Hello and welcome to chapter 3 of our
read-through of The Lion, the Witch and
the Wardrobe.
I'm Jem, the reader at John the
Baptist Parish Church in Beeston, and in
this episode, we'll be discussing Edmund
in the wardrobe, all the way from 'Lucy
ran out of the empty room into the
passage and found the other three' to
'"please your majesty", said Edmund, I don't
know what you mean. I'm at school or at
least I was  - it's the holidays now"'. As
with previous episodes, I'll be talking
about the things that particularly
struck me or made me pause and think as
we look at this chapter. So this is the
chapter in which Lucy comes back from
Narnia, tells her siblings about what
she's found there. They look into the
wardrobe, they can't find this magical
land she claims exists, they
understandably disbelieve her.
They think she's making it up for a joke or
a hoax. Then there's another game, and
Edmund finds his way through the
wardrobe into Narnia and meets a figure
who will turn out to be the White Witch. 
Perhaps the first thing I noticed,
or particularly paused on in this chapter,
is the various responses to Lucy when
she comes back. So she says oh I've, I found
Narnia. It's amazing, '"it's a magic wardrobe.
There's a wood inside it and it's
snowing and there's a Faun and a Witch and
it's called Narnia; come and see."' I wonder
whether that come and see is a biblical
echo I know I'm claiming there are all
sorts of textual resonances here that
may or may not be there, but 'come and see'
is a phrase that has been repeated so
frequently in sermons and reflections
over the years, that I wonder whether there's
a little echo there. But either way, when
Lucy tells her siblings about the
magical land, they obviously don't
believe her.
'Peter went in and rapped his knuckles
on it to make sure that it was solid.
"A jolly good hoax, Lu," he said as he came
out again,
"you really have taken us in I must admit
we half believed you."
"But it wasn't a hoax at all" said Lucy" really and truly. It was all different a moment ago.
Honestly it was, I promise."
"Come, Lu," said Peter, "that's going a bit far. You've had
your joke. Hadn't you better drop it now?"'
Peter's response strikes me as another
interesting touch of fictional
psychology from Lewis here, because the
the clash that happens 
within the family here
is because their virtues, rather than
because of their vices or weaknesses.
Lucy insists that she's seen what she's
seen, that there was this magical land
inside that the wardrobe or that you got
through, through the Wardrobe because she
loves the truth. Because she's not going
to sort of go along with things for an
easy life or sort of win people's
approval by saying something that isn't
the case. Peter, on the other hand,
maintains his position because he's also
seen what he's seen. He's seen that
there isn't a magical land there and
he's a bit concerned about Lucy later on
in the book, that she's saying things
that aren't true.  Edmund, of course is
slightly different matter.
Edmund seizes upon this as an example of
weakness in Lucy and uses it to sort of  tease
her and taunt her and ask her if she's
found any other magical lands in
cupboards all over the house. But Peter
and Susan's response is because of their
honesty and their good-heartedness. I
also wonder whether there's,  there's a slight
touch of the attitude to faith and the
experience of the, the more than natural
the more than material that Lewis
experienced in Peter. It's striking that
Peter's first response is to go and look
for it, and then when he doesn't find it,
say oh that was good, that was a joke. A
gracious way of saying "oh it's a it's a
point against me. I see you've taken me
in, isn't that good," giving Lucy an out,
so that she can say "oh yes, it was only a
joke,"
and him say "oh come on, that's, that's
pushing a joke a little bit far" and she
insists on it.
It's gracious it's humane and civilised.
I sometimes hear in this passage that
perhaps the voice of a senior academic
at Lewis's college, who doesn't see why
Lewis has to be so earnest about
everything, why he has to be so insistent
on on a singular truth. There's an
interesting sort of air of Peter of
trying to keep the siblings together as
they're away from from their family, and
he tries to do this by smoothing over
exactly what is people are claiming the-,
that is actually the case, and of course, it
doesn't work. As I say, it's, it is an
interesting moral dilemma here, in that
the clash in the family comes from their
virtues, their insistence on, on truth,
rather than any, any weakness or any flaws
in them. That moral question is extended,
I think, when Edmund finds
his way into the wardrobe. So there's a
passage here, Lucy gets into the wardrobe.
'She did not shut it properly because she
knew that is very silly to shut oneself
into a wardrobe, even if it is not a
magical one.' CLANG. The third, fourth,
possibly time we've heard that phrase in
the book so far. Very good, your, your
health and safety in in magical fiction
there. 'Now the steps she had heard were
those of Edmund; and he came into the
room and just in time to see Lucy
vanishing into the wardrobe. He at once
decided to get into it himself -  not
because he thought it a particularly
good place to hide but because he wanted
to go on teasing her about her
imaginary country. He opened the door...' and such and such and such and such, and
he find his way through the coats into
the wood, as Lucy did. Now that also made
me pause there, that we're told
definitely that, that Edmund didn't go into
the wardrobe because he thought Narnia
might be there. He didn't even go into
the wardrobe because it would be a good
place to hide in this game of
hide-and-seek.
He got in there because he wanted to
keep winding Lucy up about it, and of
course Edmund and Lucy have quite
different experiences when they first go
into the, into the wardrobe, and into the
land of Narnia. For us, I think, it makes
sense that they see that the, the, the  two sides
of the, the war that's going on, the
struggle that's going on in Narnia. And
from one point of view, their two
visits simply give us, the reader,
different insights into this fictional
world that Lewis has created. But I
wonder whether Edmund's sort of bad
behaviour, Edmund's selfishness and snideness has warped his experience of
Narnia in some way. I was just slightly
reminded of the bit of Jekyll and Hyde
where Jekyll is talking about the
transformation which the potion has upon
him, and he speculates that perhaps the
reason why his, his alter ego was his
evil self, rather than his good or higher
self, was something to do with the, the hubris
or the arrogance or the the moral state
he was in when he took the potion first
of all, and that released something, it
took him down a particular moral path. I
didn't insist on this but I think it's
interesting that we, as I've said before,
we're being shown the psychology and the
the personality of these characters
before they go into the magical land, and then that
gets extended and expanded when they
find their, their way in. The book seems quite
insistent there's a continuity between
the characters before and after their
experience of Narnia, and then through
their experience of Narnia. And I wonder
whether Edmund's  -  Lucy is offered the
experience of Narnia that a character
like hers: innocent, trusting, open,
receives -  and Edmund receives the
experience that a character like his:
perhaps slightly sly,  perhaps slightly on the
make, certainly one who respects strength,
and has an opportunity to torment
weakness, whether he receives the
appropriate experience there, he gets the
chance to join the Witch's side.Anyway, as I said just a speculation. So when he
goes into Narnia, we have this scene
where he calls out to Lucy, tries to find
her. He can't find her. Again we're told
'though he did not like to admit he had
been wrong, he didn't also much like
being alone in this strange, cold, quiet
place; and he shouted again.' Lewis seems
really determined to lay bare Edmund's
sort of moral machinations, the fact
that he doesn't always act honestly or
straightforwardly, and that he has, he's
someone who has ulterior motives.
It seems  you might, you might see this as a
bit of pre damnation for an author who's
designing a character who he intends to
to fall into, into a great sin later
so he's sort of heaping it on, but again
I think there's this question of moral
continuity where Edmund is someone
whose actions have a double quality to
them, and that's going to be expanded
later. Anyway, so he does this, this
shouting, can't find her '"Just like a girl,"
said Edmund to himself, "sulking somewhere and
won't accept an apology."' Again we given
an example here of someone who imputes
probably the, the worst motive or certainly
not a good faith motive to someone else.
He doesn't assume that she's out of
earshot or that she's scared or that
she doesn't want to meet him. He assumes
that she's sulking because she doesn't
want to have to accept his apology and
then things being all square. This is the
kind of moral psychology I think we find
in Lewis's on the writings, particularly
the Screwtape Letters, where
some of his most penetrating insights
into moral behaviour, I think, are about
everyday life. The Screwtape Letters are
a series of imagined letters from a
senior devil to his his junior cousin.
And they're about life under wartime
conditions, but about the pettiness and
the irritation, and the way in which
actually, it's not the grand terrors and
the grand dangers of wartime that are
endangering people's souls. It's smallness,
it's pettiness, it's selfishness, betrayal,
all the small traits which can grow to
great sins. That's why I think
something similar is going on here. And
then one of the central figures of the
novel arrives. 'He looked around him again
and decided he don't did not like much
like this place and had almost made up
his mind to go home, when he heard, very
far off in the wood, a sound of bells. He
listened and the sound came nearer and
nearer and at last there swept into
sight a sledge drawn by two reindeer. The
reindeer were about the size of  a Shetland
pony and their hair was so white that
even the snow hardly looked white
compared with them; their branching
horns were gilded and shone like something
on fire when the sunrise caught them.
Their harness was of scarlet leather and
covered with bells. On the sled, driving
the reindeer, sat a fat dwarf who would have
been about three foot high if he'd been
standing. He was dressed in polar bear's
fur and on his head he wore a red hood
with a long tassel hanging down from its
point; his huge beard covered his knees
and served him instead of a rug. But
behind him, on a much higher seat in the
middle of the sledge sat a very
different person - a great lady taller
than any woman Edmund had ever seen.
She was also covered in white fur up to
her throat and held a long straight
golden wand in her right hand and wore a
golden crown on her head.
Her face was white - not merely pale, but
white like snow or paper or icing sugar,
except for her very red mouth. It was a
beautiful face in other respects, but
proud and cold and stern.' So as I say, this
is going to be one of the central
figures of the novel: the White Witch, and
we're introduced to her in quite an
interesting way. I think there's a bit of
a bait-and-switch going on here, because
there's the sound of bells, then we see
reindeer in a snowy landscape. then we
see a sledge, then we see a little dwarf
who's wearing polar bear fur and has a cap
with a tassel. I think, and I say this is
just speculative, I think we're supposed to
think this is Father Christmas. I think
we're supposed to expect a big, jolly,
paunchy man, who's dressed in scarlet and
white, or scarlet with white detailing,
and who's going to give gifts and make
things cheerful and jolly, and the
opposite happens. She's a woman, she's
thin, she's tall, she's dressed in white
with scarlet detailing, just on her, on
her lips, and on the harnesses, and she's
someone who takes away rather than
giving. This is a feature of the White
Witch's character which I'll expand on,
as I think it's I think it's religiously
or theologically significant later on in
the book, but it just struck me that
there's a bit of a fictional game being
played here. We, we're being led to expect the
kind of character we'd think of in a
snowy landscape, driven by a, pulled along
by reindeer in a sledge with a little
man, who seems to have come from the
North Pole on it, and instead we're
presented with someone who seems to be
the opposite of that person. And that not
only surprises us, and I think gives us a
perhaps a similar sense of shock to
Edmund, in that we we had an advantage
over him because we'd seen Narnia before,
and if we were listening we'd know the
Father Christmas wouldn't be there, because
it's always winter but never Christmas,
but there's a, a shock for us as, just as
there's a shock for him, and we get a
sense of surprise in the reading of the
novel, but also the very, the very inverse
qualities which the Witch shows,I think,
throws into relief what's not here in
the novel. We don't have gift-giving, we
don't have jollity, not in this scene at
least. We don't have a land that is
moving through the seasons healthily and
wholesomely,
because it's frozen in time, time itself
has, has come awry somehow, and I think
by the, the very bait-and-switch that's
going on, it brings to our mind things
that should be present in Narnia, but
clearly aren't. In fact their inverse
is present. So, those are just a few of
the things that, that came to my mind as I was
reading. I'm sure, as I said before,
there'll be things that strike you as
you read this chapter, and I'd be really
interested to hear about them, so please
do leave comments. Next
episode will be discussing the
chapter entitled 'Turkish Delight', one of
the things that a lot of people remember
about this novel, all the way from '"But
what are you?" Said the Queen again. "Are you
a great overgrown dwarf that has cut off
its beard?"'  and all the way to '"Come on
then," said Lucy "let's find the others.
What a lot of adventures we shall have
now that we're all in it together."' So I
look forward to discussing that with you
soon!
