The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe: Chapter 5 Summary & Analysis

Lucy and Edmund return to find that the game of hide-and-seek is still going on, and so it takes them some time to find their siblings. Lucy, excited, immediately tells the others that Narnia is real, and that Edmund has been there now, too. When Peter asks Edmund if Lucy is telling the truth, Edmund decides “to do the meanest and most spiteful thing he [can] think of,” and lies to Peter and Susan, telling them that he and Lucy have simply been playing pretend in the wardrobe. Lucy, hurt, runs from the room to be alone.

Peter reprimands Edmund for being “beastly” to Lucy and setting her off. Edmund protests that Lucy has been spouting nonsense. Peter replies that he knows it’s nonsense, but that Edmund isn’t doing Lucy any favors by being cruel to her and jerking her around. Peter accuses Edmund of being cruel to anyone littler than himself, and reminds Edmund of the trouble Edmund was getting up to at school before they left London. Susan tells the boys to stop fighting, and suggests they all go off and find Lucy.

When they encounter Lucy again, she has clearly been crying. She tells the others that she doesn’t care what they think; she is telling the truth about Narnia, and now wishes she had stayed there forever. Peter and Susan are concerned for Lucy, and wonder if she is slightly losing her mind. After discussing the matter, Peter and Susan decide to go to the Professor and tell him what’s going on.

The Professor listens thoughtfully to Peter and Susan’s story, and then asks them how they know that Lucy isn’t telling the truth. Susan tells him that Edmund accused Lucy of lying. The Professor, though, asks Peter and Susan which of their siblings is more reliable: Lucy or Edmund. Peter admits that Lucy is more truthful, and Susan agrees. The Professor warns them that to charge a truthful person with lying is a “very serious thing indeed.” Peter and Susan confess that they are worried Lucy has gone mad, but the Professor insists that one can simply look at Lucy and see that she is perfectly sane. Logic, then, says the professor, dictates that if Lucy is not a liar and hasn’t gone mad, they all must assume she is telling the truth.

Susan and Peter are shocked to see that the Professor is serious, but he presses on, encouraging them to question the nature of what is real and unreal. He states that he himself cannot promise that there is not a door to another world hidden somewhere in his “very strange house” which he himself knows little about, and that the discovery of another dimension within it would not exactly surprise him. Peter and Susan as the Professor what they should do about Lucy, and he advises them to try minding their own business; with that, the conversation is over.

After their conversation with the Professor, Peter and Susan try hard to make things better for Lucy. Peter gets Edmund to stop teasing her, and no one brings the wardrobe up at all.

The Professor’s house is old and famous, and many people come from all over England to take a tour of it. Mrs. Macready, the housekeeper, is in charge of leading groups of tourists through the house, telling them all about the rare books and the suits of armor. Mrs. Macready, who does not like children, always warns the four siblings never to interrupt her during these tours, and to make themselves scarce while they are going on. One morning, Peter and Edmund are playing near a suit of armor when Lucy and Susan rush into the room and warn them to get out of the way—Mrs. Macready and a tour group are coming through. The siblings run through the adjoining rooms until they come to the wardrobe room. Desperate to hide, all four squeeze themselves into the wardrobe and shut themselves inside.