Into War Drobe

They didn’t remember England, or the wardrobe, or their old lives, they were Narnians and they were pushed back, not only into a world that was bound to make them miserable, but also into bodies that couldn’t reflect what they’d been through.

Just imagine Peter, waking up in the morning, not remembering that he isn’t the Magnificent anymore, imagine him subconsciously reaching for something to trim his beard, only to remember that it isn’t there anymore, to expect old battle wounds to hurt until he realises that they can’t because he doesn’t have them.

Or Edmund, who left England a stubborn selfish little boy who only wanted his mummy back, and came back the Just, the redeemed traitor, the diplomat, the man, having to resort to being ten years old and probably not even allowed to peek at a newspaper because he’s just a child after all. He plays chess, incredibly well, he doesn’t mock his siblings anymore and all the friends he knew when he was still a boy are either irritated at his behaviour or too childish, too selfish for somebody who knows very well just what selfishness can do, who has a part of the White Witch in him, always.

Susan forgets, we all know that. She must’ve lain awake at night, remembering just what it felt like to cover pain and viciousness and gore with a smile and a blush, remembering being the Gentle, but never in war. She must’ve cried for all the lost years, for all that she learnt and that she can never forget, for all that she has accomplished, that will bring her nothing in this world that doesn’t feel like hers. So she sits down in front of a mirror, talks herself out of believing, telling herself that it wasn’t real, that it was just a dream, that this Narnia her siblings talk about is nothing but a game. The truth is too terrifying, to devastating to face.

Lucy, little Lucy, who grew up under Mr Tumnus’ smiles and Aslan’s approving gaze, who was loved by all, who did learn how to rule, how to negotiate but who never forgot just what it means to be a queen of Narnia, this girl who matured into a woman, who had a woman’s mind and body and a queen’s grace, she who they called the Valiant, the lion’s daughter, she shrank into herself, into a child, younger than even her siblings. She remembers, clearest of them all, she is the only one who still knows Mr Tumnus’ face, still knows Aslan, but she is just a girl, a pretty little thing who will never be the queen she was, who will never be the woman she was because queenship forms a person in ways no schools can.

There’s longing, to be sure, and character development doesn’t just go out the window because those things actually happened. But a good chunk of the early problems in Prince Caspian are the result of the Pevensies having slid back into their mundane roles as inhabitants of our world and having to slowly get their groove back on the journey to Aslan’s How. And I think that’s because, while I think they never stopped being kings and queens, that part of them slowly bowed out in a world where there was not much use for it, just as there wasn’t much use for ordinary schoolchildren once they made their way back to Narnia. People don’t lose the different parts of themselves in Narnia stories, but each world has its own set of rules, and people will always seem to play by the rules of the world they’re in.

Just like how an apple that might offer everlasting youth on one world might only cure a deathly ill in ours.

Or how our world might strip an evil queen of her magic while leaving her strength and stature intact.

Or how that same queen might be forced to rely on tricks like magic fruit and wands like some common peddling sorceress in a world like Narnia.

Or how you should be very careful when traveling to a place like the wood between the worlds, lest you become calm and quiet, just like the trees and the pools.

The dreamers have everyone to speak for them. But those who're patient, those who try to be strong, who try to build things- no one ever sees any poetry in that, do they?

Aravis is a very complicated, very human character. Yes, she is strong and brave, and yes, she was trying to escape an arranged child marriage, which the book only ever commends her for. But what is also essential to understand is that Aravis is a member of a privileged class in a culture that relied on slavery (as did most cultures in the ancient world). Part of her plan of escape involved drugging the slave girl who was supposed to wake her in the morning.

It is noteworthy that, after she recounts the tale of her escape to Shasta (who grew up as a member of the slave class), the first question Shasta has is this:

"And what happened to the girl- the one you drugged?" asked Shasta.

"Doubtless she was beaten for sleeping late," said Aravis coolly. "But she was a tool and spy of my stepmother's. I am very glad they should beat her."

"I say, that was hardly fair," said Shasta.

Shasta knows what this is like. To have all the consequences of the actions of the privileged class fall on him. The servant girl wasn't a person to Aravis, merely a "tool" for her stepmother or a hindrance to herself.

When the Lion claws Aravis's back as he chases them (unbeknownst to them) to safety, the explanation Aslan later gives her is this:

"The scratches on your back, tear for tear, throb for throb, blood for blood, were equal to the stripes laid on the back of your stepmother's slave because of the drugged sleep you cast upon her. You needed to know what it felt like."

Aslan wasn't punishing Aravis for "escaping assault in a way he didn't like." He was teaching her to see the personhood of a someone she thought was beneath her, and who had a life and feelings every bit as important as her own. And that that slave girl has a life that is hers alone, unbound to any of the people who claim to "own" her.

"Will any more harm come to her by what I did?"

Shasta being an orphan with unknown origins meeting a prince who’s his exact double and going, “Those two things are completely unrelated.”

See, here’s the thing I don’t think many/most people appreciate about Susan Pevensie (don’t worry, this isn’t a Problem of Susan post):

Book Susan and Movie Susan are, in almost all respects, entirely different characters.

Peter, Edmund, and Lucy are changed in various measures through adaptation, and those are whole other discussions, but the core of who each of them is remains the same (at least in LWW). The adaptational process took Susan from Mom Friend to knock-off Hermione.

See, this may seem a little tinfoil hat-y, but I think that the people writing Narnia, which came hot on the heels of the Harry Potter phenomenon, looked at Hermione’s success as a popular character and thought, “we want one.” Susan was the easiest to Hermione-ify.

Movie Susan (like Hermione) is most concerned about logic, rational explanations for magic, and practicality. Her “maturity” comes from her intellect; she rejects her siblings’ faith-based arguments in because she is overly focused on the practical, because in her mind practical and logical > faith-based. Book Susan is nothing like this. In contrast, book Susan (the superior Susan imho) is the Mom Friend ™ of her family.

The thing is, Susan isn’t anything like Hermione in the books. The most obvious comparison is that book Susan “was no good at school work (though obviously very old for her age). I absolutely cannot see book Susan playing that dictionary game from the beginning of Disney LWW. Book Susan tried to martial her siblings into bed at a reasonable hour. I’m sure she reminded them all to brush their teeth and wash their faces too. The next day, when Edmund grumbles about the rain, Susan optimistically says it’ll clear up soon and cheerfully suggests listening to the wireless in the meantime. The dictionary game was never on the table.

For another specific example from LWW (which I’m choosing because most of the characters are decently true to their book characters in this one, Susan being the biggest exception): early in film, Susan argues against remaining in Narnia because she cannot logically reconcile herself to its fairytale logic and magic. “He’s a beaver! He shouldn’t be saying anything!” she exclaims.

In contrast, rather than disparaging the Beaver’s ability to talk, book Susan is the first to understand that he wants the Pevensies to follow him and is warning them not to make noise, and to argue in favor of obeying him. Her argument is pragmatic, yes (“It’s no good just standing here and I feel I want some dinner”), but it’s also based on tentative trust of the beaver and a desire to see her family warm and fed.

In the books It’s Susan who politely compliments Mr. Beaver’s Dam, which I find adorably sweet of her. Susan does again say “I wish we’d never come” when Edmund goes missing, but it’s obvious that she says it out of deep concern and love for her brother.  

Backtracking a little, while movie Susan’s concern in hers and Peter’s conversation with the Professor is almost entirely centered on the idea that Lucy’s world “isn’t logical,” book Susan is far more concerned about the members of her family and whether they’re all okay. Peter, in fact, makes the more traditionally logical arguments (“if things are real then they’re real,” though no one but the Professor actually uses the word “logic”). Susan, instead, worries about whether Lucy is okay, and asks emphatically “what are we to do!” when she feels that the conversation has veered too far into the theoretical rather than focusing on how to make sure that Lucy and Edmund are okay. Book Susan isn’t worried about logic and theoretical concepts of other worlds; she just wants to take care of her family.

I’ve done a lot of compare and contrast, so here’s just some quick bullet points to reinforce my argument, which is that book Susan’s defining characteristics are her empathy and sensitivity:

When Peter semi-criticizes the Professor on page one of LWW, Susan immediately chimes in, “I think he’s an old dear.” She barely knows the Professor, but she immediately thinks the best of him.

Susan suggests working against the Deep Magic—she is desperate to save her brother

On the road to the stone table, it’s Susan who asks Aslan, “Please may we come with you—wherever you’re going?” She also asks if he is ill, trying to figure out what she can do to help. (Side note: movie Herminie’s tearful “I’ll come with you!” to Harry as he goes to face Voldemort is easily her most Susan-ish moment)

 Susan insists that Edmund not be told about Aslan’s sacrifice: “Oh, surely not. It would be too awful for him. Think of how you’d feel if you were he.” Susan is empathy queen.

Susan doesn’t want to go beyond the Lamppost when they hunt the White Stag. She feels as though something is amiss.

Susan is very motherly with Shasta. Example: “[Susan] rose from her place and threw her arms around him and kissed him, saying: ‘Oh Corin, Corin, how could you? And thou and I such close friends since thy mother died”

Susan feels deeply guilty for being taken in by Rabadash’s charms.  She weeps to think that she has endangered the party.

Yet all the same, it is clear that Susan is definitely a romantic.

Susan, despite being an excellent archer, doesn’t ride to wars while Lucy does. Susan is responsible for holding and taking care of Cair Paravel. This speaks a great deal to her disposition and her giftedness. She’s sensitive such that she doesn’t want to fight (though she can if called upon), but good at looking after those left behind.

Susan is the first to suggest making plans and looking for food once they’ve arrived on the island in PC. This might be characteristic of both book and movie Susan, but in the context of the books it’s a great example of her once again being the Mom Friend ™.  Along similar lines, Susan cautions her siblings (*cough* Lucy) not to lose track of her shoes and socks. Very motherly.

Susan is (arguably) the first to slip into nostalgia once they reach the ruins of Cair Paravel, and the way in which she does it is very characteristic: “’In our castle of Cair Paravel,’ continued Susan in a dreamy and rather singsong voice, ‘at the mouth of the great river Narnia. How could I forget?’”

Susan comes back with the chessman from the well. This part breaks my heart: “’Look,’ she said in a rather choking voice. ‘I found it by the well.’ She handed it to Peter and sat down. The others thought she looked and sounded as if she might cry. [All the others are excited to see the chess piece, and by its implications]./‘Cheer up, Su,’ said Peter to his other sister./‘I can’t help it,’ said Susan. ‘It brought back—oh, such lovely times. And I remembered playing chess with fauns and good giants, and the mer-people singing in the sea, and my beautiful horse—and—and—'” 

Susan remains obviously upset as they explore the treasure chamber while her siblings are all excited. She doesn’t want to open the door until morning. She is really grieved by the whole thing.

When dispatching the Telmarines sent to kill Trumpkin, Susan doesn’t shoot to kill.

Susan’s archery bout with Trumpkin: before the match starts, she feels bad about it because “Susan was so tender-hearted that she almost hated to beat someone who had been beaten already.” After the bout, Susan tries to smooth his feelings: “’It wasn’t really any better than yours. I think there was a tiny breath of wind as you shot.’” There was, of course, no such wind. Susan just wants to make Trumpkin feel better.

Susan misses shooting at the bear that attacks the party. “’I—I left it too late,’ said Susan, in an embarrassed voice. ‘I was so afraid that it might be, you know—one of our kind of bears, a talking bear.’ She hated killing things.” Even afterwards, she calls the bear “poor old Bruin” and worries that he could have been a talking bear.

Susan prefaces her vote to go down the gorge instead of following Aslan with “Don’t be angry, Lu.” Trying to be peacemaker.

This is reading between the lines a little, but I don’t think Susan refuses to believe Lucy the second time because she’s thinking “don’t be silly Lucy, he can’t possibly be there because I can’t see him,” as movie Susan might have. Rather, I think she’s afraid to get her hopes up that Aslan might really have come. She tells Lucy that she really did believe that Aslan was there, deep down. When Aslan speaks to Susan, after she sees him, he tells her, “You have listened to fears, child.” Fears, not doubts. Susan was afraid that Aslan wasn’t really there, as much as she wanted him to be. That was what kept her from seeing him.

Susan doesn’t say a word when Peter explains that he and Susan won’t be returning to Narnia. I read this as deep, inward grief.

Susan is the Gentle Queen; she is not the Logical Queen, the Rational Queen, or anything else along those lines. I sort of see Lucy and Susan like Mary and Martha. Both are friends of Jesus (Aslan), but one would prefer to bask in Aslan’s presence while the other is busy trying to take care of everyone. Yet Martha has more to say to Jesus after Lazarus dies than Mary does. Susan feels grief more acutely than her siblings, which I think likely contributed to her falling away from Narnia for a time. She’s the sort who cries at Humane Society commercials and not only remembers your birthday but sends you a lovely, heartfelt card. She sees the best in everyone and gets lost in nostalgia for the past. She takes care of her siblings in lieu of their parents, she takes care of poor, motherless Corin, and she takes care of her people while her siblings are away fighting wars.

Hogwarts Houses are perhaps not particularly relevant anymore, but they provide a good shorthand to talk about this issue. I have only ever seen Susan sorted as a Ravenclaw or a Slytherin, both of which essentially fit with her Disney characterization. However, based on C.S. Lewis’s characterization of Susan Pevensie, it couldn’t be any more obvious that she’s a Hufflepuff. I can’t see her in any other house. Book Susan is deeply empathetic and sensitive, and sometimes her heart suffers for it. She virtually always considers the feelings of others first. She does her best to care for others, both practically and emotionally, and sometimes falls short. She is profoundly tender-hearted. She’s a peacemaker. She’s the ultimate Mom friend, which can be both a strength and a weakness.

I can’t stand Disney Susan because I have such deep love for C. S. Lewis’s Susan, who is also MY Susan. Lewis’s Susan is not a knock-off Hermione. She’s not Dana Scully. She’s my lovely, sensitive, compassionate daughter of Aslan and I wish her every joy.

you walk into a world you cannot understand, frozen and dying, and it is you who thaws it. you who kills the witch, you who breaks the stone table, you who slays the wolf. it is you who is crowned and it is you who wails for two worlds when the wardrobe doors shut behind you.

your skin never sits quite right and your teeth are too dull. there are wars in your bones and decades in your eyes before you can reach the telephone on the wall.

you are king. you are queen. they won't let you read the newspapers at breakfast.

it calls you back from beyond a train and from within paint. begs with bloody palms and salt-crusted cheeks. takes from you all that you can give - and sends you back.

you watch your sister fade.

you are a child twice and an adult once. and when you stand in your home again, with crushed bones and the smell of coal still in your nose, you watch them sneer at your sister.

your sister is the sun above you. she is, beautiful and stone-cast, alive in a world you could never stomach. she smiles, still, and stretches her skin over human bones.

Their mom notices, at the dinner table. She sees no nagging children, no stupid fights. She sees Lucy eating and speaking with perfect manners, Edmund analysing the economy and war with concerning skill, Susan being gracious but poised, like a diplomat.

Their father sees it in Peters eyes the first time they get into a fight. When he moves to punish Edmund for speaking out of turn, Peter calls him out on it. When his gaze meet his eldest son's, he's leveled by the war he sees behind it, the tensed muscle in his arm, the knuckles white around his knife. He's seen that before, in other soldiers. He doesn't know how to react.

Other children notice, too. Talking to all the Pevensie kids at the same time is like being the only one left out of a secret, and the way they touch and tease each other speaks of a history far deeper than their polite demeneor lets on. And when they walk they fall in line, as if there is a natural hierarchy between them.

The first time anyone picks a fight with Edmund, Peter comes home with a three week suspension and blood around his mouth. He looks more alive than you've seen him in weeks.

When Susan gets back in the pool after Narnia, she wins all the contests. Coaches can't explain how to beat her, because they don't understand how she's doing it, either. She seems to almost disappear when underwater.

Lucy, always gay and golden-haired, starts dancing, and never misses a step. She moves with an elegance that no 10 year old should have, and all the girls want to be friends with her

Edmund soon becomes the best student in his faculty. He always seems to know the right thing to say, and teachers laud his ability to think through complex problems. His mouth does get him in trouble sometimes, but the boy seems uncatchable, always talking his way through the cracks. And if not?

No one actively fears Peter, but everyone is a little scared of him sometimes. He's tall for his age, sure, but there is something else, some other air that seems to give him an authority far beyond what's normal for a teenage boy. He's nice enough, but teachers can't stand it, and bullies learn very quickly that pissing him off means missing teeth and black eyes.

without the blurred sight of joy and relief, it has become impossible to ignore. all the love inside you cannot keep you from seeing the truth. your children are strangers to you. the country has seen them grow taller, your youngest daughter’s hair much longer than you would have it all years past. their hands have more strength in them, their voices ring with an odd lilt and their eyes—it has become hard to look at them straight on, hasn’t it? your children have changed, helen, and as much as you knew they would grow a little in the time away from you, your children have become strangers.

your youngest sings songs you do not know in a language that makes your chest twist in odd ways. you watch her dance in floating steps, bare feet barely touching the dewy grass. when you try and make her wear her sister’s old shoes—growing out of her own faster than you think she ought to—, she looks at you as though you are the child instead of her. her fingers brush leaves with tenderness, and you swear your daughter’s gentle hum makes the drooping plant stand taller than before. you follow her eager leaps to her siblings, her enthusiasm the only thing you still recognise from before the country. yet, she laughs strangely, no longer the giggling girl she used to be but free in a way you have never seen. her smile can drop so fast now, her now-old eyes can turn distant and glassy, and her tears, now rarer, are always silent. it scares you to wonder what robbed her of the heaving sobs a child ought to make use of in the face of upset.

your other daughter—older than your youngest yet still at an age that she cannot be anything but a child—smiles with all the knowledge in the world sitting in the corner of her mouth. her voice is even, without all traces of the desperate importance her peers carry still, that she used to fill her siblings’ ears with at all hours of the day. she folds her hands in her lap with patience and soothes the ache of war in your mind before you even realise she has started speaking. you watch her curl her hair with careful, steady fingers and a straight back, her words a melody as she tells your eldest which move to make without so much a glance at the board off to her right. she reads still, and what a relief you find this sliver of normalcy, even if she’s started taking notes in a shorthand you couldn’t even think to decipher. even if you feel her slipping away, now more like one of the young, confident women in town than a child desperately wishing for a mother’s approval.

your younger son reads plenty as well these days, and it fills you with pride. he is quiet now, sitting still when you find him bent over a book in the armchair of his father. he looks at you with eyes too knowing for a petulant child on the cusp of puberty, and no longer beats his fists against the furniture when one of his siblings dares approach him. he has settled, you realise one evening when you walk into the living room and find him writing in a looping script you don’t recognise, so different from the scratched signature he carved into the doors of your pantry barely a year ago. he speaks sense to your youngest and eldest, respects their contributions without jest. you watch your two middle children pass a book back and forth, each a pen in hand and sheets of paper bridging the gap between them, his face opening up with a smile rather than a scowl. it freezes you mid-step to find such simple joy in him. remember when you sent them away, helen, and how long it had been since he allowed you to see a smile then?

your eldest doesn’t sleep anymore. none of your children care much for bedtimes these days, but at least sleep still finds them. it’s not restful, you know it from the startled yelps that fill the house each night, but they sleep. your eldest makes sure of it. you have not slept through a night since the war began, so it’s easy to discover the way he wanders the halls like a ghost, silent and persistent in a duty he carries with pride. each door is opened, your children soothed before you can even think to make your own way to their beds. his voice sounds deeper than it used to, deeper still than you think possible for a child his age and size. then again, you are never sure if the notches on his door frame are an accurate way to measure whatever it is that makes you feel like your eldest has grown beyond your reach. you watch him open doors, soothe your children, spend his nights in the kitchen, his hands wrapped around a cup of tea with a weariness not even the war should bring to him, not after all the effort you put into keeping him safe.

your children mostly talk to each other now, in a whispered privacy you cannot hope to be a part of. their arms no longer fit around your waist. your daughters are wilder—even your older one, as she carries herself like royalty, has grown teeth too sharp for polite society— and they no longer lean into your hands. your sons are broad-shouldered even before their shirts start being too small again, filling up space you never thought was up for taking. your eldest doesn’t sleep, your middle children take notes when politicians speak on the wireless and shake their heads as though they know better, and your youngest sings for hours in your garden.