Spoiler alert: This post is part of an in-depth discussion of Perelandra by C. S. Lewis, which will inevitably reveal key plot points. If you don't want me ruining the experience for you, put this post down and go read Perelandra now. I promise I won't be offended.
Ransom and the Green Lady were exploring the Fixed Land, Perelandra's only solid landmass, when they observed a spherical object fall into the sea. On the beach, Ransom was surprised to find his nemesis Weston, who had abducted him to Mars (in Out of the Silent Planet); likewise, Weston was surprised to see Ransom. Maleldil, the spiritual ruler of the Solar System, has forbidden the Green Lady and her male counterpart, the King, from spending the night on the Fixed Land. Therefore, Weston allowed her to leave, but he kept Ransom on the beach at gunpoint.
Weston told Ransom that his philosophy had changed since they were on Mars. There, he had been a materialist and a colonialist, believing that it was humanity's destiny to expand to the stars. Anything that stood in their way, including the rational inhabitants of Mars, was expendable. Since then, his beliefs had evolved to embrace emergent evolution directed by an impersonal, amoral spiritual essence he called the Force. In spite of Ransom's warning that all spirits are not good, Weston called this Force into himself, apparently allowing himself to be taken over by it, before lapsing into a coma. Left alone on the Fixed Land, Ransom slept on the beach.
When Ransom awakes, he finds Weston and his boat have gone. It seems he has left the Fixed Land. Ransom searches for some food. When he returns to the beach, he finds a giant fish of the kind that he and the Green Lady had ridden to the island. It appears to be waiting for him, and it carries him back to Perelandra's floating islands. By now it is night. His slumber is awakened by the sound of Weston and the Green Lady conversing.
Weston is debating with the Lady about Maleldil's law forbidding her or the King from dwelling on the Fixed Land. Weston finds this law strange, arguing that Maleldil has not forbidden her to think about living there. Maleldil would want her to know not only what really is, but what might be: just as the people of Earth tell stories to amuse one another, Maleldil has made no law forbidding her from imagining what it would be like to live on the Fixed Land. Perhaps, he says, he and "Piebald" (Ransom, so called by the Lady because of the uneven sunburn he got on the trip to Perelandra) were brought to Perelandra to make the Lady "older" (wiser) while she was separated from the King. They are here to teach her what Maleldil has not. In fact, Maleldil is allowing her to learn from others to make her wiser. She regards the King as always wiser than herself, but Weston suggests that when they are reunited, she will now be the older one.
Then Weston goes to sleep. Ransom reflects that he's different somehow; in his talk with the Green Lady, he sounds neither pompous nor bullying as he usually is. He sounds very unlike himself—to the point that Ransom is sure that it is Weston, but also not Weston, who is speaking.
So by now it's pretty obvious what Lewis is setting up. Perelandra is pristine planet, inhabited by one man and woman who go around naked and enjoy regular communion with their god. Then a malevolent influence comes in and tries to corrupt the woman's reasoning. Only this time, it's not a talking snake. (There's already been a snake in a tree&mash;or, rather, an obese dragon—in chapter 4, and it turned out to be friendly. The parallels with Genesis 3 are, perhaps, a bit on the nose.
Perelandra's "serpent" is a human being, Weston. Ransom notes that when he talks, it sounds like him and yet not like him. Clearly when Weston called his Force into himself, he became possessed by something, and we can take a good guess who or what that is meant to be.
The biblical Eden had its one rule: "Don't eat fruit from
that tree over there." Similarly, so does the Edenic Perelandra:
"Don't spend the night on that island over there." With Eve, the
serpent started his temptation by corrupting the one simple rule God
had given her: "Did God actually say, 'You shall not eat of any tree
in the garden'?" (Genesis 3:1). Weston's temptation of the Green Lady
is, perhaps, even more subtle: he doesn't change the rule, but appeals
to the letter of it. Surely a ban on living on the Fixed Land
doesn't entail not imagining living on it. Weston rightly
points out that Earthlings make up stories all the time for their own
amusement, not recognizing any sin in the act of creating fiction. (In
1941, two years before Perelandra, Lewis's friend Dorothy
L, Sayers had published The Mind of the Maker, a work of
literary theory in which she argues that the act of literary creation
mirrors the relationship between the Persons of the Trinity.) Of
course, Weston's suggestion is more subversive, implying that perhaps
the original rule wasn't so good, after all.
There might also be a perversion here of Ransom's talk with the Lady in chapter 6, when he tells her that there is no rule on Earth against sleeping on fixed land. Of course, Ransom's intent is benign, intending only to inform her that since all of Earth's land is fixed, no such rule would be possible. If Weston's assertion that the Lady is allowed to imagine living on the Fixed Land is a way of subverting the rule against actually living there, then perhaps he is trying also to appeal to a sense of envy by telling her other people get to live on their own fixed land, so why not her, too?
Weston also makes roughly the same appeal to vanity that the serpent does with Eve. The latter had subverted God's rule by insinuating that eating the forbidden fruit would make Adam and Eve as wise as God, and he did not want that. Similarly, West suggests to the Green Lady that Maleldil has not instructed her on these matters specifically because he has stepped aside and allowed Weston and Ransom to teach her. She will become worldy and wise, like the women of Earth, whom Weston says are, "as it were, little Maleldils." ("You will be like God, knowing good and evil.") The Lady trusts the "older" King in all things, but Weston assures her that with his instruction, she can be the "older" one. He seeks to "free" her from the authority of both her God and her man.
Earth, or Thulcandra, is a fallen planet. It is the "silent planet" of the previous novel's title, because it is quarantined from the rest of the Solar System following the corruption of its Oyarsa, the angelic being who watched over it. Malacandra suffered collateral damage from Thulcandra's fall, but its rational beings still live at peace and in communion with Maleldil. However, Perelandra is still an unfallen world. The Green Lady has now come under the influence of a malevolent spirit in the possessed Weston, and clearly the mission on which the Oyarsa of Malacandra has sent Ransom is to prevent Perelandra's fall. The next chapter is the midpoint of Perelandra, so there's plenty of drama to play out.
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