Till we have faces

I've just started Till We Have Faces too and am looking forward to interacting with you all on it :)
 
A verse in Proverbs says, "He who states his case first seems right, until the other comes and examines him." In this novel, Orual gets to state her case first, exhaustively, before SHE gets "examined." The book is very instructive: it analyzes, in fictional form, the way we can become isolated and insulated inside our own opinions, building mental barriers to prevent ourselves from having to consider any view but our own. It can take a mighty powerful drill for God to penetrate our armor.

And yet, having said this.....I confess that now and then I look up at the sky, and I exclaim with Orual: "Terrors and plagues ARE NOT an answer!"
 
I am re-reading this book for the first time in many years. I don't remember much from my first reading, except that I thought it a very sad story. I have heard in reviews that Lewis somehow didn't write this book as a Christian book, whatever that means. Luckily I am using an audio book to help me get threw it. If anyone knows any special meanings I should keep an eye out for, please tell. I do see this book very much like books by Macdonald.
 
Last edited:
It's a fantastic book, very subtle and deep. I find it compelling - though it's only fair to say that my wife, who also appreciates complex writing, doesn't see much in it.
 
It is interesting how all the main characters provide us with different ways people react to the gods (God).
1. There is the King and Father: He is just angry at the gods and ready to curse them and die.
2. There is the Fox: He is a rational and progressive man and if there are gods they must be rational and progressive men also.
3. There is the priest of Ungit: He is a very traditional religious person. He does what the rules tell him to do.
4. There is Redival: Who seems to care about what the gods think and seems religious, but is a hypocrite.
5. There is Orual: She wants to believe in the gods, loves the things of the gods, seeks righteousness, yet she never experiences the gods.
6. Last there is Psyche: Who is a person of simple faith, who experiences the gods, yet fails them.

Most of us seem to relate to Orual of course, We want to know God, but He is always eluding us, and we feel terrible guilt for this. Yet the only one of this group that is truly damned is Redival.
 
Peter Kreeft gives an incisive lecture with his take on the tale at this site. It's a full lecture, so insure you have time for it, but it's well worth it. He sees the story as a parable of the difference between natural and supernatural love, and how natural love will always come up short. Excellent, as Kreeft tends to be.
 
Thanks Roger, I will check out Kreeft's talk when I have time; he's wonderful.

I love, love, love this book! I love that little Psyche finds joy with her invisible lover, living in an invisible palace with riches that no one but she can see ... This is exactly like our new life in Christ when we come into intimate knowledge of Him and experience boundless joy even in the midst of difficulties!

I know Christian brothers and sisters who haven't experienced it, and they think I'm a simpleton or not facing the real world or what have you to believe in this overwhelming love which has already reconciled the world to God whether we can see it or not ... They're like Psyche's sister who fears for her sanity when she finds her living in the supposed-wilderness ... and tries to get her to snap out of her delusion!

But Psyche is the one who truly sees the real world! Her sister clinging to the rational circumstances is the one who isn't facing reality.

This story is one of the most perfect illustrations I've ever come across of the difference between me (and those like me who are insane in Love) and other Christians who haven't yet crossed that divide. We walk by faith and not by sight ... **Sigh**

Shallow Hal is a similar story actually ... :D
 
Saw that lecture PotW, liked it, though a bit of a spoiler. I have to go thru his other lectures too.

Ink, You mustn't judge your brothers and sisters whom God relates to differently. You are truly blessed, but for many of us God speaks to us in the quiet wind and we see His light thru the dense forest. He challenges us to pursue Him with a struggle but only that in our struggle do we come to work at polishing our faith so we often see that special shine of God's light. We work that acoustic and mixer controller diligently to hear His voice and are rewarded by that special quality of His song. We are encouraged by your witness of course because we know it is true and thus we pursue it with even more vigor to hear. You are an encouragement to those already saved, but the rest of the world see as insane as you say. You seem to find the rabbit trail and fly thru the woods to the Lord's palace. But we who struggle at the road to salvation pave it smoother, so the alien may also find that road. So we are encouraged by you, we read God's Word, and we pray a lot, and the Lord does reward us with glimpses of His palace. Remember Psyche for all her quick insight still never saw her husband and could be made to fail. She allowed herself to pity her sister and not to encourage her. She took her blessings for granted and thus felt she could sin with immunity to win over her sister when Oraul failed her by threatening her. :D
 
Last edited:
Eh, sorry Timmy, didn't mean that to come off as judgmental at all.

I'm just so happy in my place, it's sad to me that others don't see it.

Psyche's "sin," if you will, is that she tried to accommodate her sister's non-belief, or prove her own belief to her sister ... Her loyalty to that old life, to her beloved sister in that old life, caused her to try to prove herself ...
 
One thing that I find interesting about Faces is how it illustrates the grace of God in everyday existence, and how the presence of God ("the gods" in the context of Faces) is with us constantly.

In The Last Battle, Lewis was painting an imaginative picture of the Eschaton, the Final Judgement, the unmaking of the Old Narnia and the inauguration of the New Narnia. There was a transition point, the Stable Door, through which everyone had to pass (or not, as they chose). There was a Then and Now, a There and Here. This was a beautiful portrayal of one aspect of the Kingdom.

But in Faces, Lewis addresses the more nuanced reality of the There and Here coexisting side-by-side, the World and the Kingdom "interpenetrating each other" (as one scholar once put it), separated by barriers that can be as strong as fortress walls but can be as thin as paper, with Grace always ready to burst through into our everyday lives. This, too, is a reality of the Kingdom, one as real as the Eschaton is.

I think one way (not the only way) of understanding Psyche (whose name means "Spirit") is that she's the person, or the facet of all of us, who is responsive to that Grace, pushing at the barriers, wanting to burst through them. Because of this responsiveness, she can become a channel of that grace to those around here, reflecting the Light from the Other Side into our world. Remember, it was Psyche who could see the God's palace, and was invited into it.

One way of understanding Orual is that she's the prosaic person, or facet of all of us, who's willing to "settle", to drop her vision, to accept the lesser grace for whatever reason (because that's all she thinks she deserves, because she doesn't want to get her hopes up and be disappointed, whatever.) To her, Grace represents a threat to her tidy, ordered world. She wants the barriers between her and that which lies on the other side to be thick and strong (remember the thick brick walls she put around the well, so she wouldn't have to hear the chains moaning in the wind?) But Grace loves her, too, and will strive to break through those barriers no matter what the cost to Him and to her. That's what the final scene in the first portion of the book was about: when she stumbles across the shrine and hears the Sacred Story and recognizes herself. God allowed that to happen that He might break through and "drench her with visions" - all the grace she'd denied and been trying to keep at bay for all those years came flooding in on her as she wrote her indictment against the gods.

One thing I find interesting, and it's so minor that it can be easily missed: the classic legend of Cupid and Psyche states that there were two sisters who came to pressure Psyche on the mountain, and Lewis keeps that in the Sacred Story of Faces. Yet we know from his narrative that there was only one, and Orual even tries to correct the priest of the shrine as he's telling the Story. But the priest insists that the Story holds that there were two sisters. What did Lewis mean by this? In what sense were there two sisters, when we know that in actual fact there was only Orual?
 
Wow, you are right, I never thought about it before -- I mean, I knew Lewis had changed the myth slightly so that there was only one sister of Psyche, but I never noticed this discrepancy when they story is retold by the priest ... I may have to read it all again now and think on that.

I love, love, love your analysis of the difference betweem the two sisters as to who they repersent for us. Very nicely done! :)
 
I am about a third way thru the book. Right where they find Psyche alive in the mountain valley. Very powerful story. Gave me wired dreams all night.:eek:

You seemed to have doubled posted Ink.
 
I am about half way thru the book now, but I am listening to a number of lectures on the book on line (including the one PotW recommended). As far as PotW's question of why the sacred story or canon story is referred to in Lewis' retelling. It might be that this helps those like me who don't know the canon story and thus Lewis is highlighting the new tragedy he is bringing out in his story. Latter on we are given dreams by Orual of Psyche's trails, both to remind the reader to what happened to Psyche and to again highlight the difference between Lewis' story and the canon. Remember in the canon story the sisters are just jealous temptress whom the killed off half way thru the book. In Lewis' story Orual life is a redeeming sacrifice that the gods seem to curse for her a sin's against Psyche and thus makes her trails easier. In the canon story Psyche gets thru her trails just because the gods seem to take pity on her over Venus jealousy . However we mustn't see either the canon story or the Lewis story as pure allegories of the gospels. Their is no clear Christ figure, definitely not Cupid nor Psyche. In Oraul and Psyche's discussion often we see the discussions between Weston and the green Lady of Perelandra. Yet Oraul is never the antagonist in Lewis's story. She is not an allegory of Satan. In some ways she is like Ransom. In many ways TWHF is like the Space Trilogy especially Perelandra. But in Perelandra Ransom is much more of a Christ figure than Oraul. Oraul is at time like Satan at first then like Christ later, but never quite like either. She does become sin but there is not pure sacrifice in Oraul or even in Psyche.
Does anyone know who might be the closest to a Christ figure in this book? Saying Psyche is too easy. In the end she is too much like an Eve or even more a Mary (she is even called the Blessed).

The biggest problem with TWHF is that it is a tragedy to the highest degree and not fun to read. I guess this is why I haven't reread this book in 30 years, to the point I had forgotten much of the book. I didn't want to face how sad the story was.
 
The reason I mentioned the discrepancy was that I think Lewis was making a subtle point here. He knew, and would know the reader knew, that only Orual went to the mountain to pressure Psyche. Why, then, did he not only include the classic tale with two sisters, but call attention to it through Orual's protestation at the shrine? I think he was making a very subtle but important point; I'm just trying to fathom what it might be.

One possibility I'm still chewing over is that there were, in a sense, two sisters: the Orual who loved Psyche and truly wanted the best for her, and the Orual who was proud and wanted to jealously possess Psyche as her own. Both of these are expressions of natural love, or where natural love can end up without divine redemption.

It's easy for us to see the problem with the second Orual - that's just pride and possessiveness wearing fancy clothes. But the first Orual is also dangerous, though more subtly. The first Orual professes to want the good of the beloved, but defines that good in earthly terms. A good home, a comfortable life - what we'd call these days A Fulfilled Life. But the fulfillments would all be in terms of earthly things, tangible goods. Fill a life with enough of those and there's no room for the Greatest Goods, the Good the world cannot even contain. Notice that Psyche had to be stripped of everything and chained to a tree on a mountainside before she could be given the unearthly goods.

For my part, I'd call Faces a trying story, but not one that ends on a sad note. The second part of the tale, the postscript, as it were, sheds light on much of the earlier tale, as the workings of Grace become more clear even to Orual as she looks back on her life. She (and the reader) can look back and see how her struggle was, in a way, a just sentence, but also a redemptive work. Remember the sentence of the god pronounced on Orual in the valley after she had tricked Psyche into breaking her word: "You, too, shall be Psyche." The latter visions revealed that in a mystical way, Orual had walked beside Psyche through all her trials and bore part of her burden (in a sense expressing Gal 6:2). And, of course, the other meaning of the phrase became clear at the end, when Orual herself met the god face to face - she, too, was Psyche, in the sense of being loved and even desired. The God's love for Psyche was easier to see because she was more receptive; His love for Orual was more indirectly played, not because of God but because of Orual. The whole story is about Orual's struggle to seek, and ultimately obtain, redemption.
 
Re-reading ...

PoTW said:
One possibility I'm still chewing over is that there were, in a sense, two sisters: the Orual who loved Psyche and truly wanted the best for her, and the Orual who was proud and wanted to jealously possess Psyche as her own. Both of these are expressions of natural love, or where natural love can end up without divine redemption.
I like this interpretation. Orual was, herself, both the sisters in the myth as it came to be passed down.

I am re-reading the book now, and enjoying it very much. What struck me particularly yesterday was when the priest came to the King to demand Psyche as a sacrifice to the gods. The Fox points out that his request is illogical because first the priest said they had to root out who was the Accursed, who had sinned against the gods and become cursed, and then ended by saying they had to give the gods the purest and the best. How could the sacrifice be, at one and the same time, Accursed and the purest? To the logical mind of the Fox, it didn't make sense, it had to be one or the other.

But when you look at the cross, Jesus was both the Accursed and the purest and best. It doesn't make sense to the logical mind, but in the spirit realm, of course, it's not so black and white, Jesus can be both cursed and pure. Cursed for our sins, pure and sinless from His own life and actions. I don't know why I had never noticed this before in the story, but it really caught my attention this time around.

I think that this quality of being "beyond logic" is woven throughout the story, in large part through the contrast of the Fox and Bardia's disparate understandings of what has happened to Psyche. Orual comes to the conclusion that it doesn't matter which of their speculations is right, whether the Brute or a bandit has captured Psyche, it isn't to be borne. Orual herself is given the choice, and the encouragement, to believe Psyche's interpretation of it, that her lover is a god ... The true solution is neither the Fox's nor Bardia's. although it contains elements of both. When you move from the natural world, and even from the "superstitious" world, and into the realm of the gods, then "both and" becomes more possible than "either or." If you see what I mean?

I was also quite moved by Orual's glimpse of the castle on the banks of the stream in the early-morning twilight. For those moments, she saw what Psyche saw ... but she consciously chose to reject it, to make it an illusion rather than the reality it was ... Now and then I think we all get glimpses of heaven, feelings that the veil which separates this world from the next is quite thin, and if we allow ourselves to believe, we see we are already there. But then this world crowds back into center stage, and the castle disappears.
 
Interesting thing about being pure and clean, you go out into the world and your get dirty. My pastor came to church in a white sweater today and right away when he was away from home and couldn't change he splattered coffee on the sweater. Psyche was pure and obedient and by Orual's very nature she fouls Psyche. The harder Orual tries she can only foul Psyche. When Cupid sends Psyche out to see Orual, does He not know that he sends His pure obedient Bride out to be corrupted and she can only be made clean again by His forgiveness. But she is sent out into exile. So who is the Christ figure for her. Orual, the one who tempted her. Not Cupid, he never joins her on her journey. and takes her sin on him. Maybe their two halves of Orual, the temptress and savior as PotW is trying to allude. But I am not sure. It seem to me that Orual just means to be good but as I said all her goodness compared to Psyche's pureness is just filth and the filth pills on to become evil to where Orual will even kill Psyche.
 
I am about 3/4th thru the book now. PotW pointed out how the gods renamed Orual Psyche, but also later the gods renamed Orual Ungit the goddess. I don't think that means she becomes a god like the emperors of Rome. Ungit is a formless statue in her temple so maybe because of Orual's veil she is formless. I am not sure of the meaning. Orual also splits herself into two being between the Queen and Orual.

Another interesting point is how negative marriage is seen in this book as compared to other books by Lewis like THS. In the Space Trilogy Lewis paints marriage in a positive light that builds up the couple. But here in TWHF is very much a downer especially for the women. Marriage just leads to death in child birth or fatness. Lady Ansit and Orual both love Bardia so marriage just leads to jealousy. The only romantic marriage was that of the gods. I know this book was written at a time just before Lewis was married to Joy and before he knew she had cancer. He did dedicate the book to Joy. While THS was written while he was a bachelor. Maybe he lost his romantic view of marriage. Again it is a interesting question.

The strange thing about TWHF is that the books covers so much about the subject losing a loved one and blaming God. It follows many of the same points as Lewis' A Grief Observed written after Joy's death. Yet as I said TWHF was written before Lewis married Joy and found out she had cancer. It is almost as if he was being set up for a true lost in writing this book.
 
I think that's part of the wonder and elegance of Faces: it's a mystical story trying to make a mystical point about life's intricacy and complexity. It's not a nice, linear plot with clearly defined characters - everything intertwines and enmeshes and interpenetrates in paradox. I think that's part of the purpose of The Fox in the story. He represents the place of discursive reason that attempts to line everything up and tie everything in so that it all makes sense to our reason. But life isn't like that. You see Lewis bring this out in the scene in the Throne Room when the Priest of Ungit shows up to identify Psyche as the Accursed who must be offered as a Bride. The Fox tries to point out the logical contradiction of having the Accursed also be the Perfect, suitable to be the Bride of the god, but gets nowhere, because it's a mystery beyond the ability of reason to reconcile.

So yes, Orual is both Psyche - the Bride of the god - and Ungit. The entire tale is a story of the struggle between the Psyche-Orual, seeking God and beauty and love, and Orual-Ungit, seeking to devour and consume and bury everything near it. Which will win? By appearances at the end of the first part of the tale, Orual-Ungit is clearly out ahead. She has devoured Bardia, she has driven Redival away, she has (for all she knows) damned Psyche, the girl who once beheld the sunshine has nearly been submerged in the faceless, veiled Queen. But then God shoots one last, desperate arrow, almost a Hail Mary pass, to try to pull her out of herself: the accusation implied in the Sacred Story of Psyche that the priest at the Shrine tells. This causes the Queen to do the last thing she would ever have dreamed of doing: dig up Orual herself so she can bring her case against the gods.

This is why the last portion of the book is so critical. It happens after the incident at the Shrine, and it is all about the Queen/Orual's self-discovery. By digging up the life and memories she thought she'd buried, she (unknowingly) gives God a chance to speak as well, to add another viewpoint to her tidy, tucked-in history. She finds herself "drenched with visions" - not only memories she'd forgotten, but mystical visions that speak volumes about her, such as the one where her father comes and forces her to dig until she's deep in the dirt, at which point he brings her to the mirror to look at her own face and speak the words: "I am Ungit."

One thing I've come to appreciate over the years is that, in a sense, the three princesses represent facets of all of us. Psyche represents the part that is looking for God, Redival represents the part that simply wants to live in the natural order, and Orual represents the part that wants to bring all things under control. Redival is a minor character and thus often overlooked, but I think she's more important than first appears. Lewis hints at this in a couple of vignettes in the last part of the book: one a memory of just Orual and Redival when they were small girls, before any shadow of sorrow or loss fell across their lives, playing in the sun and simply enjoying each other. They were living "from the center", as children are wont to do. Only later, when the tragedies began and they had to start calculating to protect themselves, did the cunning and manipulation start to manifest. But there was loss, too - you see this in the conversation between Orual and the young man who'd been castrated for flirting with Redival, and eventually became a powerful eunuch in some emperor's court. He passed a memory back to Orual - that Redival had been lonely, and felt abandoned by Orual once Psyche came along and she devoted all her attention to the new baby. This gobsmacks Orual, who'd never seen that she did Redival any wrong, but it was a sin of omission, not commission. Natural love is like that - it doesn't give, it invests. Once the "return" from Redival started dropping, especially relative to the "return" from devotion to Psyche, Orual switched her investment.

I think Redival found her redemption in her marriage to the prince. It was a problem off Orual's hands, but hopefully he was a good enough husband to work with her as she was. It's certainly true that her son inherited Glome's throne, so in a way that story came full circle.
 
Very good analysis, PoTW. Very insightful.

One thought about Timmy's comment that TWHF shows marriage in a bad light -- we have to keep in mind that Orual is the storyteller, and she has no reason to think kindly of romance/marriage. She is the one whose perception of marriage we receive through her story, so of course she cannot give us a good one -- her father is a pig; she is jealous of Ansit; and she hates Psyche's marriage to to god.

But in the "ravings" of Psyche that she records for us, we get the true perspective on marriage. Psyche is happy and healthy in her marriage to the god. And if you asked for her perspective on marriage, she probably would have pointed out that Bardia's love match with Ansit was a happy enough reflection of her own divine happiness.

I guess what I am saying is, we cannot trust Orual's view of marriage. Ansit is grieving when she complains of how the Queen worked her husband to death, but we have no way of knowing whether her marriage was a happy one -- and no reason to believe it wasn't.

I finished the book ... it is really so good. I had to stop and ruminate a long while over the vision-Fox's promise to Orual as she went for judgment -- something like, "You may have infinite fear and infinite hope, but you may be sure that whatever else you may get, you will not get justice."

And then Orual's final declaration to the god, that she didn't need answers, because he himself was the answer. **Sigh**

So much glorious meaning.
 
Back
Top