Are the Emerald Witch and the White Witch the same person.

MRW said:
Tash, I believe, is actually a demon, but there's nothing in Narnia to tell us where demons come from or even what they ARE. He is also the only god in Narnia to get a formal religion. I find it interesting that Lewis wrote a series with Christian overtones in which the only creature that is actually worshiped is an evil god. Not even Aslan and the Emperor are actually worshipped -- they merely recieve allegiance from the Narnians as higher royalty.
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To say this is to misunderstand Lewis' understanding of how unfallen races and lands behave. The only reason we humans need a formalized religion, with services and sacraments and such, is that we've fallen from grace. Our lives are mostly lived for ourselves, so we need to set aside space and time to focus on our Creator and Redeemer. As Lewis expresses by analogy in Mere Christianity, we're foreign agents living in enemy-occupied territory, and worship services are like us assembling at a wireless to receive our instructions.

A land or race that had not fallen into sin would not need such mechanisms, because their entire lives would be worship. Everything they did or said would be an act of worship to God. For example, the races of Malacandra in Out of the Silent Planet have no religious observance, but they are in constant obedience to Oyarsa, the tutelary spirit put in authority over their planet. In Perelandra, the Green Lady need not practice any religion because she walks constantly in the presence of Maleldil (Christ).

The Christian Church teaches that there will come a day when sacraments are no longer needed, because mankind will dwell in God's presence an behold Him directly. Lewis' worlds are simply expressions of that reality in fiction.
 
First of all to say Jadis and LotGK are Satan figures does not mean that every evil character is a Satan figure. The giants aren't and all the henchmen, nor the Calormenes etc...

Secondly, I think to decide Tash is a demon who had an organised religion created around him is just as much conjecture as my hypothesis!! :D You can't have your cake AND eat it young man!
 
I agree with waterhogboy, the two witches represents evil, maybe not satan, this would be a little extreme, but evil, and some are more evil than others in the bad guys category ...
 
Were the Lady of the Green Kirtle and Jadis the same person?

I know that in the editor's intro-thingy to one edition of the books, where it gave the characters before the story, it had the Lady of the Green Kirtle and Jadis as one and the same. However, that's just some editor's edition, rather than Lewis' own words. What do you think? Were the LGK and Jadis the same person?

Personally, I think not. I believe that Jadis was killed, or at least permanently done for, in LWW. LGK was just another one of those 'Northern witches', as Puddleglum put it.
 
iMerge with existing thread on the topic.

If you browse back through existing posts on this idea, you'll see that the general consensus agrees with you: that they were different parties. Only a few hotheaded agitators (which is kind of like a baked tater, but different) contend differently.

You're right that a lot of the confusion was started by a cover blurb, which had been written by someone who clearly hadn't read the books.
 
They're almost as bad as the magazine that said that Jadis lived in the Wood Between the Worlds (it was the Movie Magic articles that came out in May of this year)
 
Oh good grief! jadis couldn't live there! She could barely breathe there.

Also in the BBC version, I believe the same actress played both witches, so a lot of people think they are the same.
 
The Magazine, Movie Magic, did a special on PC back in May with a whole bunch of articles about Narnia in it. One was kind of a "timeline" that included what was happening when and had little blurbs about the people involved. Unfortunately the person writing it did very little research before-hand and definitely did not read the books, thus they wrote that the White Witched lived in the Wood Between the Worlds before coming to Narnia and other outrageous thing that would either make a true Narnia fan angry or ROTFL.
 
~Lava~ said:
The Magazine, Movie Magic, did a special on PC back in May with a whole bunch of articles about Narnia in it. One was kind of a "timeline" that included what was happening when and had little blurbs about the people involved. Unfortunately the person writing it did very little research before-hand and definitely did not read the books, thus they wrote that the White Witched lived in the Wood Between the Worlds before coming to Narnia and other outrageous thing that would either make a true Narnia fan angry or ROTFL.
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I...does anyone fact-check these things? (And what not read the books? They're *short*!) ::shakes head::

I mean, the Wood Between the Worlds--not only do you apparently forget all about life while you're there and would therefore be unable to live there for any length of time, but it kills evil people!
 
ok. first of all, I have read all the posts on this thread because it sounds interesting. Second, everyone brings up good points (especially meg) , this is a wonderful debate that is extremely intriguing. now, down to business.

First of all, if you are going by the new timelines...well let's face it, they were probably put out as a publicity stunt by some guy who had never read LWW in his life.

There are several other things I have noticed in this thread. there are many parralells drawn to people and things in the Bible. I must say that firstly, Tash is the paralell of satan. no doubt. I can say this because puzzle is clearly drawn as the Beast (the deceiver) the end times are rather spelled out in LB (read LB and Revalations if you want to check it out) there are also those who are not satan but still want power. they do this by leading people away from the truth. they are called false teachers. I personally believe that both Jadis and TLOTGK are two of these.

Another thing i've noticed is an almost complete disregard for the disjointed way in which the books were written. This, by their nature, makes them erratic and unpredictable. C.S. Lewis just before his death said in a letter to a friend that he was going to clean up some of the discrepancies in the books.

We must also remember that these are childrens fairy tales and that they must be treated as such. What I mean by this is that there are clear concepts of good vs. evil and good always wins. That means the death of the bad guys, or at least their return to good, or their imprisonment. That does not mean letting them go free.

One more thing is the idea that the witch is immortal because she ate the fruit. My personal opinion is that it gave her as the text says "Endless days as a goddess" this to me implies that she will never die of old age. If anyone has anything to say against this, please, I would be more than happy to hear them in a constructive debate.
 
Well, Tash may well be a Satan figure in TLB, but the White Witch and Jadis (er, to differentiate the books) are both Satan figures as well. Lewis was free to have as many (or as few) Satan characters as he liked; he wasn't writing an allegory.

narniaguardian said:
We must also remember that these are childrens fairy tales and that they must be treated as such. What I mean by this is that there are clear concepts of good vs. evil and good always wins. That means the death of the bad guys, or at least their return to good, or their imprisonment. That does not mean letting them go free.
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Not always. Children's stories can (and do) end with the evil character(s)/force(s) alive or lurking just around another corner.

narniaguardian said:
Another thing i've noticed is an almost complete disregard for the disjointed way in which the books were written. This, by their nature, makes them erratic and unpredictable. C.S. Lewis just before his death said in a letter to a friend that he was going to clean up some of the discrepancies in the books.
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I think, also, that we are trying to answer to separate questions here: a) Which interpretation(s) does/do the text support? and b) Which one(s) did Lewis intend? And these are definitely *not* the same questions, and may not have the same answers--texts can support all sorts of things the author didn't intend, either because they never got around to writing what they meant in or because sometimes we write things we don't realize we write. And sometimes what authors intend to write totally fails and we get something else entirely. So I think that you'd probably get different answers depending on which question you were actually asking and whom you were asking it of, and I also think it might be worthwhile to consider them separately if this point gets debated again? I don't mean a new thread, just being more clear about it.
 
Is there even enough evidence to speculate on what Lewis actually intended? We've discussed pretty fully what the text does and doesn't support (and we still can't seem to agree even on that), but how can we know what Lewis actually intended? We can speculate based on his philosphies and his views on Christianity, but even that isn't concrete and can't be directly applied, as Narnia isn't completely allegorical. Unless there's something in his notes that talks about the witches specifically, I don't think we'll be able to come up with a definitive answer.

And even if we do come up with what Lewis intended, there's always the possibility that what's actually supported in text is quite different from what's intended. Then we have to define canon, and whether authorial intent is more important than what was actually published.
 
I think, and have made clear in my posts in this thread, that Lewis never intended the two witches to be the same character. The fact that Silver Chair itself refers to "those Northern witches" (plural) indicates that he clearly thought of them as different beings entirely. It's only people stretching the story, and dragging in considerations from other tales or fantasy traditions, that even keeps this discussion alive.

Let me put it another way: Lion was just a scratchpad effort, the jotting down of many disjointed images that Lewis had kicking around in his head. He never intended that there would be a series of stories about another world. But by the time he'd gotten to Chair, he was well into the series, and had probably envisioned all the books by then. If he'd intended the Emerald Witch to be the same person as Jadis, don't you think he would have left a few more indications of that? He knew how to do that, as Nephew demonstrates. I submit that the very lack of evidence tells a story all its own.
 
I must disagree with one thing said in you post, narnianguardian. Puzzle is not the beast or the anti-Christ, Puzzle is just as decieved as the rest. Shift is the beast if any one in the Chronicles is.

I have long felt that the White Witch/Jadis represents that which is fallen in the nature of man. She represents sin and temptation, not Satan, the Father of Sin.

As most familiar with this long standing debate already know, I whole-heartedly agree with PotW with regards the White Witch and the Emerald Witch being two separate individuals with similar aspirations.
 
MRW said:
Is there even enough evidence to speculate on what Lewis actually intended?

And even if we do come up with what Lewis intended, there's always the possibility that what's actually supported in text is quite different from what's intended. Then we have to define canon, and whether authorial intent is more important than what was actually published.
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I, personally, think it's useless to speculate on what an author intended to do, because I think it's presumptuous and because I think that authorial intent isn't canon in the least. (I've also spent too much time in the Harry Potter fandom, where people decide what JKR meant to do and then berate her for not sticking to it. Um, maybe she intended something else?) But there are people who think otherwise, so I think that it would be useful to know which question we're dealing with if we get this thread started up again. (I'm sort of hesitant about that--it feels like we'd be rehashing old arguments.)
 
I agree with you on that AW, and my views also came from the HP fandom. There were many times where Jo answered a question in an interview, or told us what to expect in future books, and it just didn't happen. Either she wrote something contradictory, or she didn't write the scenario in question at all.

While I definitely take the author's intent into consideration (if their intent is known), what's more important to me is what they end up actually writing, becuase that's the one thing that everyone concerned will have read. Not all fans are obsessive or interested enough to seek out interviews and the author's notes on a book series. The actual, published text is the only thing we all have in common, and it is the finished product. Notes are not final drafts, and intent can change from interview to interview, but what's published is set in stone unless the author goes back and revises it.

Now, Lewis did intend to go back and revise the Chronicles, we know that. I believe I read that his intent was to make them more streamlined and internally consistent. But we have no way of knowing what he intended to change or what he intended to change it to, so the Chronicles must stand as they are.
 
Right. The question we are asking here is whether the text supports the concept that the white witch and emerald witch are the same person. What Lewis thought about it, of course, is an interesting idea, but all we have to go by is what he put into the text. (It's for this same reason I think anything JKR now says about the "true nature" of certain HP characters isn't really hers to say anymore -- they are contained in the pages of the books just as they are ... to add to them now just on her say-so is unwarranted.)

But in the end I agree with PoTW: what we read in later books of the LoTGK is that they speculate she is of the same crew as the WW, just one of those (many) northern witches. No one present in the stories presents the idea that she is the same witch, and certainly if she had been, someone would have realized it?
 
inkspot said:
But in the end I agree with PoTW: what we read in later books of the LoTGK is that they speculate she is of the same crew as the WW, just one of those (many) northern witches. No one present in the stories presents the idea that she is the same witch, and certainly if she had been, someone would have realized it?
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Not necessarily. The people who deal with the Green Lady are chiefly Puddleglum, Jill and Eustace, Rilian, and the owls. It's been...oh, what, fifteen hundred years since the White Witch? And even longer since Jadis first showed up. It would not surprise me at all if the stories that told of her eating the apple to gain immortality hadn't kept on, or if the fact that witches can (apparently) always be brought where you want them isn't universal anymore. In any case, absence of evidence is not necessarily evidence of absence.
 
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