In the first of two episodes on this chapter, Ransom and the Green Lady speak about “growing older”, as well as the impact of the Incarnation.
S8E6: Chapter Five – “An Interview With a Lady (Part I)” (Download)
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Show Notes
Introduction
Quote of the Week
Do not wonder, O Piebald Man, that your world should have been chosen for time’s corner. You live looking out always on Heaven itself, and as if this were not enough Maleldil takes you all thither in the end. You are favored beyond all worlds.
C. S. Lewis, The Green Lady, Perelandra, Chapter Five
Chit Chat
- Andrew’s had a busy church schedule. He’s still deciding where his next steps will take him once his assignment is up. Also, he is about to update his eBay page in time for Christmas!
- David’s children ares still recovering from jet lag, although they’re slowly readjusting back to tolerable hours. However, a week after their trip, David’s luggage was successfully recovered and returned. In other good news, another one of his wife’s siblings will be moving to La Crosse shortly!
- Matt went to a dinner, and got to listen to chilling stories from an affiliate with the exorcists out of the diocesan of D. C.. Apparently, the movie Nefarious is incredibly accurate! If listeners want to hear a discussion with an exorcist, we had on Fr. Vincent Lampert back in a Season 4 After Hours episode to talk about “The Screwtape Letters” and spiritual warfare.
Toast
- David was sipping Clipper tea from England, out of the suitcase that was returned a week later!
- Andrew had his usual coffee in his Houston mug.
- And today we’re toasting a returning Patreon supporter, Joanna…
- St. Joanna, the wife of Chuza, the manager of Herod’s household, accompanied our Lord and supported his ministry. So Joanna, we want to thank you for supporting our ministry and pray that the same Lord will bless you greatly.
Discussion
Chapter Summary
- It’s really difficult to sum up their entire conversation in 100 words, but David gave it his best go…
Ransom awakes to find the Lady on a nearby island. She tells him how she was “young” yesterday. They discuss Malacandra (Mars) and Thulcandra (Earth), about the creatures which inhabit them and the impact of the Incarnation.
Ransom realises that she is a goddess, the Queen and Mother of Perelandra. He discovers that there is only one other creature like her on the planet. He is her husband, the King, for whom she was searching when she met Ransom.
Speaking of death, disappointment, agency, and different kinds of joy, Ransom realises that he might inadvertently corrupt this Lady’s innocence…
01. “Evening and Morning – The Second Day”
On what is his second day on Perelandra, Ransom awakes to birdsong. It seems that he didn’t make it to the Green Lady’s island after all! After his swim, he seems to have accidentally returned to the island he left!
However, Ransom sees the Lady’s island only a few feet away. A number of islands have clustered together so that it was a flat, wooded landscape as far as he could see. The green Lady walks nearby plaiting some blue flowers and singing to herself.
Q. Is there anything you’d like to say before we jump into their conversation?
- David talked about the foolishness of Ransom trying to force their meeting, as the islands were already drifting towards each other. Sometimes, it is best to let things happen on their own time, without attempting to intervene.
- The colour of the flowers the Lady is plaiting is significant. They are blue, like those in Narnia after the resurrection of Aslan, and in “Surprised by Joy“. Blue flowers are symbols of Romanticism. Andrew suggested that, as the Lady refers to herself as the “mother”, that the blue is in reference to the Blessed Virgin.
…before I was six years old, [I was] a votary of the Blue Flower.
C. S. Lewis, Surprised by Joy
- The opening scene – a woman singing and playing with flowers opposite a stream – mirrors Dante’s “Matilda” in “Purgatorio”, as the narrator is exploring the Garden of Eden.
Q. As Ransom watched her, here was his train of thought; “In his heart such a premonition of good adventure as made him sit up forthwith.” Lewis doesn’t normally speak this way. What’s with the language in this section?
- Lewis is writing an Arthurian romance, and Ransom is akin to a knight on a quest; defending ladies and taming dragons, and earning supernatural help.
02. “Ransom’s Reaction”
Q. How does Ransom react to the lady initially?
- He was overwhelmed, but not because of her metallic green colour, nor ashamed of the difference in sex… like Adam and Eve, they were “naked and unashamed”. Rather, he was a little embarrassed of how he looked “a little ugly and a little ridiculous”. His journey through space had left one half of his body exposed to the sun, while the other faced the darkness of space, meaning that he was half lobster red and half pasty white. He felt inappropriate compared to the setting around him.
Embarrassment and desire were both a thousand miles away from his experience: and if he was a little ashamed of his own body, that was a shame which had nothing to do with difference of sex and turned only on the fact that he knew his body to be a little ugly and a little ridiculous. Still less was her colour a source of horror to him. In her own world that green was beautiful and fitting; it was his pasty white and angry sunburn which were the monstrosity.
C. S. Lewis, Perelandra, Chapter Five
- David mentioned that Lewis thought all bodies a little ridiculous, as he mentions in “The Four Loves”.
03. “Younger Yesterday”
Q. The queen described herself as “young yesterday”. What did she mean by this?
- What she means by this is that she is innocent and ignorant, and didn’t know that Ransom wouldn’t like her laughing at him. Ransom doesn’t pick up on this different definition of “young”, and takes her literally.
It is very strange to say one is young at the moment one is speaking. But to-morrow I shall be older. And then I shall say I was young to-day. You are quite right. This is great wisdom you are bringing, O Piebald Man… This looking backward and forward along the line and seeing how a day has one appearance as it comes to you, and another when you are in it, and a third when it has gone past. Like the waves.
C. S. Lewis, The Green Lady, Perelandra, Chapter Five
- Why does the Lady call him “Piebald”? It’s because he has two patches of colours: sunburnt pink and pasty white. Animals with patches of two colours were considered “Piebald”.
- This chapter’s evaluation of contemplation has echos of “Meditation in a Toolshed”, which talks about the difference between “looking at” something and “looking along” it. In the time of Lewis’ writing this, analysis had taken over, leaving out the enjoyment and pleasure of experience.
I have never done it before–stepping out of life into the Alongside and looking at oneself living as if one were not alive.
C. S. Lewis, The Green Lady, Perelandra, Chapter Five
- In “C. S. Lewis on the Final Frontier” Sanford Schwartz notes that Lewis draws heavily on French philosopher Henri Bergso, particularly how Bergson saw reality as a continual movement toward new forms of life with ever-higher levels of development. Time then, in Bergson’s view, has no length or meaning, aside from the new states being produced.
- We see this reflected in the way the lady responds to Ransom saying she was only a little older today:
“I see it now,” she said. “You think times have lengths. A night is always a night whatever you do in it, as from this tree to that is always so many paces whether you take them quickly or slowly. I suppose that is true in a way. But the waves do not always come at equal distances. I see that you come from a wise world . . . if this is wise. I have never done it before–stepping out of life into the Alongside and looking at oneself living as if one were not alive.”
C. S. Lewis, The Green Lady, Perelandra, Chapter Five
- The Lady has a very different concept of time; she views its passage in terms of the amount of change that occurs.
- The phrase “I see it now” will be repeated throughout this work. It’s interesting here, because on Malacandra, Ransom was the visitor learning to see, but here, he is the visitor teaching the inhabitant of this new world how to see things she hasn’t until this point.
04. “Of This and Other Worlds”
Q. The Green Lady makes reference to other worlds and so Ransom asks her what she knows about them. What does she say?
- The Lady has an intuitive knowledge of “deep heaven”. She has never seen the night sky however, as it is covered by the thick Venusian atmosphere.
“What do you know about other worlds?” said Ransom.
C. S. Lewis, Perelandra, Chapter Five
“I know this. Beyond the roof it is all deep heaven, the high place. And the low is not really spread out as it seems to be” (here she indicated the whole landscape) “but is rolled up into little balls: little lumps of the low swimming in the high. And the oldest and greatest of them have on them that which we have never seen nor heard and cannot at all understand. But on the younger Maleldil has made to grow the things like us, that breathe and breed.”
- On other worlds, there will be things that she doesn’t understand, but she understands that the ways of Maleldil are much higher than her own.
- Throughout these passages, the Lady references Maleldil the Younger, i.e., God the Son.
Q. Ransom asks her how she can possibly know this, given the thick atmosphere of Venus. How does she respond?
- The Lady rejoices when she learns that on Ransom’s planet, he can see the stars.
“How have you found all this out? Your roof is so dense that your people cannot see through into Deep Heaven and look at the other worlds.”
C. S. Lewis, Perelandra, Chapter Five
Up till now her face had been grave. At this point she clapped her hands and a smile such as Ransom had never seen changed her. One does not see that smile here except in children, but there was nothing of the child about it there.
“Oh, I see it,” she said. “I am older now. Your world has no roof. You look right out into the high place and see the great dance with your own eyes. You live always in that terror and that delight, and what we must only believe you can behold. Is not this a wonderful invention of Maleldil’s? When I was young I could imagine no beauty but this of our own world. But He can think of all, and all different.”
- Although she has never seen the nighttime sky, the Green Lady still trusts that it exists. This reflects the words of the gospel of John:
Jesus said to him, “Have you believed because you have seen me? Blessed are those who have not seen and yet believe.”
John 20:29
05. “Made in the Likeness of Men”
Q. Ransom expresses his surprise to find a humanoid on this planet, someone who looks basically like a human. The same was not true on Malacandra. What’s her explanation?
- Malacandra was much older, according to her. Or, according to Maleldil Himself, because it appears that at this moment, the Lady is in communication with Him. Lewis inserts another presence into the scene to demonstrate this, and Ransom experiences the weight of glory.
“Maleldil is telling me,”… The light was dim, the air gentle, and all Ransom’s body was bathed in bliss, but the garden world where he stood seemed to be packed quite full, and as if an unendurable pressure had been laid upon his shoulders, his legs failed him and he half sank, half fell, into a sitting position.
C. S. Lewis, Perelandra, Chapter Five
- Andrew referenced Lewis’ “The Weight of Glory”.
It may be possible for each to think too much of his own potential glory hereafter; it is hardly possible for him to think too often or too deeply about that of his neighbor. The load, or weight, or burden of my neighbor’s glory should be laid daily on my back, a load so heavy that only humility can carry it, and the backs of the proud will be broken.
C. S. Lewis, The Weight of Glory
- Matt went back to the previous passage, which described the smile that came over the Lady’s face as childlike. It shows the un-fallen nature of Perelandra,that she is in that state.
…and said, “Verily I say unto you, unless ye be converted and become as little children, ye shall not enter into the Kingdom of Heaven.”
Matthew 18:3
06. “The Incarnation Changed Everything”
Q. Seemingly seeing a vision of Malcandra, the Lady speaks of what a great pleasure it would be to meet the Seroni and Hrossa, and she mentions that there are no more of that kind to come. Why?
- Because Maleldil took human form on earth, this Incarnation seems to have changed something. Previously outside of time, He entered into it. The event quite literally split time in two (B.C. and A.D.) and brought forth new covenants.
“Are you so young?” she answered. “How could they come again? Since our Beloved became a man, how should Reason in any world take on another form? Do you not understand? That is all over. Among times there is a time that turns a corner and everything this side of it is new. Times do not go backward.”
C. S. Lewis, The Green Lady, Perelandra, Chapter Five
- What about characters like Aslan? Is Narnia in the same universe as Perelandra? Something to ponder.
- Did the Incarnation change things so much that all future peoples will be human?
- When Christ took on flesh, He assumed our full nature, sans sin. Therefore, to make salvation available for future peoples on future planets, they would have to be human so that the sacrifice and redemption could apply to them.
- Andrew quoted “Mere Christianity”, in reference to Lewis’ thoughts on evolution.
People often ask when the next step in evolution—the step to something beyond man—will happen. But in the Christian view, it has happened already. In Christ a new kind of man appeared: and the new kind of life which began in Him is to be put into us.
C. S. Lewis, Mere Christianity
- Christ entering time and space gives it an end towards which it is heading.
- Ransom asks her if she knows why the Incarnation happened.
“And do you,” said Ransom with some hesitation–“and do you know why He came thus to my world?”
C. S. Lewis, Perelandra, Chapter Five
All through this part of the conversation he found it difficult to look higher than her feet, so that her answer was merely a voice in the air above him. “Yes,” said the voice. “I know the reason. But it is not the reason you know. There was more than one reason, and there is one I know and cannot tell to you, and another that you know and cannot tell to me.”
- The full explanation of this section will have to remain a mystery for a few chapters though, because it would give spoilers!
Q. Ransom expresses sadness that it will only be humankind moving forward, asking if they are to be swept away and whether they are only rubbish in Deep Heaven. Like Americans, she doesn’t know what rubbish means (maybe he should have said “trash” instead!), but the lady gives a response which seems rather like a rebuttal of chronological snobbery.
- Basically, she says that the other species are not worse, they just came earlier.
…You do not mean they are worse because they come early in the history and do not come again? They are their own part of the history and not another. We are on this side of the wave and they on the far side. All is new.
C. S. Lewis, The Green Lady, Perelandra, Chapter Five
Q. We’re told that Ransom had difficulties with the “conversation. It may (or may not) have been due to the fact that he could not look long at her face”. What do you make of this?
- Maleldil is speaking directly in her ear, likely speaking through her. This makes her difficult to keep eye contact with.
07. “No More Talking”
- Ransom then wants the conversation to end. The text makes an important and quite beautiful distinction that He had had his fill, like a man who has slept or eaten enough.
- Perelandra seems to have worked some kind of magic on Ransom, suppressing his English instinct to beat around the bush. Instead he just tells her he doesn’t want to talk any more, but would like her permission to come over to her island so that they may speak again at some point. After some confusion as to what he meant by her island, she invites him over so crosses over, bows awkwardly, and walks into the wood where he falls into a deep sleep…
Wrap Up
Concluding Thoughts
- Matt closed with an admiration of Lewis’ ability to capture innocence. He was attempting to grapple with a creature that was beyond his grasp, but he did it as well as anyone could have.
