The Chronicles of Narnia: The Magician's Nephew

[starlady]

So I'm rereading the seven Chronicles of Narnia, in internal chronological order. It's been probably a dozen years since I read all of these books, and in the following entries my thoughts are a jumble of reactions on at least four levels: Watsonian, Doylist, and fannish of both a critical and laudatory variety. I loved these books as a child, and I still do; it's still possible for me to access, dimly, the spirit of following the author's lead in which I first read them in fourth grade, but that doesn't preclude criticism, not anymore at least; like so many other books of children's fantasy, I do find them in some ways flawed, or at least, they're not everything I want them to be on the page. So, you know, depending on your reaction to Narnia, you may just want to look at this cat macro instead. But I shall do my best to be honest about my own reactions, and the reasons behind them.

Lewis, C.S. The Magician's Nephew. New York: Harper Collins, 1994. [1955]

I used to think that this was my favorite of the Narnia books, and though I'm withholding judgment on that now until I've reread all seven, I can see why I liked this one so much; I think it still might be my favorite in the end. swan_tower asked me why I thought that, and what I told her at the time was what I liked about it this time too: I find Jadis' backstory, and Jadis herself, to be fascinating (I bet her sister was just as titanic), and the bits about the creation of Narnia, and Polly and Diggory wandering around in the Wood Between the Worlds (Polly names it that, incidentally), and Uncle Andrew being such an idiot, and most of all the fact that Diggory's mother is dying, and he makes the choice he does anyway, and is rewarded for it, beyond thought and hope--I still find that interesting and affecting.

This time around I also noticed how Polly Plummer is MADE OF AWESOME; I also noticed the, well, preachiness (and also classism) that Lewis indulges in at times, particularly via Aslan, to say nothing of Uncle Andrew's greedy, colonialist impulses, and the implication of the Kirke family in British imperialism via India and the Raj. Also too this time I noticed that the Narnia books canonically take place in Sherlock Holmes' world, which is just screaming for a well-done crossover fic, preferably with Holmes getting the better of Uncle Andrew, who I actually despise a lot more now. But this is clearly the most Tolkienic of the Narnia books, and as a kid I was fascinated with the worldbuilding of Middle-Earth; around the same time that I read the Narnia books (fourth grade) I devoured the books of Tolkien's published papers despite not really fully understanding what was going on in them ever, and there are some things in TMN that simply have to have come by way of conversations with Tolkien, particularly the Trees of Gold and Silver (and the guardian white Tree) that are briefly mentioned before Frank and Helen's coronation. I enjoy it when books link up to each other, and I've always enjoyed knowing the origins of things (is it surprising that I am now going for a history Ph.D.? No it is not), and this book was explicitly written to link up to the later ones and to provide an origin story for Narnia, and I love it for that. It's probably best not to peek too far behind the 'creation by the Lion in a day' curtain, but even on this side of that barrier, it's a memorable story.

I was talking with my roommate about Narnia, and she pointed out that Jadis and the White Witch aren't terribly similar characters, which I hadn't really considered before but which I think is definitely true to an extent. Jadis in TMN is, well, passionate in a way--darkly, cruelly passionate, but passionate all the same, whereas the Witch is so--frozen. You can see it in their coloring, even, and Lewis does a decent job of lampshading the differences between them by having Jadis eat the apple wrongfully, but the White Witch has swallowed Winter, to borrow Michelle West's phrasing, in a way that Jadis hasn't and the apple doesn't account for in-text. More than anything, it's interesting to consider that Lewis thought that Jadis was the alpha point for the Witch.

Comments

[ellen_fremedon]

You've seen this lolcat, I hope?

[starlady]

LOL now I have! That is awesome!

[recessional]

There's a lot that I'm deeply fond of in this book, but it mostly, for me, brings out all the potential the entire world-arc never quite achieved (I feel mostly because Lewis was trying to shoehorn it into being something it wasn't).

His is a very particular kind of classism, too. The lower classes of the city = bad/shallow/corrupted; the lower classes of the country = moral/good/fit to be elevated. It's interesting that for all people focus on Tolkien's fixation on the English countryside, Lewis is far more anti-city than Tolkien was.

My assumption was always that - okay, my assumption WATSONIANLY was always that Jadis froze, slowly, over the centuries and centuries between when she ate the apple and when she conquered Narnia as the Witch: that without life, with only existence as the immortality of the apple gave it to her, she slowly lost all that passion and drive and pure (if warped) vitality, and was left only with that overwhelming drive for conquest. (In LWW, her passion starts to come back a bit as the world melts, if only in short tantrums and her joy at Aslan's killing).

My assumption Dolyistically was that, as this was written after LWW even if he wanted it to be read first when it was all done, that was a bit of retcon OOPS.

This is also one of the two books (the other being LWW) that show an interesting influence by Paradise Lost; the description of the garden, and of Jadis' way of getting into the garden and a number of other things, is right out of PL, and part of why I see PL, Narnia and HDM in a long literary conversation.

[starlady]

I may or may not have said something about someone jossing the canon when I read the "I give to you forever this land of Narnia" line. And, yeah--I agree with you that Lewis didn't quite grok the shape of his own story to an extent. I don't know that I could come up with a citation for it, but there's all these little details that just don't go in the direction he wants, throughout the books.

I never thought of connecting this book or these books with PL, but I'm contemplating an HDM reread (as well as The Dark Is Rising sequence); I should reread that one too. I ♥ PL. I talk about this in my comments for one of the other books, but it's fascinating to read Narnia and to virtually be able to see where Pullman made his notes of things to engage with.

Yeah, Lewis & Tolkien, they're so obviously so similar, and their differences are so fascinating.

Your Watsonian explanation for Jadis makes a lot of sense to me. Even in this backstory book, there's so much that gets left off the page.

[recessional]

I'm not terribly fond of PL, to be honest, but it still interests me where it twines in and out of literary discourse.

Interestingly, re: Jadis - I'm in the middle of relistening to the BBC radio-play of LotR (which is my favourite) and just after I posted this comment we got across the part wherein Gandalf explains to Frodo that a mortal who possesses a ring of power does not die, but does not grow or obtain more life, merely continuing ("until at last every moment is weariness.") As a thought on similarities and differences.

[lnhammer]

reactions on at least four levels: Watsonian, Doylist, and fannish of both a critical and laudatory variety

I'm now trying to map those to Dante's four levels of interpretation -- literal, allegorical, moral, and analogical (better understood in modern terms as literal, historical, psychological, and spiritual). It's not quite working, though, in part because I don't really understand what Watsonian and Doylist mean.

I confess, when I was a wee one, TMN was my least-favorite and least-reread. IIRC, I found it both dry and unnecessary.

---L.

[lnhammer]

Urk: for "interpretation" read "meaning" (razzlefrazzle incomplete edit posting before finishing).

[starlady]

Watsonian and Doylist are terms the Sherlockians use--Watsonian refers to explanations for things in the text that are derived in-text (i.e. on the level of John Watson M.D., who narrates the stories), while Doylist explanations are ones that go outside the text to the author to explain things. :) I'm not sure how to map those on to Dante's categories, though I think allegorical may be Doylist in this case, given Lewis' purpose, and literal would be Watsonian. I think psychological is my critical fannish, and spiritual can go under laudatory fannish.

[epershand]

Hmm, I like this post. It's been a long time since I read it, but even as a kid I tended to take a Doylist perspective on a lot of the world building that exists only in TMN and TLB--it always felt to me like the main goal of TMN was retconning the universe to make TLB fit into it. There was this fantasy world I knew and loved and then the last two books in the series sandwiched it in Genesis and Revelations? Even in the fourth grade, I didn't trust that as a narrative technique, although at least Lewis's retcon worldbuilding wasn't as egregious as Baum's.

I resent TLM way out of proportion with what it does. For the most part the book just raised more questions than it answered. For instance, if the population of Calormen and Archenland are descended from the cabbie and his wife, who are a son of Adam and a daughter of Eve, why they children of Adam and Eve themselves?

I particularly resent TLM because of the way it was retconned into being the first book in the series when that is clearly not where it belongs in the narrative.

On the other hand, I adore so much of the setting. I love the connected rowhouses--I get excited whenever I see that style of house in the UK because of TLM. And I adore all the visuals of the Jadis backstory. They're just breathtaking. And the wood between the worlds also makes me happy, although again it feels a bit too much like a setup for TLB. While I can come up with Watsonian reasons for Digory to have neglected mentioning the rings to the Pevensies, none of them are particularly satisfying. I actually found the way they handled the buttons and the Neitherlands in The Magicians a lot more satisfying.

[epershand]

The retconned book order also means that my younger cousins have a drastically different reading of this book and Narnia in general than I do. My cousin reports that, having read it, he was really annoyed when he got to the second book and suddenly there were these PEVENSIES everywhere instead of a continuing set of characters from the first book.

But it also established the Christian frame around the series from the get-go in a way that you dont get if you start with LWW.

[starlady]

Yeah, my roommate read them in publication order, and talking with her about them is really interesting.

The Christianity of some things in LWW and PC in particular stands out to me now that I've understood the elements of the allegory, but in many ways it's much subtler than TMN and TLB.

Yeah, I was indifferent to the Pevensies too, definitely as a reaction to them being completely unfamiliar to me after TMN.

[starlady]

Oh yeah, Genesis! As I mentioned above, the Christianity of any of this didn't really register with me. And clearly it still doesn't, since my first thought here was "Tolkien!" And this, it strikes me now, is probably some form of sort of-Christian privilege. (Sort of in that I was sort of Christian, not sort of privilege.)

The retconning here makes some other things stick out really awkwardly in the later books, particularly Caspian's right to kingship in PC. I don't think Lewis really conceived of other countries with humans in them until after writing that book, and that leads to some really unpleasant, racist stuff with the Calormenes in particular (which of course culminates in TLB). It's been eons since I've read TLB, since I'm going in order, but they definitely don't fit with the other five in some really crucial ways--though you could probably construct a sort of meta-narrative starring Digory and Polly using them.

Oh, Digory and the Pevensies, I'm not even going there mentally unless I absolutely must. But yeah, so much of the story in TMN prior to the creation is just so awesome, and that's what I like best, except for the subplot with Digory and Jadis and the apples, but that's partly one of my favorite things because of my personal history.

[epershand]

So, I have this longstanding love of what I think of as Genesis fanfiction. As a broader cultural phenomenon it's actually based on Paradise Lost, but because I skipped out on PL (and on Christianity as a whole, for the most part) I tend to get fixated on the Adam and Eve portions and ignore the Fall of Lucifer portions.

My favorite part of Good Omens is Crawly and Aziraphale after Adam and Eve leave the garden. One of my favorite things in HDM is the daemons and puberty as the visible sign of the Fall left over from Eden. I really adore the musical Children of Eden.

So... yes, I totally read the end of TMN as being Adam and Eve fic. Some day I should finally read PL and figure out how this subgenre I love is actually all based on it, but I'm a bit afraid to face it.

[recessional]

who are a son of Adam and a daughter of Eve, why they children of Adam and Eve themselves?

Because they intermarried with naiads and river-gods, as they couldn't marry each other (incest). So much like Jadis is not a Daughter of Eve (being descended from Lilith), the "humans" of Narnia aren't Sons and Daughters of Adam and Eve because they're descended from non-humans as well.

Conversely, the Telmarines fell into Narnia as a whole society, men and women both, and then stayed isolated and insular, so their stock remained solely human.

[pseudo_tsuga]

I was never fannish about the Narnia books as a child but I love reading all of the comments in this entry. I'm even inspired to start reading fanfic now.

[starlady]

I was never fannish about them until about three or four months ago, when people in my circle started talking about them. But it's pretty awesome; there's some great writers in the fandom. :)

[laceblade]

I've actually....never read these books, :O

Do you remember reading them in in-universe chronological order, or in order of publication?

[dhobikikutti]

ORDER OF PUBLICATION!!!!!

Sorry. I may be slightly obsessive about this. To the point that I shelve the books that way, even though it means the numbers on the spines are out of order.

[starlady]

I read them in internal order, but publication order offers some real advantages, I think, just based on what people have told me here. :)

[umadoshi]

I haven't got anything to add to the conversation, but I really like this post and have been greatly enjoying the comments. I'm in the "read in chronological order" camp, for the simple reason that my set came with numbers on the spines and I obeyed. It wasn't under comparatively recently that I even realized there was a different publication order, and I haven't read the books in years and years, so now I kind of want to reread them that way.

[rushthatspeaks]

It interests me that none of the beasts of Narnia were offered the temptation of the apple. The Witch, from elsewhere, for whom taking it was a foregone conclusion; Digory, from elsewhere, who made a real choice-- and so there are the major powers of Narnia, evil from elsewhere and fallible good from elsewhere. It makes me wonder if Lewis means us to view the beasts as on some level unfallen, and yet that can't be right, or they would all listen when Aslan calls them in TLB.

Which is to say, it is so very odd in some ways that Narnia has no humans of its own. But I suppose then he'd be writing Perelandra, which, after all, he eventually did elsewhere.

[starlady]

Oh, Perelandra. I really tried to read that book, and I gave up because it was so damn boring. That was--sixth grade?

Yeah, it's interesting that that lack in TMN is immediately followed by some of the Talking Animals ignoring Aslan in TLB--the first book is more in line with Lewis' earlier ideas about Narnia, and the second more in line with his later ideas about it, where there are more humans in the world of Narnia than just the Pevensies and the Telmarines.

[epershand]

It's continually fascinating to me that Aslan creates Narnia, and gives all the Narnians intelligence, and then STILL gives dominion of it all, all the beasts and birds and creeping things, to the humans that are brought in from elsewhere. In this version of the story of Eden, it's not only G-d, but the Serpent, and Adam and Eve, who are external to the world, and have their own moral and theological struggle, on the backs of the Beasts, who aren't really a part of it all. Which, from what I understand, is relatively in tune with the PL interpretation of the Garden of Eden, where the serpent is somehow more connected with Lucifer than it is a literal animal.

But still, when it comes down to TLB, it's Shift who is the central figure in the Fall. The humans are never really implicated in Narnian sin, not even Narnian humans like Tirian. The Calormenes are fallen, but they're also outsiders, and there's the whole creepy conflation of their outsider status with Shift as a proto-human being uncannily intelligent and making rational decisions that are sinful because Rationality is at odds with the Truth you can only get to by Faith. Shift, in a lot of ways, feels like a human out of The Screwtape Letters than a Narnian character.

It's sort of creepy that while (Telmerines aside) all the Sons of Adam and Daughters of Eve ultimately are able to square off against their temptations and choose the right side, it's the characters that Lewis seems to see as proto-humans who have the genuine struggles and make the genuine lapses within the series.

[juniperphoenix]

there are some things in TMN that simply have to have come by way of conversations with Tolkien, particularly the Trees of Gold and Silver (and the guardian white Tree)

The creation of the world through song is very Tolkienic, too.

I also love the portrayal of Jadis in this book, and although I doubt they're going to make this one into a film, I would LOVE to see Tilda Swinton play it. It makes a lot of sense to me that Jadis came into Narnia from elsewhere. Although there are some things about Narnia that she comes to understand, she is not of Narnia; she and the land are fundamentally alien to each other.

[starlady]

Oh yeah! I totally missed that one.

And, yeah. Jadis doesn't understand Narnia, what it really is; she sees the land and the people, but not what makes them more than that.