ABSTRACT
This chapter is concerned with the meaning of children’s entry into Narnia, its relation to their situation at that moment, and the kind of experiences they have in Narnia. The children are impressed and a little frightened by hugeness of the house and quickly try to turn their backs on feelings of strangeness and potential homesickness by defining the house as a new world of freedom. When Lucy returns home through the wardrobe and tells her story, the other children think she is crazy. The older children consult the Professor about Lucy, who they feel is out of her mind. The children feel afraid to be without food, being now literally hungry, but also in sore need of emotional sustenance as they experience the impact of the icy state of Narnia. The girls’ endurance breaks the stranglehold of eye-for-an-eye morality; ‘deeper magic’ has been released, and the stone table, place of heartless assault on the good object, snaps in two.
