That Hideous Strength -- Mimetic Theory and Literary Study

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Date Posted: 16:19:27 02/07/08 Thu
Author: Shannon
Subject: That Hideous Strength

To add to the other excellent examples from Lewis already posted, his That Hideous Strength provides several examples of mediation. Ransom acts as double mediator for Jane, first in relation to her husband, then in relation to God. Though Jane is a first confused, believing the draw she feels in both cases to be directly connected to the "Director" himself, Lewis quickly reveals the flaw in this thinking in various ways. Ransom himself constantly reminds Jane of her proper roles of wife and daughter of God. And in one scene, Lewis writes of Jane's inner struggle:
"Risen from some unknown region of grace or heredity, it uttered all sorts of things which Jane had often heard before but which had never, till that moment, seemed to be connected with real life. If it had simply told her that her feelings about the Director were wrong, she would not have been surprised, and would have discounted it as the voice of tradition. But it did not. It kept on blaming her for not having similar feelings about Mark....At the very moment when her mind was most filled with another man there arose, clouded with some undefined emotion, a resolution to give Mark much more than she had ever given him before, and a feeling that in doing so she would be really giving it to the Director."

As the story developes, Jane slowy begins to learn that these feelings of admiration and obedience are, or ought to be, directed towards God and through God to her husband. Thus, when Ransom is literally removed from the story, he is no longer needed because the proper relationship of God as mediator within the marriage of Jane and Mark has been restored.

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