Review: The Horse and His Boy

If The Silver Chair was a book of firsts (first three-dimensional female protagonist, first non-related boy/girl pairing, first story that didn’t rely on Aslan as a deus ex machina) then The Horse and His Boy is a book of onlys. This the only book in the series to take place entirely within the world of Narnia, the only book to include a romance, however slight, between its two protagonists, and the only book that exists as a “midquel”, taking place as it does within the Golden Age of the Pevensie reign as briefly mentioned in The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe.

Unlike The Lion or Prince Caspian, whose narratives revolved around putting the rightful monarchs on the throne, or The Silver Chair, which is a straightforward quest, or Dawn Treader, a voyage of discovery, The Horse and His Boy is an escape/identity story, in which Narnia is the destination, not the setting. The attempt that Shasta and Bree take to reach Narnia safely provides the book’s catchphrase “Narnia and the North!” though this plot is hijacked about halfway through when our protagonists stumble onto a political plot that threatens the safety of Narnia and its neighbour Archenland.




And even though it takes place at the same time as The Lion, this instalment sits uneasily within that story in terms of tone. In The Lion, Narnia existed in a fairytale-type atmosphere, where a collection of magical species were thrown together at random and a wicked witch could only be defeated by the sacrifice of a golden lion. Here Calormen (where the narrative spends most of its time) is both structured and grounded, feeling more like an alternate world than the fantastical and somewhat arbitrary Narnia. It’s almost impossible to read The Lion and consider that a few miles south from the Eternal Winter and the Talking Animals and the Father Christmas cameo is a thriving empire with its own ancient history, religion, and culture.

In fact, when Shasta arrives in Narnia and meets his first Talking Animal (a hedgehog), it’s almost jarring, like he’s walked out of a serious fantasy novel and into a Beatrix Potter story. Likewise, the chapter in which Aravis overhears the Tisroc, Prince Rabadash and Vizier Ahoshta discussing the political ramifications of war and invasion feels like absolutely nothing you’d read about in the more simplistic good/bad conflict of The Lion.

All this makes The Horse and His Boy unique within the series, not least because it jumps significantly back in time, disrupting what has otherwise been a straightforward chronology of children entering Narnia from our world, returning again, and passing the torch to the next lot of children (a trend that will continue in The Magician’s Nephew, which travels even further back in time).  

But the absence of any children from our world (sans the grown Pevensie siblings, who only get supporting roles) raises questions about the narrator’s omniscience. In previous books it’s been hinted that C.S. Lewis is relating these stories as though they were told to him by Lucy Pevensie at some unspecified point after they took place (from Dawn Treader: “Edmund and Eustace would never talk about it afterwards. Lucy could only say, “It would break your heart.” “Why,” said I, “was it so sad?” “Sad! No,” said Lucy).

Lewis’s presence is still felt in The Horse and His Boy, with plenty of passages in which he addresses the reader directly and offers his own opinions on the events taking place, but it raises the question as to where he’s getting all his information from, as there’s no logical way an Oxford don could have access to the thoughts and feelings of two Narnian children and Talking Horses.

Yet what's more interesting to me was the realization that Lewis’s insistence on inserting himself into the text as a sort of “sub-character” actually makes it easier to disagree with him and his highly subjective commentary. Lewis clearly wants us to dislike Lasaraleen and Susan (especially in favour of the more tomboyish Aravis and Lucy), yet his open disdain of them only makes me more defensive of them. Having realized this, it struck me that The Horse and His Boy is very much a story of perspective, whether or not Lewis deliberately intended it to be or not.

As such, while the action takes place in Calormen, we are privy to various opinions on what Narnia is like. Bree describes it as: “Narnia of the heathery mountains and the thymy glens, the mossy caverns and the deep forests ringing with the hammers of the Dwarfs,” whilst the Tisroc of Calormen takes a much more jaundiced view:  “such things are to be expected in that land, which is chiefly inhabited by demons in the shape of beasts that talk like men, and monsters that are half man and half beast. It is commonly reported that the High King of Narnia (whom the gods may utterly reject) is supported by a demon of hideous aspect and irresistible maleficence who appears in the shape of a Lion.”

Later, when Shasta finally arrives in Narnia, he’s met by a Talking Hedgehog who remarks: “And they do say that Calormen is hundreds of miles away, right at the world’s end, across a great sea of sand,” – something that Shasta is quick to correct. Both lands are equally “exotic” to the other, each one’s perspective of the other is highly skewered, and the theme of misunderstanding and things not being what they initially appear permeate the entire book.

The further North they go, the more apparent it becomes that Shasta is actually a figure of great importance (a lost prince of Archenland to be precise), while Aravis initially struggles with her pride and lack of importance in having to go undercover in a city where she would otherwise be honoured and revered. Then there’s Aravis’s initial Samus is a Girl introduction, the Twin Switcharoo between Shasta and Corin, Aslan’s many disguises, and Rabadash’s transformation.

Of course, this constant changing in perspective can also be inherent on a Doylistic level, with hypocrisy rearing its ugly head in the way Lewis pits his depictions of Susan/Lasaraleen against Lucy/Aravis, or how the Tisroc’s overweightness is described in grotesque terms “he was so fat and such a mass of frills and pleats and bobbles and buttons and tassels and talismans” whilst King Lune is instead “the jolliest, fattest, most apple-cheeked, twinkling eyed King you could imagine” (the bias is apparent even in Pauline Bayne’s illustrations!)

But of course, if characters within the story can grow and change, so too can the narration be challenged and reinterpreted, particularly in its portrayal of women and other cultures, the two greatest controversies throughout Lewis’s body of writing.

Aravis and Sexism:

I’ve been led to believe that The Silver Chair was published before The Horse and His Boy, but written afterwards, with Lewis opting to hold back on the release of The Horse for reasons I’m unaware of. But if that’s the case, it’s fascinating to contrast and compare his treatment of women in each book.

There are four important female characters in this book (a record number) and both can be grouped into sets of two: Lasaraleen and Susan versus Aravis and Lucy, as despite the fact that the former two are both Calormens and the latter two are English/Narnian, it’s pretty clear that Lewis differentiates between them in regards to their femininity, not their race.

Susan is at the centre of the book’s conflict, having been wooed by the Prince Rabadash of Calormen but now desiring to reject his suit, something that the other Narnians (having travelled with her to Calormen) fear the prince will take very badly. As in “he’s going to kill us all and marry Susan against her will” badly. Lewis never overtly points the finger at her and states: “it’s all her fault” (in fact he gives her the opportunity to defend herself by saying that Rabadash acquitted himself quite differently in Narnia) but the implication is still there, especially with the overtly lustful language that Rabadash uses in describing “the beautiful barbarian queen” (or maybe that just fits into the equally unfortunate portrayal of a “hot-blooded Turk” – take your pick).

Lasaraleen is painted with a similar brush. She’s vain, she’s vapid, she’s silly, she’s “a giggler”, she’s petty (telling Aravis of Susan that “I can’t see that she’s so very pretty myself”), she’s flighty – heck, the contrast between the two girls is best pointed out by Lewis himself:

Lasaraleen had always been like that, interested in clothes and parties and gossip. Aravis had always been more interested in bows and arrows and dogs and swimming. You will guess that each thought the other silly.

The subtext is pretty clear: girls are okay, but they’re even better when they act like boys.

(Which makes it all the more strange that when Lucy and Aravis finally meet, this happens: "they soon went away together to talk about Aravis's bedroom and Aravis's boudoir and about getting clothes for her, and all the sort of things girls do talk about on such an occasion").

But Aravis herself is pretty awesome. She’s not quite as fully-realized as Jill, but she’s haughty and quick-thinking and “as true as steel”, and she and her mare Hwin are escaping her Arranged Marriage to start a new life together in Narnia. Admit it, that’s a much more interesting story than young Shasta’s, whose tale is riddled with clichés, up to and including the fact that he’s an identical twin and a lost prince.

Like Jill, Aravis is allowed to have faults that don’t damn her: she’s too proud of her status regardless of the fact she’s trying to escape it, and her taste of humble pie is not in realizing that Shasta is her one true love, but in suffering the same injuries that she indirectly (but callously) imposed on a slave-girl that she drugged in order to make her escape.

There are other nuances here and there. Aravis is allowed to challenge Shasta’s condescending: “why it’s only a girl!” comment when they first meet, and Hwin is by far the most intelligent and reasonable member of the escapees. It’s her plan to disguise themselves as peasants and pack-horses that gets them through Tashbaan, and her timid needling that the company should struggle on after their desert ordeal that is vindicated by the text even after it's been rejected by the characters.

Even when sexist comments are made, they’re from characters of whom you’re not necessarily expected to agree with. It’s villainous Rabadash who hinges at least part of his plan on a stereotypical view of women: “it is well-known that women are as changeable as weathercocks” and it’s braggish Corin who states: “[Susan] is not like Lucy, you know, who’s as good as a man, or at any rate as good as a boy” (Lewis having presumably left behind his “wars are ugly when women fight” motto and replaced it with “a boy in battle is a danger only to his own side”).

It’s difficult to unpack all of this, and you can’t help but get the sense that Lewis was struggling as well. Having met Joy Gresham by this point, it almost feels as though he’s torn between the old clichés of depicting women as flighty idiots and objects of lust, and his growing realization that they're just as capable of having opinions, flaws and agency of their own.

Calormen and Racism:

Yes, the uncomfortable subject of Calormen. I suspect that at least part of the reason why The Horse and His Boy has yet to be adapted for the big screen (or even just television) is that no one wants to tackle the challenge of depicting Calormens in a way that won’t be grossly offensive. Here’s our first description of one:

The spike of a helmet projected from the middle of his silken turban and he wore a shirt of chain mail. By his side hung a curving scimitar; a round shield studded with bosses of brass hung at his back, and his right hand grasped a lance. His face was dark ... and the man’s beard was dyed crimson, and curled and gleaming with scented oil.

Though the Calormen empire has been mentioned in previous books, this is the first time we get to explore it properly, and though most assume that it’s based on Muslim culture and history, I think Hinduism is closer to the truth given the polytheistic gods (one of which is many-armed), the emphasis on hierarchy (perhaps alluding to the caste system?) and the general descriptions of beards and turbans and scented oils. I have a friend who argues in favour of it being based on the Ottoman Empire, but at the end of the day, all we can say safely is that it’s an amalgamation (or imitation) of the Middle East, as seen through the eyes of an English scholar soaked in Western literature.

I’m not hugely interested in defending this portrayal, but I am left wondering where they all come from.

We know the Telmarines arrived in Narnia through a portal after the Pevensies' Golden Age, and presumably King Lune and the other Archenlanders are the descendants of Frank and Helen, but where on earth did the Calormens come from? Even The Magician’s Nephew, which explores the creation of Narnia’s world doesn’t offer any insight. Equally mysterious is their understanding of the gods – here we see that the god Tash is considered a legitimate power in Aslan’s world (as he says, Rabadash appeals to Tash, and so it’s at Tash’s temple that he’s transformed back into a man) and The Last Battle has him appear in the flesh. So where’d he come from? And what about the other mentioned deities, Azaroth and Zardeenah? Are they real too?

As with Lewis’s attitudes toward women, it’s difficult to really grasp what he’s trying to convey with all of this, and there’s every chance that the whole thing is simply window-dressing for a fantasy world that he gave no further thought to. And despite the stereotypical trappings, there’s almost a sense that this is a subversion of Orientalism in regards to perspective. Here it is the eastern (or in this context, southern) “Other” that looks at the northern/western world through suspicious eyes – though of course, white people being described as “the accursed but beautiful barbarians” are words that could only ever be put into the mouth of a dark-skinned character by an English imperialist.

Miscellaneous Observations:

In terms of plot, The Horse and His Boy isn’t Lewis’s best, with a rather straightforward escape narrative, a subplot involving the Pevensies that teeters on the edge of the action, and Aslan operating as a secret guardian angel that gets the characters where they need to go at exactly the right time (and despite what he says about there being no coincidences, there are in fact, quite a few of them in this book).

It’s also a story that relies on a multitude of characters existing as little more than nameless plot devices. Aravis’s entire story is based on her (unseen) father and her wicked stepmother, and her initial escape from home involves drugging nameless servants and having an equally faceless secretary forge a letter for her. Likewise, Shasta’s story involves a man called Lord Bar kidnapping him as a baby, and another nameless knight that starves himself at sea so that Shasta can survive long enough to be washed ashore. The Hermit of the Southern March doesn’t get a name, and neither does the Tisroc. They’re all crucially important, but in a series that so often has wonderfully rich supporting characters (Reepicheep, Trumpkin, Puddleglum), those found in The Horse and His Boy are bland.

Even some of the more important characters are rather dull. Peter is entirely absent, Susan disappears halfway through, and Lucy and Edmund (despite one pertinent line that references his history as a traitor) are pleasantly banal. Peter, Caspian, Rilian, the upcoming Tirian – I find all of Lewis's adult characters interchangeable.

Conversely, as a villain Rabadash is mildly more interesting than Miraz, but suffers the same fate of all male antagonists in this series – they’re just not as interesting or compelling as the witches.

Corin is a repugnant little shit. I can’t remember how I felt about him as a child, but reading the book now makes me loath him more than any other character in this entire series – running away from the Narnians, picking fights at the drop of a hat, disobeying orders, sneaking into battle, gloating over no longer having to be a king... Judging by the coda to his character, he didn’t improve much as an adult, climbing up a mountain to box the Lapsed Bear of Stormness until he “couldn’t see out of his eyes.” What the hell did that bear ever do to you, Corin? If he wants to lapse back into bearness, then how is it any of your business?  

Shasta on the other hand, reminds me of Taran from Lloyd Alexander’s The Chronicles of Prydain, and his matter-of-fact courtship with Aravis rather like Taran’s romance with Eilonwy.

Come to think of it, it’s odd that Lewis never drew a corollary between both Susan and Aravis both being menaced by the threat of unwanted marriages.

And despite being called The Horse and His Boy, the relationship between Bree and Shasta dwindles a little as the book goes on, with Bree not getting any particular sense of closure on his sense of vanity or cowardice. The last proper look we get of him is him looking “more like a horse going to funeral than a long-lost captive returning to home and freedom.”

Yet for some reason The Horse and His Boy is my favourite Narnia book – or at least the one I get the most enjoyment out of re-reading. Lewis captures the tension and excitement of running away, of what’s at stake if they get caught, the political intrigues and secrets along the way, and the freedom and promise of Narnia as their destination. If this review sounds critical, it’s probably only because I’ve read this book the most, and know it the best.

I live in hope that it will one day be adapted for the big screen. Yes, the Calormens will be an obstacle, but I would cut off my little finger to see a live depiction of Aravis. Her backstory in particular is ripe for fleshing out (perhaps putting a name and face to characters like the wicked stepmother and the loyal secretary) and since the recent films have actually done a pretty good job at adding nuance to characters, I can easily see them injecting more of a romantic subplot to the Shasta/Aravis interactions.

Plus, we might get James McAvoy back as Mr Tumnus!