Jonathan Strange is one of the two main characters in Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell. He is one of the two magicians who are foretold to appear in England in order to revive magic. He becomes Mr. Norrell's pupil, then his rival.
Personality[]
Jonathan Strange is a very creative, but distracted and undisciplined kind of person. He is spontaneous and sometimes doesn't follow through, as seen in the winding road he took in choosing a profession and the way he decided upon magic.
This also applies to his magical abilities, which he can't always control and not even understand most of the time: he describes his doing magic as a composer who instinctively knows which musical note needs to follow.
In the field of magic he often goes very far with not enough thought of the consequences and completely without a plan (he resurrects the Neapolitans knowing that he has no clue what to do after, how to make them dead again) and he is somewhat prone to recklessness (ex: he attacks Norrell's house in a burst of anger, getting himself arrested and confirming the preexisting rumours that he turned into a villain).
His personality is somewhat the antithesis of Mr. Norrell's: Jonathan Strange is the overflow, the excess, inborn talent with little grounding in learning - with its positive sides and downsides; Mr. Norrell is the too disciplined shut-in, fearful of the outer world, hoarder of knowledge and learning, with its good sides and downsides, too.
He is compassionate and much less classist than the other characters: he recognises Childermass' talent and knowledge of magic when others don't or won't because he is a servant. He (in the movie, in the book not as much) wants everybody to have access to knowledge about magic, including women.
He is loyal and very much in love with his (in the 1st episode girlfriend, then) wife, Arabella and, when she is kidnapped with spells that fake her death, he tries everything to bring her back to life, then, after finding out she is alive, he doesn't hesitate to put his health and life in danger and he eventually succeeds in freeing her.
Biography[]
He is the son of a wealthy nobleman; his father was very cruel in nature, setting an example of how Jonathan wants to not be. Strange lost his mother at the age of four.
Powers and Abilities[]
Within the series- specifically seen inside of the first episode- Jonathan discovers his magical prowess shortly after being offered two spells written on a piece of parchment. This is where his occupation and journey as a magician begins. Compared to other magicians his magic seemingly has no limitations, allowing him to cast various spells that surpass the understanding and imagination of more experienced magicians like Mr. Norrell as well as Jonathan himself. In the show we see him exhibit many mystical feats such as:
Scrying: In the first episode, Strange performs one of the spells, written on the parchment he received named as "A spell to show what mine enemy is doing presently". Strange used a small mirror with the stems of wilted flowers placed parallel on both sides, as the spell required "something dead" and a reflective surface. He then drew a circle in the center of the glass and "quartered it". Though he was probably not expecting a resulting effect, the reflection inside of the mirror changed to show the inside of Mr. Norrell's study rather than the reflection of the dining room he and a few other characters were present inside of at the time.
- This enchantment would soon be proven useful to Jonathan as it allowed him to use other reflective mediums such as a bowl of water to see people and witness situations remotely. It also allowed him to hear sounds from where the mirror showed.
Reflective dimensional transposition: An ability that allowed Jonathan to switch the reflection of a object and the actual physical form of the object itself. The effect caused the reflection of a paper to appear in the real world as an intangible and backwards visage while the actual paper resided inside of the mirror. A witness to this feat was Mr. Norrell who claimed that it was a magic that he had never seen before.
Dreamscape Entering: An ability that allowed Strange to enter and communicate inside of the same dream shared between him and Jonathan Segundus.