Both Meek and Stern: How C.S. Lewis Views Femininity and Masculinity in ‘The Necessity of Chivalry’

C.S. Lewis symbolically views God as ‘masculine’ and human beings as ‘feminine’. However, God himself became ‘feminine’ through Jesus in the Incarnation and Lewis states that the way God rules is by giving himself eternally through his Son, thus suggesting the presence of a ‘feminine’ aspect in God’s very nature. As a consequence, Lewis believes that ‘femininity’ and ‘masculinity’ should be apparent in every personality. In ‘The Necessity of Chivalry’, Lewis refers to Launcelot as a perfect combination of meekness and sternness, or of ‘feminine’ and ‘masculine’ qualities, thus making him the ideal knight. In Lewis’s fiction, there are characters who lack one of the two necessary components, as well as knights in the making. The perfect ideal knight is Aslan, shaped on Christ as he is described in the Gospels, displaying both ‘feminine’ and ‘masculine’ characteristics. Today, the radical message of “heroic meekness” that Jesus preached and that Lewis endorsed still needs to be taught.