How old were the children?

[Toastie]

i was thinking how approximate old was digory, polly, peter, edmund, lucy, estace and jill (well, all people in our world that knew about narnia except susan) when they had their last meet together.

[~Lava~]

I would put Digory and Polly in their mid-sixties based on the fact that Lewis said that Sherlock Holmes was still at Bakerstreet when they were around ten (Sherlock Holmes retired in the very early 1900's and for about 10 years before that he was believed to be dead based on the books). However, there is plenty of room for disagreement as to how many years there were between the Blitz and the train crash. I always thought that it was around 10 years (not from the end of DT but from the end of LWW). I always put Lucy at 18, Edmund at ninteen, Susan at 21, and Peter at 22. I placed both Jill and Eustace at 17. Probably I would put Digory and Polly at 64-65.

This how I would age them. I know others would not. Lucy has been aged as young as 16 or as old as 20. We know that Eustace was younger than Lucy (it says so in the book) and Jill was about the same age as Eustace. We know that Ed was only a year older than Lucy and that Susan and Peter were both older than Ed. We also know that Lucy was too young to be in Boarding School at the time of LWW and was out of school at the time of LB. Lewis describes the professor as being middle-aged in LWW and we know that Digory and Polly were about the same age.

[NarniaGirl12]

i was thinking how approximate old was digory, polly, peter, edmund, lucy, estace and jill (well, all people in our world that knew about narnia except susan) when they had their last meet together.

If you go on NarniaWeb.com it should tell on the character profiles. ;)

[~Lava~]

Those aren't grounded in canon.

[NarniaGirl12]

Those aren't grounded in canon.

Oh I know haha but I like to think of them as the real ages. ;)

[Animus Wyrmis]

I'm going to have to agree with Lava here. We know that there's about a year's gap between LWW and PC and between PC and VotDT, and a couple months between VDT and SC. We also know that there's about a year's difference between Ed and Lucy. Lucy's first year of boarding school is right after PC; I'd guess Ed's is right after LWW (because it's his school that makes him go bad, which makes no sense if he and Peter go to the same school--you wouldn't consider it the school's fault at that point, but his year/roommate/something else). The four of them are done with school by LB. I don't think there's any direct evidence about the age differences between the Peter, Susan, and Edmund/Lucy, but I'd guess Peter and Susan are a year or two apart and Susan and Edmund at least a year. ::shrug::

My guess is that Lucy is probably eighteen at the youngest by LB; that puts Ed around nineteen and Peter and Susan a few years older than that. I would peg Jill and Eustace around sixteen, but definitely not older than seventeen. I would put Polly and Digory somewhere between fifty and seventy--Holmes lives in Baker Street from 1887-1903, give or take. E Nesbit's books about the Bastables are set about the same time. Polly and Digory are probably around ten, give or take, so there's a lot of room play in there.

[Mozart the Meerkitten]

Before New Narnia or after? Before I'd say that; Lucy, Jill and Eustace, were about 17, Edmund about 18, Susan around 20 or 21, and Peter about 22. Polly and Digory were old!:p

After; They were like kids again! I like to think they were age-less in New Narnia, like we will be in Heaven.;)

[~Lava~]

Thanks Animus. I had never read Nesbit's book so I did not know that info. I have every Sherlock Holmes book that Sir Arthur Conan Doyle ever wrote.

[MrBob]

We know that Peter is "hardly full grown" putting him at about 17-18, younger than Tirian who was 20-25. That would put Susan at 15-16, Edmund 13-14, Lucy 12-13, Eustace and Jill 11-12 (my guess is that they were closer to the upper age).

Digory and Polly were probably around 65.

I am using canon to determine the ages of the first six and guesstimates for Digory and Polly. I do not believe that seven years passed between TSC and TLB based on contextual clues in TLB (Eustace describing how long it had been, the treatment of Jill and Eustace by Tirian, description of Peter when Tirian appears to them, etc).

MrBob

[Animus Wyrmis]

How do we know Tirian's age?

Lava--I love Sherlock Holmes, although I watched the Wishbone version of the Hound of the Baskervilles once and it terrified me to death. E. Nesbit was one of my favorite authors once upon a time, too--there's a lot of her stuff in Narnia, I think, particularly in the opening of LWW and in MN.

[~Lava~]

We know that Peter is "hardly full grown" putting him at about 17-18, younger than Tirian who was 20-25. That would put Susan at 15-16, Edmund 13-14, Lucy 12-13, Eustace and Jill 11-12 (my guess is that they were closer to the upper age).

Digory and Polly were probably around 65.

I am using canon to determine the ages of the first six and guesstimates for Digory and Polly. I do not believe that seven years passed between TSC and TLB based on contextual clues in TLB (Eustace describing how long it had been, the treatment of Jill and Eustace by Tirian, description of Peter when Tirian appears to them, etc).

MrBob

What is "Full Grown" in Narnian standards? How different does a college student from our world look to a King of Narnia? How is Lucy already out of School at 12-13? There are a lot of variables that just don't add up in mind to the fact that Lucy is only 12-13 in my mind. I can yield to the fact that Peter may be only 20 and the rest each have one year difference in between them. But I doubt that Lucy and Ed would be "out of school" before they were 16.

[MrBob]

"How do we know Tirian's age?"

Animus, when we are first introduced to Tirian, he is described as 20-25 years of age.

"What is "Full Grown" in Narnian standards? How different does a college student from our world look to a King of Narnia? How is Lucy already out of School at 12-13?"

FUll grown would have been 18, possibly 16 the way I see it. Caspian was about 15 when he became king. And being so young himself, Tirian saw Peter and noticed that he was "certainly younger than" he was. This context shows me that Peter cannot be as old or older than Tirian and the not quite full grown tells me that he is just about 18-years-old.

As for the schooling, I always saw it that Experiment House let out ater than Lucy's school. Maybe Lucy's school year ended at the end of May while Experiment House ended in he middle of June and the meeting took place on a Saturday or a three day weekend for Experiment House. We do know that the Experiment House began in beginning to mid September as they had only gone through two weeks in TSC with it being an autumn day.

MrBob

[Animus Wyrmis]

::shakes head:: It took two weeks between the dinner and the train trip, and Jill and Eustace were present for both--they had to have been on vacation, not a weekend break.

LB takes place at least in 1948; they mention the British Railways, and that's not founded until 1948.

[~Lava~]

Either way you look at it. There were at least eight years between September of 1940 when the Blitz started and they started evacuating children from London and when British Railways was founded. Lucy was not five when she found Narnia. Based on the maturity level she showed even eight is a little bit of a strech. We know that Peter was at least three years older than Lucy. So Peter is at least 19.

It is also a bit of a strech to say that Eustace would automatically start calling the new Railway company by its name during at least the first several months of it existance. I know that the appropriate common name for a tulip poplar is actually tuliptree and have known for going on 9 months but I still find myself calling tulip poplar. I still call ATT cell phones Cingular cell phones and that changed two years ago. I would maintain that they were probably at least a year out from the consolidation that took place in 1948.

Also, four years can make a difference in the way people percieve age. William Mosely is only two months younger than me and I think he looks at least 4 years younger than me. A 25 year old Narnian could easily look at William Mosely who is 22 and say that he is hardly full grown. Peter, depending on his clothing and the way "growing up" treated him in this world, could have very easily have looked younger than he really was. I think that all clues point to the fact that Peter was 19-21 years old, he was very possibly 22 years old.

[MrBob]

The timeline is one of my pet peeves for this series.

"It took two weeks between the dinner and the train trip, and Jill and Eustace were present for both--they had to have been on vacation, not a weekend break."

OK, it was "nearly a week ago" between the dinner and their arrival. Reading, it sounds like four days at most. It still doesn't mean that Experiment House didn't have a week-long holiday. The day after they came to narnia was when they were supposed to go back to school.

As for when British Railways came into being, I doubt Lewis really did his homework to figure out when the company came into being. He never specifically gave any dates for his books.

"Either way you look at it. There were at least eight years between September of 1940 when the Blitz started and they started evacuating children from London and when British Railways was founded."

Lava, in VotDT, we have Edmund explaining about "the war years" as if they were over. Would they have gone back to school in PC with a war going on? Why did they stay with the Professor supposedly for only one year? I place VotDT after the war ended, possibly 1945. Would Experiment House have been opened during the war?

Yes, I know what it says in LWW regarding the air raids of London, but they started in September while the book took place in the summer while it was still warm enough for them to play outside a lot and go bathing in the ponds on the property.

MrBob

[Animus Wyrmis]

I still think it's a stretch to give them a long holiday in June.

Lewis wouldn't have to do any work--he was there! He should remember! Anyway, it's canon at this point, whatever he meant.

A lot of boarding schools were open, I believe, especially if they were in the country--it would be safer. We don't really know where the kids go to school though (Experiment House is somewhere near the Moors). Wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evacuations_of_civilians_in_Britain_during_World_W ar_II) puts evacuation of children starting earlier, so the kids could have been moved as early as 1939, depending on how broadly you take air-raids.

"Father had got a job lecturing in America for sixteen weeks that summer, and Mother was to go with him because she hadn't had a real holiday for ten years. Peter was working very hard for an exam and he was to spend the holidays being coached by old Professor Kirke in whose house these four children had had wonderful adventures long ago in the war years."
It's ambiguous whether that's from the POV of the character or from the narrator. I'm tempted to put the timeline here in the POV of the narrator, on the basis that we wouldn't say "long ago during the start of the Iraq War" comfortably. OTOH, the book's written in the early fifties, so it's odd for the narrator too. OTOH, how likely is it that you'd go on an Atlantic cruise with your wife and daughter--leaving your other two kids in Cambridge--if the war was still going on? *Really*?

::sigh:: The timeline here is a pain, isn't it?

[~Lava~]

Not according to Wiki (this came from more reliable sources like BBC), the official evacuation of children was on September 1, 1939 (note: September can be summer-like in temperature, in fact the Autumnal Equinox is in late September so they were at the Professor's house before Summer was over). The children were required to evacuate during that time. Also, the majority of the children (the figure was 60%) were brought home by January of 1940. It says that some schools closed but others were still open.

Regarding the during the war days comment, there was a lull in the attacks on Britain from 1941 until 1944. This can account for the fact that "during the war days" the children had great adventures. During that lull, everything started to become normal again; from a child's perspective, the war is done during that time (note 1941 would be about the right time for Dawn Treader to occur if the Children went to the Professor's House in 1939).

Like Animus said, Lewis lived through this period. He probably remembered the time that children came to stay at his house because of the evacuation well. He was probably still dealing with the issues that started in the 1948 when they combined the four major railways in England when he penned TLB.

About war time cruising: If it is your job to lecture, why not? They are not going on an Atlantic Cruise, they are going to America for a job. They just happen to be making a vacation of it. I will admit that Lewis does have some irregularities in his writting.

[Animus Wyrmis]

But not everyone was evacuated by 1939--they continued on.

Also...if Lucy's going into the first form in PC, she'd be twelveish by VDT, which is old enough to understand that the war isn't over even if they aren't constantly being bombed--especially since she ruled over a country that went to war more than once.

Well, there are torpedoes and such--it's not like it's wonderfully safe.

[TimmyofOz]

Most text books in human development say full-grown is by about 25.

[Ephinie]

Most text books in human development say full-grown is by about 25.I think the idea of "full grown" here is being considered from a cultural standpoint rather than a biological standpoint. But as far as textbooks are concerned, I'm pretty sure you're right. :) I remember learning in health class in junior high that one's bones are actually cartilage when one is born, and then they gradually turn to bone over the years. The last bone to do this is the breastbone, which happens roughly at age 25 - at which point the body is then fully developed.

[fallingup4ever]

i don't really know. i'm torn between Lava and MrBod's extremely deep as well as entertaining debate, but if you remember correctly then Tirian had seen Peter only twice

1. when Tirian saw them in his vision/dream/?

2. when he got to heaven and it specifically mentions that Polly and Digory seemed to get younger and then the younger ones seemed to get old, so it would be very hard to guess their ages.

P.S the focusonthefamily audios don't help because their voices sound waaaay too young. i haven't read the books recently so pleasse excuse my lack of information on their ages.

P.P.S i haven't read all the posts on this so i don't know if someone has or has not pointed this out (i'm very sorry if someone has) then please accept my lack of intelligence :confused:

[Toastie]

i don't really know. i'm torn between Lava and MrBod's extremely deep as well as entertaining debate, but if you remember correctly then Tirian had seen Peter only twice

1. when Tirian saw them in his vision/dream/?

[...]

i think i could take a look in the book :D
let's see... oh, here we are, in the last battle.
tirian was remembering how his ancestors saved narnia, with the help of children from other world and, of course, Aslan. well, he clamour for a rescue from the Lion and the children.. then he feel asleep into a deep dream ( almost in live) and saw all of them. :)

[pokemainiac]

I'd actually say Jill/Eustace were 14/15, because they were the only ones still at school, and in those days the minimum school leaving age was 15. If they are to believed, the pevensies would have all finished secondary school, but Jill/Eustace would be in thier last year(s).