Dominicrussell's Blog

When Digory and Polly explore the worlds beyond our own they come to a place which is on the verge of ending.  This is Charn a great and mighty empire that dominated the planet and made slaves of all other nations.  Where we use science they are adepts of magic and Lewis uses this a as a warning about nuclear bombs.

The highwater mark of Charns magic was the “Deplorable word” a magic super weapon that once said would kill all living things except for the person who used it.  Realising the terror of this weapon the ancient Kings and Queens made the knowledge secret but it was discovered years later by Jadis, the last Queen of Charn.

In the last throws of a civil war when she is about to lose to her sister Jadis uses the word and kills the world, then awaiting the intervention of explorers from another world she hibernates amongst the statues of her ancestors.

She is awoken from this sleep by Digory and Polly and is an unwelcome guest on their further adventures.  Causing problems in London and then travelling with them to the birth of Narnia.  After throwing an iron bar at Aslan she flees to the north to escape.

Despite her power, her magic and her strength and despite her evil, pride and selfishness she is a tragic character, as worthy of our sympathy as any character from “The Great Divorce”.  She is, if you look closely, a lonely woman who uses her feminine wiles to both get attention, her dress being off her shoulder, and to gain influence by imperiously flirting with men.  She is a frightened woman who seeks independent power over her family, those who awaken her and even Aslan himself whom she recognises as a power much stronger than her.  The true extent of her fear is clear when she is in the wood beyond the worlds when she is stripped of her power and when she faces Aslan.

The tragedy is that she, like so many of the ghosts in “The Great Divorce” do not fall into love with Aslan but rather hold onto their fear, desires and dreams.  In 1919 Lewis published a poem with a section about a witch in which he describes her as, “Too deeply damned to feel her shame” a line that could apply to Jadis.

After fleeing from Aslan she makes her way North and into a garden with a tree whose fruit is the fruit of life.  Shes steals a golden apples achieving immortality and whilst hiding in the wildlands of the north transmutes into the White Witch.  She goes from bad to worse, as Lewis said we are “all eggs which must either hatch or go off”, Jadis had the potential to be a great and powerful and good sourceress, akin to Galadriel, but unlike that fair lady Jadis would not have handed the ring back to Frodo.