’t travel much (at least they had never taken their son farther by sea than the Isle of Wight). Despite this, Eustace apparently knew a lot about modern ships (probably from having read about them in his books of information.
- Eustace seemed to have a fair knowledge of politics (or at least knew what it meant to “lodge a disposition at the British Consul”).
- (Uncle) Harold says that “one of the most cowardly things ordinary people do is shut their eyes to Facts”. (Apparently they don’t see themselves as “ordinary” but as progressive and better than society for putting the factual ahead of other considerations)
- They are British Republicans (i.e. they don’t recognise the monarchy)
- (Aunt) Alberta has feminist tendencies (Eustace tried to explain why giving up the best room to Lucy because she’s a girl is “really lowering girls”)
They are pacifists (unless Eustace is just using it as an excuse for being a coward, but a pacifist stance seems to fit with much of the rest of their philosophies).
Thank you for the set Happy!!
Born a Daughter of Eve; Now a Daughter of the Second Adam
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hobbit_of_narnia
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Re: Summer Challenge Sharing Thread
Very interesting points, Ajjie. The Scrubbs always drove me crazy. 
I just did a little drawing today.
I just did a little drawing today.
If somebody has an idea for a Narnia comic that they weren't planning on making themselves, I <------ This offer still
would be so grateful if they would send it to me in a PM. I am running appallingly low on ideas...! <-- stands.
Re: Summer Challenge Sharing Thread
Hurrah! And we are off on our voyage!
I really enjoyed your observations, Ajnos. The hints Lewis gives about the Scrubb's life style are rather fascinating.
And that's a splendid sketch, Hobbit! I love the movement, and Reep's whiskers
On we go, friends, to the end of the world!
Chapter 1. The Picture in the Bedroom
Chapter 2. On Board the Dawn Treader
I really enjoyed your observations, Ajnos. The hints Lewis gives about the Scrubb's life style are rather fascinating.
And that's a splendid sketch, Hobbit! I love the movement, and Reep's whiskers
On we go, friends, to the end of the world!
Chapter 1. The Picture in the Bedroom
- Clipboard01.jpg (36.4 KiB) Viewed 20000 times
- Utter East.jpg (53.15 KiB) Viewed 20000 times
Re: Summer Challenge Sharing Thread
Beautiful pictures Hobbit and Swan (And yay for dark-haired Eustaces!! Not that I don't think Will Poulter and David Thwaites did brilliant jobs but I always thought he should have darker hair ) Swan, I love the lookout peeking through the dragon's mouth.
) Swan, I love the lookout peeking through the dragon's mouth.Thank you for the set Happy!!
Born a Daughter of Eve; Now a Daughter of the Second Adam
Re: Summer Challenge Sharing Thread
Well, no.Ajnos wrote:We tend to associate especially non-smoking and non-drinking with traditional Christian type families of the Pevensie kind – ...
For one thing, traditional Christian families that are Lutheran, Anglican, Catholic and Orthodox, unlike those that are Methodist or Pentecostal (to name two of the "non-conformist" or "born-again" type) would NOT be non-drinking and non-smoking.
And for another, the Pevensie family were hardly traditional Christians by upbringing if they had to get to Narnia to get to know Aslan somewhat there before learning to know Him under another name here. That part of the setting pretty much means that the parents were NOT really helping their children to learn to know Jesus. My guess is they were - the parents, that is - as Anglicans both as Modernist as Dean Inge (a clergyman who denied all of the Gospel Miracles) and very shallow.
They had more culture in fairy tales and pop culture than in Catechism or Bible.
The point about the Scrubbs is they didn't even have that.
If you are really wondering what the non-conformist practises like non-drinking and non-smoking have to do with secularists, take a look at George Bernhard Shaw. He was that, AND vegetarian, and his opponent Chesterton described him as "a Calvinist minus the Christianity" - to which GBS responded GKC was "of course" perfectly right.
CSL considered non-believers different in Oxford and Cambridge. Just like among Anglicans, Oxford is more High Church and Cambridge more Puritan, among unbelievers, Oxford tends to mellow Agnostics with no real grudge against Christians and not very much grudge against Christianity beyond thinking it was wrong, whereas Cambridge would more be agressive Atheists quasi on a Crusade against Christianity, just as Puritans had been quasi on a Crusade against Catholics and High Church under Oliver Cromwell.
The Scrubbs were, thus, very Puritan non-believers of the Cambridge or Scottish type.
EDIT:
In Germany and Austria too there was a fashion in health conscious circles about "hardening" oneself to the cold. It involved taking cold showers. Kneipp was the German doctor proposing it. As to survival, I suppose the answer is eating much.Ajnos wrote:Other modern practices attributed to the Pevensies include a sparsity of furniture, only very basic bedclothes and open windows (how anyone could survive well in and English winter with few blankets and open windows beats me – maybe they stoked the fires higher).
Though not per se Nazi, this is a kind of thing Nazis would have approved of too. That doesn't make it bad, but it gives an added touch of Puritan impression.
EDIT:
Or simply from having used such on trip to Isle of Wight.Ajnos wrote:They possibly didn’t travel much (at least they had never taken their son farther by sea than the Isle of Wight). Despite this, Eustace apparently knew a lot about modern ships (probably from having read about them in his books of information.
CSL was pretty furious when the open deck ship between Ireland and Wales (Holyhead is Wales, right?) was replaced by a modern ship where one could sit inside and where very few places were open on the deck. Back then this modern ship with a salon inside was not quite safe from stinking from engine fuel as well. He longed back to standing on open deck.
Yes, there is one article in "letters section" by CSL on the subject some time in the Times.
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hobbit_of_narnia
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Re: Summer Challenge Sharing Thread
I love your drawings, Swanwhite, especially the one of the Dawn Treader's prow.
If somebody has an idea for a Narnia comic that they weren't planning on making themselves, I <------ This offer still
would be so grateful if they would send it to me in a PM. I am running appallingly low on ideas...! <-- stands.
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alexandanor
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- Location: Walking safely through darkness
Re: Summer Challenge Sharing Thread
Day 2: The Lone Islands
I'm not any good at original art so instead I've made a collage of pictures I took on an island in Wales which reminded me a bit of Felimath.
(It's getting late so I'll have to post the second, written part of my reflection in the morning)
I'm not any good at original art so instead I've made a collage of pictures I took on an island in Wales which reminded me a bit of Felimath.
- Felimath 600.jpg (60.84 KiB) Viewed 19958 times
Thank you for the set Happy!!
Born a Daughter of Eve; Now a Daughter of the Second Adam
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alexandanor
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- Location: Walking safely through darkness
That does look like Felimath! 
I want to go there!