Once a King or Queen of Narnia, Always a King or Queen of Narnia

[qos]

One thing the movie version of The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe brought home even more vividly than the book -- for me, anyway -- was the stunning contrast between the Pevensie children in this world and the grown-up kings and queens of Narnia who accidentally stumble back through the wardrobe at the end of the story.

The way the movie casts it, Lucy, the youngest, is clearly at least in her late teens, if not her early twenties, in the last Narnia scenes. The siblings have spent, at conservative estimate, at least a dozen years in Narnia -- long enough so that they have entirely forgotten their lives in England, much less how they came to Narnia. (I find myself wondering what their dreams were like. . .)

And then, suddenly, a high-spirited hunting trip ends not with a feast and celebration back at Caer Paravel, but with them falling onto the floor in the Professor's house, once again English schoolchildren. In the movie as well as in the book, they snap back into that reality easily, as if waking from a long and lovely dream.

I don't buy it. I don't buy it at all.

Even from a purely biological perspective, the change would have been wrenching. Lucy is a child in England. In Narnia she's grown into a young woman, with all the physical and emotional changes that involves. She's certainly been courted, engaged in flirtations, perhaps kissed a few young men. And now she's - what? six years old again? Anyone here want to volunteer to re-set your biological clock like that and keep your memories of what it's like to be fully mature? It wouldn't have been much easier for Edmund.

Then there's the experience of being a king or queen of a magic land, with all the authority, ceremony, and privelege that entails. Now you're a legal minor again? You're telling me that High King Peter -- no matter how noble his character -- didn't find himself grinding his teeth in fury and frustration when once again under the thumb of the tyrannical housekeeper? Or schoolmasters? That he didn't have to work had to keep his manner 'appropriate' for where he was again? That any of them didn't have a hard time being reduced to having no authority at all? Not even being treated as the adults they had been, much less monarchs?

One could argue that back in England Narnia seemed only a dream -- except that Peter and Susan have their conversation with the Professor about their experiences, and in the later books they continue to discuss their adventures. They know it was real. They remember.

Aslan told them, "Once a king or queen of Narnia, always a king or queen of Narnia."
Even when you're back in England, with no outward physical sign that your world has twice been turned inside out and upside down and you are not who you were before.
How do you live with that?

Comments

[catwingz.livejournal.com]

Yes, I know what you mean. There is the point that C S Lewis makes in the books, and that you see the first time Lucy goes into Narnia, that time passes much more quickly in Narnia than in England. With all the years and such that they spent in Narnia, though, I would think it would be at least a few days before they came back to England. The time doesn't go by THAT slowly.

I think I'm going to have to go back and read those books again, because what you're saying DOES make sense. It's just that, I mean, from purely a logical perspective, another world SHOULDN'T exist in the back of the wardrobe anyway. Perhaps the time difference was created so that the keepers of the house wouldn't get too angry/upset about the kids not being around, and to add another element of confusion to the children, so that it's the strong of faith that remember and come back.

[qos.livejournal.com]

I mean, from purely a logical perspective. . .

I know. There's a real danger in trying to push mythology too far, or to try to answer certain questions that aren't part of its primary interest.

At the same time, one of my own most important personal mythological projects uses the same device: a main character vanishing from our world, living many years in another, and returning only minutes after she left, looking no older than she had been. And for me, exploring the tensions produced by that experience was a big part of what was interesting about the story.

I wish I could remember at this late date whether or not I was consciously inspired by TLTW&TW when I made the time-travel part of my own story. I know I had read the books at least once or twice by that time, so the motif was definitely in my head, whether I drew on it deliberately or not.