Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell - 'Arabella'

"Am I your wife?"

"I think what you are telling, my lady, are fairy tales, but told in some way as if the fairy is telling them."
"Human tales, as it were."
- Honeyfoot and Segundus

The Gentleman's trap is sprung! With Jonathan distracted by his Waterloo PTSD, he sends Stephen to lure Arabella away on the pretense that Lady Pole is upset - which she is, sensing the impending deception and striving to warn the Stranges via her baffled keepers - and then swaps in the moss oak duplicate, who induces the magician to declare her 'your only wife', thus bargaining away the real Arabella into the Gentleman's power. As we first saw with Lady Pole, the right of a person to bargain another's life, let alone their understanding of what they are doing, seems less important than their willingness in dealing with the fey.

One ought not to get into strange coaches, and this is a very strange coach.

Lascelles leaps on this as an opportunity to squash Strange's attempt to publish a magical primer, by fostering accusations that he murdered his wife by magic and manipulating Norrell into refusing to aid his attempts to revive Arabella when the moss oak expires. The result is a rapid degeneration, as Strange abandons his self-imposed exile from practical magic and sets out to become mad enough to see and deal with a fairy, restore Arabella and show Norrell what for.

As in the book, Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell has little in the way of obvious heroes and villains. While on the most superficial level the dynamic, emotional Strange is the hero and the cold, calculating Norrell the villain, they are both flawed men and ultimately focused on doing what they see as good. The most obvious actual villain is of course the Gentleman, although he is more by way of the scorpion of oft repeated fable; why does he deceive, manipulate and abduct? Because it's what he is. He's less a bad guy and more a natural hazard.

For real villainy and heroism, we have to look elsewhere; at the smaller roles. At the unfaltering Lady Pole, and at Messrs Honeyfoot and Segundus who are working so hard to understand their charge (an action largely unheard of in 19th century psychiatric care;) and at Mr Childermass, who is just... quietly cool. Childermass in particular gets good mileage this week. He politely turns down Strange's offer of a partnership, and explains that as Strange and Norrell seem set on destroying one another now, he will hang back and step in to oppose whomsoever wins, so that there will still be two English magicians. He also clashes with the real villain, the reptilian Lascelles, who with no excuse of alien origin leaps on the apparent death of Arabella Strange as a chance to destroy the already distraught Strange in revenge for his critical assassination of Lascelles' own book. Lascelles also dismisses Childermass as 'the servants', which may yet come back to bite him.

The strength of this tale of magicians and magic is that the real driving forces, be they virtuous or vicious, are human.