There is a particular scene which has come to bother me more over time, in part because I've heard other readers discussing implications which I honestly would not have thought of as a child. That is Aravis's scars received from Aslan, and his explanation of why.
I do understand that it was, at least roughly speaking, Aravis' fault that the slave-girl was beaten. And it is possible that it was her lack of remorse which Aslan was working to remedy--making sure that a future queen (I'm sure Aslan has foreknowledge in this universe as well as ours) would not be callous to suffering among her subjects, or willing to dismiss pain because they were the wrong person's lackey at some point. But, then we come to why she did what she did.
She didn't see any other way. Before she came up with this plan, she was ready to commit suicide.
When I was younger, I didn't really get this. I'd naively assumed that "arranged marriage" meant being stuck in the same house as a man she disliked for the rest of her life, and at some point raising his heir, without thinking through the details. And that "let's not look too closely" attitude persisted until recently, even when I was definitely old enough that I should have known better. Trying to be delicate, because this is a kid-friendly forum, but I hadn't thought through the fact that Aravis would legally be able to be hurt by him on a daily basis if he wanted, and that he didn't seem to be the sort who was particularly willing to care about his wife's desires. And she was willing to die to get away from that, and then she found a way which would let her escape forever without dying, and with the consequence being that one person got hurt, one time, not by her personally, and possibly unavoidably. And then "God" claws her for it.
Does this seem at all disproportionate to anyone else? Do you think that a verbal rebuke, perhaps accompanied by a vision, would have been as effective as days of pain to teach a girl who had just escaped arranged bondage that "no, you shouldn't have been so callous to the servant even under the circumstances, be nice to people in the future"?
Is there a good reason that you can think of why clawing was necessary, or was this just a place where Lewis may not have thought all the way through things?
An excellent question, but I never got the feeling that the punishment was ever for running away. Drugging the servant wasn't really necessary to her escape. It was done partly out of convenience and partly out of spite. I think it comes down to motive even if it was necessary she had no remorse or care for the girl's feeling. I think if she had needed to do it, but felt pity for her, that she wouldn't have needed to know what it felt like.
I think Aslan was very right in the way he treated her- after all, it would be Aravis' fault the servant had been whipped, and, perhaps it was a lesson to show Aravis how much the servant had suffered, and maybe how she should treat servants from then on?
In the Bible we read: “In everything, therefore, treat people the same way you want them to treat you, for this is the Law and the Prophets." Matthew 7:12
I think she was careless, and didn't really think about what could happen to someone else because of her actions. Aslan was making a point- he wanted her to feel what that servant had felt. Her actions may seem easy to justify because all the things that she had gone through... but to put someone else in harm's way to accomplish what she wanted was selfish. If she had been the servant, I'm sure she wouldn't want to have been put in that situation.
Sorry if that is confusing, and let me know what you think 😀
Swanwhite - I guess I might be able to accept that it was a motive thing, about her attitude to the action... I mean, on the one hand, I wouldn't want to think to hard about somebody being in pain because of me if I'd left them in the lurch to avoid life-long trouble, either... on the other hand, it wasn't so much like she was avoiding the topic as justifying it, because servant-girl was supposedly a snitch and she never liked her much anyway. <.< It still seems kind of... severe, though. I mean, she's standing in front of a massive awe-inspiring lion who exudes some kind of strong charisma and happens to rule these environs at the same time as the Horses are--after what she'd been through with her travels, would a sharp verbal rebuke from such a being been sufficient to teach her to reexamine her actions?
always-narnian - I'm not arguing whether or not the servant being harmed was at some level Aravis' fault. My issue is whether, given the circumstances (terrified young girl from a culture which did not teach her the value of people from other classes than her own is running away from being pawned off on a rather ignoble older nobleman who will have the legal right to do whatever he wants to her, and drugs someone knowing that there is a likelihood that person will be punished in order to buy time for her escape), after a journey in which she has suffered much and begun to learn her lesson about lower-class people being able to be honorable comrades and human beings (Shasta), it's quite a proportionate punishment for her to be non-fatally torn open and bedridden in extreme pain.
I agree with Swan, the punishment wasn't for running away, but for indirectly hurting her servant. Maybe the servant was only being a "tool of the stepmother" out of fear, and maybe she would have wanted to run away too. Also, Aslan said the scratches were equal to the whipping the servant girl received. So I think the point was that Aravis' life was just as valuable as the servant girl's. No more and no less.
I have to wonder if anything happened to Arsheesh because of Bree and Shasta running away.
Jesus answered, "I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through Me. If you really knew Me, you would know My Father as well." - John 14:6-7a
...Oh.
I'd been thinking in terms of delaying the reaction of a potential enemy/roadblock to escape, but I honestly hadn't considered that the girl might have been willing to run. Although if she'd been at odds with Aravis in the past, might she have taken it as a test or a means of getting her in trouble? Still... asking her to come along (if Aravis could get past the whole "lower class isn't trustworthy" mindset she seemed to have going), is an option which might actually have worked. 0.0
Hmmmm...I don't know. I suppose it's also how you look at Aravis as a character. I always found her sort of snobbish, not really caring.. I never wondered if Aslan's punishment was unjust- like Hermit said: the scratches were equal to the whipping the servant girl received. I thought Aslan taught her a valuable lesson through it.
She'd been raised in Calormen nobility. She was taught from birth that rank mattered, servants were there for you to use, and her family was related to gods. It would have been exceptional if she hadn't been snobbish.
Even at that, she was able to respect her Animal and see her as an equal or close to, as soon as she found out that she could talk, in spite of local rumors of the Talking Animals of Narnia being demonic; and Lewis said that if Shasta had known her better, he never would have doubted that she'd wait for him/not leave without him when he was late to the meeting place; and she was able to recognize that her supposedly part-divine royal superiors were in the wrong and help bring the news of their betrayal to the Narnians.
I'd say, given the givens, she was a pretty decent person.
Lily: - I pretty much agree with most of what you said, however perhaps because she was snobbish because of her upbringing and circumstances, the influences of her upbringing would have been so strong that it would have taken an equally strong lesson to help shake off those influences. And while Aravis was a pretty decent person in a lot of ways, she did seem to me to be lacking in empathy (Ha! I can talk! I'm pretty good at switching off empathy when it suits me to!) So she would've needed to learn that to complement and enhance all her other good qualities. I can definitely relate to her respecting her Animal; I respect mine and in fact see him as more than my equal!
Hermit:- If anything happened to Arsheesh because of Bree and Shasta running away, I think he deserved it. He was the one who was willing to sell Shasta as a slave to Bree's owner. While he did show some small degree of compassion for an abandoned baby, I feel he basically saw Shasta much the same way as Aravis saw her slave-girl; as someone of little consequence who was there for him to use.
I agree with Swanwhite as well, as when she was retelling the story to Cor she just brushed off the girl's fate without a care. Also, I also think it might've had something to do with bringing her down from her... general opinion about being better and such by having the same scars as a slave girl... though she had already started to not be like that anyway.
And who knows, the scars might've had something to do with her future as well (read some interesting fanfics), Aslan works all things out for good.
I also agree with Trisha on the subject of Arsheesh.
The Talking Raven
Really good thoughts, everyone! Thanks for such good topic Lily.
I don't think of the claw marks on her back as a punishment, but as a lesson taught in love. I believe Aslan disciplined her in order to reveal her flaws, because he loves her and wants her to learn compassion and humility. And since he knows her heart entirely, he knows the precise act of discipline which would truly teach her those lessons.
Yes that is it exactly! That is what his punishments always are for his children. It's a gift. It's a blessing in disguise. 🙂 What she did could be excused and ignored with human reasoning from outward appearances, but He looks at the heart and cares too much to let the disease go untreated.
....He looks at the heart and cares too much to let the disease go untreated.
That's a beautiful way of putting it Swanwhite. It was only too easy for me to say that Aravis's punishment was justified, and that it would serve Asheesh right if he was held responsible for Shasta and Bree escaping. But it seems to me that most of the lessons Aslan dishes out are rather painful and uncomfortable. Such as Bree being put into the fearful situation of being chased by a lion and having his pride in being a Noble Talking Horse seriously crushed. And (in another book entirely) Eustace being turned into a dragon in order to learn not to be such a spoiled brat, and having his dragon skin torn off by a lion in order to be made human again....OUCH!! I know my greatest fault all too well and I shudder to think what kind of lesson Aslan might have in store for me.
Aravis changed during the journey to Narnia. I think part of what Aslan told her was basically, "Look, this is how much you've changed." Before her journey she was willing to have another person beaten without thinking twice.
The scars that Aslan left there, well the book never mentioned any scars, but you can put it together that she did receive some. I think God leaves certain reminders on our bodies, of terrible things we have done in life. And when we see those reminders, we remember to never do them again. Aslan gave Aravis those scars, so that she could look at them every day, and so she would be able to build up a better character towards other people.
This is such an interesting question, and one that made me think a good deal.
I don't know what side I come down on. Here's something that occurs to me, though. If we think about Lewis rather than Aravis, maybe Lewis wanted to remind readers that even "small" people matter, and this servant girl didn't exist merely as a tool for Aravis's escape. Lewis barely brings up this character as a subsidiary plot point during that part of the story, but he doesn't then just let her drop into obscurity. In addition to demonstrating that everyone has a story in Aslan's eyes, Lewis also shows by this situation that Aravis, though we may have come to love her and (if we're female readers) to identify with her, is accountable for her actions. And, as was said earlier in this thread, she's going to be a queen, and she needs to remember to keep all her people in mind.
In this book, until almost the end of the story, Aslan reaches people by action, not by direct appearance and explanation. There's an old saying, "Coincidence is God working anonymously." So what we see of Aslan in this story is what he does. This physical rather than verbal punishment is in line with such an approach.
