I don't like unearned redemption

 I'm going back to a familiar well and re-reading older books this year. Well, not always older, one was The Employees by Olga Ravn, and I read that only in 2022 and it came out about a year earlier. But mostly older books.

One book I reread the last few days was The Magician's Nephew. Book 6 of the Narnia series, though it's now placed as Book 1 because chronologically it comes first. The story of two children, Polly and Digory, who get involved in the schemes of Digory's uncle (the titular Magician) and find themselves waking a terror of another world, the half-giantess Jadis, who will later be the White Witch of Narnia.

Digory is a bold and loud idiot. He's generally trying to do the right thing, but only after serious consideration or hesitation, and when he does the wrong thing, he goes all in. He's the one who insists that Polly and he go to another world; once there, he decides he's going to ring a bell that seems to be bad news and hurts Polly when she tries to stop him. That bell wakes up Jadis, and lots of unfortunate events follow. Eventually, for no particular reason, the Jesus-substitute Aslan the Lion allows him to do an important job and redeem himself, when at no point has he earned the right to be important or valued.

Meanwhile, there's Polly. She's consistently for doing the right thing, for not taking stupid chances, for leaving clearly bad things alone. But because she's a girl, and because Clive Staples Lewis is very, very Christian so the unearned redemption comes in, and she gets nothing. She's sidelined in the narrative, and will not be the old professor who the Pevensey kids end up staying with, and basically just gets ignored. She's permitted, as a favor, to fly along with Digory on his redemption quest, but not to really participate.

And then, again, he does nothing to earn the thanks and regard of Aslan except do as he's requested, but he gets thanks and regard just the same. "Do the thing!" and then he does it and is treated as if doing the thing was the biggest deal in all of history. He's sorely tempted to fuck up on doing the thing, almost does; Polly on the other hand never has a moment's thought of messing up the task by involving herself. Again, she gets paid in relative dust.

I think there's a lot of good things in the book; I adore Jadis, and really Aslan is even okay in this book. Strawberry/Fledge is a great horse. Uncle Andrew is a pretty good character, if an awful and worthless human being. The green and yellow rings and the Wood Between The Worlds are neat! Even Digory isn't as annoying as I am making him out to be. It's the story where the redemption of Digory's boring failings is built in and guaranteed because it's what Christ would do that makes me crabby.

Anyway, I want to do something with Jadis. I want to do something with these settings and ideas. It's still under copyright so it'll be a slantwise sort of thing, but I am having thoughts and they might turn into words, eventually.

Polly deserves better, at the very least.