Crossing Into the Real: Portals, Liminality, and Platonic Theology in C.S. Lewis’s Narnia

From Wardrobe to Wood to Painting

Introduction: Portals as Theology

Most scholarship on C. S. Lewis’s Chronicles of Narnia has focused on allegory or cosmology. Yet the most pivotal narrative moments are not the allegories themselves but the crossings into Narnia. The wardrobe, the Wood Between the Worlds, and the enchanted painting are not just narrative gateways. They are liminal thresholds—structural metaphors for Lewis’s Platonic conviction that the material world is but a shadow of a deeper reality.

This article proposes a systematic typology of portals across the series, showing how they form the architecture of Lewis’s theology of access. By situating them within Victor Turner’s anthropology of liminality (Turner 94) and the spatial turn in literary criticism (Tally 3), I argue that the portals evolve across the chronicles: from accidental discovery, to moral choice, to conscious imaginative participation.

Positioning: While Michael Ward (Ward 1) has shown the cosmological architecture underlying the chronicles, and Alan Jacobs (Jacobs 230) and Peter Schakel (Schakel 4) have traced Lewis’s Platonism and theology of imagination, these studies do not treat portals as a systematic structure in their own right. Shannon Burkes’s liminal reading of Lucy’s first wardrobe crossing (Burkes 7) gestures toward this direction, but remains confined to a single episode. This article extends such insights by offering the first sustained typology of portals across the series, framing them as the theological architecture of access that mediates Lewis’s Platonic “deeper reality.”

Literature Review: From Allegory to Space

Scholarship has long emphasized allegory in Lewis (e.g., Christian parallels, cosmological symbolism). Michael Ward’s Planet Narnia (2008) expanded the field by demonstrating that the chronicles are unified by medieval cosmology (Ward 1). Critics such as Alan Jacobs (Jacobs 230) and Peter Schakel (Schakel 4) have also treated Lewis’s Platonism and his theology of imagination. Diana Pavlac Glyer has shown how Lewis’s creative process was deeply shaped by collaborative exchange among the Inklings, reminding us that portal imagery emerged not in isolation but within a vibrant literary community (Glyer 6).

Yet while some studies mention thresholds or crossings, they rarely treat portals as the primary theological architecture. A handful of critics apply liminality to Lucy’s first entry into Narnia (e.g., Burkes (Burkes 7)), but these analyses remain scene-specific. This article extends such insights into a coherent framework, showing how portals collectively embody Lewis’s Platonic theology of passage.

The Wardrobe: Innocent Threshold

Lucy’s first encounter with Narnia exemplifies Turner’s rite of passage:

• Separation — she leaves her siblings and steps into the wardrobe.
• Limen — the sensory sequence (fur → snow, mothballs → fir trees) marks a suspended, in-between state.
• Re-aggregation — she is recognized by Mr. Tumnus as “Daughter of Eve,” entering a mythic social identity.

The wardrobe is selective. For Peter and Susan it remains mere furniture; for Lucy and Edmund it opens—but differently, depending on their disposition. The portal thus functions as a spiritual filter, accessible only to the morally or imaginatively ready.

The Wood Between the Worlds: Meta-Liminal Space

The Magician’s Nephew introduces a more abstract threshold system: magical rings that deliver travellers to the Wood Between the Worlds. This space, where “nothing ever happens,” is the quintessential anti-structure. Here, Digory and Polly are stripped of ordinary identity and confronted with radical moral agency.

Where the wardrobe initiates innocent discovery, the Wood foregrounds choice. Digory’s decision to strike the bell in Charn—outside the normal constraints of his own world—illustrates Lewis’s theology of freedom: thresholds make divine reality accessible, but they do not determine human action.

The Painting: Imagination as Willful Crossing

By The Voyage of the Dawn Treader, portals require more than innocence or chance—they require cultivated imagination. Edmund and Lucy gaze at the picture with longing; Eustace rejects it as “a rotten picture.” The portal responds to the faith-filled gaze, transforming the aesthetic into the real.

This progression aligns with Lewis’s Platonism: art becomes a training ground for vision, teaching readers to look beyond surfaces toward the deeper reality. Ward identifies the volume with the Sun (truth, enlightenment), and the portal as painting reinforces this Solarian symbolism.

Susan and the Refusal of Passage

The “Problem of Susan” takes on new clarity when viewed through this portal framework. Susan’s exclusion in The Last Battle represents not misogyny but self-exclusion: the deliberate refusal of transcendence. By privileging “nylons and lipsticks and invitations,” she chooses the mundane world and closes the threshold from her side.

Her fate is tragic not because the portal failed her, but because she rejected the disposition required for crossing. Susan’s story confirms the conditional nature of all thresholds: they demand ongoing assent to a deeper reality.

Conclusion: The Architecture of Access

Across the chronicles, Lewis builds not just a fantasy world but a theology of passage. The wardrobe, the Wood, and the painting form a progressive sequence of thresholds:

1. Accidental innocence (wardrobe)
2. Moral choice (Wood)
3. Imaginative faith (painting)

Together, they construct a Platonic architecture in which access to the “deeper reality” is mediated by liminality. The portals are not incidental devices; they are the theological skeleton of Narnia.

This article was developed through an iterative collaboration between our Editor-in-Chief and multiple AI language models. Various LLMs contributed at different stages—from initial ideation and drafting to refinement and technical review. Each AI served as a creative and analytical partner, while human editors maintained final oversight, ensuring accuracy, quality, and alignment with AuthZ's editorial standards.