As part of my 100 Books list, I’m re-reading The Chronicles of Narnia (in chronological order). Except for Prince Caspian, I haven’t read these since I was around ages 8-10, and don’t remember much. I did adore the Disney movies and am still technically writing that Suspian fanfiction I started in 2013……. Anyway, if I misspell or mis-capitalize anything, cut me some slack. I read audiobooks these days because we don’t own a dishwasher.

The Magician’s Nephew

C.S. Lewis

The Magician’s Nephew tells the story of Polly and Digory, two British children who, through nasty trickery by Digory’s Uncle Andrew, wind up magically world-hopping between England, a burnt-up place called Charn, and a new world called Narnia. They meet a destructive, haughty magical queen, a kind London cabby, and a powerful talking lion. There’s a flying horse and silver apples. The whole thing wraps up in four hours.

Random thoughts in no specific order

This was my favorite of the Narnia books as a kid, and the one I remembered the most from. I loved the Wood Between the Worlds. I remembered magic rings and vague mental images of the birth of the world of Narnia.

I’d completely forgotten all of Jadis’ backstory. It was interesting picturing Charn and (re-)learning about her life, reign, and power before her stint as the White Witch in Narnia.

This book is much shorter than I remember. I do appreciate Lewis’ kid-friendly version of storytelling in which he’s not afraid to summarize, skip boring transitions, and interject with direct addresses to the audience, or break the fourth wall. His style makes the story feel not like a stuffy century-old classic.

Being a boring academic grown-up

It’s impossible to read the books as an adult in 2020 without analyzing the story for both the famous Lewis Christian allegories and also sexism. Let’s cover those now.

I don’t like allegory. It feels heavy-handed. There’s not a ton of allegory in this book, compared to Lewis’ general reputation, but Aslan and the tree of magical silver apples are both obvious ones. The allegory of Aslan (as Jesus/God) is just… kind of unavoidable in Lewis’ worldbuilding. The apple tree as the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil and/or Tree of Life feels a liiiittle bit trying too hard for me, but at least it did tie in with Digory’s established character and the conflict of his sick mum. It worked with the story, mostly.

In this particular book, I can see both the arguments for and against Lewis being sexist. Polly is adventurous, smart, curious, and unafraid to get dirty. She can also be timid, innocent, bossy, and in plot terms, overlooked in favor of Digory’s character and story. Digory is undoubtedly the main character — but then again, the book is literally titled after him. In a vacuum, Polly would be a good example of a three-dimensional flawed, relatable, ultimately role-model-worthy character. In context… the jury’s out. From what I’ve heard and remember, I do worry that certain flaws and strengths will be very gender-segregated/based across characters as the series progresses.

(Is any sexism in the Narnia books just a product of Lewis’ time? I’m almost sure that would be a yes. Should we judge him as a person or writer if the series proves to be sexist? Personally, I’d say no. But if we’re going to keep reading and sharing stories with children today, we need to allow ourselves to question and criticize the messages those stories are sending. We can say, if it proves to be true, that the stories of Narnia are sexist without saying they or their writer are wholly bad.)

What’s with Uncle Andrew???

Now. I’ve saved the best (worst) for last. The number one stand-out factor, most memorable scene, biggest “woah I did not remember that” moment, was by far and away… the CREEP that is Uncle Andrew. Has any adult ever read this and NOT thought “holy pedophile vibes”?? I literally had to pause the book for a second because I was utterly skeeved by this weird old man who locked two kids in an attic alone with him and convinced them in syrupy-sweet but selfish words to do his bidding. EWWWWWWWW.

I felt marginally better as the story progressed and I realized that we’re definitely not supposed to like Uncle Andrew and he is, in fact, kind of a creepy selfish villain character. He experiments on animals, too! I don’t think he was supposed to be uber-pedophile-level of creepy, though, so… that was fun. /S Personally, I wouldn’t have given such a grade-A terrible man the redemption bit he got at the end, when Lewis says in passing that Andrew became a better person when he gave up magic and got older. Ugh. At least we get to see nice old man Digory being literally the opposite of his uncle in the next book. (Right? That’s how I remember him…)

On to book two!