Mrs. Beaver and the Great Escape

As a kid, and even as a young adult, I reacted to Mrs Beaver's pottering around in the little house on top of the dam much the same way as the children and Mr Beaver do.  I was impatient with her and anxious for them to just leave already!

Now I'm seeing it a little differently.  Mrs Beaver is perfectly clear-headed and practical, and she's thinking several steps ahead of everyone else.

It starts in Chapter 8, when she is the one who points out that what Edmund can tell the White Witch depends on when he slipped away.  This gets them thinking and remembering in useful ways; they realize Edmund did hear about Aslan's return before he left.  And they can't be sure if he heard about the plan to meet him at the Stone Table.

Mr Beaver immediately assumes the White Witch will go directly to the Stone Table and they will be cut off from Aslan.  Mrs Beaver more shrewdly reckons on her knowledge of the White Witch's character and predilections:

"The moment that Edmund tells her that we're all here she'll set out to catch us this very night, and if he's been gone about half an hour, she'll be here in about another twenty minutes."

She's right, of course, and Mr Beaver acknowledges it without hesitation.  Indeed, he urges everyone "we must all get away from here. There's not a moment to lose."

At that, everyone except Mrs Beaver begins bundling themselves into coats (ch. 10).  I won't say they're panicking, but they are certainly not stopping to plan or even consider anything beyond getting out of the house and heading to the Stone Table.  But Mrs Beaver, cool as a cucumber, starts packing five sacks with food and supplies.  She has thought several steps ahead of her companions, and has an answer for everything:

• They aren't in imminent danger, because the White Witch "can't be here for quarter of an hour at least."
• They don't need a big head start, because "we can't get [to the Stone Table] before her whatever we do, for she'll be on a sledge and we'll be walking."
• But it's not hopeless to get through even though the White Witch will get there first, because "we can keep under cover and go by ways she won't expect."

She even takes the time to proportion the five loads to the members of the party, saving the smallest one for Lucy as the smallest of the group.

And what about the sewing machine, which is probably the lightning rod for her seeming sentimentality and impracticality?  Mrs Beaver does not, in fact, actually attempt to bring it, but only mentions it wistfully after her packing is complete and the loads are distributed:  "I suppose the sewing machine's too heavy to bring?"  Her desire not to leave it behind is, of course, largely sentimental (she doesn't want the witch "fiddling with it, and breaking it or stealing it, as likely as not"), but both the phrasing and the timing of the question flag it as strictly rhetorical, and the brief exchange with Mr Beaver on the subject does not appreciably delay their departure. 

The narrator does mask her wisdom a little at the end, apparently adopting the children's impatient perspective with a twice-repeated "at last" sandwiching the sewing machine interlude (it's prefaced by "'Well, I'm nearly ready now,' answered Mrs Beaver at last, allowing her husband to help her into her snow-boots." and followed by the children begging her to hurry "And so at last they all got outside...").  But we shouldn't let that distract us from the underlying reality: Mrs Beaver was right.  They absolutely had the time to bring food with them for the journey.  And I would note that Mr Beaver, for all his own impatience, likewise takes the time to stop and lock the door before they actually set off.

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Coda: It occurs to me now that there is something special about Mrs Beaver's post-packing sewing machine comments.  The children have been impatient all along, and were quite wrong about it.  But when Mrs Beaver expresses her regrets at leaving the sewing machine behind, I think that is also symbolic -- or perhaps more precisely, an instance of synecdoche.  Her sphere is largely a domestic one, and she is leaving her hearth and home behind with no assurance that it will be there safe and sound for her return.  To the contrary, it will surely be violated by the White Witch.

And from that perspective, Mr Beaver's locking the door -- ineffective as he knows it will be even to slow down the White Witch -- is perhaps also a symbolic gesture of acknowledgment, sympathy, and support.