That Hideous Strength: Chapter 7

Spoiler alert: This post is part of an in-depth discussion of That Hideous Strength by C.S. Lewis, which will inevitably reveal key plot points. Unless you're the sort of person who likes skipping to the last page, go read the book first.

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Mark Studdock accepted a job with the National Institute for Co-Ordinated Experiments (N.I.C.E.). Though his insistence on concrete work and salary details fell afoul of the N.I.C.E.'s policy of "elasticity"—basically, "do whatever you're told, and don't upset Deputy Director Wither"—he found himself accepted by the Institute's inner circle. He began his project of rehabilitating the executed scientist Alcasan, and was flattered to know his newspaper articles were widely read. Amongst the N.I.C.E.'s elite is Professor Frost, the bearded man whom Mark has seen here and there; he is also the man Mark's wife Jane saw in her first dream, in which Frost removed the head of Alcasan. It was revealed to him that the unrest going on in Edgestow was engineered by Miss Hardcastle, head of the Institute's police. They assigned him to report on some violent riots, which have yet to occur; he wrote two articles, one for the more prestigious papers, and one for the populist tabloids.

Jane, meanwhile, had a recurring dream: this time, of Frost examining her and taking notes while she lay in bed. Later, she had another dream, in which she was in the dark in a stone mausoleum, where she found the corpse of a large, bearded man on a raised platform, and a bearded, young, golden man coming down to her, but he did not arrive. When she went into Edgestow that morning, she spotted the real Professor Frost, and, frightened, immediately decided to return to St. Anne's.

Chapter 7 differs from the previous ones, in that they split their time between Mark and Jane. This chapter is told exclusively from Jane's point of view.

Chapter 7: "The Pendragon"

Jane arrives at the Manor is St. Anne's, where she is first met by Arthur Dennington and her former cleaning lady, Ivy Maggs, who is also part of their group.

They know about her dream of Frost taking notes in her bedroom (apparently she sent a letter), and assure her that the dream was not literal; the Director thinks the dream represents Frost getting information about Jane from another source. Jane also tells them about her latest dream and then meeting Frost in town. While the group is reluctant to tell her too much (she has not yet joined them, after all), they invite her to meet with the Director.

The fact that Jane had sent a letter to the Manor, that had already been received and read, makes me wonder about the timeline in this novel. The plot alone makes it feel like (so far) it has taken place over a matter of a few days; but every so often you get a hint that much more time has passed. The ongoing construction at Bracton, for example, or Mark's growing readership in the press, or this letter. Lewis's writing makes the timing feel compressed. (I get the same impression from reading Acts: you wouldn't immediately realize the book takes place over about 20 years.)

Miss Ironwood prepares Jane for meeting the Director, whom we also know as Mr. Fisher-King or the Pendragon (or, of course, Elwin Ransom). She warns Jane that he appears younger than he is ("nearer fifty than forty"), he has "travelled where no other human being ever traveled before" (I'll say he has), and he is in constant pain, presumably because of his chronic foot wound. As it turns out, Grace Ironwood is his doctor.

Jane is admitted to the presence of the Director, who is sitting on a sofa on a raised dais. He has a bandaged foot. He appears, momentarily, to be about twenty years old. At the same time he appears much older, with a full beard; he gives the impression not of a bedridden invalid, but a very strong and powerful person. "All the light in the room seemed to run towards the gold hair and the gold beard of the wounded man." Is the Director, in fact, the golden man Jane saw in her dream?

Seeing the Director's ageless appearance and kingly countenance, Jane knows that "her world was unmade." It reminds me of Isaiah's reaction to seeing the glory of God on his throne: "'Woe is me! For I am lost; for I am a man of unclean lips, and I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips; for my eyes have seen the King, the Lord of hosts!'" (Isaiah 6:5). Between the Arthurian and quasi-biblical allusions, clearly we are supposed to see Ransom as a legendary figure of some kind, perhaps even a Christ-figure, but how is not yet clear. Well, there's more book to come.

Mr. Fisher-King would like for Jane to join their group. However, her husband Mark being part of the N.I.C.E. complicates matters: they cannot trust each other. He asks Jane to return to Bracton and make an effort to talk him away from Belbury.

Jane has an egalitarian, feminist view of marriage as that between equal partners, with mutual companionship and personal independence. Hence her revulsion at the "little woman" stereotype. She doesn't want her marriage to reduce her autonomy or compromise her academic career (not that her thesis is going anywhere, anyway). The idea that she would need to submit to Mark, even under these circumstancs, is foreign to her.

The Director, on the other hand, reflects Lewis's own view that marriage is not an equal partnership. Equality before the law, or equality of income, he says, are good. But "obedience—humility—is an erotic necessity." Obedience means hierarchy. In the Bible, marriage is portrayed as a symbol of the relationship of Christ with his church (Ephesians 5:22–33). Marriage is grounded in a cosmic hierarchy. Lewis got his views from the Bible; the fictional Ransom, though also a Christian, ascribes his own views to his Masters—presumably the eldila. This relationship is anything but an equal one: as Christ is the head of the church, the husband (who represents Christ in this symbol) is head of the wife. Indeed, when Jane starts to contemplate obedience, but to the Director rather than her husband, he rebukes her with a sharp "Stop it!"

At the end of the conversation, the Director sends Jane back to Edgestow and to Mark. There's an amusing sequence where he blows a whistle and summons three mice, who clean the crumbs from his lunch out of the carpet. But at the very end of this section, the Director sends her out of the room quickly. Jane gets the impression that "something intolerably big, something from Brogdingnag, was pressing on her, was approaching, was almost in the room." Brobdingnag is the setting of the second part of Gulliver's Travels, where the tables are turned from his more familiar voyage to Lilliput: here, he is the Liliputian in the eyes of the Brobdingnagian giants. The language in this place resembles the narrator-Lewis's first view of an eldil: though it appeared to him as a slanted column of light, it did so in such a way as to suggest that the world, not the eldil, was aslant.

As Jane rides the train back to Edgestow, she is conflicted, as though there are four of her: the Jane who simply sat in admiration of Fisher-King; the Jane who is repulsed by that kind of hero-worship; the "moral" Jane, who suggests that the Director is right about her and Mark; and finally, the "supreme Jane" who is simply in a state of joy after having been in the presence of the Director.

When the train stops in Edgestow, it has arrived in the thick of the N.I.C.E.'s engineered riot. Jane must have gotten caught up in some of the violence; she becomes lost, "bruised, frightened, and tired to death." She is captured by the N.I.C.E. police and taken for questioning to Miss Hardcastle. The Fairy recognizes her as Mark's husband, but she doesn't like that she isn't forthcoming about where she had gone on the train, and she burns Jane on the shoulder with the lit end of her cheroot.

Jane is hustled into a car by Miss Hardcastle and two other female members of the police (the Women's Auxiliary Institutional Police, or Waips) humorously named Daisy and Kitty. However, the car breaks down, and after abusing the driver, they have to continue on foot. But when they hear their driver caught, they are forced to scatter and abandon Jane. She is offered a ride back to St. Anne's by a couple in a car who stop to help her.

This chapter is titled "The Pendraagon," referring to the Director/Ransom. Like his other alias, Mr. Fisher-King, it's yet another allusion to Arthurian legend: a title given to Uther, Arthur's father. It means "Chief of Warriors" or "Head Dragon." How the titles "Fisher-King" or "Pendragon" apply to Ransom in particular have yet to be revealed. But there are ten chapters left&hellip<;