Weren't they fur coats in the book? I thought was part of why Lucy went in the wardrobe because she loved "the smell and feel of fur." 

I'm not sure how much significance can be attached to the slightly different coats the characters wear in adaptations. I guess Edmund's looks the most the different from the others in the Walden movie and that's a visual way of symbolizing that he's the bad guy at this point in the story. Probably the directors just want the character's costumes to be slightly different so they aren't visually dull. And realistically speaking, the professor wouldn't have wanted all his coats to look exactly the same. (The coats in my family's closet don't all look alike.) If I remember correctly, the original illustrations for the book also had some variations as far as the coats go.

It's hard for me to say whether the adaptations succeeded in evoking the image of royal robes because I don't have a clear imagine in my head of what royal robes look like.   They don't trail behind the young wearers' that much but that's understandable since it'd be harder to film them that way, especially in scenes where they have to move quickly.

In a way, the fact that Edmund leaves behind his fur coat when he goes to the White Witch if it foreshadows his royal destiny. By betraying his siblings, he's also turning away from the possibility of being King Edmund.

Thanks for bringing that up @col-klink! I had forgotten that detail, now I'm just remembering all the details about the mothballs, which really stuck with me when I was a kid.  

I think you're right about how the variance might've been just for the viewers, and Edmunds' gives off 'I'm the bad sibling' energy for sure. It's been done in other movies and TV shows too.

Speaking of the Pauline Baynes' illustrations:

Just wanted to take a look at the picture, now that you mentioned it, and compare it to the adaptions. It's interesting how the coats are much lighter and more 'colorful' (for readers to look at), but I did always think the coats in the Walden adaption were too dark and gloomy to match their wearers (although Ed's fit!).

That's also an interesting point to mention, I'd never thought of it that way. I think Edmund (out of all the Pevensies) would be the one most 'led on' with visual cues. The others sort of blend in with each other (all being on the good side) in terms little pockets of information in the books and adaptations that would signify something greater. I agree with you on that detail though. Lewis probably mentioned they looked like 'royal robes' to set up Edmund to bring significance when Edmund leaves his coat behind. (Abandoning the warmth for the cold, definitely did not just learn that today! )

It was fun doing writing all the details, but I'm sure I read into it a bit much lol

For what it's worth, the book is quite explicit about them being fur coats...

Looking into the inside, she saw several coats hanging up - mostly long fur coats. There was nothing that Lucy liked so much as the smell and feel of fur.

The real question then becomes, why did the Professor even have a fur coat, never mind loads of fur coats such that he could fill an entire wardrobe with them?

To start with, a long fur coat does not really seem to be the Professor's style. He always strikes me as being a somewhat humble and down-to-earth man, despite his rather lavish house. I just can't seem him cutting around in something so ostentatious as a full length fur coat.

Secondly, for someone who has met a sentient Lion as a child, and is aware of a world full of other sentient animals, owning a whole bunch of fur coats would seem to be out of character. After being in Narnia, I would have thought that the idea of the fur trade would repulse him.

Therefore I'm going with one of two theories:

• The professor inherited the house along with the fur coats. He stuck them all in the wardrobe out of the way so he never had to look at them.
• The professor goes out of his way to disrupt the local fur trade by acquiring as many fur coats as he can to take them off the market and ensure that there can be no further profit from the exploitation of animal skins.

The second might better explain why he has so many fur coats (I think it's implied that there were fur coats to spare even after the children take four) and why he has them in such a a range of styles and sizes - think about it; a fur coat that would actually fit the Professor (if we assume he wore them) would not even be wearable by someone like Lucy. It would be like a large tent on her.

Posted by: @icarus

The professor inherited the house along with the fur coats. He stuck them all in the wardrobe out of the way so he never had to look at them.

We do know from the ending of The Magician's Nephew (written some years after The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, of course) how Professor (Digory) Kirke's family inherited the house:

After about six weeks of this lovely life [after Digory's mother's recovery] there came a long letter from Father in India, which had wonderful news in it. Old Great-Uncle Kirke had died and this meant, apparently, that Father was now very rich. He was going to retire and come home from India forever and ever. And the great big house in the country, which Digory had heard of all his life and never seen, would now be their home: the big house with the suits of armour, the stables, the kennels, the river, the park, the hot-houses, the vineries, the woods and the mountains behind it. (p. 169 in the Puffin edition)

So I would assume that the fur coats came along with all the other contents of the house when the Kirkes inherited it and moved in. The wardrobe itself, on the other hand, wasn't made until many years later, out of the wood from the tree that grew from the Narnian apple...

For when Digory was quite middle-aged (and he was a famous learned man, a Professor, and a great traveller by that time) and the Ketterleys' old house [in London] belonged to him, there was a great storm all over the south of England which blew the tree down. He couldn't bear to have it simply chopped up for firewood, so he had part of the timber made into a wardrobe, which he put in his big house in the country. And though he himself did not discover the magic properties of that wardrobe, someone else did. (pp. 170-1)

Why Digory (now the Professor) still had his rich great-uncle's old fur coats by that time, and why he chose to put them in that wardrobe, and indeed why he chose to put the wardrobe itself in an otherwise empty spare room, when it was made out of a tree that was so special to him... we simply don't know.

I like the speculation that Digory, having been in Narnia and seen the first Talking Beasts created, wouldn't have wanted to own fur coats. But he clearly did keep the ones he'd inherited, even though he can't have had much use for them. And when Lewis originally wrote LWW, although he dropped hints that the Professor knew about Narnia and had perhaps been there himself, he hadn't thought out any full explanation for how that happened.

It's just occurred to me, too, that Narnian Talking Beasts have no problem with non-talking beasts being killed, and almost don't see them as the same species as themselves — Trufflehunter makes that very clear in Prince Caspian. So presumably that's why the Beavers and others in LWW don't react negatively to the Pevensies wearing fur coats. Maybe Digory, too, had the same attitude towards fur? Again, we just don't know.

If anything, the fur coats are just there as a plot device — first to make Lucy climb right into the wardrobe and feel them, instead of just shrugging and closing the door, and secondly, so that the four children don't freeze during their extended stay in snowbound Narnia. I don't know if Lewis ever had questions from critics (young or adult) about how the fur coats got there or whether they meant anything significant, so I don't think we have it on record what he might have said about all this!  

I think that since Digory was aware of the difference between Talking Beasts and ordinary ones, he would not have been bothered about fur coats, because they were part of the culture he grew up in. (Cheaper furs were often just rabbit anyway, and these are never going to be an endangered species! Only rich people could afford the better sort, and like many good things they would stay in a family home and get passed down).

My thought about the furs was that they were kept in that wardrobe, because they needed to be stored hanging up rather than packed away in a chest, and a house of that age would have had few wardrobes. I am sure they were part of what Digory inherited, which makes them quite old by the time Lucy found them, and the fact that they were still in good condition suggests that the storage method worked!

Of course it is part of the plot for getting them into Narnia, but if Lucy loved the feel of furs she would have been familiar with them herself (upper middle class family - her mum probably had a fur coat), so it's not a strange intrusion in its day, However if you happened to walk through most modern wardrobes into a strange world, you might well have a few coats to choose from, but probably not fur.

@icarus every reply I read, the more I realize I was wrong about the fur coats being an independent decision, seems I missed some of the details from LWW that point to the furs being the only choice for the adaption coats.

Posted by: @icarus

The professor goes out of his way to disrupt the local fur trade by acquiring as many fur coats as he can to take them off the market and ensure that there can be no further profit from the exploitation of animal skins.

Haha, these theories are great. I can imagine the benevolent professor looking to demolish the fur trade, just as much as Uncle Andrew had wanted to start up a industrial revolution in Narnia! 

I think the first theory might be more plausible though, that the professor had inherited these coats and kept them tucked away. That does bring up the question, why would he keep this very extravagant and made out of animal fur, coats in wardrobe related to Narnia? But I don't know why that would be. 

Posted by: @courtenay

Talking Beasts have no problem with non-talking beasts being killed

I'd have to disagree a bit here. Although there is a clear distinction between the TB and NTB, and Aslan had given the TB the privilege of ruling over the 'dumb' beasts, and having the TB carry on the created culture of the species, and the NTB the instinctual? aspects of the species, I wouldn't go so far to say that the TB believe in their superiority to the point where they wouldn't care.

It's actually weird for their to be no reaction to the Pevensies wearing fur coats in either books or adaptions. If the beavers had commented to compliment the camouflage or to kindly remark on how much like their own colony, it would've left some understanding of how they felt towards the fur. But no remarks is odd.

I agree that if Lewis had made some commentary on this it would be more along the lines of 'it's not a matter of import' rather than expanding on all the details (that's more Tolkien style anyway ), but I wish there was something more, if only for my own curiosity's sake.

Posted by: @coracle

them quite old by the time Lucy found them

I'm sure they were not cheap furs but maybe bear fur, or even beaver? Not sure if Beaver fur was expensive at the time, learned something about this in history class a long time ago, but perhaps they were imported inherited furs like you said. But definitely not rabbit!

Interesting though that you mentioned the age, because I had not considered that. Perhaps the age of the furs carried a scent that the beavers found hospitable, or gave of 'royal airs'. To be honest, I'm not really sure where I'm going with that haha but it's intriguing to wonder how the scent, age and work of the coat could've contributed to the welcoming the Pevensies received when they entered Narnia.

Not to get off topic too much, but where in the text (or if there's a topic on NW) would I find more info on the class of the Pevensies?

Posted by: @highkingpete

I'd have to disagree a bit here. Although there is a clear distinction between the TB and NTB, and Aslan had given the TB the privilege of ruling over the 'dumb' beasts, and having the TB carry on the created culture of the species, and the NTB the instinctual? aspects of the species, I wouldn't go so far to say that the TB believe in their superiority to the point where they wouldn't care.

I'm going by what Lewis puts quite explicitly into the mouth of Trufflehunter, one of the wisest Talking Beasts we meet in Narnia:

"... This is one of the cursed Telmarines. He has hunted beasts for sport. Haven't you, now?" [Nikabrik] added, rounding suddenly on Caspian.

"Well, to tell you the truth, I have," said Caspian. "But they weren't Talking Beasts."

"It's all the same thing," said Nikabrik.

"No, no, no," said Trufflehunter. "You know it isn't. You know very well that the beasts in Narnia nowadays are different and are no more than the poor, dumb, witless creatures you'd find in Calormen or Telmar. They're smaller too. They're far more different from us than the half-Dwarfs are from you." (Prince Caspian, pp. 65-6 in the Puffin edition)

It's probably worth noting that Lewis wrote this some years before he wrote (or probably even thought of) the scene in The Magician's Nephew where Aslan picks out certain animals to become Talking Beasts and gives them the privilege of ruling over the dumb beasts. The way Trufflehunter phrases his speech, it seems to imply that originally there were only Talking Beasts in Narnia and the "poor, dumb, witless creatures" are relative newcomers, rather than having been there from the beginning. But that aside, his attitude is very clear: non-talking beasts are not at all "the same thing" as Talking Beasts and hunting them isn't a crime or even particularly troubling.

I'm also bearing in mind here that Lewis was born in the (very) late Victorian era and writing these books in the 1950s. I don't know much about the history of animal rights campaigning in the UK, but I don't think it was very strong at all for most, if any, of Lewis's lifetime. Most people in early to mid-20th century Britain, especially those who were well-off enough to own fur coats (or to aspire to), wouldn't have thought twice about whether it's wrong to kill animals for their fur — or meat, or leather, for that matter. Those who were opposed to killing animals for humans' use would have been out on the fringes of mainstream society at that time, not anywhere near being widely accepted and respected.

Lewis himself wasn't a fan of vegetarians (he implicitly mocks them in his description of Eustace's parents at the start of VDT) and I somehow doubt that it really crossed his mind that wearing fur could be considered unethical. So it just doesn't seem likely he would have thought to give Narnian Talking Beasts an anti-fur stance — logical though that seems to us in today's world.

I sort of hesitate to post this because it really annoys me when people cite Michael Ward's interpretation of the Narnia books like it's the unquestionable truth when it's...not necessarily. But in her book, C. S. Lewis in Context, Doris T. Myers, writes about the significance of the fur coats in LWW. I'm not saying her opinion is definitely true. But it relates to this topic very much and I do like her book. 

Fur is much more basic to the tone and theme of The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe than a black-hat/white hat morality. The images suggest very young childhood when we make furry toys the center of our imaginative life and the object of our love. Furriness is important to theme because Narnia is a land of Joy, the romantic Joy that surprised Lewis and Wordsworth alike, a Joy closely connected with Nature. The very entrance of Narnia is furry, through a wardrobe filled with fur coats. Inside, the children find the heart's desire, the ability to communicate with Nature as symbolized by talking beasts and mythological creatures such as fauns and satyrs, dryads and naiads, giants and centaurs. 

Lewis is seeking to train the emotions, to implant the sense of awe and wonder in the presence of Nature. He wants to inoculate his young readers against the attitude toward Nature he hates in The Abolition of Man, that Nature is "a tool for us to understand analytically and then dominate and use...for our own convenience...(while) we suspend our judgments of value about it, ignore its final cause (if any) and treat it in terms of quantity." Furriness is thus a symbol for Nature which in one sense is neither good nor bad. Lewis however uses it to express emotional responses to moral value. It is an image of good when Aslan frees a lion from its enchantment: the lion "shook his man and all the heavy stony folds rippled into living hair." It is an image of evil when the wolf attacks Susan: its hair bristles in anger, and when Peter stabs it, "everything was blood and heat and hair" as it dies...

Lewis apparently did not think out consciously the manifold significance of furriness. In a letter quoted by Glover, Lewis sees so little of its importance that he even offers to get rid of the fur coats. "The fur coats can be altered easily...I don't know why Morrell shd. feel let down. Fur is nice, otherwise there would be no temptation to trapping, and one does find it in wardrobes. But that will be altered." Fortunately, it was not. Far from being a minor detail, it is part of the whole emotional experience of entering Fairyland and being trained in Joy.

@col-klink Interesting thoughts! I haven't read that book. Myers' speculations may be going a bit far, but obviously fur in Narnia makes a big impression on her and she does make a good point of how much it adds to the atmosphere of some of the key scenes. One of my favourite "fur" moments, which she hasn't mentioned, is when Lucy and Susan find Aslan walking away in the night (they don't yet know why) and, when he asks them to walk with their hands on his mane, they "buried their cold hands in the beautiful sea of fur and stroked it".

Mind you, I think that quote from Lewis goes to prove that he himself didn't have any deliberate deeper meaning in mind when he decided to have the children wear fur coats. It sounds like that's just what came to him as he wrote and he didn't see the fur as an essential element in the plot. So that for me pretty much settles the question of "what's the significance of the Pevensies wearing fur coats in Narnia?"... nothing, really.  

@courtenay @col-klink

I just came back to read all the responses to this thread about the TB/ NTB arguments and I really enjoyed it, might open up a topic about it specifically in the future since it's a very interesting discussion.

Great discussion.  I think fur plays too big a role in the LWW  - and in others of the Narniad - for it to have been incidental. We rely heavily on Lewis' correspondence with children for interpretation - and I think there may be some danger in this. 

First because he meant for LWW to be read by both children and adults - we know this from the dedication to Lucy. So what he wrote to children may not be definitive for an adult readership. Not that what he wrote was inaccurate - but that it may have left things out. Second - he did not write down everything he thought - far from it.

If you really put yourself into the story (as an adult or a child reader) you MUST be shocked by the fact that the children - while wearing fur coats - are welcomed into the house of a beaver couple. This is startling. If we trace the use of fur throughout the LWW we begin to see some patterns. Aslan has fur - the Witch wears fur. Fur comes to have an association with sacrifice - something must die for there to be fur. The fact that most readers completely overlook the fact that the children are likely wearing beaver fur while talking to .... beavers - is EXACTLY the point. It is sacrifice taken for granted.  

I think we need to be careful in assuming that the coats were beaver fur. 

The main use of beaver skin was for making hats, with a 'beaver' being a popular hat for those who could afford it.

The idea of the four children arriving in Narnia in skins of the non-talking (Dumb Beast) version of their hosts is unpleasant.

I can't see that dressing up as beasts would make them more acceptable to the other animals. They have come, called by Aslan, as Sons of Adam and Daughters of Eve, not as 'pretend' animals. 

Posted by: @lindsaydoering

Great discussion.  I think fur plays too big a role in the LWW  - and in others of the Narniad - for it to have been incidental. We rely heavily on Lewis' correspondence with children for interpretation - and I think there may be some danger in this. 

It's a good point that what Lewis says in his correspondence with children isn't necessarily all there is to know about Narnia (and I don't know that anyone has ever argued that it is). But the letter quoted in @col-klink's post doesn't seem to be a letter to a child. I haven't read the book it's quoted in (Doris T. Myers' C.S. Lewis in Context) and I don't know who the letter was addressed to and for what purpose, nor who the "Morrell" referred to is. However, it sounds very much like Lewis is writing to another adult — about edits to the book before it was published, maybe? — and showing pretty clearly what he himself thought about how significant (or not) fur was to the plot of his own story:

Posted by: @col-klink

Lewis apparently did not think out consciously the manifold significance of furriness. In a letter quoted by Glover, Lewis sees so little of its importance that he even offers to get rid of the fur coats. "The fur coats can be altered easily...I don't know why Morrell shd. feel let down. Fur is nice, otherwise there would be no temptation to trapping, and one does find it in wardrobes. But that will be altered."

The above quote also goes to show that Lewis himself had little or no moral objection to trapping and killing animals for their fur. Probably most middle- and upper-class British people would have felt the same way, back in the 1950s. So there's no logical way he could have intended for his readers to feel shocked by the fact that the children are wearing fur (we're never told it's beaver fur) when they meet the Beavers, if he himself, as the author, didn't feel any such shock. Which he clearly didn't.

It's also shown in Prince Caspian — in Trufflehunter's rebuke to Nikabrik, which I quoted above — that Narnian Talking Beasts themselves have no objection to humans hunting and killing "dumb beasts". Nikabrik tries to equate hunting of non-talking beasts with hunting of Talking Beasts (in an effort to discredit Caspian) and is immediately and sharply slapped down for it, by an actual Talking Beast.

Obviously we don't know if all Talking Beasts share Trufflehunter's opinion on the subject, since I think he's the only one we hear commenting on it directly, but he is presented as a very old and wise Badger who knows what he's talking about. And certainly the Beavers in LWW aren't shown as reacting in any way to the fact that the four children are wearing fur. If they aren't shocked, should we assume Lewis wanted readers to be?

I don't of course mean that no readers will be shocked at that element — clearly some readers are, and some aren't. I'm just thinking about whether or not Lewis intended for them to be shocked, or for them to read any deeper meaning into all the scenes involving fur. I'm moved by your interpretation here, Lindsay:

Posted by: @lindsaydoering

If we trace the use of fur throughout the LWW we begin to see some patterns. Aslan has fur - the Witch wears fur. Fur comes to have an association with sacrifice - something must die for there to be fur. The fact that most readers completely overlook the fact that the children are likely wearing beaver fur while talking to .... beavers - is EXACTLY the point. It is sacrifice taken for granted.  

That is a beautiful and compelling argument in its own right. But that said, when I'm reading the Chronicles (or any fictional works that obviously have some level of symbolic meaning), I try to remember what Lewis himself famously said somewhere, possibly more than once. I don't have the exact quote — can anyone help me out here? — but I know he remarked that whenever he encountered people who claimed to have figured out what he or his other author friends really meant in their books, those commentators never got it right.

To me, that doesn't mean "don't ever try to look for a deeper significance", just "don't ever treat your own interpretation as what the author truly intended, unless you have really solid evidence from the author him/herself"! (Michael Ward, I'm looking at you... )

Honestly, I think the reason C. S. Lewis used fur coats was because he thought they'd be warmest. (I don't know if he was right about that. I'm not a coat expert.)  

I've been hesitating to say that because I feel like I'm the guy on this forum who always says "Lewis had to write it that way to make the story work" rather than coming up with some more interesting explanation. I don't mean to be a wet blanket. It's just that I'm an amateur writer myself, (don't mean to brag; the world is crawling with amateur writers) so I think more about it from an author's perspective.