Wardrobe



"It is very foolish to shut one-self into any wardrobe."

- C.S. Lewis

The Wardrobe was a magical portal in Professor Kirke's House that linked Earth to the world of Narnia, if only for a short time.

History
The wardrobe was commissioned by Professor Digory Kirke sometime before the Second World War. Its origins, however, stretched back many years earlier to Digory's own adventure in Narnia.

During that adventure, Aslan had sent Digory to retrieve an apple from a magic tree and bring it back to him. After Digory did so, the apple was planted in the ground and grew into a beautiful tree with silver bark, known as the Tree of Protection. This tree acted like a shield, keeping the witch Jadis out of Narnia for many years after it was planted.

Aslan later gave an apple from the Tree of Protection to Digory. When he returned to London and gave the apple to his mother who, after eating it, was cured of her long and debilitating sickness. Afterwards, Digory buried the apple core in his backyard, and it grew into a tree as well - a daughter tree to the one that had grown in Narnia. Sometimes the apple tree would creak and move, as if being blown in the wind - when there wasn't any; as if it could feel the winds that blew its mother tree.

Portal to Narnia
Eventually, the tree was blown down in a storm, and the much older Digory, unable to bear the prospect of the magical tree being simply chopped up for firewood, had the wood from the tree made into a beautiful wardrobe. This was placed in the empty back room of his large country home, where many years later, Lucy Pevensie discovered it while exploring the house with her siblings.

Hiding inside it, she felt tree branches and snow, and looked up to find herself in Narnia, in Lantern Waste, near the Lamp-post.

The portal seemed not to be open all the time, because when Lucy returned and tried to show the other children, they found only an ordinary wardrobe, with a solid back.

The wardrobe portal was used twice more, first by Lucy and Edmund, who had separate adventures, and then finally all four children entered together. They saved Narnia from the White Witch, and ruled Narnia for 15 years during the Golden Age.

They eventually came back through the wardrobe the same way, and became children again, but told the Professor about all of their adventures. He said they might return to Narnia someday, but suggested they not try to get into Narnia by that route again.

Inspiration

 * Author C. S. Lewis had an English country home of his own, and he took in children who were fleeing London because of the German air-raids, much the same as the Professor did. He also had a magnificent wardrobe in an upstairs room, said to have been of particular interest to one little girl, and to have inspired the wardrobe for which Lewis is now known.


 * In the Disney film, director Andrew Adamson decided to tell the story of The Magician's Nephew in the carvings on the wardrobe's panels (see The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe: The Illustrated Companion by Perry Moore for full details).
 * Lewis, on the advice of a friend, took pains to stress in the novel of the danger of being trapped in a wardrobe without ensuring that the doors are left adjar. Indeed, Skandar Keynes, the actor playing Edmund Pevensie in the 2005 film adaptation, found out the truth of that the hard way when he entered the wardrobe and found himself trapped inside when the door closed on him.

Armoire magique Der Wandschrank