regshoe

Originally posted here on Tumblr.

The plot of Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell is about a revolution, really – a social revolution along a dimension that doesn’t actually exist in the real world, so what does that mean? Strange & Norrell is about the oppressed and marginalised people of England taking back the magic that is rightfully theirs, about the return of magic to the land. And yes, they can only do this because of the actions of a king, but this is a king who deliberately ends the dependence of English magic on his own presence*, and who ultimately puts magic back in the hands of the people in a way that it wasn’t before.

I think a lot of the book is concerned with the interaction between the past and the present – the constant historical footnotes, some of which turn out to be very relevant, the in-universe doubts over whether historical figures really existed, or events really happened. It’s the return of English magic, after all – and the return of magic could easily mean simply that, a going back to how things used to be, overthrowing the new order to re-establish the old. But that is very much not what happens, and I think that’s really interesting.

John Uskglass is explicitly associated with rebels, the Johannites, who believe – and the southern English government fears – that he will come back to take the throne of the North as he did in 1110. But he knows better than to do that. He doesn’t return in a blaze of glory to rule – instead he appears in person only for a few unremembered moments, he restores the power of English magic and places it in the hands of the people who no longer need him to sit on the throne. He disappears mysteriously once again, going back to the shadows. England is ‘his forever’, but it is no longer the same place that it was in 1110. The words are rewritten, and the England we see at the end of the book is not a land merely restored to its former glory but one changed now to something new.

*Is this what John Uskglass is doing? I don’t know! I think it’s a reasonable guess.

Tags: this post is a bit of a mess and i'm not sure i agree with all of it, but i think there's definitely something interesting here