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The Wardrobe in THS

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The Wardrobe in THS

Postby MonarchButterfly » December 24th, 2005, 3:03 am

I a a new member, so I apologize if everyone knows this but me. The first time I read the Chronicles followed by the space trilogy (many years ago) I was thunderstruck to see a reference to the Wardrobe in the last chapter of THS. "That same afternoon Mother Dibble and the three girls were upstairs in the big room which occupied nearly the whole top floor of one wing at the Manor, and which the Director called the Wardrobe. If you had glanced in, you would have thought for one moment that they were not in a room at all but in some kind of a forest..." So is Ransom also the Professor? I am further confused by the reference in an early chapter to Ransom having recently inherited the house from his sister because she knew he and it were intended for a purpose. If the children visited him and went through that Wardrobe to Narnia, yet in a subsequent Chronicles book he has moved to a different house. (nstead of removing to Perelandra with Venus?)

I apologize for any typos...my new laptop and I are just getting acquainted, and it has decided to reject my bluetooth mouse, so editing is tiresome. Thanks in advance for clarifications!
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re: The Wardrobe in THS

Postby Steve » December 24th, 2005, 1:02 pm

Interesting parallel, thanks for pointing this out.

If you go in context a bit further, the parallel with Narnia diminishes some. The imagined forest is described as "a tropical forest glowing with bright colors". Perhaps he was evoking the image of Perelandra.

Maybe Lewis already had the image of a Wardrobe that led to a forest when he wrote this, maybe it is just coincidence. THS was written about 7 years before LWW if I have my chronology right, and it began with his picture of a fawn carrying packages and an umbrella in a snowy wood. Maybe he had already thought of this image when he wrote THS, I don't know. I also don't know when he thought of a wardrobe as the way into this snowy wood with faun, either.
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Re: re: The Wardrobe in THS

Postby Stanley Anderson » December 24th, 2005, 3:23 pm

…on a night of rain Frodo smelled a sweet fragrance on the air and heard the sound of singing that came over the water. And then it seemed to him that as in his dream in the house of Bombadil, the grey rain-curtain turned all to silver glass and was rolled back, and he beheld white shores and beyond them a fair green country under a swift sunrise.
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re: The Wardrobe in THS

Postby Erekose » December 24th, 2005, 5:30 pm

Hey.. no fair!

I've hiccupped/stalled on the first chapter of "Voyage to Venus (Prelandra), so I don't want to know the ending of THS :shocked:

And.. erm.. Aren't I supposed to be the resident Heretic???? :rolleyes:
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Re: The Wardrobe in THS

Postby Messenger_of_Eden » December 29th, 2005, 7:32 am

"If you believe what you like in the Gospel, and reject what you don't like, it is not the Gospel you believe, but yourself."--St. Augustine of Hippo
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re: The Wardrobe in THS

Postby jo » February 28th, 2006, 6:00 pm

"I saw it begin,” said the Lord Digory. “I did not think I would live to see it die"

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re: The Wardrobe in THS

Postby Sir Linus the True » June 12th, 2006, 1:34 am

That is fascinating. I'll have to go back and re-read that section. I never noticed anything about a wardrobe before.

The main thing I can say is that Ransom is not the Professor. Ransom was taken back up into "the heavens" (Perelanda?) at the end of WWII (roughly 1946 or so). The Earth events of TLB take place in 1949, so he wouldn't have been around for that.
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re: The Wardrobe in THS

Postby westsands410 » June 14th, 2006, 6:34 pm

Interesting idea, but the houses and professors referred to are probably not one and the same.

In LWW, the professor is an old man (unlike the youthful Ransom / Fisher-King), and the story is set during the Blitz years of World War II (c. 1940-1942), as the children are evacuated to escape the London bombs. THS, Lewis mentions in the Preface of the edition I have, although written c. 1943, is set shortly after the end of WWII - therefore nearer 1950. The professor of LWW is called Digory (as he is the same Digory as in The Magician's Nephew), and not Elwin Ransom / Fisher-King.

Perhaps the idea of the Wardrobe that might lead somewhere else, and the old house in the countryside stuck in Lewis' head? The similarities are certainly there!
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re: The Wardrobe in THS

Postby Erekose » June 14th, 2006, 9:17 pm

Call yourself a dog???? I've seen better hair on a lavatory brush!!!
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Postby alliebath » January 17th, 2007, 10:53 pm

Although we have reduced the word ‘wardrobe’ to be a piece of furniture, a wardrobe in mediaeval times could be a room. So for instance could a cabinet. So the British Prime Minister has Cabinet meetings, which comes from the notion that he met with senior people in a private small room. Another example is the Office of Privy Seal, with privy later becoming a word for toilet (water closet), at first it meant a small private room, in which was kept the seal used for the most important documents. The person in charge of such a seal became the Lord Privy Seal.
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