C. S. Lewis

Jill and Eustace must rescue the Prince from the evil Witch.

The Silver Chair: Full Color Edition

a.k.b.

If you had told me a week ago that the Silver Chair would turn out to be my favorite book in the Chronicles of Narnia, I would have looked at you like you were crazy. I went into this book knowing nothing about it, and even worried that I’d dislike it, but the fact that I knew nothing actually worked in my favor. The Silver Chair felt like such an adventure, as it was unpredictable in the best of ways, and introduced me to my absolute favorite character in the entire franchise.

The Silver Chair doesn’t follow the Pevensies as the majority of the series does - instead our main characters are Eustace, who we met in Voyage of the Dawn Treader, and Jill, who is new to the series. I will say that one of the weak points of this book is the fact that Eustace and Jill don’t feel particularly dimensional as characters - they are rather the eyes through which we view the journey rather than being fully developed characters. However, this isn’t to say they aren’t interesting - by the end of the book, I felt as if I knew these children, as if I’d been right there alongside them on this adventure. They may not have gotten complex character moments, however, they were nonetheless characters one could come to enjoy and feel a connection to.

The highlight of the Silver Chair is without question a new character named Puddleglum, who is equal parts pessimist and optimist, in his own strange way. Puddleglum accompanies the children on their journey to find the missing Prince Rilian, son of Caspian the Tenth. Puddleglum felt like a very well-developed character - he grows as they go through this adventure, and as readers we see the ways in which he changes from start to end. You can really feel how much Lewis enjoyed writing this character, as Puddleglum sometimes feels the most human despite being the only non-human of the main characters. Puddleglum is suspicious of just about everything he encounters, and yet he’s eternally loyal to the children and to Aslan; he finds the negatives in all situations, and yet he always manages to pluck up his courage to do what’s right. And it doesn’t hurt that Puddleglum is an absolute riot that drew many smiles and laughs out of me as I read.

One of the weakest points of the Silver Chair, however, is it’s female characters. Lewis’ work has been criticized in the past of giving his female characters little opportunity to be more than a simple stereotype, and unfortunately the two lead female characters of this story fall to that same fate. Many times throughout the story, Jill feels useless alongside Eustace and Puddleglum, she’s not given any significant weapon aside from a knife, and the one time she gets to shine is when she’s using “girly” skills to her advantage. This all wouldn’t be so much a problem if it wasn’t written as if Jill didn’t matter.

And then we come to the Lady of the Green Kirtle, who is known by many names throughout the book. She is a witch, and as such is compared to the White Witch of the previous books. I realized at the climax of this story that Lewis seemed to put greater emphasis on his female antagonists than he ever does on any male antagonists. At that point I set aside the book to consider if there actually were any major male antagonists in the stories. Although there are a number of male antagonists in other stories, such as the Horse and his Boy and Prince Caspian, they never felt as if they received as much attention as the White Witch or the Lady of the Green Kirtle. This could be interpreted as a good thing, that female characters are being better developed than male characters, however, it reads as if to emphasize the evil of witches and, therefore, the potential evil of women.

But maybe I’m looking too much into it. Aside from this critique of Jill and the Lady’s characterizations, the Silver Chair was the strongest book of the series. The writing felt perfected, the story was incredibly engaging, and the world felt truly Narnian but with new places and adventures. As a reader, it feels as if Lewis put a lot of love and energy into this book, because it’s very engaging, interesting, and exciting. If you have any doubts about reading the entirety of the Chronicles of Narnia, then I say put those doubts aside, because the Silver Chair is well-worth everyone’s time.

The Silver Chair: Full Color Edition

Reviews

Highlights