Leaning Literary: Characters in That Hideous Strength

Mark Studdock

Jane Studdock

St. Anne's

Dr. Elwin Ransom, the Pendragon, the Director: previously a Cambridge professor, protagonist of the previous books, now the head of those fighting the N.I.C.E. He has many Christologic aspects to consider. Note his wound. Note his leading. Note his teaching. Note his exit.
Grace Ironwood: psychologist who helps Jane interpret her dreams.
Dr. Cecil Dimble: once Jane's teacher. Scholar of pre-Norman and Arthurian England.
Margaret "Mother" Dimble: Cecil's wife; maternal character.
Ivy Maggs: Formerly Jane's part-time maid.
Andrew MacPhee: Skeptic
Mr. Bultitude: talking bear
Arthur and Camilla Denniston: Arthur was a colleague and sometime rival for a position that Mark Studdock received.
Merlin: Yes, the wizard. Consider reading this excellent critical piece after you've read the book: The Discarded Mage: Lewis the Scholar-Novelist on Merlin's Moral Taint by Dr. David C. Downing. Here is an example excerpt:

In That Hideous Strength it is Dr. Dimble who insists on the contrast between Merlin's magic and the magic of sorcerers: "What common measure is there," he asks, "between ceremonial occultists like Faustus and Prospero and Archimago with their midnight studies, their forbidden books, their attendant fiends or elementals, and a figure like Merlin who seems to produce his results simply by being Merlin?" (200). Later Dimble argues that Merlin's source of power is utterly different from the technological approach at NICE: "Merlin is the reverse of Belbury. He's at the opposite extreme. He is the last vestige of an old order in which matter and spirit were, from our modern point of view, confused. For him every operation on Nature is a kind of personal contact, like coaxing a child or stroking one's horse. After him came the modern man to whom Nature is something dead--a machine to be worked, and taken to bits if it won't work as the way he pleases" (285). Dimble concludes that the leaders at NICE will never be able to enlist Merlin as an ally: "They thought the old magia of Merlin, which worked in with the spiritual qualities of Nature, loving and reverencing them and knowing them from within, could be combined with the new goeteia--the brutal surgery from without. No. In a sense Merlin represents what we've got to get back to in some different way" (285-86).

N.I.C.E. National Institute of Coordinated Experiments (at the University of Edgestow)

Superficially, an organization aiming to bring eternal life to all people.
Actually, a foothold for the fallen eldila (angels), also called Macrobes, to attack earth.
Francois Alcasan: Apparently, a head kept alive through machines; actually, the portal the fallen eldila use for communication.
John Wither: Bureaucrat
Professor August Frost: Psychologist and assistant to Wither. Frost knows what other do not about the evil eldila.
Miss Hardcastle; the Fairy: Wicked head of police
Dr. Filostrato: Believes he keeps Alcasan's head alive
Feverstone: Political schemer. He had been previous in the series as Dick Devine.
Straik: Parson with a false view of the faith
Jules: Reporter, novelist, and later director of the N.I.C.E.

Oyarsa (arch-angels over planets)

Leaning Literary