The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe - the Virtue of Holiness.

 

('The Red Cross Knight' by John Singleton Copley. He is pictured here with Faith and Hope.)

Holiness is the virtue that encompasses all virtue. It is the root and the flower, the sap and the scent. The other virtues are hollow imitations if this one is not first and foremost and throughout. Spenser puts it first in The Faerie Queene because it must be first. All the other virtues are impossible without it. (As an aside, it is interesting that the color white features almost as prominently as the color red in this book, because white contains all colors, just as holiness contains all virtues.) I believe Lewis wrote The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe with this same virtue as his aim, and that Edmund is the character through whom this is portrayed.

If you step back and look at the general story, I think you will see they parallel each other:

The first book of the Faerie Queene is the story of the Red Cross knight and the virtue of holiness. Red Cross is a young man of unknown name and origin, an untried knight who has been sent on a quest by the Faerie Queene to aid a princess name Una. The Book follows them both, and chronicles St. George's deception and fall into sin, Una's trials and enduring faithfulness, and St. George's redemption and restoration. It ends with him fighting the battle he was sent to fight, and succeeding, though not without pain. He wins the hand of his lady fair and her father promises him his kingdom before he leaves again to finish his years of service to the Faerie Queen.

Just as Book One of the Faerie Queene follows Red Cross as a proud, untried youth that cannot see clearly or judge rightly, all the way to his humiliation and redemption and the wisdom that follows, so TLWW follows Edmund as he learns to know his heart as it really is. Edmund starts out proud and disdainful, and we quickly learn that he is also fearful, petty, and greedy. When he is in the Narnian wood for the first time and all alone, he shouts out an apology to Lucy for not believing her, but not because he is actually sorry. He just doesn't like being left alone in the forest. He meets the White Witch, eats her dainties and falls for her charms, and becomes first her servant, then her slave, and finally her prisoner. He is rescued by Aslan’s army (just as George is rescued from the dungeon of Despair by Prince Arthur) and reunited with his siblings. But just as in the Faerie Queen, returning to those you never should have left and being really sorry about it is not enough. Treachery must be paid for in blood. In the Faerie Queen, it is Christ who has paid, but George must endure the pain of learning repentance before holiness. Edmund also is truly humbled after his long talk with Aslan. He is a different boy now. We see that when the Witch comes to claim him:

“You have a traitor there, Aslan,” said the Witch. Of course everyone present knew that she meant Edmund. But Edmund had got past thinking about himself after all he’d been through and after the talk he’d had that morning. He just went on looking at Aslan. It didn’t seem to matter what the Witch said.”

This doesn’t sound anything like the Edmund we met at the beginning, the Edmund who can’t stop looking at himself and putting himself forward. The time he spent in the Witch’s dungeon seems to have worked on him like George’s time in the House of Holiness. And his conversation with Aslan after his rescue only seals it.

George is welcomed back by Una with love and without condemnation. We see that in the Pevensey children, too. The church, the brothers and sisters in Christ, love to see a fellow member restored to fellowship. Then they both go on to fight the battles they are sent to fight; George and his dragon, Edmund and Peter the White Witch. The battle is fierce. “Horrible things were happening” all over the field. But eventually they defeat their enemies. Not without pain and injury, though, and I think this is also an important connection in the stories. Red Cross is wounded twice and wondrously healed by water from the well of life and dew dripping from the tree of life. Spenser says that each time when the knight fell, Una saw him and prayed for him all night. I think that connects with Lucy healing Edmund with the cordial from her diamond flask. He is healed by the one he has wronged, but this time because he was injured in doing right.

George and Edmund are victorious and given a kingdom afterward. There is a mighty celebration and while Spenser has Red Cross leave Una until he has finished his pledge to the Faerie Queen, Lewis has his Kings and Queens grow and become men and women of valor. The description of Edmund is particularly interesting:
          “Edmund was a graver and quieter man than Peter, and great in council and judgement. He was called King Edmund the Just.”
Is he called “the Just” because he is careful and fair in his judgements, or because he has been justified by the blood spilt for him and has been declared “Just?” I think both.

 I am a firm believer The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe is the Narnian Chronicle a first time reader should read, and this theory of the virtues just confirms this idea to me. This book sets the tone for all others. Through it we see what is possible in this world, what marvels we can hope for. We enter the wardrobe with Lucy and we rejoice when we are with her, but it is through Edmund and his journey toward holiness that we taste it's deep goodness.

Between this book of Spenser's poem and the first Narnia book, there is a lot of crossover in small details which really didn’t support or take away from my theory but which I think are interesting for themselves. I thought I would leave some of them as a little add-on:

• both stories start out in the country - "a gentle knight was pricking on the plain." The 4 Pevensy children are sent from the city into the country, and even the house itself is described as being so large you could lose yourself in it's rows and rows of passages and rooms - almost like one could get lost wandering in a forest. And funnily enough, there actually IS a forest in the house. A wood within the wood.
• Edmund and Lucy are miniatures of St. George and Una. Una is faithfulness and truth, she is dressed in white, she is the reason for George's quest, and several times in the story she in the position of teacher or instructor. She is the one who appeals to Prince Arthur to save him from the Dungeon.
  Lucy means light. She is the one who lights the way, so to speak, into Narnia, the one who sets them on their quest to rescue Mr. Tumnus, the one who appeals to Aslan to rescue Edmund from the Witch.
• they all face and defeat an almost undefeatable enemy (the white witch, the dragon)
• Edmund meets a witch in the wood who pretends to be what she is not. St. George is won over by Duessa, a witch pretending to be what she is not (Fidessa).
• Lucy reforms Mr. Tumnus the Faun, pulling him out of the service of the White Witch. In the Faerie Queene, Una teaches and instructs the Satyrs of the forest – a more wild version of the Faun.