From a netfriend:

Apparently, the genesis of these books was Lewis' response to being trounced in a philosophical debate by a woman; and the subtle mysogynistic put-downs sprinkled throughout the series were his petty revenges

"Apparently."

I think this is the result of a misreading of something which A.N Wilson said.

Like a lot of what Wilson has to say about Lewis it is

a: Interesting

b: Worth thinking about and

c: Wrong.

Wilson reports the story of Lewis "losing" the argument about "Miracles" with Anscombe. He cites Lewis's friends Derek Brewer and George Sayer, who both stated in print that Lewis was devastated and defeated after the argument.

Wilson argues that, as a result of the debate, Lewis lost confidence in his ability to "prove" the Christian faith with rational arguments. Maybe he even lost faith in the idea that Christianty was rationally defencible. So he retreated into the fantasy world of "Narnia", as if to say "Well, if my intellect can't help us understand God, then maybe my imagination can."

And it is perfecly true that all Lewis's "argumentative" books -- Problem of Pain, Mere Christianity, Abolition of Man and Miracles are written prior to 1948. The books which come after the Anscombe debate -- the Narnia series, Reflections on the Psalms, The Four Loves and Letters to Malcolm -- are much more meditative and devotional.

Naturally, Wilson points to the great scene in "The Silver Chair" where the Witch proves that Narnia and Aslan can't possibly exist, using arguments that Jill and Eustace can't, at that time, refute. He wonders whether the witch is, at some level "a nursery nightmare version" of Anscombe. Puddleglum's response is to obstinately carry on believing in the face of the Witch's proofs: "I'm going to live as like a Narnian as a I can, even if there isn't really any Narnia" which was -- according to Wilson -- roughly Lewis's response to his defeat by Anscombe: I still believe in God even if you've proved to me he doesn't exist.

There is certainly *something* in all of this. George Sayer says that Lewis told him that he could never write a book like "Miracles" again. Wilson doesn't take into account that Anscombe herself said that Lewis wasn't particularly upset by the debate, and wondered whether Brewer and Sayer weren't "projecting" their sense of defeat onto him. He also doesn't mention that Lewis re-wrote the offending chapter of "Miracles" in line with Ansombe's critique, which would have been an odd thing to do if he had simply given up on the idea of philosophical apologetics altogether. It might also be pointed out that in 1951, Mrs Moore died, and in 1952, Lewis met Joy Davidman for the first time, two events that presumably had an effect on his outlook.

Even if the Witch in the Silver Chair is (by a stretch) a caricature of Anscombe, it would seems pretty far-fetched to argue that the "misogyny" (read: "typical 1950s social attitudes") in Narnia are all derived from this one encounter.