Till We Have Faces

Summary

Till We Have Faces, subtitled A Myth Retold, rewrites the story of Cupid and Psyche from Apuleius's Golden Ass, told by one of Psyche's elder sisters. Orual, now an old queen of Glome, a small barbarian kingdom on the edge of the Greek world, writes her book as a formal accusation against the gods. Her mother dead and her father, King Trom, harsh and violent, she grows up ugly and unloved, taught Greek poetry and Stoic philosophy by the Fox, a captured Greek slave, and cared for by the nurse Batta alongside her pretty sister Redival. When the king's second wife dies bearing a daughter, Istra, whom the household calls Psyche, Orual raises the child and loves her with her whole heart. Psyche's beauty becomes a cult; then plague, drought and rebellion come, and the old Priest of Ungit, the dark goddess of Glome, declares that Psyche must be the Great Offering, left bound to the holy Tree on the Grey Mountain for the god of the Mountain, the Shadowbrute. Orual, sick with fever, cannot prevent it. Afterwards she climbs the mountain with Bardia, the captain of the guard, to bury what is left, and finds Psyche alive and radiant in a hidden valley, saying she is the bride of the god and living in his palace. Orual sees no palace. Torn between the Fox's rational explanation of a mountain outlaw and Bardia's fear of a monster, she returns, stabs her own arm, and forces Psyche to promise to light a lamp and look at her husband while he sleeps. That night a storm wrecks the valley; the god appears, sends Psyche into exile, and tells Orual that she too shall be Psyche. Orual veils her face for the rest of her life. As queen she becomes a strong ruler: she wins a single combat against Argan of Phars, frees the Fox, reforms the house of Ungit under the new priest Arnom, and depends on Bardia until he dies of overwork. His widow Ansit tells her she devoured him. On a journey Orual finds a shrine where Psyche is worshipped as a goddess and hears a priest tell the tale as though the sisters had seen the palace and envied her, which provokes her written complaint. Part Two, added in her last days, records how the eunuch Tarin and Ansit showed her the truth about her loves, and how visions bring her to Psyche's labours and to the court of the gods, where reading her complaint aloud is itself the answer. There she sees Psyche restored and, in the pool, herself made beautiful, just before she dies. Geoffrey Bles published the novel in London in 1956, with a dedication to Joy Davidman, and Harcourt, Brace issued it in New York in 1957.

Top Lessons

• Love that devours

  Orual's love for Psyche, for the Fox and for Bardia is real, but it wants to possess. Lewis shows natural affection turning jealous when it cannot bear the beloved to belong to another, even to a god. Only when Orual sees what Ansit and Tarin see does she recognise the hunger in her devotion.

• Seeing and not seeing

  Psyche sees a palace where Orual sees only heather and rock. Lewis leaves open whether Orual's blindness is inability or refusal, and why each piece of evidence leaves her unpersuaded. Lewis ties her uncertainty to her wishes: if the god is real, Psyche belongs to him and not to her.

• Reason, sacrifice and the holy

  The Fox's Greek reason and the old Priest's dark, bloody religion stand opposed for most of the book. In Part Two the Fox admits that his clear philosophy left out something the Priest knew: that the divine is weighty, demanding and not reducible to explanation. Lewis lets each side be partly corrected by the other.

• Getting a face

  Orual veils her face and writes a complaint that she believes is her whole truth. When she reads it before the judges she discovers it is a small, repeated cry of self-pity. The title suggests that a person must first become honest and whole, with a true face and voice, before she can meet God.

Verified Quotes

Medical Lens

Medicine appears at the edges of the story. A pestilence with fever sweeps Glome, and Psyche goes among the sick and lays her hands on them, which turns the people first to worship and then, when the sickness persists, to demand her sacrifice. Orual herself is laid low by fever at the moment of the offering. The Fox treats grief and fear with Stoic precepts, a literary picture of philosophy offered as consolation, and the novel lets Orual find that consolation insufficient without dismissing it. Bardia's death after years of exhausting service and Orual's prolonged, hardening grief over Psyche are drawn with psychological care. Part Two proceeds through dreams and waking visions that Orual cannot tell from reality; the novel presents them as true spiritual experience, and any clinical reading of them would be interpretive.

• Part One, Chapters 4-5

  Fever spreads through Glome; Psyche touches and blesses the sick, and the people's gratitude turns to fear as the plague continues.

• Part One, Chapter 7

  Orual lies ill with fever while Psyche is prepared for the Great Offering.

• Part One, Chapters 1 and 20

  The Fox counsels the princesses with Stoic maxims on death and loss, and later grows old and dies in Orual's service.

• Part Two, Chapters 2-4

  Orual's visions of becoming Ungit, of Psyche's labours and of the court of the dead, which she cannot separate from waking life.