Think of what we were spared for over 50 years because Lewis was too good a writer to give in to the tendency to write another series that would be nothing but Christian glurge! 
Ah yes, she tempted Edmund with her magic vagina. If you go through the text and substitute “vagina” for “Turkish Delight”, that is. :dubious:
I just had a new thought, something that perhaps adds another layer to this question. One could argue that, before Susan rejected Aslan, Aslan rejected Susan. She and Peter are the first two to be told they won’t be coming back to Narnia.* Though Aslan did not mean for it to be taken that way, might not being (in effect) forbidden to come back to Narnia have started Susan down her path to unbelief? It didn’t affect Peter that way, but Susan was a different person, weaker in faith and prone to self-absorption. Maybe Susan need more direct connection for her not to reach that lapsing point. She hadn’t been guided quite far enough to stay on the path, so to speak.
Maybe, maybe not. Just something I’m throwing out there.
(This, I think, speaks to your solution to the question, Malacandra. Because…
why would Susan conclude that, as you said, “the nearest thing to being a Narnian Queen she would ever experience again was to network herself into becoming a Hollywood starlet,” if not for her being told she would never go to Narnia again?
If your story is online somewhere, I would be intrigued to read it.)
*The first two both in terms of the order of the books, and chronologically in the history of Narnia. I haven’t read TMN in a while, but I don’t recall Digory and/or Polly being sent back with any specific prohibition.
Well, if anyone would have some insight into that point, Not A Tame Lion, it would be you!
Yeah, true enough. I always had it in for that Susan chick. What can I say? She just bugged me.
Well, Aslan only told Susan and Peter “No more Narnia for you” because they were meant to start learning to know him in our world (it says so somewhere). That would mean some dull times compared to the thrills and spills of the magical world - but the long-term reward was to experience the true Narnia, and the true Earth too, in the fullness of their maturity. That’s a theme Lewis revisits in some of his other work, such as Screwtape IIRC. I may find some quotes if you like.
I see what you’re saying. I think you’re right about the sense in which Aslan (and Lewis) meant for that “ban” to be taken. But I think the key there is, “in the fullness of their maturity.” The record seems to indicate that Susan, at the time of that break, was nowhere close to fullness of maturity, and from her perspective, that long-term reward was unforeseeable. Sometimes, the lesson can’t be learned until the pupil is ready to learn it.
So it goes.
I think he was just pointing out the archetype. Females tempting males is a very old trope. Remember, while a serpent tempts Eve, Eve tempts Adam.
I guess that also is the archetype for a female to be the one that is drawn away…
If you work hard enough, you can fit anything into some archetype somewhere.
He certainly did. Read That Hideous Strength and you’ll see. I, too, read it in high school. Then I re-read it as an adult. Entirely different book, practically.
Calvinist.
Sounds more Hobbsian, if you ask me…