Why the title The Silver Chair?

Question

The titles of the Narnia books mostly make sense.

• The Magician's Nephew: title refers to the main protagonist, through his relation to a more minor character but that's how he got involved in all this stuff in the first place.
• The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe: title refers to the guardian of the good guys, the main antagonist, and the protagonists' route into Narnia - all major aspects of the story.
• The Horse and His Boy: title refers to two of the main protagonists, in a slightly unexpected way (the horse owns the boy?) but I think this is commented on in-story and explained.
• Prince Caspian: title is the name of one of the main protagonists.
• The Voyage of the Dawn Treader: title is about what happens in the story.
• The Last Battle: title refers to the ending of Narnia which is the main thing that happens in the story.

That leaves The Silver Chair, whose title refers to a piece of furniture that appears only in a couple of scenes. Not such an important piece of furniture as the Wardrobe, either - it serves as part of Rilian's enslavement, but a summary of the story probably wouldn't even mention it if it didn't happen to be the title of the book.

So, why this title? Did Lewis ever say anything about why he titled the sixth book that way, or does a deeper analysis of the story put great significance on the silver chair? Did he plan to title it The Giants, the Other Witch, and the Silver Chair and get argued down by his editor to just The Silver Chair?

Answer 1

@ClaraDíazSanchez's answer seems to cover Lewis's struggle to name this book very well. I have no additional insights on the process of choosing its name.

Instead, I come at the question from a different angle. The OP seems to take the view that "The Silver Chair" is poorly suited to be the title, dismissing the chair itself as an insignificant detail. So, "does a deeper analysis of the story put great significance on the silver chair?" Even if not, entitling the book "The Silver Chair" does. That makes the chair a symbol of prince Rilian's imprisonment by the Lady of the Green Kirtle, which is the central conflict of the entire novel.

The chair is a natural choice for that role, being a key mechanism by which the Lady maintains her power over captive Rilian. For an hour every night he is bound to that chair, supposedly to protect those around him from a violent psychotic episode that he undergoes. It turns out, however, that he is under the Lady's mind control, and as he tells the children during a period of lucidity,

Every night I am sane. If only I could get out of this enchanted chair, it would last.

Destroying the chair produces a loud, foul-smelling flash, underscoring its unnaturalness, at which Rilian again attributes the enchantment to the chair, proclaiming:

Lie there, vile engine of sorcery, [...] lest your mistress should ever use you for another victim.

Whatever inspiration led Lewis to choose "The Silver Chair" for his title, it is well suited indeed, notwithstanding that the first-time reader will not realize that until late in the story.

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But what about that deeper analysis? All Lewis's fiction has significant allegorical character. The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe especially so, but The Silver Chair, too. For example, many take Aslan the lion as an allegory of Jesus Christ, and Lewis himself goes even further, actually identifying Aslan with Christ:

Since Narnia is a world of Talking Beasts, I thought He [Christ] would become a Talking Beast there, as He became a man here.^*

When The Silver Chair is viewed from the angle of Christian religious symbolism, it is easy to draw parallels between the talking serpent who deceived Eve into eating the forbidden fruit and the Lady / serpent who bewitched Rilian and later attempted to bewitch the children into disbelieving in everything they knew, especially Aslan. Moreover, the Lady is engaged in a campaign to invade and seize control of Narnia, Aslan's chosen kingdom in that world. If the Lady is the arch enemy of the kingdom of Aslan, then that makes her an analog of Satan.

To continue this stream of analogy, a major doctrine of Christian theology is that without Christ, human beings are trapped, enslaved, bound by the principle of sin, unable to do right by God's perfect standard. In The Silver Chair, the chair is the mechanism by which the Lady binds Rilian to her will, intending to use him for her own purposes against Narnia and Aslan. In the Christian analogic framework, this entrapment and binding to act against Aslan / Christ, combined with ultimate rescue by Aslan's agents, lends itself well to association with the concept of enslavement to sin. In that analogy, the chair itself represents sin, which is indeed a great symbolic significance.

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^*As quoted in Companion to Narnia: Revised Edition (2005) by Paul Ford.

Answer 2

The choice of title for the book which would eventually be called The Silver Chair seems to have been a bit of a struggle for Lewis. A detailed, but unfortunately incomplete account can be gleaned from Lewis' correspondence, collected in Collected Letters of C.S. Lewis, Volume 3, Harper Collins (2004), which cover the period from 1950 - 1963.

He began writing it in December 1950, and in March of 1951 sent a draft to his "First Reader" and colleague, Roger Lancelyn Green. At this point we are not explicitly told what the working title was, but from a later letter we can deduce that it was probably "The Wild Waste Lands", referring to the setting of the story.

In September 1952, Lewis wrote to his editor, Geoffrey Bles, requesting that the title be changed:

I suppose there’ll be no difficulty about changing the title of the new one in galley. I want to call it "Night Under Narnia”

The new choice of title now reflects how the climax of the novel occurs in the Underworld, beneath Narnia. A little over a week later (27/9/52), however, Lewis wrote to Green asking his advice:

But let me have... your advice on my immediate problem wh. is the title of the new story. Bles, like you, thinks "The Wild Waste Lands" bad, but he says "Night Under Narnia" is ‘gloomy’. George Sayer & my brother say "Gnomes Under N" wd. be equally gloomy, but "News under Narnia" wd do. On the other hand my brother & the American writer Joy Davidman (who has been staying with us & is a great reader of fantasy and children’s books) both say that "The Wild Waste Lands" is a splendid title.

So Bles and Green both thought that the first title was bad, but that the proposed new title of "Night Under Narnia" was too gloomy. Alternatives of "Gnomes Under Narnia", and "News Under Narnia" were proposed, and Lewis' brother and Joy Davidson both suggested going back to the original - "The Wild Waste Lands". As Lewis frustratedly asked, "What's a chap to do?"

Further debate over the title does not appear in the Letters, but by March 1953 the question seems to have been settled. In writing to an American schoolboy, Michael (W), Lewis gives the title of the soon to be published book:

The new book is The Silver CHAIR, not CHAIN. Don’t look forward to it too much or you are sure to be disappointed.

So many titles were in play, some even reaching the proof stage. In the end Lewis settled on The Silver Chair but no specific reason is given except perhaps, that the alternatives were worse.

Answer 3

The novel itself is episodic. There isn't one overriding theme that clearly links the school, the meeting, the commencement, the waste, the giants, the other giants, the ruin, the uprising, the party, and the school.

So it's not possible to come up with a title that clearly represents the overriding theme of the novel.

So a title is chosen that is a symbol of the novel -- a crown, or flag, or sword: "The Owl Service", "The Weirdstone of Brisingamen", "The Golden Key".

It is not, clearly, a central theme of every chapter of the novel, but that can't be helped, given the nature of this novel. It is though, a unique and memorable feature of the novel, an identifying and illuminating symbol of the story: a good title.