That Hideous Strength

That Hideous Strength
First edition cover
Author	C. S. Lewis
Country	United Kingdom
Language	English
Series	Space Trilogy
Genre(s)	Science fiction novel
Publisher	The Bodley Head
Publication date	1945
Media type	Print (Hardback and Paperback)
Pages	384 pp
ISBN	N/A
Preceded by	Perelandra

That Hideous Strength (subtitled "A Modern Fairy-Tale for Grown-Ups") is a 1945 novel by C. S. Lewis, the final book in Lewis's theological science fiction Space Trilogy. The events of this novel follow those of Out of the Silent Planet and Perelandra (a.k.a. Voyage to Venus) and once again feature the philologist Elwin Ransom. Yet, unlike the principal events of those two novels, the story takes place on Earth rather than in space or on other planets in the solar system.

The novel was heavily influenced by the writing of Lewis's friend Charles Williams and is markedly dystopian in style. In the book's preface Lewis acknowledges the science-fiction writer Olaf Stapledon and his work: "Mr. Stapledon is so rich in invention that he can well afford to lend, and I admire his invention (though not his philosophy) so much that I should feel no shame to borrow."^[1]

The title is taken from a poem written by David Lyndsay in 1555, Ane Dialog betuix Experience and ane Courteour, also known as The Monarche. The couplet in question, The shadow of that hyddeous strength, sax myle and more it is of length, refers to the Tower of Babel.^[2]

Plot summary

The story is set in England of the mid 1940s ("vaguely after the war"), in the small university town of Edgestow, centered around a young university don Mark Studdock, a fellow of Bracton College at the (fictional) University of Edgestow, and his wife Jane (née Tudor), who is working on her graduate degree in poetry.

The National Institute of Coordinated Experiments ("N.I.C.E."), a scientific and social planning agency, furtively pursues its program of the exploitation of nature and the annihilation of humanity. The Institute is secretly inspired and directed by fallen eldila, whom they refer to as "macrobes", superior beings. Their takeover of Edgestow and its surrounding area is a case in point of the manner in which they use human pride and greed to get what they want. After the N.I.C.E. would achieve its ends, the earth would only belong to the "macrobes".

Set against the N.I.C.E.'s operations is a small resistance group led by Dr. Elwin Ransom, who following his journeys to Mars and Venus, is now directed by the good eldila there, as well as those of Mercury, Saturn, and Jupiter. These eldila, previously blocked from accessing Earth, "the silent planet", are now unhindered, as that silence had first been breached by Weston and Devine when they left the earth to travel to Malacandra (Mars) in Out of the Silent Planet. Ransom's group consists of humans and animals living in unity and harmony, in stark contrast to the division and political maneuverings within the N.I.C.E.

The story begins with Jane thinking about her troubled marriage over breakfast while casually glancing at a photograph in the morning newspaper. The picture is of a man named Alcasan, a criminal just guillotined in France, which Jane recognizes as the man in a dream she had the night before. In her dream she saw him in a prison cell with a man with a pointed beard and pince-nez glasses. She then sees this man twisting off Alcasan's head. She is frightened by the dream, and after visiting with her friend Mrs. Dimble, is persuaded to seek help from psychologist Grace Ironwood at the St. Anne estate. Ironwood informs her that she is not insane but receiving clairvoyant visions, but Jane initially refuses to accept this. Ironwood asks Jane to report any further visions, and Jane returns home to Edgestow.

Meanwhile Mark, a professor of Sociology at Bracton College, has been recruited into an inner circle of fellows, known as "the progressive element". He finds out from his colleague Curry that he obtained his fellowship through the recommendation of Lord Feverstone (later revealed to be Devine, who first appeared in Out of the Silent Planet). Feverstone is also associated with the N.I.C.E. After the "progressives" see to it that the college approves the sale of Bracton land including Bragdon Wood to the N.I.C.E., Mark enthusiastically accompanies Feverstone to the N.I.C.E. headquarters at Belbury for what he believes is a position at the Institute. Feverstone flatters him, and Mark is initially optimistic about his future, but is perplexed by the vagueness of his interview with Deputy Director John Wither. He only confirms that he might actually work in the N.I.C.E. through conversations with an Italian professor Filostrato and the head of the N.I.C.E.'s institutional police force, Miss "Fairy" Hardcastle. He finds that his work with the N.I.C.E. would have nothing to do with his academic training as a sociologist but instead would make use of his persuasive writing skills to plant N.I.C.E. propaganda in local papers (now mostly under N.I.C.E. control). He finds himself accepted into the "library circle", seemingly the inner political circle at Belbury. The circle reveals plans for staging a riot in Edgestow in order to cement N.I.C.E. control of the area, and Mark begins his efforts for the propaganda campaign.

After experiencing further visions, Jane returns to St. Anne, where she meets the rest of the group. She also meets for the first time with the director, Ransom, who explains more about his organization and the N.I.C.E. as well as her role, but does not yet admit her fully into the group, especially as her Mark is unaware of her association with them.

Meanwhile, Wither and Hardcastle now try to pressure Mark into bringing Jane to Belbury, as they are aware of her clairvoyance, and intend to use her for their own purposes. They reveal that they have his lost wallet, which they say was found in the vicinity of Mark's colleague Dr. Hingest, who was murdered by the N.I.C.E. a few days before during his attempt to leave the institute (an event which Jane also saw in a vision). As Mark has no alibi to clear himself of the murder, he begins to realize he is trapped. He is also brought to the severed head of Alcasan, who is represented as the actual "head" of the N.I.C.E. Filostrato believes that the head is being kept alive purely by his scientific devices, where blood and air are pumped through it, but it is actually a mouthpiece of the evil eldila that control the N.I.C.E. Frost, who brought the head to Belbury, has opened himself to be possessed by these eldila as well.

It is upon Jane's return to Edgestow in the midst of the riot that the N.I.C.E. almost succeeds in capturing her. Jane is unable to make her way to her home, and is arrested by Miss Hardcastle and the institutional police and taken to a basement room for interrogation. Hardcastle attempts to get Jane to reveal where she has been, intending to ascertain Ransom's base, and resorts to burning Jane with a lighted cheroot cigarette. Fortunately for Jane, Hardcastle's car stalls in the middle of the riot as they are trying to take her to Belbury, and they abandon her. Jane is rescued by Arthur Denniston and his wife, and they take her to live at the St. Anne estate. Jane finds that her friends, Dr. Cecil and Mrs. "Mother" Dimble are now staying there with the Dennistons, Ivy Maggs, Grace Ironwood, Dr. MacPhee, and "the Director" Elwin Ransom. They are all that stands between Logres, the good and 'true' England, and the N.I.C.E. Ransom still suffers from the wounded heel that he sustained on Perelandra (Venus) when he defeated the diabolically controlled Weston in Perelandra. He is now the "Pendragon", the inheritor of the role of King Arthur, and he is allied with the good eldila. By her association with the St. Anne group, Jane begins to rethink her non-Christian lifestyle.

Mark determines to leave Belbury. He runs away on foot to the nearby village of Courthampton where he takes a bus to Edgestow. He finds his flat deserted, Jane not having been there in some time, but he finds a letter addressed to Mrs. Dimble. Mark then makes his way to the village of Northumberland to see Dr. Dimble to find out where his wife is. Dimble sees Mark but does not let him know where Jane is. He lets Mark know that Jane is a part of the resistance to the N.I.C.E. Mark leaves Dimble's office only to be arrested by the police for the murder of Dr. Hingest.

Mark is conveyed by the police to Belbury and confined to a cell, and realizes that the N.I.C.E. may have him killed for his disloyalty. It is then that he begins to set himself against the N.I.C.E. Frost wants to fully initiate Mark into the Institute, but Mark is disgusted with Frost's cold inhumanity. Frost wants to condition Mark into what Frost believes to be "objectivity". Mark is taken to a room beyond the room of the severed head where he is exposed to pointlessly broken and off-center patterns in a controlled environment decked with horrible, blasphemous, surrealistic paintings. The effect on Mark instead is that he reaffirms to himself the natural and the normal in opposition to the perversity of his surroundings.

One of Jane's visions in the course of the story involves an old man lying in an underground vault. Both Ransom and the N.I.C.E. know that this is the wizard Merlin of Arthurian legend who "sleeps" in such a place beneath Bragdon Wood, recently acquired by the N.I.C.E. A race develops to acquire Merlin with the hope of making use of his powers. While the N.I.C.E. is forced to search the entire wood, Ransom's group is aided by Jane's recollections of the area from her visions. She also has seen that Merlin has awakened. On a windy and rainy night Ransom sends Dimble, Denniston, and Jane out to Bragdon Wood to find Merlin. The N.I.C.E. also has three teams looking for him at the same time. Jane and her companions find an abandoned camp of a vagabond tinker in a dingle in Bragdon Wood. They then encounter a wild, old, bearded horseman, who rides away before they are able to communicate with him. While this is going on the N.I.C.E. succeeds in apprehending a frail, naked, old man, whom they lodge in another room at the Institute. The wild horseman meanwhile makes his appearance at St. Anne's, and is revealed to be the true Merlin. After questioning Ransom and finding him to be the Pendragon, Merlin, who identifies himself as Merlinus Ambrosius, is readily compliant, and is found to be the perfect agent of the good eldila to destroy the N.I.C.E.

Comically, the man the N.I.C.E. has acquired is actually the vagabond tinker, whom they mistake for Merlin. The tinker takes advantage of the first class care he receives at the hands of the N.I.C.E. and remains silent despite Wither's attempt to communicate with him in Latin. Mark, during breaks from his conditioning with Frost, is ordered to keep watch on the strange guest with whom he forms a secret understanding.

Wither and Frost believe that in order to communicate with their "Merlin" they have to secure someone who can speak in a Celtic dialect. They take out an advertisement for a linguist, which is answered by the real Merlin disguised as a Basque priest. Merlin hypnotizes the tinker to speak in an unknown language, which Merlin in turn appears to interpret to Wither and Frost in Latin. In this way Merlin gets Wither and Frost to believe that the tinker is Merlin, and has Wither give them a tour of Belbury.

Frost, in the meantime, wants to complete Mark's initiation, so he takes him into the "objectivity room" where a large crucifix has been placed in the center. Frost then orders Mark to stamp on it and degrade it. Mark demurs with the argument that such an action would affirm the reality of Christianity, which the crucifix represents. When again ordered to desecrate the crucifix, Mark curiously responds, "It's all bloody nonsense, and I'm damned if I do any such thing."^[3]

Merlin accompanies the false Merlin to the Institute banquet at which the director of the N.I.C.E., Horace Jules, gives a speech. During this speech the Curse of Babel falls on him and all present, causing confusion and mayhem. Jules is shot and killed by Miss Hardcastle, who in turn is killed with many others when Merlin releases the Institute's captive animals (a tiger, an elephant, a wolf, a snake, and a bear among others) into the hall. In the ensuing carnage only Wither, Straik, Filostrato, Frost, and Feverstone escape.

The end of Wither, Frost, Filostrato, and Straik is quite bizarre. Wither and Straik force Filostrato to the severed head room where they strip, worship the head, and behead Filostrato. Wither then stabs Straik to death and is himself killed by a bear that apparently destroys the severed head as well. Frost later comes into the room with gasoline, and mechanically sets himself and Belbury on fire under the total control of the evil eldila.

Merlin helps Mark, the tinker, Tom Maggs, and Mr. Bultitude the bear escape and directs Mark to St. Anne's. He then disappears from the narrative. From four vantages the destruction of Edgestow by blasts and earthquakes is portrayed: St. Anne's, Mark's, Feverstone's, and Curry's. Curry determines to go to London to be at the center of the re-establishment of Bracton College. Since he was made the provisional governor of Edgestow subsequent to the riot, Feverstone tries to return. He gets part way there from Belbury in a car that is driven wildly across country. When he gets to Edgestow, he perishes in an earthquake that engulfs the town.

The St. Anne group celebrates the victory over the N.I.C.E. with a dinner served to the women by the men. Since Ransom can only be cured of his injury in the place where it occurred, he will once again be taken to Perelandra. His departure is not shown, but the reader is informed that a new Pendragon will be installed. Ransom bestows a blessing on his associates before they retire for the beautiful evening that is strangely transformed from a wintry one into a summer one. The St. Anne estate comes under the influence of the various eldil of the solar system, including Perelandra, the eldil of Venus, who stays after the other good eldila have left. She presides over the reuniting of the couples: the jackdaw and its mate, Mr. Bultitude the bear and his mate, who had presumably killed Wither and destroyed the severed head, Tom and Ivy Maggs, and Mark and Jane Studdock. Ransom tells Jane that when she and Mrs. Dimble were preparing the lodge for Tom and Ivy Maggs and she saw a curious vision of a beautiful woman and dwarves, reminiscent of a painting by Titian, she was actually preparing her own bridal bower for herself and Mark. Mark is invited into the lodge by a vision of the beautiful woman where he undresses and is later joined by Jane, who, when she sees Mark's shirt hanging out of the window, knows that only he could be there.

Characters

• Mark Gainsby Studdock — Protagonist; sociologist, and ambitious to the point of obsession with reaching the "inner circle" of the social environment to which he has been grant preliminary admittance.
• Jane Tudor Studdock— Protagonist; wife of Mark, and clairvoyant dream-seer.
• vagabond tinker — mistaken by the N.I.C.E. for Merlinus Ambrosius when the latter steals his clothes and horse at his camp in Bragdon Wood.

N.I.C.E.

• François Alcasan — "The Head", a French scientist executed for murder early in the book. His head is recovered by the N.I.C.E. and appears to be kept alive by the technology of man while actually having become a communication mechanism for the "Macrobes", the fallen eldila.
• John Wither — Long-winded bureaucrat and "Deputy Director" of the N.I.C.E. He is the true leader of the N.I.C.E., and a servant of the Macrobes. Long-term association with the Macrobes has "withered" his mind, and his speech and thinking are characterized by vagueness, jargon, and euphemism. He does not engage in a normal sleep cycle, but maintains a continual dreamy wakefulness that affords him the ability to maintain a shadowy, supernatural presence throughout the Institute.
• Professor Frost — A psychologist and assistant to Wither, he is the only other N.I.C.E member who knows the true nature of the Head, and of the Macrobes. He views emotions and values as mere chemical phenomena to be ignored as distractions from scientific inquiry. He is coldhearted and unemotional and he has an exact, precise manner of speech and thinking.
• Miss/Major Hardcastle (a.k.a "The Fairy") — The sadistic head of the N.I.C.E. Institutional Police and its female auxiliary, the "Waips". Torture is her favorite interrogation method, and she takes special pleasure in abusing female prisoners. It is clearly implied that she is a sadomasochistic lesbian.
• Dr. Filostrato — An obese Italian physiologist, who has seemingly preserved Alcasan's head. He does not understand the Head's nature and believes it to be truly Alcasan. His ultimate goal is to free humanity from the constraints of organic life.
• Lord Feverstone (Dick Devine) — The politician and recently ennobled businessman who lures Mark into the N.I.C.E. Feverstone was one of the two men who kidnapped Ransom in Out of the Silent Planet. A classic sociopath, he is motivated in all circumstances by the perceived benefit to himself. Although he is aware of the Macrobes, he has no interest in them.
• Reverend Straik — "The Mad Parson". He believes that any sort of power is a manifestation of God's will. This belief, along with other beliefs, makes him a suitable candidate for introduction to the Macrobes. "He was a good man once", but became deranged by the death of his daughter.
• Horace Jules — A novelist, tabloid reporter, cockney, and pseudo-scientific journalist who has been appointed the nominal Director of the N.I.C.E. His minimal understanding of science allows him to be unaware of the true nature of the Institute and to be manipulated by Wither and Frost. He has a strong anti-clerical bias, and objects to Wither appointing "parsons" (such as Straik) to the Institute.

St. Anne's

• Dr. Elwin Ransom — sometimes called the "Pendragon" or "Mr. Fisher-King". He alone communicates with the benevolent eldila. Back from Perelandra, Ransom is a kingly figure among his small band of followers, and is usually referred to as "The Director". Ransom attributes his following to a divine Power, presumably Maleldil.
• Grace Ironwood — The seemingly stern but kind psychologist and doctor who helps Jane interpret her dreams.
• Dr. Cecil Dimble — Another don, an old friend of Ransom, and close adviser on matters of Arthurian scholarship and pre-Norman Britain.
• "Mother" Dimble — Mrs. Dimble; She and Mr. Dimble have no children, much to their sadness, but have compensated by their kindness to students. Very maternal.
• Ivy Maggs — Formerly a part-time domestic servant for Jane Studdock; now driven out of the town by the N.I.C.E. and living at St. Anne's. Jane is puzzled at first by her status as an equal at the house. Ivy's husband Tom is in prison for petty theft.
• Merlinus Ambrosius — The wizard Merlin, awakened and returned to serve the Pendragon and save England. Receives the powers of the eldila. He has been in a deep sleep since the time of King Arthur, and both sides initially believe he will join the N.I.C.E. His appearance at St. Anne's comes as a surprise.
• Mr. MacPhee — A scientist, skeptic, and rationalist, who is a close friend of Dr. Ransom and joins him at St. Anne's. Though not religious, he is deeply influenced by his family Ulster Scot Presbyterian background.^{[citation needed]} He is mentioned parenthetically in Perelandra, and he appears in The Dark Tower. MacPhee, like Ransom, was an officer in the First World War. MacPhee desires to fight the N.I.C.E. with human powers. An argumentative character who claims to have no opinions, merely stating facts and illustrating implications. His position in the establishment is to be skeptical, testing every hypothesis and Jane's dreams; however, the awakened Merlin believes MacPhee to be Ransom's "fool" (i.e. jester), because MacPhee is "obstructive and rather rude...yet never gets sat on". The character may have been based on William T. Kirkpatrick, former headmaster of Lurgan College and an admired tutor of the young Lewis.
• Mr. Bultitude — Last of the seven bears of Logres, who escaped from a zoo and was tamed by Ransom, who has regained man's legendary authority over the beasts.
• Arthur and Camilla Denniston - Arthur is an academic at Edgestow and an old University friend of Mark Studdock's, before Studdock began to be obsessed with reaching the "inner circle" at Bracton College. His wife, Camilla, is described as very tall, and she is the first person Jane meets when visiting St. Anne's for the first time.

Reception

Some two years before writing his own Nineteen Eighty-Four, George Orwell reviewed That Hideous Strength for the Manchester Evening News commenting: "Plenty of people in our age do entertain the monstrous dreams of power that Mr. Lewis attributes to his characters [the N.I.C.E. scientists], and we are within sight of the time when such dreams will be realizable"^[4]. It is noteworthy that the review was written in the direct aftermath of the nuclear bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, which are referred to in the text.

However, Orwell argued that Lewis's book "would have been a stronger without the supernatural elements". Particularly, Orwell objected to the ending in which N.I.C.E. is overthrown by divine intervention: "[Lewis] is entitled to his beliefs, but they weaken his story, not only because they offend the average reader’s sense of probability but because in effect they decide the issue in advance. When one is told that God and the Devil are in conflict, one always knows which side is going to win. The whole drama of the struggle against evil lies in the fact that one does not have supernatural aid".

In popular culture

• Physicist Freeman Dyson cites That Hideous Strength and the N.I.C.E. organization on pages 141–143 of his recent book A Many-Colored Glass: Reflections on the Place of Life in the Universe (University of Virginia Press, 2007) as an example of theofiction.^[5]
• The post-hardcore band Thrice based their song "That Hideous Strength" (on their EP album, If We Could Only See Us Now) on Lewis's novel.
• Christian Progressive Death Metal band Becoming the Archetype's 2008 album Dichotomy is based heavily on the book.
• English electronic musician Belbury Poly takes his name from the town of Belbury. Many of his peers on the Ghost Box Music label pay similar homage to Lewis' mythology of Belbury.

Publication history

• 1945, UK, The Bodley Head, N/A, Pub date ? December 1945, hardback (first edition)
• 1996, USA, Simon & Schuster, ISBN 0-684-83367-0, pub date 28 October 1996, hardback
• 1996, USA, Simon & Schuster, ISBN 0-684-82385-3, pub date 1 June 1996, paperback

References

External links

• Notes on Quotations & Allusions in That Hideous Strength
• That Hideous Strength publication history at the Internet Speculative Fiction Database