Previous
Chapter 10
Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in That Hideous Strength, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Obedience, Exclusivity, and Humility
Modernization vs. Tradition
Divine Conflict
Deception and Confusion
Gender and Marriage
Summary
Analysis
Jane leads Dimble and Denniston on a search for Merlin, and as they walk through the Wood in the rain, they all start to truly believe in Merlin for the first time. Denniston realizes they are pursuing not only a man, but the lost age of Britain that he represents. Jane wrestles with the implications of Maleldil being God, whom she doesn’t think she believes in. The group sees a “tramp” with a donkey, but they lose sight of him.
The characters’ walk in Bragdon Wood once again highlights how connecting to nature connects people to the past, as walking through the Wood is equally enlightening to Jane, an atheist, as it is to the Christian Dimble and Denniston. Denniston’s realization that Merlin represents a lost age of Britain further emphasizes this point. Being in Bragdon Wood lets people briefly experience this lost age, and it thus inspires them to believe in it.
Themes
Wither, Miss Hardcastle, and Professor Frost talk about Mark, whom they have left overnight in jail, and the N.I.C.E.’s efforts to find Merlin. Miss Hardcastle wants to torture Mark to learn Jane’s location, but Frost, who is quietly leading the meeting, insists that they should instead manipulate Mark and secure his loyalty to the N.I.C.E. Wither agrees that they should try to bring as many individuals as possible into the N.I.C.E.’s “unity.”
Professor Frost has been lurking in the shadows throughout the novel, and now he finally demonstrates how he has masterfully manipulated the N.I.C.E. He subtly controls the meeting with two people who ostensibly outrank him, and he understands that Mark is more susceptible to being tempted with inclusion than to being antagonized.
Themes
Mark despairs in jail, certain he is going to be hanged. He feels like a fool for trusting Wither and Feverstone, and he knows that Jane would have easily seen through both men. He realizes the folly in his desire to be an “insider,” which he’s wished for since childhood. Mark acknowledges that he has come to care about Jane only as a symbol of his status, which is unfair to her because she is capable of a kind of joy that he can’t access. He resigns himself to death because he believes Jane will be better off without him. Frost enters Mark’s cell, and Mark is astonished that he now hates this man, though he used to want to impress him.
Mark’s self-loathing at his own foolishness is coupled with his conviction that Jane, who he has internally belittled and resented, is his moral superior. He realizes that his greatest joy is being an insider, while Jane is capable of a purer joy. This calls to mind Jane’s feeling of joy after meeting Ransom, as well as C. S. Lewis’s memoir Surprised by Joy. In this book, he writes about “joy” as a sensation unique from simple happiness, so powerful that it bears more similarity to grief than pleasure. This suggests that the kind of joy Jane is capable of is powerful, if not divine.
Themes
