structural:reformatting, structural:expansion, linguistic:paraphrasing, structural:summarization, linguistic:voice_change
Accusations of gender stereotyping

In later years, both Lewis and the Chronicles have been criticised (often by other authors of fantasy fiction) for gender role stereotyping, though other authors have defended Lewis in this area. Most allegations of sexism centre on the description of Susan Pevensie in The Last Battle when Lewis writes that Susan is "no longer a friend of Narnia" and interested "in nothing nowadays except nylons and lipstick and invitations".

Philip Pullman, inimical to Lewis on many fronts, calls the Narnia stories "monumentally disparaging of women". His interpretation of the Susan passages reflects this view:

Susan, like Cinderella, is undergoing a transition from one phase of her life to another. Lewis didn't approve of that. He didn't like women in general, or sexuality at all, at least at the stage in his life when he wrote the Narnia books. He was frightened and appalled at the notion of wanting to grow up.

In fantasy author Neil Gaiman 's short story "The Problem of Susan" (2004), an elderly woman, Professor Hastings, deals with the grief and trauma of her entire family's death in a train crash. Although the woman's maiden name is not revealed, details throughout the story strongly imply that this character is the elderly Susan Pevensie. The story is written for an adult audience and deals with issues of sexuality and violence and through it Gaiman presents a critique of Lewis's treatment of Susan, as well as the problem of evil as it relates to punishment and salvation.

Lewis supporters cite the positive roles of women in the series, including Jill Pole in The Silver Chair, Aravis Tarkheena in The Horse and His Boy, Polly Plummer in The Magician's Nephew, and particularly Lucy Pevensie in The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe. Alan Jacobs, an English professor at Wheaton College, asserts that Lucy is the most admirable of the human characters and that generally the girls come off better than the boys throughout the series (Jacobs, 2008: 259). In her contribution to The Chronicles of Narnia and Philosophy, Karin Fry, an assistant professor of philosophy at the University of Wisconsin, Stevens Point, notes that "the most sympathetic female characters in The Chronicles are consistently the ones who question the traditional roles of women and prove their worth to Aslan through actively engaging in the adventures just like the boys." Fry goes on to say:

The characters have positive and negative things to say about both male and female characters, suggesting an equality between sexes. However, the problem is that many of the positive qualities of the female characters seem to be those by which they can rise above their femininity... The superficial nature of stereotypical female interests is condemned.

Nathan Ross notes that "Much of the plot of 'Wardrobe' is told exclusively from the point of view of Susan and Lucy. It is the girls who witness Aslan being killed and coming back to life – a unique experience from which the boys are excluded. Throughout, going through many highly frightening and shocking moments, Susan and Lucy behave with grown up courage and responsibility. Their experiences are told in full, over several chapters, while what the boys do at the same time – preparing an army and going into battle – is relegated to the background. This arrangement of material clearly implies that what girls saw and did was the more important. Given the commonly held interpretation – that Aslan is Jesus Christ and that what the girls saw was a no less than a reenacting of the Crucifixion – this order of priorities makes perfect sense".

Taking a different stance altogether, Monika B. Hilder provides a thorough examination of the feminine ethos apparent in each book of the series, and proposes that critics tend to misread Lewis's representation of gender. As she puts it "...we assume that Lewis is sexist when he is in fact applauding the 'feminine' heroic. To the extent that we have not examined our own chauvinism, we demean the 'feminine' qualities and extol the 'masculine' – not noticing that Lewis does the opposite."