Words Snarled or Swallowed Back: Exploring Edmund Pevensie

Edmund Pevensie: brother, bully, traitor. Aslan died for his betrayal. Always my least favorite of the Pevensie kids, always the one I was a little uncomfortable with. Who likes Edmund, after all? The bitter tang of his betrayal carries over through the Narnia saga. But today I want to talk about Edmund of C. S. Lewis’s  The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe in relation to his siblings – Edmund and Lucy, the first two Pevensies into the wardrobe; Edmund and Peter, the fraught relationship of brothers. Let’s talk about that long, gloomy hall where a boy stood and gave away his siblings for the promise of candy and a crown.

When Lucy stepped through the back of a wardrobe into a strange snowy wood for the first time, the first person she ran into was a Faun with legs “shaped like a goat’s” and at the end of them “instead of feet he had goat’s hoofs.” And because he seemed kind and homely she walked back to his home with him and ate a stranger’s food: “And it really was a wonderful tea. There was a nice brown egg, lightly boiled, for each of them, and then sardines on toast, and then buttered toast, and then toast with honey, and then a sugar-topped cake.”

When Edmund stumbled through the back of a wardrobe into an impossible snowy wood for the first time, the first person he ran into was “a great lady, taller than any woman that Edmund had ever seen” who was “covered in white fur up to her throat” with a face “proud and cold and stern.” And because she seemed royal and commanding he stepped into the sleigh with her and ate a stranger’s food. He took her drink: “It was something he had never tasted before, very sweet and foamy and creamy, and it warmed him right down to his toes,” and he took her food: “each piece was sweet and light to the very center and Edmund had never tasted anything more delicious.”

White is a symbol of good. The devil is said to walk on goat’s hooves. Later, the children would follow a robin because “they’re good birds in all the stories I’ve ever read. I’m sure a robin wouldn’t be on the wrong side.” In another world, another story, the boy who trusted a great lady robed in white and crowned in gold is the lucky child and the girl who went home with a cloven-hoofed goat-legged stranger is the one who came back marked and wounded; but this is not that story. Lucy had the homely, down to earth tea and Edmund the sweetmeats; but realize that that is all he was offered, just as it was all she was offered.

I think we must blame Edmund for eating the witch’s food and listening to her blandishments in just such measure as we blame Lucy for nearly dying at Tumnus’s hands.

He listened, and that was foolish, and he ate fae food, and that was worse, and perhaps we can call this the moment that fallen nature meets temptation; but Edmund’s first real fall happened back in the world he had come from.

Lucy came back from Narnia the first time and told her story, and no one believed her. “For the next few days she was very miserable. […] The others who thought she was telling a lie, and a silly lie too, made her very unhappy.” She is alienated and shut out, and when Edmund comes stumbling through the wardrobe after her it is a chance to make the others believe. But “up to that moment Edmund had been feeling sick, and sulky, and annoyed with Lucy for being right, but he hadn’t made up his mind what to do. When Peter suddenly asked him the question he decided all at once to do the meanest and most spiteful thing he could think of. He decided to let Lucy down.”

He lies.

Peter is tired of his bratty little brother, and Edmund was willfully complicit in Lucy’s alienation, and it is neither surprising nor unfair that when the three other children realize he has lied to them Peter says no more than, “Well, of all the poisonous little beasts-” and from that moment Edmund is silently, invisibly shut out of the group. Nobody says as much, but it’s clear enough; when he tries to drag them back to practicalities, “A lot we could do!’ said Edmund, ‘when we haven’t even got anything to eat,” Peter snaps, “Shut up – you!” but returns to the same thought bare moments later when a few lines further he says, “I’m worried about having no food with us.”

His older brother’s reaction is a natural consequence for Edmund’s actions. It’s also a consequence that means, in these moments when Edmund has taken his first step onto the wrong path, Peter is turning his back instead of holding out his hand to help his brother back up off the slippery slope. Edmund is in that awkward, painful childhood stage where he is largely oblivious to how other people see him until the situation explodes, but is at the same time desperately desiring of their approval, particularly his older brother’s. Edmund will circle back again and again to the thought of Peter even as spite and greed draw him further down the wrong path.

On the way to the Beaver’s house Edmund sees the path he could take to the witch’s castle, “and he thought about Turkish Delight and about being a King (‘And I wonder how Peter will like that?’ he asked himself) and horrible ideas came into his head.” And when they reach the house and dinner is made,

“he hadn’t really enjoyed it because he was thinking all the time about Turkish Delight – and there’s nothing that spoils the taste of good ordinary food half so much as the memory of bad magic food. And he had heard the conversation, and hadn’t enjoyed it much either, because he kept on thinking that the others were taking no notice of him and trying to give him the cold shoulder. They weren’t, but he imagined it.”

Maybe they weren’t, but in all that conversation his name comes up only once – and that when he asks a direct question.

Edmund edges away while Mr. Beaver is talking about Aslan, “for the mention of Aslan gave him a mysterious and horrible feeling just as it gave the others a mysterious and lovely feeling.” To the genre-savvy reader it may already be clear that Aslan is the Right Side to be on and that this mysterious, horrible feeling is a very bad sign indeed; in retrospect, it is obvious that this feeling signals his allegiance to the White Witch, magically catalyzed by the Turkish Delight and sealed by his agreement. But in the moment, in Edmund’s head, in this strange new wonderous world, we must admit that it is just as reasonable for Edmund to react to an uncanny feeling of horror as it is for his siblings to react to an uncanny feeling of delight.

However, he is also motivated primarily by spite, greed, and a childish ambition, as we see laid out simply: “He did want Turkish Delight and to be a Prince (and later a King) and to pay Peter back for calling him a beast.” He can’t shake the sting of Peter’s words, as we see yet again, “[…] great loads of snow came sliding off on to his back. And every time this happened he thought more and more how he hated Peter – just as if all this had been Peter’s fault.”

With the witch’s treachery revealed, miserable at her side, Edmund thinks “he would have given anything to meet the others at this moment – even Peter!”

His siblings didn’t even notice the moment when Edmund leaves the Beavers’ house. Mr. Beaver’s judgement is instant and uncompromising: “He has betrayed us all.” Now that Edmund is gone, no one knows how long ago, now he sees fit to tell them that, “the moment I set eyes on that brother of yours I said to myself ‘Treacherous’. He had the look of one who has been with the Witch and eaten her food.”

Mr. Beaver took one look at this human boy and could see that he had eaten her food, the “enchanted Turkish delight […] that anyone who had once tasted […] would want more and more of it, and would even, if they were allowed, go on eating it till they killed themselves.” He looked into Edmund’s eyes, solid down-to-earth kind helpful Mr. Beaver, saw that magic or temptation and cupidity (either way) already rooting itself in him, and not only did he have nothing to help him with, he “didn’t like to mention it before (he being your brother and all).”

Edmund would enjoy no reward from his betrayal. For it he would be chained, whipped, and driven; he would watch woodland creatures turn to stone and nearly die on a cold stone altar himself. Edmund never got a gift from Father Christmas like the others did; what he walked away with instead was the weight of Aslan’s sacrifice for his life.

Edmund was angry and lonely, alienated and lost, and it was his fault. This is the root of Edmund Pevensie’s crime: he was spiteful and mean. He was a schoolyard brat and a bully, and through that the witch would end by claiming his life as hers by right.

So. I never liked Edmund. And maybe that was because he was just a little too close to home. Can we understand him now, seen in this light? It was only circumstances, running into the witch when his sister ran into a faun – it was only a childish lie, a moment of spite – it was only natural, resentment over harsh words. Only, only, only. All the excuses we give ourselves. And then he handed his siblings over to the Witch in exchange for empty words, that promise of candy and a crown.

First: what if Peter had held his tongue and held out his hand, older brother and role model, instead of calling him poisonous little beast? Maybe Edmund would never have ended up alone in the snow, coat-less and hungry and angry. One moment of undeserved compassion, and what a world of pain could have been saved! And second: before Peter, Edmund could have bitten his tongue. The first step was one lie wielded as weapon.

Words, just every day words, snarled or swallowed back, and life on the line.

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