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truepennyOoh, look. Truepenny's got more Things to Say about Narnia. Shock. Amazement. Also, my opinions are, um, decided and often intemperately worded, especially in regards to The Horse and His Boy. Just so you know.
Someone smarter than me needs to talk about The Silver Chair as an Arthurian romance. Because I can recognize some of the elements--the Lady of the Green Kirtle is a clear descendant both of Bercilak's Lady in Sir Gawain and the Green Knight and of Duessa in Book I of The Faerie Queene (with an extra dash of Melusina), and fountains are always significant and frequently bad news--but I can't put the pieces together properly to figure out what Lewis was doing.
A related point: why does Rilian talk in such a different style from his father? Caspian talks like an English public school boy; Rilian talks (as well as looking) like Hamlet--or an Arthurian knight. The Silver Chair is arguably of a quite different genre from the other Narnia books, and Rilian is one of the very few adults in the series who gets more than a walk-on. But it's still disconcerting to go from Rilian's courtly language to Caspian telling Eustace not to be an ass. I feel like there has to be a reason behind it, but I can't quite figure out what it is.
And returning to Jill, as I said I would. Jill is interesting (aside from being sympathetic) because the scenes in Harfang make it very clear (brace yourself--jargon ahead) that both Lewis and Jill recognize "girliness" as something that can be performed. Jill, who has been resolutely boyish throughout, turns on the charm in Harfang:
The others admitted afterward that Jill had been wonderful that day. ... she began making a tour of the whole castle and asking questions, but all in such an innocent, babyish way that no one could suspect her of any secret design. Though her tongue was never still, you could hardly say she talked: she prattled and giggled. ... upstairs among the ladies she asked questions about how she would be dressed for the great feast, and how long she would be allowed to sit up, and whether she would dance with some very, very small giant. And then (it made her hot all over when she remembered it afterwards) she would put her head on one side in an idiotic fashion which grown-ups, giants and otherwise, thought very fetching, and shake her curls, and fidget, and say, "Oh I do wish it was to-morrow night, don't you? Do you think the time will go quickly till then?"
(TSC 109-10)
Jill's performance is primarily childlike; its inception is marked by her "put[ting] on her most attractively childish smile" (TSC 107). But that childlike quality is specifically bound up with femininity. Lewis is explicit that "girls do that kind of thing better than boys" (TSC 110). And Jill's prattling includes that question about a very, very small giant--the question of a little girl wanting to be a lady. She isn't just being childish. She's being a little girl, and both she and Lewis recognize that this is a way in which she can cold-bloodedly manipulate the adults around her. It also is quite specifically not natural to her. This kind of femininity is something Jill can do, but it isn't something she is.
We also get an explicit deconstruction of the outward markers of femininity when they are escaping from Harfang: "Jill gathered up her long skirts--horrible things for running in--and ran" (TSC 117). Jill is a girl (and, caroming off![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
wordweaverlynn's point about her last name, the narrative itself calls her "Jill" rather than "Pole," although both Eustace and Puddleglum call her "Pole"), but Lewis seems to have recognized that that doesn't mean she can't be useful and active. She does pretty much go to pieces in the fight against the Witch/Snake, but I'm willing to put that down to this being her first time in Narnia rather than mere frail womanhood.
Jill's downrightness also provides a pointed contrast to the Lady of the Green Kirtle, who hides her serpent nature under what Dorothy Sayers would call "sweet womanliness" (Have His Carcase 235). She is loaded down with femininity: "... the lady, who rode side-saddle and wore a long, fluttering dress of dazzling green, was lovelier still" (TSC 75). And her trilling r's remind me for some reason of Jill's "prattling." And, of course, the Witch's sweet femininity is as much a performance as Jill's.
The Witch also emphasizes a point I made in my earlier post about the demonization of adulthood. Puddleglum's terrific, defiant speech after he's burned his foot in her magic fire is very specific about the superiority of "childish" stories over the Witch's adult reality: "... four babies playing a game can make a play-world which licks your real world all hollow" (TSC 159). That entire scene is in fact couched in terms of adulthood vs. children's make-believe, with adulthood being not only dreary and hopeless, but also a lie. (It's also probably worth noting that the enchantment on Rilian doesn't make him childlike, it just makes him a fool.)
The Silver Chair seems to me to be the most genuinely novel-like of the Narnia books, with the most realistically fallible characters and a notable lack of the leo-deus ex machina. Aslan is tremendously important to the characters and the book, but he has nothing to do with getting them out of sticky situations. They have to do it all themselves. Which in turn makes it feel that there is something genuinely at stake here, just as Rilian returning only just in time to witness his father's death shows us that adventures have consequences. For the first and possibly only time, Narnia feels real.
I still don't like The Horse and His Boy, and there are all sorts of reasons for that, many of which are thrown into relief by its juxtaposition with The Silver Chair.
First of all, Aslan is ubiquitous in this book, providing the leo-deus ex machina all over the place. And, as with all dei ex machina, that makes it very hard to feel that there's any real danger (except for Aravis and Lasaraleen inadvertently eavesdropping on the Tisroc, because that scene works). Secondly, I really dislike Bree. That was something I vaguely remembered from my first reading, and it has been validated in spades. I really dislike Bree. He's pompous, stupid, condescending ... I frankly don't understand why any of the other three put up with him, much less like him. I like Hwin much better, but she barely gets any attention.
Shasta is completely useless. He reminds me very much of Inga from Rinkitink in Oz, who is likewise effeminate, not very bright, prone to despair and bewailing of his fate, and IIRC coupled with a boyish assertive girl who does all the necessary heroing. And Shasta gets so little proper characterization that, while I think it's a character discontinuity for his speech to become larded with public school boyisms once he becomes Cor, I'm not actually sure. (And I can't see him called "Cor" without wanting to tack a "blimey" onto it. But that's probably just me.)
Aravis, it is true, is delightfully ungirly, especially in contrast with Lasaraleen. But the book as a whole seems to be backsliding from The Silver Chair. The whole trouble of the B-plot is caused by Susan being an idiot in a distinctly feminine fashion, and while Aravis and Lucy both get to be active (although with that weird retrograde motion at the end: "... [Aravis and Lucy] soon went away together to talk about Aravis's bedroom and Aravis's boudoir and about getting clothes for her, and all the sort of things girls do talk about on such an occasion" (TH&HB 205)--excuse me, what? What have you done with Aravis and why have you replaced her with Lasaraleen?), we also have this completely chilling line from Corin: "[Susan]'s not like Lucy, you know, who's as good as a man, or at any rate as good as a boy" (TH&HB 176). Words fail me, especially since just over the page, we've had Edmund asserting that a boy isn't any good at all: "A boy in battle is a danger only to his own side" (TH&HB 174). Granted, yes, Corin isn't exactly a reliable source, but as with Reepicheep in The Voyage of the Dawn Treader, we never get the balancing point of view we so desperately need.
In The Silver Chair Lewis seems to be pushing at the limits of both his abilities and his characters', whereas The Horse and His Boy is careful not to. The Silver Chair, it seems to me, is a real novel. The Horse and His Boy is just a children's adventure book.
---
WORKS CITED
Lewis, C. S. The Horse and His Boy. The Chronicles of Narnia 5. 1954. New York: Collier Books, 1970.
---. The Silver Chair. The Chronicles of Narnia 4. 1953. New York: Collier Books, 1970.
Sayers, Dorothy L. Have His Carcase. 1932. New York: Harper & Row, Publishers, 1960.
Someone smarter than me needs to talk about The Silver Chair as an Arthurian romance. Because I can recognize some of the elements--the Lady of the Green Kirtle is a clear descendant both of Bercilak's Lady in Sir Gawain and the Green Knight and of Duessa in Book I of The Faerie Queene (with an extra dash of Melusina), and fountains are always significant and frequently bad news--but I can't put the pieces together properly to figure out what Lewis was doing.
A related point: why does Rilian talk in such a different style from his father? Caspian talks like an English public school boy; Rilian talks (as well as looking) like Hamlet--or an Arthurian knight. The Silver Chair is arguably of a quite different genre from the other Narnia books, and Rilian is one of the very few adults in the series who gets more than a walk-on. But it's still disconcerting to go from Rilian's courtly language to Caspian telling Eustace not to be an ass. I feel like there has to be a reason behind it, but I can't quite figure out what it is.
And returning to Jill, as I said I would. Jill is interesting (aside from being sympathetic) because the scenes in Harfang make it very clear (brace yourself--jargon ahead) that both Lewis and Jill recognize "girliness" as something that can be performed. Jill, who has been resolutely boyish throughout, turns on the charm in Harfang:
The others admitted afterward that Jill had been wonderful that day. ... she began making a tour of the whole castle and asking questions, but all in such an innocent, babyish way that no one could suspect her of any secret design. Though her tongue was never still, you could hardly say she talked: she prattled and giggled. ... upstairs among the ladies she asked questions about how she would be dressed for the great feast, and how long she would be allowed to sit up, and whether she would dance with some very, very small giant. And then (it made her hot all over when she remembered it afterwards) she would put her head on one side in an idiotic fashion which grown-ups, giants and otherwise, thought very fetching, and shake her curls, and fidget, and say, "Oh I do wish it was to-morrow night, don't you? Do you think the time will go quickly till then?"
(TSC 109-10)
Jill's performance is primarily childlike; its inception is marked by her "put[ting] on her most attractively childish smile" (TSC 107). But that childlike quality is specifically bound up with femininity. Lewis is explicit that "girls do that kind of thing better than boys" (TSC 110). And Jill's prattling includes that question about a very, very small giant--the question of a little girl wanting to be a lady. She isn't just being childish. She's being a little girl, and both she and Lewis recognize that this is a way in which she can cold-bloodedly manipulate the adults around her. It also is quite specifically not natural to her. This kind of femininity is something Jill can do, but it isn't something she is.
We also get an explicit deconstruction of the outward markers of femininity when they are escaping from Harfang: "Jill gathered up her long skirts--horrible things for running in--and ran" (TSC 117). Jill is a girl (and, caroming off
wordweaverlynn's point about her last name, the narrative itself calls her "Jill" rather than "Pole," although both Eustace and Puddleglum call her "Pole"), but Lewis seems to have recognized that that doesn't mean she can't be useful and active. She does pretty much go to pieces in the fight against the Witch/Snake, but I'm willing to put that down to this being her first time in Narnia rather than mere frail womanhood.Jill's downrightness also provides a pointed contrast to the Lady of the Green Kirtle, who hides her serpent nature under what Dorothy Sayers would call "sweet womanliness" (Have His Carcase 235). She is loaded down with femininity: "... the lady, who rode side-saddle and wore a long, fluttering dress of dazzling green, was lovelier still" (TSC 75). And her trilling r's remind me for some reason of Jill's "prattling." And, of course, the Witch's sweet femininity is as much a performance as Jill's.
The Witch also emphasizes a point I made in my earlier post about the demonization of adulthood. Puddleglum's terrific, defiant speech after he's burned his foot in her magic fire is very specific about the superiority of "childish" stories over the Witch's adult reality: "... four babies playing a game can make a play-world which licks your real world all hollow" (TSC 159). That entire scene is in fact couched in terms of adulthood vs. children's make-believe, with adulthood being not only dreary and hopeless, but also a lie. (It's also probably worth noting that the enchantment on Rilian doesn't make him childlike, it just makes him a fool.)
The Silver Chair seems to me to be the most genuinely novel-like of the Narnia books, with the most realistically fallible characters and a notable lack of the leo-deus ex machina. Aslan is tremendously important to the characters and the book, but he has nothing to do with getting them out of sticky situations. They have to do it all themselves. Which in turn makes it feel that there is something genuinely at stake here, just as Rilian returning only just in time to witness his father's death shows us that adventures have consequences. For the first and possibly only time, Narnia feels real.
I still don't like The Horse and His Boy, and there are all sorts of reasons for that, many of which are thrown into relief by its juxtaposition with The Silver Chair.
First of all, Aslan is ubiquitous in this book, providing the leo-deus ex machina all over the place. And, as with all dei ex machina, that makes it very hard to feel that there's any real danger (except for Aravis and Lasaraleen inadvertently eavesdropping on the Tisroc, because that scene works). Secondly, I really dislike Bree. That was something I vaguely remembered from my first reading, and it has been validated in spades. I really dislike Bree. He's pompous, stupid, condescending ... I frankly don't understand why any of the other three put up with him, much less like him. I like Hwin much better, but she barely gets any attention.
Shasta is completely useless. He reminds me very much of Inga from Rinkitink in Oz, who is likewise effeminate, not very bright, prone to despair and bewailing of his fate, and IIRC coupled with a boyish assertive girl who does all the necessary heroing. And Shasta gets so little proper characterization that, while I think it's a character discontinuity for his speech to become larded with public school boyisms once he becomes Cor, I'm not actually sure. (And I can't see him called "Cor" without wanting to tack a "blimey" onto it. But that's probably just me.)
Aravis, it is true, is delightfully ungirly, especially in contrast with Lasaraleen. But the book as a whole seems to be backsliding from The Silver Chair. The whole trouble of the B-plot is caused by Susan being an idiot in a distinctly feminine fashion, and while Aravis and Lucy both get to be active (although with that weird retrograde motion at the end: "... [Aravis and Lucy] soon went away together to talk about Aravis's bedroom and Aravis's boudoir and about getting clothes for her, and all the sort of things girls do talk about on such an occasion" (TH&HB 205)--excuse me, what? What have you done with Aravis and why have you replaced her with Lasaraleen?), we also have this completely chilling line from Corin: "[Susan]'s not like Lucy, you know, who's as good as a man, or at any rate as good as a boy" (TH&HB 176). Words fail me, especially since just over the page, we've had Edmund asserting that a boy isn't any good at all: "A boy in battle is a danger only to his own side" (TH&HB 174). Granted, yes, Corin isn't exactly a reliable source, but as with Reepicheep in The Voyage of the Dawn Treader, we never get the balancing point of view we so desperately need.
In The Silver Chair Lewis seems to be pushing at the limits of both his abilities and his characters', whereas The Horse and His Boy is careful not to. The Silver Chair, it seems to me, is a real novel. The Horse and His Boy is just a children's adventure book.
---
WORKS CITED
Lewis, C. S. The Horse and His Boy. The Chronicles of Narnia 5. 1954. New York: Collier Books, 1970.
---. The Silver Chair. The Chronicles of Narnia 4. 1953. New York: Collier Books, 1970.
Sayers, Dorothy L. Have His Carcase. 1932. New York: Harper & Row, Publishers, 1960.
