Sexsim in C.S. Lewis's Pilgrim's Regress?

In Pilgrim’s Regress, a modernization of Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress, C. S. Lewis portrays a few female characters, though not all, as ‘brown girls.’ These girls, portrayed as another species, like the dwarves and giants in the book, pose a problem for the character John, who is on his spiritual journey to reach the island he envisioned in a moment of joy. The first brown girl appeals to him in a way he has not experienced before. They have sex, and for every time they have sex, another brown girl is born. The book is allegorical, like Bunyan’s work. The brown girls come to represent his guilt. The first girl now tries to make him settle down and take care of the family, to ignore his vision of the island. Still he sets out to find it. There are a few more times he is tempted by brown girls, even some he does not recognize as such, always to settle with what they have, because the island isn’t real, and this sensuous experience is. More than once he hears the girl say, “I’m what you’re looking for.”

Lewis’s purpose must be kept in mind. He, or rather his characters, realize that lust, love of the body, imitates love of the spirit. In his book, The Four Loves, Lewis categorizes these two different kinds of love as “Eros” and “Agape,” the first for the opposite sex, the second for God. In Pilgrim’s Regress, the protagonist realizes Eros, (what I prefer to call romantic love), is not the fulfillment of his desire for the heavenly. He finds sex enjoyable, even ecstatic initially, but it is not what he desired.... (Continued in ZEDS e-newsletter.)

The argument he makes that romantic love is the lesser substitute for agape love is important and still relevant. It is not just a medieval concept. It still justifies warning. Lewis notes just how prevalent this idea and practice of idealizing romantic love has become in his book, Allegory of Love. In the commentary on allegorical literature, he notes how influential works like the Romance of the Rose was on medieval thought and thereafter. From the antiquities of Greek and Roman writers until the Middle Ages romantic love was seldom written of, and certainly not central to literature. After the late medieval period, with the works of Dante, Boccaccio, and Chaucer, literature is preoccupied with romantic love. Few authors in that time conceive of agape love, in comparison. It is true to this day. In the age of Hollywood romantic love is consistently shown as the highest man can experience, and sex is the equivalent to Holy Communion, only it’s become so common it’s more like grabbing a quick bite to eat in the car. And it’s recognized as the false substitute for the soul by real life experience.

C. S. Lewis, The Pilgrim’s Regress, (New York: Eerdman’s Publishing Co. 1981).