The Silver Chair

The Silver Chair

Cover of first edition (hardcover)
Author	C. S. Lewis
Illustrator	Pauline Baynes
Country	United Kingdom
Language	English
Series	The Chronicles of Narnia
Genre(s)	Fantasy novel
Publisher	Geoffrey Bles
Publication date	1953
Media type	Print (Hardcover & Paperback)
Pages	202 pp
ISBN	NA
Preceded by	The Voyage of the Dawn Treader
Followed by	The Horse and His Boy

The Silver Chair is part of The Chronicles of Narnia, a series of seven fantasy novels written by C.S. Lewis. It was the fourth book published and is the sixth book chronologically. It is the first book, and one of two books in the series, in which the Pevensie children do not appear (the other being The Magician's Nephew). The book is dedicated to Nicholas Hardie, the son of Lewis' fellow Inkling Colin Hardie.

Plot summary

The story begins with Eustace Scrubb, who was introduced in The Voyage of the Dawn Treader, and his classmate Jill Pole, who are unhappy at their school, Experiment House, where bullying is left uncorrected. At Eustace's suggestion, they ask for Aslan's help while trying to escape from the bullies, and then blunder through a temporary interdimensional gate into Aslan's Country. Jill shows off, by moving too close to a high cliff, and Eustace, while trying to pull her back, falls off. Aslan appears and blows Eustace until he is out of sight. Aslan then explains to Jill that she and Eustace are charged with the quest to find the Narnian Prince Rilian, who had disappeared some years prior. He tells her that her task will be more difficult because of what she did. He then gives Jill four "Signs", to guide her and Eustace on their quest: of these Signs, the fourth and final is that at a key moment they will be asked to do something in Aslan's name. Aslan then blows Jill into Narnia, where she arrives a few moments after Eustace. Once there, they are aided by Master Glimfeather and a Parliament of his fellow talking owls (a pun on Chaucer's Parlement of Foules, but also a nod towards the use of the word "parliament" as a collective noun for owls, as "exaltation" is for larks). The owls explain that Rilian disappeared while searching for the green serpent that killed his mother, and is under the spells of an enchantress. As Jill and Eustace journey toward the far north of Narnia, they acquire a companion and guide, a gloomy but stalwart Marsh-wiggle, appropriately named Puddleglum. Journeying into the harsh northland, the three cross the River Shribble, which marks the boundary between Narnia proper and the lands of the giants. The first giants they encounter do not notice them (fortunately), but are playing: they are throwing huge boulders at a rock-cairn near the trio. Escaping from these giants, they continue north until being stopped short by a deep and sinister canyon. The sole route across this barrier is an enormous and sinister bridge, many times larger in scale than anything a human being might normally use. The three principal characters continue to be in the Narnian universe, but once they have crossed this bridge their quest enters a new phase. Not long after crossing this bridge, the members of the quest start to receive advice that conflicts with the "Signs" which Aslan had charged Jill to follow. Hungry and suffering from exposure, they meet The Lady of the Green Kirtle, who encourages them to proceed northward to Harfang, a castle belonging to the "Gentle Giants." Desperate to reach this castle, the trio ignore a clue that Aslan has given them. Reaching Harfang, Jill, Eustace and Puddleglum are given a warm welcome by the giants, who are in active preparation for Harfang's "Autumn Feast." Refreshed by a sleep in shelter, they look out the window and see the words "Under Me", and realize that they have failed to follow Aslan's Signs. Later, they see the giant's cookbook and discover evidence of what part the humans will actually play in the "Autumn Feast" - the main course. In a desperate attempt to escape from the "Gentle Giants", Scrubb, Pole, and Puddleglum escape from the castle, force themselves into a small nearby hole and find themselves falling down a steep slope. They continue to fall, bouncing and rolling periodically, until reaching the bottom of this slope: they are now completely helpless, since even if it is climbable, they are all bruised and bloodied, with no light to guide them, but they have at least, now followed the Sign that said "Under Me". After coming to rest at the bottom of the slope, Puddleglum, Eustace, and Jill are taken captive by gnomes; they have reached the Underland. They are placed on a boat and rowed for uncounted days across a "Sunless Sea" until finally reaching the city of the gnomes, where reigns the Lady of the Green Kirtle and a young man being raised by the Lady as a protegé. A series of rapid events bring the Narnia trio and the unknown youth together, alone. The young man, who is not given a name, treats the travellers pleasantly but does not seem to be right in the head; he himself explains that he suffers from nightly psychotic episodes. During these episodes he must, by the Lady's orders, be bound to a silver chair; if he is released, he will kill everyone within sight, and immediately turn into a green serpent, deadly to all nearby. The threesome determine to witness the youth in his torment, which they sense could be a key to their quest. As Pole, Scrubb, and Puddleglum witness the young man tied to his chair, his "ravings" seem to indicate desperate health within an enchanted captivity, rather than psychosis. Finally, after launching a battery of dire threats, the youth begs his companions to release him in the name of Aslan. Recognizing the fourth Sign, they decide that they are obliged to do so. Far from killing them and turning into a serpent, the young man thanks them and reveals himself to be the vanished Prince Rilian, kept underground by the Lady of the Green Kirtle for sinister purposes. Rilian draws his sword and hacks the silver chair to pieces, but the lady returns and tries to bewitch them all into forgetting who they are and where they are from. Puddleglum heroically steps in the magical fire she has created, releasing an ostensibly putrid smell of burnt Marsh-wiggle and thereby breaking her spell. The enraged Lady transforms into a green serpent, and Rilian realizes that he has been enslaved for all these years by his mother's murderer. Rilian kills the serpent^[1], and leads the travellers in their escape from the Underworld. The gnomes, who were also magically enslaved by the Lady and are now freed by her death, disclose that they have been kidnapped from their home in the very centre of the earth, a magical land named Bism. In gratitude for their freedom, they guide the party to a route upward, out of the Underworld, before returning to their native land below. The travellers thus return to Narnia and are welcomed by a party of winter merrymakers, who say that in every age "these Northern witches" want the same thing, but have different means of getting it. Rilian returns to Cair Paravel. Eustace and Jill watch as King Caspian returns home and meets his long-lost son just before dying. Aslan then appears and congratulates Eustace and Jill on achieving their goal, then returns them to his country where they arrive at the stream where Jill first met Aslan. The body of King Caspian appears in the stream and Aslan instructs Eustace to drive a thorn into his paw. Eustace obeys, and Aslan's blood flows over the dead King, who is then revived and re-appears as the young Caspian. Aslan explains that when Jill and Eustace return to their own world, Caspian will go with them briefly, to help set things right there. At the portal between the worlds, Aslan roars, and part of the wall surrounding Experiment House collapses. Caspian, Eustace and Jill cross the wall and give the school bullies, who have gathered at the wall to seek out the two children (keep in mind that time stands still in our world whilst the characters are in Narnia), a well-deserved thrashing. The beaten bullies run back towards the school in terror, having also seen Aslan. In the confusion Eustace and Jill sneak back into the school building and change into their school clothes while Aslan and Caspian return to Aslan's country.

Commentary

Some readers of the novel believe it is implied that the Lady of the Green Kirtle—the enchantress of the Underworld—is the White Witch from The Lion, The Witch, and the Wardrobe and The Magician's Nephew herself, who plagued Narnia for decades in the past. In some versions she was referred to as the Emerald Witch, and the correspondence in names may have given rise to this idea. In some quarters heated debate exists on this matter, with some arguing that the White Witch is dead and others arguing in favor of her return in the form of the Lady of the Green Kirtle. Support for the latter view is given by the Emerald Witch herself, who "explains" the significance of the words "Under Me" written in the ruins of the Giant City of Harfang. According to the Prince, under her spell at the time, she claims that the word were originally part of a longer couplet which read: "Though under earth, and throneless now I be, Yet while I lived all earth was under me." According to the Lady this was meant to be the epitaph for some deceased great ruler. Lewis's true intentions remain a mystery, one of the great mysteries of Narnia. It should however be remarked that there are few points of similarity between the Lady and Jadis, either in appearance or in modus operandi. The two witches are referred to as "these Northern witches" and as belonging to "the same crew", but this may mean no more than power-mad witches in general. It is suggested, for example by A. N. Wilson, that the White Witch represents, among other things, modern philosophy in general, with its freezing effect on the religious and mythical imagination being embodied in her "Great Winter". If so, the Lady of the Green Kirtle presumably represents the Freudian world view, with its tendency to explain away all strongly held beliefs as infantile neuroses. Underland would then be the world of the unconscious, and the Silver Chair itself would be the psychoanalyst's couch. (The same two enemies appear as the characters of "old Mr Enlightenment" and "Sigismund Enlightenment" in The Pilgrim's Regress.) The significant part of the story underground also parallels the Platonic parable of the cave, which is paraphrased in the sequence where the Lady of the Green Kirtle tries to convince the children, Puddleglum and Rilian that there is no world outside her cave. Puddleglum admits that this is possible, but argues that even if the outside world is an illusion, reality contains nothing of comparable value. Michael Ward, in his book 'Planet Narnia: The Seven Heavens in the Imagination of C.S. Lewis', argues that Lewis constructed the story out of the imagery associated with Luna (the Moon), the nearest of the seven planetary spheres of the pre-Copernican cosmos.

Film, TV or theatrical adaptations

• The BBC produced a TV miniseries of The Silver Chair in 1990 (see The Chronicles of Narnia (TV miniseries)) and was the last book when BBC stopped making the next ones.
• Walt Disney Pictures and Walden Media currently retain the option to make The Chronicles of Narnia: The Silver Chair in the future.

External links

• The Silver Chair at Narnia Fans
• The Silver Chair publication history at the Internet Speculative Fiction Database

Notes

1. ^ In a scene heavily influenced by Spenser's The Faerie Queene, Book I, Canto I, stanzas 17-24.

See also

Narnia Portal