Confessions of a Liberal Puritan

I know nothing about Pullman so can't speculate on his influences but I know a great deal about Lewis. Given that he lost his mother when he was still fairly young and lived as a bachelor (to a profound degree I understand, no woman would dare enter the home shared by he and his brother, it was apparently quite awful) most of his adult life, I think the lack in Narnia is simple lack of exposure and being uncertain how to write such a character. After he met Joy, the love of his life, he wrote my favorite novel, Till We Have Faces, which has an adult woman (actually, she grows from a young girl to an old woman over the course of the book) as it's central character. He finally had a model. :)