“If you dip into any college, or school, or parish, or family –
anything you like – at a given point in its history, you always find that there
was a time before that point where there was more elbow room and contrasts
weren't quite so sharp; and that there’s going to be a time after that point
when there is even less room for indecision and choices are even more momentous.
Good is always getting better and bad is always getting worse: the
possibilities of even apparent neutrality are always diminishing. The whole
thing is sorting itself out all the time, coming to a point, getting sharper and
harder. Like the poem about Heaven and Hell eating into merry Middle Earth from
opposite sides…”
It probably seemed that way to C.S. Lewis, writing
in the latter days of World War II. I think here he succumbs to the same
mistake he finds in Modernists, that they see all history as a seamless
progression from point A to and anticipated point B.
But whether Dr. Dimble is mistaken or not, Mark and Jane Studdock have found
themselves on opposite sides of a cosmic war and there is little neutral ground
to stand on. The age-old conflict between Good and Evil is about to enter a
startling new phase.
We are not told how Mr. Bultitude first came to St. Anne’s. He seems to have
just shown up one day. Very likely, MacPhee’s guess that he was a trained bear
who wandered away from a carnival is correct; but if Mr. Bultitude was ever a
wild animal, the peaceful environment of St. Anne’s has tamed him. The manor is
like a second Eden, where man and animals co-exist in harmony, and even the mice
are welcome to eat the crumbs which fall from the Master’s table. This is
largely due to Ransom’s influence. The Director’s brief sojourn on the unfallen
world of Perelandra has given him the rapport with animals which is Adam’s
neglected birthright.
Mr. Bultitude is largely contend to live in the garden, occasionally
wandering into the manor house to startle unwary guests, like Jane, or to sit by
the fireside and receive affectionate scratches from Ransom. He is vaguely
aware that he is not supposed to stray from the garden, but being a bear of
little brain, his thought processes get a bit fuzzy. When he finds the garden
gate accidentally left unlatched, his curiosity gets the better of him. This
passage, told from the bear’s point of view, is one of my favorites in the
book.
A couple of workers from the National Institute of Co-ordinated Experiments
happen to drive by. They have been assigned to acquire animals for the N.I.C.E.
laboratories and are a bit behind quota. Coming across a stray bear wandering
loose is quite a stroke of luck for them – one might almost say a Godsend – and
they easily lure Mr. Bultitude into their truck.
What they don’t realize is that Mr. Bultitude is not your average bear.
Merlin has identified him as one of the Seven Bears of Logres, and in one of
the strange oracular moments that seem to strike him occasionally has prophesied
“…that before Christmas this bear would do the best deed that any bear had done
in Britain except for other bear that none of us had ever heard of.”
The Director has asked Jane and some of the other women to put the Lodge, a
small cottage on the manor grounds, in order. Household chores at St.Anne’s are
done on a rotating basis; the men do them one day, the women the next. Jane
doesn't see how this democratic division of labor fits in with the Ransom’s
insistence that wives need to submit to their husbands, but the system seems to
work; at last so long as the women don’t look too closely at the dishes on the
guy’s day to wash.
Previously I've said that in Lewis’s world the gods and goddesses of
classical myth are something like racial memories of the actual cosmic beings
which rule the planets. This is not strictly true. There are echoes of those
cosmic entities here on earth; reflections like the shadows in Plato’s cave of
the actual planetary beings. “That is why there was an Italian Saturn as well
as a Heavenly one,” Ransom explains, “and a Cretan Jove as well as an
Olympian.”
Jane comes across such an avatar in the lodge: a tall, intimidating goddess
in a flame-colored robe. Were she a pagan, Jane might worship her; were she a
Christian, like Mother Dimble, she could trust in God’s protection. Lacking the
spirituality of the former and the faith of the latter, Jane finds herself
overwhelmed by the terrifying apparition.
Later Ransom offers another suggestion why the goddess seemed so terrifying,
reflecting again Lewis’s orthodox views of gender. Jane is neither matron nor
maid. She has renounced her role as a virgin – which is not by itself a bad
thing – but has refused to take on the role of a mother. Are these the only two
roles permitted a woman? I think Lewis over-simplifies things; and once again,
I have to wonder how Dorothy L. Sayers would have written such a scene; but I
have to admit, it makes sense that a fertility goddess would have strong
opinions on this subject.
Ivy Maggs and Mrs. Dimble do not see the apparition. They lack Jane’s
psychic sensitivity. But the goddess’s appearance probably has a good deal to
do with the presence of Merlin. “We are not living
exactly in the
Twentieth Century as long as he’s here,” Ransom explains. “We overlap a bit;
the focus is blurred.”
And what of Merlin? Merlin has been wondering about that himself. He’s been
taken out of time for 1500 years and brought back in the present day to combat
the Forces of Darkness; but what is he to do?
Ransom has been trying to bring him up to speed on the 20th Century, and he’s
managed to wrap his brain around the idea that the present king is what he’d
call a Saxon; but he doesn't understand why this king doesn't just send an army
against Belbury and crush the N.I.C.E., or why the Ransom, the Pendragon,
doesn't try to raise the populace against the tyrants. “They have an engine
called the Press whereby the people are deceived,” Ransom tells him.
Merlin offers to summon magical forces to come to their aid, but Ransom
forbids it. The spirits Merlin once commanded are long since gone, dormant
under centuries of industrialization. Times have changed, and the kind of
meddling with natural forces Merlin used to do is no longer permitted by the
cosmic forces Ransom serves. “It was never
very lawful even in your
day.” Merlin is not sure that the forces of nature he knew are completely
dormant, and from Jane’s experience in the lodge we see he may be right.
Nevertheless, he concedes to Ransom’s other point.
But the question remains: what is Merlin here for and what is the Director’s
plan? Ransom’s answer is the same as the one he earlier gave MacPhee. He is
waiting on his Masters, the Oyarésu.
But surely they will not intervene directly, Merlin protests. The cosmic
planetary powers are forbidden by divine edict from crossing the Lunar orbit, as
part of the cease-fire decreed following the rebellion of Earth’s own Dark
Archon.
Ah, but that’s just the thing. The treaty has already been broken. The
cosmic entities were forbidden to cross the orbital embargo, but nobody ever
said that humans using their own intelligence and science couldn't. By
travelling to Mars, Weston has already crossed the line; and when the Enemy
possessed Weston on his trip to Venus the decree was broken. The Oyarésu are
now free to come to earth; but they too are waiting for something.
Jane’s husband Mark, meanwhile, is still a prisoner at the N.I.C.E.
headquarters in Belbury, where Wither and Frost wish to initiate him into their
Inner Circle. Mark wants nothing to do with the Institute. He has finally
realized how they've been manipulating him all this time; but since he is a
captive, he sees no choice but to play along while Frost subjects him to bizarre
rituals which seem to be intended to desensitize him to societal taboos and, by
extension, to ethical norms and conventional notions of Good and Evil in order
to inculcate “Objectivity”.
Mark has an unexpected ally in the form of a nameless tramp, picked up by the
N.I.C.E., whom Wither and Frost have mistaken for Merlin. The tramp has
neglected to undeceive them, partially because they keep speaking to him in
Latin; (they think he’s a 5th Century wizard who wouldn't understand Modern
English) and so he assumes they are foreigners; and partially, I think, because
he’s been arrested enough times to know that you never volunteer information to
the cops. As far as the tramp is concerned, he’s been given a warm place to
sleep, and good food. His confinement is undoubtedly better than many jails
he’s been in. The tramp comes from a culture so alien to Mark that he has
trouble understanding him; and yet Mark feels an affinity to him based on their
shared captivity.
Every now and then, Wither and Frost come in with an expert in old Celtic
languages hoping to find someone who can communicate with “Merlin”. They've
been unsuccessful so far. The philologist Elwin Ransom would be an obvious
choice, but their people have had difficulty in finding him; (undoubtedly one of
the reasons why Ransom has changed his name to Fisher-King). Finally, Wither
resorts to putting an ad in the newspaper for linguists.
When he sees this ad, Ransom knows that their opportunity has arrived.
That night, Ransom tells his household to remain downstairs. He and Merlin
are going to entertain visitors in his upstairs study. The Oryarés are going to
descend in person. In this memorable passage, Lewis describes parallel scenes
how the presence of the gods affects the people in the manor house. Their
conversation becomes lively and witty, almost giddy, as Vilitrilbia, whom men
call Mercury, arrives; a sweet peacefulness descends upon them and the couples
begin to snuggle as upstairs Perelandra, the personification of Venus appears.
The men become more aggressive and impatient for action with the arrival of
Mars. One by one, the great planetary powers manifest in Ransom’s study, and
one by one, they infuse some of their power into Merlin.
These entities are mind-bogglingly powerful, and here I’m reminded of
something from
The Simarillion, by Lewis’s friend J.R.R. Tolkien.
Although
the Simarillion was not published in its finished form until
after Tolkien’s death, he had read portions of the unfinished stories from it to
his friends. Lewis might have borrowed this idea from his friend, or it is just
as possible that they were both drawing off a shared Christian Cosmology.
In
The Simarillion, the Valar, god-like beings subordinate to the
Creator-God, are also barred from interfering in the affairs of Middle-Earth.
They remain on the sidelines throughout Melkor’s age-long war against the elves
until one of the elves makes the arduous voyage to return the last of the
Simarils to Valinor. Only then do the Valar come to personally kick Melkor’s
butt. The powers they unleash to do it, however, obliterates half of the
continent.
Likewise, the Oyarsés could easily leave all of England a giant hole in the
North Sea if they unleashed their full powers. Instead they are going to
channel their powers through a mortal. This is why Merlin was important. Using
their power thus is going to be hard on the vessel receiving it. The Oyarsés
refuse to subject even a volunteer to this. But Merlin is no stranger to
powerful spirits. He he has never met any of the Oyarsés scale before, but he
has channeled supernatural forces. Metaphorically speaking, he is not a virgin.
Merlin realizes he is not likely to survive this experience and it frankly
terrifies him; but he understands that this is the purpose for which he has been
brought here and so he resolves to go through with it.
The next day another visitor comes to the N.I.C.E; a Basque priest who
understands not a word of English but who somehow has come in answer to Wither’s
newspaper ad. When he is brought before the supposed “Merlin”, he is actually
able to converse with him. This is because the priest is the real Merlin, using
his Jedi Mind Tricks to control the tramp. We have a comical situation where
Merlin is making the tramp give orders in ancient Celtic, which he then
translates into Latin for Wither’s benefit.
Wither is perplexed by this situation. It certainly
looks as if the
priest is controlling the wizard instead of merely interpreting for him, but
that couldn't possibly be the case. At Merlin’s orders, he gives the supposed
wizard and his interpreter a tour of the Institute. Adding to his confusion, he
realizes that a dinner has been scheduled for that evening with several
important backers of the Institute in attendance. Of course, Merlin will have
to attend, but how will Wither explain the wizard to all these big-wigs who
think that the N.I.C.E. is all about Science?
As Wither goes off with the two Merlins, Frost takes Mark back to the
Objective Room for another training session. A large table in the room has been
moved aside to reveal an ornate carving on the floor depicting Christ nailed to
the cross. Frost tells Mark to trample on the image.
Mark hesitates. He is not a Christian; unlike Jane he has never been one;
but this seems so pointless. “This is all surely a pure superstition. … Well,
if so, what is there objective about stamping on the face? Isn't it just as
subjective to spit on a thing like this as to worship it? I mean – damn it all
– if it’s only a bit of wood, why do anything about it?”
Frost insists. “Of course, it is a superstition; but it is that particular
superstition which has pressed upon our society for a great many centuries.”
But Mark looks at it another way.
Mark has never had a really firm grip on the notion of Good vs. Evil, but for
the past few days, he has come to regard everything about Belbury as an affront
to everything that he saw as Straight or Normal or Wholesome. Looking on the
suffering man on the cross, he does not see it as a religious icon or an image
of worship; he sees it as what happens when the Straight meets the Crooked; what
the N.I.C.E. would do to him if he refused to warp himself in their demented
image.
Frost prods him. “Do you intend to go on with the training or not?”
Mark made no reply. He was thinking, and thinking hard because he
knew, that if he stopped even for a moment, mere terror of death would take the
decision out of his hands. Christianity was a fable. It would be ridiculous to
die for a religion one did not believe. This Man himself, on that very cross,
had discovered it to be a fable, and had died complaining that the God in whom
he trusted had forsaken him – had, in fact, found the universe a cheat. But
this raised a question that Mark had never thought of before. Was that
the moment at which to turn against the Man? If the universe was a cheat, was
that a good reason for joining its side? Supposing the Straight was utterly
powerless, always and everywhere certain to be mocked, tortured, and finally
killed by the Crooked, what then? Why not go down with the ship? He began to
be frightened by the very fact that his fears seemed to have momentarily
vanished. They had been a safeguard … they had prevented him, all his life,
from making mad decisions like that which he was now making as he turned to
Frost and said,
“It’s all bloody nonsense, and I’m damned if I do any such
thing.”
And here things start to get really surreal.
The session is interrupted by the simultaneous arrival of Wither’s little
tour group, and the dinner guests, including Jules, the self-important public
face of the N.I.C.E. Most critics regard him as a particularly unkind
caricature of H.G. Wells, and they are probably correct. Jules knows nothing
about the Macrobes, the diabolical cosmic entities who control the Institute
through the severed head of the executed murderer Alcasan; he knows nothing
about the severed head. He thinks that he’s in charge of the Institute, and
part of Wither’s job is to keep him thinking that. Jules does not understand
what the old man in the robes and the foreign priest are doing here, and it
takes all of Wither’s powers of diplomacy and double-talk to soothe him.
Mark is allowed to change into dinner clothes. This is England after all,
and there are some societal norms which even Objectivists like Frost must
follow.
The dinner is a peculiar one. The tramp seems to be enjoying himself,
accepting the bizarre things that are happening to him with a cheerful fatalism.
During the dinner, several things happen, and Lewis show them unfolding as they
occur to several individuals.
Wither first notices something wrong when in the middle of his after dinner
speech, Jules makes a remark about something being “as gross an anachronism as
to trust to Calvary for salvation in modern war.” Of course, he means
“cavalry”; “Calvary” is the name of the hill upon which Christ was crucified;
and Jules’s significant slip has always stuck in my mind to keep me from
confusing the two words. But the next sentence out of his mouth is utter
gibberish, and not the type of gobbledygook platitudes he usually uttered.
Wither tries to prevent Jules from embarrassing himself further by taking the
podium himself, but finds the guests staring at him as if he were speaking
gibberish too. Actually, everyone in the room has suddenly lost the ability to
communicate intelligibly.
Frost attempts to pass a note to Fairy Hardcastle, but the note reads
“Blunt frippers intantly to pointed bdeluroid. Purgent. Cost.”. So
she takes a wild guess as to what her boss wants. She discreetly gets up from
the table, locks all the doors leading out of the dining room, pulls out a
pistol, and shoots Jules dead.
That’s when the real panic starts. And that’s when the ferocious man-eating
tiger comes out of the kitchen. Tiger? What’s going on here?
What has happened is that Merlin has unleashed the Curse of Babel on the
crowd. You may recall that the novel’s title, “That Hideous Strength”, comes
from a medieval poem about the Tower of Babel, that dreadful stronghold. Merlin
now possesses the power of Mercury, the god of Language, to take away their
ability to communicate. I recently read another critic who observed that the
curse doesn't end with language; With the power of Mars, he removed from the
N.I.C.E. the martial discipline they once had and with the power of Venus the
camaraderie and co-operation they once enjoyed. Well, to be honest, the crew at
Belbury despised all those things; their organization was based on fear, not
discipline; on ambition, not comradeship; and they used language as a tool to
deceive, not to communicate. So, in a way, Merlin is merely taking away from
them virtues which they weren't using anyway.
Merlin leaves the banquet hall quietly without being observed and takes the
tramp with him. No one sees the tramp again, although I like to think he made
off with some of the N.I.C.E.’s silverware and got many a drink at the local pub
telling of his adventures. Merlin goes to the labs where the animals are kept
for vivisection experiments and frees them, sending them to the dining room. To
dine. Here he finds Mr. Bultitude, and gives him a special blessing,
temporarily freeing him from the tameness Ransom had imposed upon him and
reminding the bear that he is a carnivore.
Merlin also releases other captives, prisoners who have been transferred from
the local jails to the N.I.C.E. as part of the Institute’s takeover of local
civil government. One of these prisoners is Ivy Maggs’s husband, and Merlin
gives the man a note from his wife instructing him to come to St. Anne’s, but to
avoid Edgestow.
Belbury is now utter chaos, which is only intensified when the Macrobes,
seeing that their plans have been upended, decide to destroy their tools. Wither
along with Filostrato and Straik flee to lab where Alcasan’s severed head is
kept.. The men find themselves compelled to worship the head as if it were some
kind of scientific Lord of the Flies. Then the head commands them to get it a
new one, and Filostrato finds himself dragged off to the lab’s mini-guillotine.
They kill Filostrato and are in the process of trying to kill each other when
Mr. Bultitude comes in to finish the job.
Frost finds himself compelled, as if his body was controlled by superior
forces, to gather all the flammables in the lab and immolate himself.
Lord Feverstone, ever the opportunist, manages to slip out of the banquet
before everything goes pear-shaped; but when he heads towards Edgestow, he finds
an exodus of people leaving it. He presses onward, and so is swallowed up by
the unexpected earthquake which destroys the town.
As it happens, very few people die in the destruction of Edgestow. Many had
already been displaced. Many more providentially left town for seemingly
coincidental reasons. But in any case, the only people left in Edgestow when it
was destroyed were the Very Good, who were ready for Heaven anyway, and the Very
Bad, who were getting what they deserved. George Orwell disliked this
eldila ex machina ending, feeling that it detracted from a perfectly
good cautionary dystopia; but Lewis re-wrote Paradise Lost so that the Snake
loses; he’s not about to end the novel with a boot on humanity’s face
forever.
The next morning, many of the animals freed from the N.I.C.E. turn up at St.
Anne’s. Mr. Bultitude returns, in the company of a friendly she-bear. Many of
the other animals also have arrived two-by-two and celebrate their new freedom
under the blessing and sanction of the goddess Venus. “This is becoming
indecent,” MacPhee complains as the elephants begin copulating in the garden.
“On the contrary,” Ransom replies, “decent in the old sense,
decens,
fitting is just what it is.”
Lord Byron once said that every tragedy is ended with a death, and every
comedy with a marriage. This comedy ends with couples united. Ivy is reunited
with her husband. And then there’s Jane.
The Director is bidding all his friends good-bye. Ransom’s task here is
finished. He is ready to go. Like Frodo, he has suffered wounds which cannot
be healed in this world; but the eldila are going to come and take him to
Perelandra, where he will wait with Arthur and a handful of others until the End
of Days.
Jane would like to stay with the Director until he leaves, but Ransom tells
her that she is being waited for. “Your husband is waiting for you in the
Lodge. It was your own marriage chamber that you prepared. Should you not go
to him?”
Since Ransom requests it, she accedes to his will. “But – but – am I a bear
or a hedgehog?” Is she just another female to be paired off at the end?
“More. But not less,” Ransom says. “You will have no more dreams. Have
children instead.”
Mark too has escaped the chaos at Belbury. Merlin also found him and gave
him a letter from his one-time friend Dennison, telling him that his wife was
waiting for him at St. Anne’s-on-the-Hill.
When he was a prisoner at Belbury, he flattered himself in thinking himself
heroically resisting the N.I.C.E. He doesn't feel so heroic now, and can only
think of how badly he’s treated Jane and how unworthy he is of her. What he’s
feeling is the flip side of Paul’s admonition for wives to obey their husbands;
the husbands need to strive to be deserving of that deference. As he approaches
the small cottage on the manor property he encounters a gigantic woman in a
flame-colored robe with a beautiful but sternly enigmatic face who opens the
door for him and wordlessly commands him to enter.
Jane does not see the goddess this time. But she sees through the window
that Mark has left his shirt lying draped over a chair. How like the man. She
goes in to him.
And do Mark and Jane really reunite and re-establish their relationship?
Lord Byron would say yes. And so would every Happily Ever After. But for all
his theoretical musings on the proper relation between the sexes, C.S. Lewis
never shows the two actually together and trying to make things work.
So maybe it’s best to leave it as a Happy Ending. Jack has his Jill, and the
Forces of Darkness have for a time been forestalled. The darkness will gather
again, but for the time being Venus presides over St. Anne’s and elephants are
dancing in the rose garden.