Two Decades Later, Philip Pullman’s His Dark Materials Has Never Been More Relevant

This week, Pullman returns to the series with The Book of Dust: La Belle Sauvage, the first in a prequel/sequel trilogy. But even without a new book on the horizon, the original trilogy feels more relevant than ever, given their emphasis on favoring rational thought over dogmatic belief, safeguarding the environment, and exploring the role of women in society. If the new trilogy winds up half as timely, we’ll be discussing this series for a long time to come indeed.
Though the books go way beyond pastiche, strong elements of His Dark Materials seem to take specific issue with the works of C.S. Lewis. The Narnia stories were specifically religious allegories, which isn’t in itself problematic, but Lewis’ worldview takes us down dark roads. The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, the first of the series, presents Aslan as a Christ figure, retelling the crucifixion and resurrection via a wise, fuzzy lion. Sure, it’s just a fantasy—but one that has made more than a few secular readers uncomfortable encountering such strong religious imagery in a fantastical children’s story. Still, the books work on their own terms, right?

But Narnia takes on more troubling aspects with regard to race—Lewis’s Calormenes are a dark-skinned desert people who fight with scimitars and worship a false god. They’re generally (though not exclusively) bad. It’s the kind of thing apologists might chalk up to Lewis’s era and social class. Then there’s Lewis’s seeming disdain for adulthood , and female sexual maturity in particular. Susan, one of the lead characters early on, is later barred from further adventuring—and even denied a version of salvation—after she starts getting into lipstick. The others are saved from the stain of adulthood more tragically, but we’re meant to appreciate the fact that they never have to stop being children. Susan’s journey through the series from strong hero to unmentionable, seemingly solely because she grows into a woman, is deeply uncomfortable. We’ve trained ourselves to make allowances for the era in which an author wrote, but Susan’s story remains jarring, and a little ugly. That’s not to say there’s not much to admire in Lewis’s fantasy epic, but they’re hard books to read uncritically.

Enter Lyra Belacqua, aka Lyra Silvertongue, Pullman’s hero. As a young girl, Lyra is smart and resourceful, even if her formal education has been surprisingly scant. Where the Susan of Narnia seems to suggest the stain of original sin, of partaking in forbidden knowledge, is a virtually insurmountable obstacle to a woman’s salvation, Lyra’s character revels in wisdom. The first book is built on a mystery, as Lyra determines to discover what happens to the children who’ve started to go missing from Jordan College in an alternate-universe version of Oxford.
Lyra grew up at the college as sort of a ward, alongside her “dæmon” Pantalaimon. In the world of His Dark Materials, your innermost self—your soul, perhaps—is made manifest in the form of an ephemeral animal companion. Plot turns reveal soon enough that the religious authorities that hold undue sway over this version of mid-20th Century England—ominously monikered “the Magisterium”— are kidnapping children in order to separate them from their dæmons, believing that doing so will protect them from the influence wrought by a mysterious substance known as “Dust,” a scientifically observable, omnipresent phenomenon that seems to settle more around adolescents and adults, which leads some to believe it is the physical manifestation of original sin (also sexuality, and open-mindedness). The practice of permanently separating children from an essential part of themselves is therefore deemed preferable to exposing them to evil influence. By design, the process draws parallels to genital mutilation—a tragically real-world attempt to cut off young women from adult sexuality.
Did we mention these books were originally marketed to middle schoolers? (Interesting note: alongside The Hobbit, the His Dark Materials trilogy is one of the rare books you’ll find in both the adult and children’s sections at Barnes & Noble.)

Lyra is all about forbidden knowledge, having been gifted with an alethiometer (the “Golden Compass” for which the American version of the first book is named). It’s an arcane truth-telling device that only the exceedingly clever can comprehend. Pullman isn’t terribly concerned with injecting real-world science into his fantasy, but he does show an appreciation for scientists, and nods toward some cutting edge thinking from our own Earth—Dust seems inspired by super-string theory, for instance, and he also gives a scientific gloss to his many-worlds take on reality (Mary and John Gribbin’s The Science of His Dark Materials discusses all this in great detail).
The trilogy generally shows an appreciation for rational thought, one shared by Lyra. And she’s also rewarded for her imaginative nature, saving herself and her friends on more than one occasion by deceiving the less quick-witted—a skill which C.S. Lewis would certainly not have celebrated. Lyra is true to herself, warts and all, and makes friends in her travels of all shapes, sizes, and colors. Criticizing the ruling Magisterium is a blasphemous crime, but, ultimately, that won’t stop her from doing what she believes to be the right thing.

If the idea of an authoritarian leadership catering to religious extremists taking steps to keep people—women in particular—from thinking too hard strikes you as particularly familiar these days well, welcome to 2017.
Naturally, the trilogy has weathered a fair bit of criticism from Christian scholars, but it’s also entirely possible to read them as a critique not of organized religion, but of extremism in general. When the 2007 film adaption was in the works, Pullman signed off on the filmmakers’ decision to push religion to the side in favor of making the ruling Magisterium more secular in nature. It was, no doubt, a way to give the film broader appeal, but Pullman also apparently felt his critique of authoritarianism would be just as effective if the authority in question was secular. It’s probably for the best the film series stalled at the first film, which did manage to work in fits and starts; the book series gets more specific in its critiques, and much more transgressive, as it goes, leading to a final battle for dominance over the afterlife itself. How would the Potter-ized film treatments have handled that? Would we have met the gay angels Balthamos and Baruch? Probably not.

Pullman’s environmentalism, particularly brought to the fore in the climactic volume The Amber Spyglass, also feels newly immediate. The entire trilogy pivots on the idea of intersecting parallel universes, and by the third book, there’s an effort to exploit the existence of the various planes of reality by thoughtlessly and recklessly opening windows between unrelated worlds. We meet the Mulefa, good stewards of the environment in their personal realm, whose world is dying because of the unregulated and unnatural flow of Dust from other dimensions. There’s a reference at one point to chemicals interfering with the atmosphere and, by extension, weather patterns. Pullman forefronts the idea that human activity has consequences for the natural world, unintended though they may be, that need to be considered.
If the trilogy has a moral, it’s in the related ideas of rejecting authoritarianism and rejoicing in open-minded rationality. Even his most evil characters become heroes by the end, better for having been exposed to new ideas via Lyra and her companions. It all sounds very heavy, but there’s a palpable joyousness in the idea that no one is irredeemable who’s willing to open themselves to new ideas, and ways of thinking. Tolerance and rationality are forces for good that seem to fall out of favor from time to time, and it’s thrilling that Philip Pullman has returned to remind us of their power and necessity.
The Book of Dust, Volume One:La Belle Sauvage is available October 19.