Book Review: The Silver Chair

[osprey_archer]

Rereading the Narnia books has been an interesting exercise in the fragility of human memory. Going in, I believed that I remembered The Silver Chair rather well, because hadn’t I read it over and over? Or at least read parts of it over and over? Or, perhaps, just read the Silver Chair part over and over, the part where Prince Rillian is strapped into a chair and screams and begs to be let out as the chair saps away his memory for another day and leaves him again the willing slave of his enemies –

“Oh no, Prince Rillian is Bucky Barnes,” I realized, as I enthusiastically described this scene to littlerhymes. Clearly this kind of thing simply speaks to something deep in my soul.

And to be fair I DID remember the chair scene pretty well. And of course I remember Puddleglum, the hilariously gloomy marsh wiggle! And Jill and Eustace themselves, and the scenes at their horrible school Experiment House, which takes potshots at the kind of progressive school Lewis disliked while also, somehow, being exactly like the horrible boarding school that he described in his memoir.

Somehow I’d conflated the final Scourging of Experiment House with the ending of Prince Caspian, where Aslan leads a bacchanalia to destroy some Telmarine schools. I was quite surprised when Jill and Eustace and Caspian clear out Experiment House without any maenads at all! (Caspian is of course technically dead at this point, but he's been resurrected in Aslan's Country, which I guess clears him to hop off on otherworldly adventures if necessary.)

And I’d forgotten just about everything else about the book. The trek across the north lands! The sojourn with the giants! OMG the giant cookbook which is like “humans are delicious! Not marsh wiggles though,” and Puddleglum is like HEY. I get it. You don’t want to be eaten, but you also don’t want the giants not to even want to eat you.

And then the underground world of the Lady of the Green Kirtle. (Lewis’s villainesses continue to be completely on point.) The darkness, the quiet, the mushroom-like gnomes who make no noise, Prince Rillian prattling on fatuously under the Lady’s enchantment… then of course the complete about face once he’s in the Silver Chair to be re-enchanted for the next day.

I was delighted when it turned out the gnomes had ALSO been enchanted by the Lady of the Green Kirtle. Once they’re free, they all go wild with delight! They burrow back down into the deep depths, the Bism, where jewels grow wild and you can drink ruby juice. Rillian is tempted by the adventure, but the others convince him that he needs to get back to Narnia, which is probably just as well because even in Narnia I think drinking ruby juice might kill you.

Still, what a gorgeous image. The whole book is just overflowing with these wonderful flights of the imagination. What an excellent book! What a high note to end on! What a pity that instead we have to go forward with The Last Battle...

Comments

[sovay]

Or, perhaps, just read the Silver Chair part over and over, the part where Prince Rillian is strapped into a chair and screams and begs to be let out as the chair saps away his memory for another day and leaves him again the willing slave of his enemies –

The part of this book that really upset me as a child was the gaslighting reversal of Rilian’s enchantment where his brief episodes of sanity and despair are framed as flights of dangerous mad nonsense, right down to the supposed threat of becoming a murderous serpent if freed during this time when the Lady of the Green Kirtle is really the loathly shape-changer. It's very effective.

Somehow I’d conflated the final Scourging of Experiment House with the ending of Prince Caspian, where Aslan leads a bacchanalia to destroy some Telmarine schools.

That makes sense; now I think there should have been maenads.

I love Puddleglum, even if I can't believe no one ever pointed out to Lewis that ducks are not cold-blooded.

[asakiyume]

Pretty much anything is improved by maenads, and DEFINITELY school-scourging!

[osprey_archer]

Yes, the way the Lady explains the enchantment to him upside-down is so effective. And poor Jill and Eustace and Puddleglum, promising solemnly not to free him no matter what he says and then realizing "Oh no, maybe we have to..."

My imaginary version of the scouring of the Experiment House with maenads was AMAZING. Clearly Lewis should have come up with the idea, and never mind it would have been a bit of a repeat of the ending of Prince Caspian

[asakiyume]

OMG the giant cookbook which is like “humans are delicious! Not marsh wiggles though,” and Puddleglum is like HEY.

Ahahahaha, as superb as that actual scene is, your retelling is EVEN BETTER A++, love it.

And yes, I love this book very, very much. I love them breaking through into Narnia at the end, into a snowball fight! And then having bacon! (Am I remembering that right?) Yum! And yes, I love the glimpses of Bism and how delighted the gnomes are to be going home. And the Lady of the Green Kirtle's wicked logic about why Narnia isn't real! And Puddleglum's breaking of the spell at that moment! He provided child-me with huge comfort and solace and, indeed, a pattern for living. Which sounds so overblown, but it's true.

... On a lighter note, I loved the Pauline Baynes drawing of the Lady of the Green Kirtle as they encountered her (w/silent Prince Rillian beside her) on the road: I loved those scalloped sleeves! They became a staple of my princess drawings.

[kore]

Puddleglum is just one of the great Stoic heroes of kidlit, I swear, except Lewis also makes him hilarious. And then he is just A Big Damn Hero:

One word, Ma'am," he said, coming back from the fire; limping, because of the pain. "One word. All you've been saying is quite right, I shouldn't wonder. I'm a chap who always liked to know the worst and then put the best face I can on it. So I won't deny any of what you said. But there's one more thing to be said, even so. Suppose we have only dreamed, or made up, all those things-trees and grass and sun and moon and stars and Aslan himself. Suppose we have. Then all I can say is that, in that case, the made-up things seem a good deal more important than the real ones. Suppose this black pit of a kingdom of yours is the only world. Well, it strikes me as a pretty poor one. And that's a funny thing, when you come to think of it. We're just babies making up a game, if you're right. But four babies playing a game can make a play-world which licks your real world hollow. That's why I'm going to stand by the play world. I'm on Aslan's side even if there isn't any Aslan to lead it. I'm going to live as like a Narnian as I can even if there isn't any Narnia. So, thanking you kindly for our supper, if these two gentlemen and the young lady are ready, we're leaving your court at once and setting out in the dark to spend our lives looking for Overland. Not that our lives will be very long, I should think; but that's a small loss if the world's as dull a place as you say.

[kore]

(Also now that I think on it....is this sort of a version of Pascal's Wager? Heh, Lewis.)

[sovay]

(Also now that I think on it....is this sort of a version of Pascal's Wager? Heh, Lewis.)

It's very much one of those moments of Milton being of the Devil's party, because even if Lewis intended it as Christian apologetics, which I am sure he did, it makes a perfectly beautiful argument for not needing a God to live a philosophically good life.

[kore]

Yes! It might be inside baseball, but to me that's Lewis's early Classics training coming out, and all those years of being a hardcore atheist. In fact old Jack follows Pascal's reasoning pretty closely: you can't argue logically for or against God, and the worst outcome is if you accept the wager (as you must), and live virtuously (little asterisk: according to Christianity, but you can kinda leave this off) then you will have a finite ending (die). The Lady is using reasoning against them (along with some, er, sensory manipulation) and that's not how Puddleglum defeats her. "I'm going to live as like a Narnian as I can even if there isn't any Narnia" -- there it is.

[asakiyume]

Staaap, you're making me cry. Seriously.

I have that speech practically memorized.

Okay, going off to weep somewhere, brb

[kore]

I think if there is one passage you can single out as the beating heart of the whole Narnia series, that one is it. It's beautiful.

[asakiyume]

😭

Agreed

[osprey_archer]

The bit where they come up out of the underworld at the end, and there's a snow dance that also involves snowballs, and if you do it just right no one gets hit by a snowball, but if someone DOES get hit by a snowball then you get to have a snowball fight... yes, and there's a nice dinner for everyone, after all their time hurrying to escape the underground before they get cut off from the surface. Such a joyful homecoming.

[kore]

“Oh no, Prince Rillian is Bucky Barnes,” I realized

//SHRIEKS

You DID NOT just do that to me, OH MAN

This is such a great book! It was one of my favourites even before everyone started admitting that Rilian bound in the Silver Chair gave them early Feelings, lol. You zero right in on it -- there's so many neat descriptions, it's so imaginative, and the adventures are thrillingly paced. I always loved Lewis -- Lewis of all people! -- going to town on learned femininity and Jill being all simpering with the giants, because that was EXACTLY how I felt as a girl-child a lot of the time. Puddleglum is amazing. The Lady is hott in all the wrong ways (is she supposed to be Jadis? That never made sense to me. Or was it the White Witch who was supposed to be Jadis).

I've always loved how they keep missing the Signs -- which is straight out of fairytales, but also emphasizes the reality of the characters to me -- they argue, they fuck up, they make awful mistakes but keep going. I think Lewis was the one who said admiringly that LOTR was maybe the one book that could give you the feeling of what a medieval pilgrimage was, and this is also such a Quest book.

The scene where the Lady is trying to re-enchant them all is interesting -- on par with that invented (sob) Tolkien quote about fantasy and escapism. Religion is usually seen as opiate of the &c &c, denial of this world, and so on, but Puddleglum -- Puddleglum! the most reality principle character in a kids' book ever -- is the one who says their "fantasy" world is superior to the Lady's denial of the sun and reality, and we "know" since we're reading the book that Aslan and Narnia and the sun are real -- but of course, they're not because we're reading a fictional book! But Lewis is also using the fictional book to allegorize a religion he thinks is true. I do love that what really helps break the enchantment is the smell of burnt Marsh-Wiggle foot. PUDDLEGLUM. What a hero.

And for all of Lewis's actualfax misogyny, Jill is just a delight. She's strong and real and utterly believable, and I always wanted her and Lucy to meet up and have Adventures, back before I knew what fanfic was.

[asakiyume]

💛💛💛

[osprey_archer]

I'M SORRY okay actually I'm not sorry, I too shrieked when I saw the Prince Rillian = Bucky Barnes connection. Perhaps someone involved in the production of The Winter Soldier read this book too many times as a child! Or maybe it's such a compelling image they came to it independently...

The Lady and Jadis are different characters - maybe the Lady is supposed to be identified with the snake who tempts Jadis to eat the fruit in the orchard in The Magician's Nephew? Or maybe just some rando witch, who can say.

The whole "Narnia isn't real" thing is also SO Plato's allegory of the cave, right down to the centrality of the sun to the metaphor: the sun = goodness (= Aslan/God, in Lewis's extension of the metaphor.

I think Jill and Eustace are my favorite Plucky Child Duo in this series. Their bickering is so much fun, and I love the way that Jill just turns on her chirpy sweet little girl act to get information out of the giants. Shades of Natasha Romanov...

[kore]

IT'S HILARIOUS BECAUSE IT'S TRUE. I choose to believe a set designer for this movie got to beautifully express their long-held devotion for the Silver Chair, because I don't remember seeing it in the original Winter Soldier comics.

The Lady is rather snaky! Lewis does have rather a number of these evil hot Amazon type witches roaming around his fantasyland, doesn't he. HMM, JACK.

The whole "Narnia isn't real" thing is also SO Plato's allegory of the cave, right down to the centrality of the sun to the metaphor: the sun = goodness (= Aslan/God, in Lewis's extension of the metaphor.

It TOTALLY is, that's a great catch. Like I was just saying to sovay, I think Lewis's Classics background is coming out here -- and dare I say, it may even be as big an influence on Narnia as Christianity was. (Surely one influence on Dawn Treader is clearly the Odyssey?)

[osprey_archer]

Yes, I do love the idea of a Silver Chair-loving set designer coming up with the idea, and the Russo brothers are all "love it. Let's run with it."

The Lady actually turns into a snake! Which may or may not make her the SAME snake as in The Magician's Nephew.

(Also quick, someone look up whether Joy Gresham was an Amazon striding across the countryside.)

Yes, the classics keep coming out! Even in the little things like the presence of the maenads and the dryads etc. But also, yes, the Odyssey influence on Dawn Treader, and IIRC the people with the single giant foot that they use as an umbrella comes out of some classical source?

[kore]

I choose to believe she is the same snake! (Ahaha, that makes her Melusine, doesn't it.)

and IIRC the people with the single giant foot that they use as an umbrella comes out of some classical source?

Oh wow, this looks interesting, even if they do mention Freud.

https://www.academia.edu/277670/The_Domestication_of_Classical_Mythology_in_the_Chronicles_of_Narnia

I had to look it up! Apparently the Classical reference is Pliny.

Ctesias....also describes a tribe of men called the Monocoli who have only one leg, and who move in jumps with surprising speed; the same are called the Umbrella-foot tribe [Sciapodas], because in hotter weather they lie on their backs on the ground and protect themselves with the shadow of their feet.

(All I know about Pliny is that he described a unicorn, but it sonds like a rhinoceros. /o\)

[nnozomi]

What a good review. I read the Narnia books as a child when I read everything, whether it interested me or not, and have rarely revisited them since, but this one is the exception! Jill and Eustace delight me, and the whole atmosphere is wonderfully, memorably eerie and significant. UNDER ME and the way the Signs are unmissable when you think about it but of course Jill, actually living through it, misses them, and the hominess of the Giants' household that furthers the horror, and the vivid fantasy-world descriptions of the underground realms.

[ethelmay]

I loved the general atmosphere of The Silver Battle, but it bothered me that a lot of the signs were things that in fact they couldn't have gotten right (like the "Under Me" that they couldn't see until they were above it and not in the snow). And while like everyone else I found Puddleglum's speech moving, when I stopped being a Christian I realized that in many respects the last thing I wanted to do was act as if Christianity were true when I didn't think it was. (Also the "even if there isn't any Narnia" threw me out of the story a bit, because after all that is exactly the position of the reader: there IS no Narnia, no matter how much we want there to be one.)

[nnozomi]

And while like everyone else I found Puddleglum's speech moving, when I stopped being a Christian I realized that in many respects the last thing I wanted to do was act as if Christianity were true when I didn't think it was. (Also the "even if there isn't any Narnia" threw me out of the story a bit, because after all that is exactly the position of the reader: there IS no Narnia, no matter how much we want there to be one.)
Oh, that makes good sense. You know, I actually can't remember if I knew Narnia was a Christian allegory when I read the books? I don't remember any moment of major dislocation when I found out, but that might have been just because I wasn't that emotionally involved in the story. Rereading as an adult, I like Puddleglum's speech as an idea of story-telling, the need for imagination, even though it doesn't entirely work that way.

[osprey_archer]

Jill and Eustace are probably my favorite Narnia children! They just bicker so delightfully. And the eerie atmosphere is so different from the other books, particularly from the sunlit sea-swept Dawn Treader which comes right before - it's so fascinating that Lewis could have two books so different in feel that are nonetheless recognizably the same place.

[nnozomi]

Jill and Eustace are probably my favorite Narnia children! They just bicker so delightfully.
Oh, mine too. And I especially like seeing post-Dawntreader Eustace, still recognizably himself (see also your line below!) while obviously changed and grown.

it's so fascinating that Lewis could have two books so different in feel that are nonetheless recognizably the same place.
Yes! Man, I'd like to be able to do that.

[phantomtomato]

This is a fantastic review! The Silver Chair was never one of my favorites (probably second-least fave, with TLB taking the ignominious spot at the bottom), but you’ve reminded me of the parts that I did like. Puddleglum is great, even if Jill and Eustace weren’t my favorite children and Rilian wasn’t my favorite prince. The giants! The cookbook is something that stuck with me as quite scary, but yes how bizarrely terrible to know that no one wants to eat your species…

The Lady of the Green Kirtle was also frightening, both for her effects on Rilian and her other magic. I think the fact that she was so distinct from Jadis’ power set was really fascinating, looking back—Lewis could have had a re-do, but instead he invented a totally new witch and made her just as formidable.

[osprey_archer]

Puddleglum is SO much fun. He's so gloomy that it loops right back around to hilarious. And the terror of finding the cookbook, and the sheer scariness of the Lady of the Green Kirtle's powers - totally different than Jadis's skill set but just as scary in its own way.

[littlerhymes]

Still laughing at your belated Bucky Barnes realisation! <3

This was one of my favourites as a child, but this time seemed both bigger and smaller than I remembered. The time in the underground is really quite short? Barely even get to talk to the lady in the green kirtle before she's defeated...

The way the book ends by tempting you to go on a cruise on an underground lake only to destroy the whole thing in the next book smh.

[osprey_archer]

LOOK it simply hadn't occurred to me to make this connection before! Powerful man strapped to chair and brainwashed...

Yes, I remembered the chair sequence being much longer! Not to mention the confrontation with the lady in the green kirtle. Imagination clearly added quite a bit to the book.

C. S. Lewis throws out a number of these little asides suggesting more stories (might write something about the Lone Isles someday! imagine a cruise in this cool underground lake!), which certainly contributes to the feeling that Narnia is a vast and fascinating land but ALSO is pretty mean sometimes.

[littlerhymes]

And he does it again in The Last Battle!! Please CS Lewis, tell us all the other stories too...

[osprey_archer]

Lewis: didn't Jewel just tell those stories to Jill??
Us: But we want more detail! TEN MORE BOOKS. TEN MORE BOOKS.
Lewis: No. :)

[genarti]

I agree with sovay about the gaslighting reversal of the enchantment -- that's the bit that affected me the most about Rillian's part in things, when I was a kid. And Puddleglum's speech is absolutely glorious -- one of the most beautiful true things I've ever read, and the stubborn and absolute refusal to give into despair is especially wonderful coming from Puddleglum. I love it. The other part that stuck with me was the salamander talking about the beautiful glowing land where the rubies were alive and bursting with juice. I understood that it was probably a bad idea for Rillian to go there, and even that it probably wouldn't be as beautiful in a sustained on-page view as it was in that description, but oh, it was a fabulous image.

[osprey_archer]

Yes, when he's strapped to the chair he's actually sane, but he's been told that's when he's mad! Such a good and terrifying reversal. And I love that it's Puddleglum who saves them all, even though he's more convinced than anybody that doom is imminent.

[silverusagi]

I like Jill and Eustace fine now, but I remember being so disappointed as a kid that I wasn't still reading about the Pevensie children. But this is such a great quest/adventure book. I would love a whole series of Narnia adventures like this.

[osprey_archer]

There are a few times in the books where he casually mentions other adventures he could be writing about, and of course that's one of the things that makes Narnia feel so big and expansive, but on the other hand TELL US HOW THE LONE ISLES GOT ATTACHED TO NARNIA, LEWIS. There could be a dozen more books in this setting! We would read them!