Pretty unlikely considering the lack of context.
"For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for Nature cannot be fooled." - Richard Feynman
Fair for Its Day means that, despite being a relic of its time and having some or all of those things (many of them are rather reaching), it contains enough pro-social messages that it remains better about them than its contemporaries. Charlie Chan, for instance, is often seen as staggeringly racist by modern standards, but it is also about a heroic Chinese-American cop contrasted with the Yellow Peril fiction of its time.
Raises the question, then, what Lewis's unusual pro-social messages actually are. No, seriously, I'm having some trouble thinking of anything. (It's certainly not simply that mixed-gender groups of Free-Range Children can have adventures just as good as boys-only ones can. The man was a contemporary of Enid Blyton's, after all...)
In any event, the current FFID entry (which I still have half a mind to simply delete for lack of accuracy, I originally just didn't want to jump blindly into a possible Edit War and somehow my discussion post morphed into what you can see above while I was still writing it) kind of boils down to "yeah, Lewis had Father Christmas say that women shouldn't fight, but he didn't really mean it!". Except...it would seem that he actually pretty much did. The two main female characters we see actually get their hands dirty in combat in the entire first four novels are the White Witch and the Lady of the Green Kirtle — the villains of their respective books. Susan saving Trumpkin with a surprise shot from ambush in Prince Caspian aside, the girl protagonists strongly tend to be busy either traipsing around with Aslan while the boys are with the clashing armies (Lucy and Susan) or outright playing pretty much Damsel in Distress (Jill Pole).
Be fair. None of the heroes won any fights in The Silver Chair, except against game. And I'm pretty sure Jill's the better shot.
If you wanna wipe it, wipe it. I don't think I agree, and I personally chalk it up to Early-Installment Weirdness (Lucy does fight in a battle in a later title, and no one finds it strange), but I can't stop you. You're right. It's not a great example. It benefits the wiki to either have a better one or none at all.
Overall, I feel your view of women's treatment in the books is a jaundiced exercise in cherry-picking and using tinted language to arrive at predetermined conclusions, but what am I gonna do, argue with you? Science has shown that doing that just makes people believe harder out of spite.
Edited by SpectralTime
Do the Chronicles actually qualify for Fair for Its Day? It seems that a reasonably solid argument can be made that underneath the pretty fairytale exterior for children they're alarmingly full of sexism, racism, classism, Broken Aesops, and even questionable theology...
Edited by Underachiever Hide / Show Replies