Till We Have Faces: A Myth Retold

There’s so much to be said for this novel – so many layers to consider. To begin with, it’s written as a new light on the story of Cupid and Psyche from Apuleius’s Metamorphoses, presented as the true story behind (or, perhaps, the rebuttal to) the ancient myth. In an interesting twist, the Graeco-Roman story is set in a barbarian land prone to believing in such things, whilst a wise Greek character is introduced who critiques pagan spirituality through his rationalism. “Lies of priests and poets!” he says. It’s a sort of ironic twist, as the heroine struggles to understand which is real: the spirit-world of Greek gods and faeries (as represented by the barbarian religion), or cold hard rationalism (as represented by the show more Greek). Of course, the trick of it all is reading as a Christian, knowing the whole time that the author himself is a prolific Christian apologist. Just what is Lewis doing, entering into this world of gods versus rationalism? Why is he presenting a choice between two philosophies when he agrees with neither? Unlike many of his other works, Lewis waits to the very end before revealing his own philosophy, inviting the reader to endure the tension and darkness of the pagan world for most of the book. It was a brilliant book in this way, as though the apostle Paul himself decided to borrow a bit of John’s knack for artful poetry, weaving together a drama for the purpose of converting both the spiritualist and the naturalist. I can see him now, sitting down on Mars Hill, saying, “Let me tell you a story…” What depths there are to this story, even before the story itself is considered! And what is the story? The gods have spoken to one sister and not the other, inviting one to be wedded to the god himself. The one who cannot see (the story’s heroine) gathers all the powers of her selfish love to convince her sister to break faith with the god, which she does. The remainder of the story is the tragedy which results, both sisters being cast out in a sense, as the heroine lives the rest of her days as queen, not knowing what has become of her sister, only that she has been consigned to some terrible fate for her faithlessness – her life ruined for giving up the god she loved for the sister she loved. The queen’s sin toward her sister becomes a source of great bitterness and shame as her soul shrinks and dies within her, though she attributes her miseries to the cruelty of the gods who never revealed enough of themselves for her to have believed her sister’s report. She finally, in her dying days, has the opportunity to make her case in court against the gods, at which point her truest complaint comes spilling out – she was mine, and what right had you to take her?! “That there should be gods at all, there’s our misery and bitter wrong. There’s no room for you and us in the same world.” It is only now at the end of her days (when she can find words to voice her truest complaint) that the gods can hear and give answer, as “How can they meet us face to face till we have faces?” Again, it’s a brilliant work with much besides all this – a most non-Christian Christian apology for the God who seemingly shows Himself too little to the friends of His Bride.

As a footnote, I'll add that I just read a book of Lewis's letters, and he often remarks that this was his personal favorite among the books he'd written, though it did not enjoy an enthusiatic reception in his day. show less

The title of Till We Have Faces has always intrigued me, and I will say here and now that it has to be one of the best titles I have ever seen. I went into the book not really sure what to expect, and Lewis surprised me greatly with the story he chose to tell. Who would have thought he had such sensitivity, to write from the perspective of a female character with almost frightening insight?

Till We Have Faces is an imaginative retelling of the myth of Psyche, who was married to a god but was not allowed to see her husband who came to her in the night. According to the myth, Psyche's jealous sisters convinced her to take a lamp and look upon her husband to know what he really was. When Psyche does this, the god's jealous mother gets show more power over her and sends her to wander the earth and perform impossible tasks, until the day when she accomplishes them all and becomes a goddess herself. Psyche is then reunited with her husband and the story ends happily. Lewis chose to tell this story from the perspective of one of Psyche's sisters, Orual. This choice breathes new life into an old myth and allows Lewis to explore what must have been for him a very different landscape: the heart and mind of a woman.

Orual is ugly. Not just plain, not just mildly unattractive; ugly. She is three years older than her pretty sister Redival, and they live with their father the King in the poor country of Glome. The country is in decline and the King is unable to get heirs. When he marries a young princess from a neighboring country, she dies in childbed bearing him another daughter. This daughter is Psyche. From the first, Orual loves Psyche more than any other and cares for her like a mother. And Psyche grows into a perfectly beautiful and loving girl. She is the darling of the kingdom, until one day the Priest of Ungit comes to tell the King that his perfect daughter must be sacrificed to turn the fortunes of the land. Psyche will be given to the son of Ungit, a Shadowbrute who will take her as his wife — a sort of death in itself, and certainly thought to entail physical death as well.

Orual is enraged by her father's selfish acquiescence to the people's demands, and he beats her for her attempts to stop the sacrifice. Psyche is carried away up the Mountain while Orual lies wounded and ill, and it is many days before Orual is strong enough to attempt the journey up the Mountain to gather whatever is left of her sister and give it burial. But when Orual makes the journey (in company with Bardia, the captain of the King's guard), she is amazed to find her sister not only alive, but glowing with health and happiness. Orual cannot see the glittering castle that Psyche says is her home with the god her husband, and is terrified that her sister is being duped by an outlaw or some such villain, or a monstrous god. For Psyche may never see her husband when he comes to her in the night.

Orual is faced with a choice. Either she must leave her sister in what she thinks is deluded happiness, or she must convince or force Psyche to leave her husband. Orual tells Psyche that she will kill herself unless Psyche agrees to look upon her husband (thinking that the sight of his monstrosity will convince Psyche to return to Orual). When Psyche lights the lamp and looks upon her husband, a curse falls on her from Ungit, the god's jealous mother, and both she and Orual are condemned to an anguish scarcely imaginable for the rest of their lives.

Orual starts the book in great anger against the gods. Far from not believing in them, she sees them as malevolent and selfish beings who sadistically enjoy the struggles of humanity. The book begins with Orual's tired anger:

I am old now and have not much to fear from the anger of the gods. I have no husband or child, nor hardly a friend, through whom they can hurt me. My body, this lean carrion that still has to be washed and fed and have clothes hung about it daily with so many changes, they may kill as soon as they please. The succession is provided for. My crown passes to my nephew.

Being, for all these reasons, free from fear, I will write in this book what no one who has happiness would dare to write. I will accuse the gods, especially the god who lives on the Grey Mountain.

Most of the book is written in this attitude, like an accusation in a courtroom against the gods. At the end, Orual is brought before the gods to make her case. She speaks her anger and her hurt and her pain to the assembly, and stops when she realizes she is repeating herself again and again. She sees what she has done and what she is, how she has pushed the Orual part of her down and allowed the cold Queen part of her to dominate. She sees how her manipulation of Psyche has led to the agony both have suffered, and learns that she too "has been Psyche" and has borne most of the suffering for her sister in her dreams and visions. One of Psyche's tasks was to separate a huge mound of different kinds of seeds, and not make one mistake. Orual sees the scene and notices the ants helping Psyche — and remembers a terrible dream in which she was an ant carrying seeds on her back for an eternity. Orual has been allowed to carry much of Psyche's pain. There is mercy mixed with judgment.

Orual sees her own awfulness and the ugly, blood-gorged state of her soul. For when her father died she succeeded him as Queen, and used her faithful servants Bardia and the Fox (her Greek teacher/slave) to the point where they were sucked dry. Bardia's wife Ansit finally brings that point home to the Queen, and Orual is miserable when she sees what she is. This is what was meant when Orual realizes the gods are silent because, all her life, she has lacked the ability to hear them. She has worn a veil ever since becoming Queen because of her ugliness, and it is a metaphor for her inner ugliness as well. Orual writes,

When the time comes to you at which you will be forced to utter the speech which has lain at the center of your soul for years, which you have, all that time, idiot-like, been saying over and over, you'll not talk about joy of words. I saw well why the gods do not speak to us openly, nor let us answer. Till that word can be dug out of us, why should they hear the babble that we think we mean? How can they meet us face to face till we have faces?

Faces — not veils.

There is so much in this book I feel I am only swirling the deeper waters with a hesitant toe. The characters are amazingly drawn. I cannot say enough about Orual's narration and clean spare beauty of the prose. And the philosophy underneath is just staggering. Lewis has so much to say about the relationships between deity and humanity, and the way our human-ness both impedes and helps us. The book reminded me somewhat of Ursula K. Le Guin's The Tombs of Atuan with its descriptions of the terribleness of Ungit and how holiness is always found in dark places reeking of sacrifice and blood. I was also reminded of a more recent book, Jo Graham's Black Ships, although the underpinning philosophy in that book is pretty much non-existent compared to this one, and it's much more of an adventure story.

In other ways the book reminded me of Nathaniel Hawthorne's The Scarlet Letter. The stories are very different, but there is a kinship of excellent writing and powerful insight into the human heart. Hawthorne's graceful renderings of human experience and pain finds an echo, likely unintentional, in Till We Have Faces. There were also echoes of Lewis' Perelandra, especially with the Lady whose joy in her Lord is so much like Psyche's adoration of her husband. But Till We Have Faces cannot be judged solely by comparison to other works. It is one of the most unique stories I have ever read.

Lewis dedicated this book to his wife, Joy Davidman, and I don't think her influence over him and over this particular work can be overestimated. There is no way that a man could write like this about the feelings and thoughts of a woman without intimate knowledge of a most exceptional woman. Lewis' versatility as a writer is astounding.

I read this book in one sitting and I came away with a sort of gasp at the beautiful complexities of it. I am still pondering it and I know the themes of this story will stay with me. I highly recommend it. show less

When I read this as a teenager, I loved it: when I read it again five years later, it infuriated me. Lewis has a narrow, venomous view of love and god and fate and choice and, well, everything; and a fluid manner of proselytizing that makes his self-righteousness seem oh so perfectly reasonable. And unlike his Narnia books, it's impossible to separate plot from religion here. The non-theist reader is intentionally isolated and totally unforgiven. Screw you, Lewis. Conviction doesn't change a dream into a fact.
I've never felt less sympathetic towards theism than when I read this.

When the time comes to you at which you will be forced at last to utter the speech which has lain at the center of your soul for years, which you have, all that show more time, idiot-like, been saying over and over, you'll not talk about joy of words.

Yes. Oh, if he had only stopped there!

But then.

I saw well why the gods do not speak to us openly, nor let us answer. Till that word can be dug out of us, why should they hear the babble that we think we mean? How can they meet us face to face till we have faces?

Huh. Why should the gods bother to help us when we're so stupid and wrong? BECAUSE IT IS THE RIGHT THING TO DO. The idea that a god would need a better reason than that is awful. But Lewis seems to think that if you cannot teach the alphabet to the ants, you may as well pour boiling water down their holes. Yeah? well, "I expect more." show less

I loved Till We Have Faces. I have never read any of C. S. Lewis's books for adults. I recall having a few religious friends in high school recommend The Screwtape Letters to me, but I shied away. As a child, I read a few of the Narnia books. I stopped because something nebulous about A Horse and His Boy made twelve-year-old me extremely uncomfortable. As an adult, I realized that the nebulous thing was racism. But even before I realized that, I'd been turned off of Lewis. He didn't appeal to me.

I might have to revisit that, because I thought Will We Have Faces was wonderful. I thought it was beautifully written. It evoked classical mythology so authentically but was simultaneously very accessible to the modern reader. It also presents show more some intriguing philosophical questions.

Orual and Psyche represent two very different views of religious belief. Orual struggles against the gods, angry about their interventions or lack thereof. Orual trusts in herself instead of the gods and becomes her own woman independent of all others, god and man alike. Psyche, by contrast, trusts in the gods implicitly, letting her life be guided by their actions. Psyche comes to religion from a place of service and humility.

Although Part II undoes Orual's characterization, bringing her firmly back into the religious camp, the bulk of the book focuses on her original journey. While Orual represents many of the weaknesses of the human condition, I connected with her. That rage against the supernatural's indifference, that decision to rely only on herself -- it spoke to me.

Orual is not a good person. She loves Psyche jealously in the classical, self-centered sense of the word. She cannot let Psyche go. But her actions in response to the gods' cruelty were so relatable to the modern, secular human. Nothing like an ancient tale to connect us to modernity.

Orual ends up discovering that until we can judge and assess ourselves, we cannot ask the gods to judge us. But the happiness she gains from this revelation is no greater than Psyche's happiness from her pure trust in the gods. So who should we aspire to be: Orual, who discovers her faith, or Psyche, who has it all along? show less

I read "The Chronicles of Narnia" when a child, which I believe was a statutory requirement for American children born between 1958 and 1970. I went on to read Lewis's Martian books, eg "Perelandra", and suddenly *smack* the Jesus factor hit me and I lost my taste for Lewis. No chance of that here, since this is a retelling of the classical myth of Cupid and Psyche.

Aphrodite, for reasons of her own, gets wildly jealous of a mortal beauty, and demands of her local enforcer/priest that he sacrifice Psyche to appease her wrath; her son goes to collect the sacrifice, and instead falls in love with her; he spirits (pardon pun) Psyche off to his Palace of Luuuv; and then all Hades breaks loose.

In Lewis's skillful hands, the retelling of the show more tale becomes a cautionary tale of political/religious power concentrating in one set of hands and the cruelties and idiocies that follow inevitably therefrom; and the horrid cruelty of the beautiful to each other, the nature of sibling rivalry, and why sisters should always be kept apart, preferably in tiger cages, until breeding age is attained. (Okay, I added that last part.)

It's a marvelous story, fraught with conflicts among a powerful family of women, and almost unbearably sad in many places. It speaks loudly of Lewis's undeniable abilities as a storyteller. It makes all the sense in the world that this should rank in his canon with "The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe", and yet somehow it doesn't. I suspect the lack of Christian symbolism hurts the book in his fans' eyes. But I am here to say that, for the non-Christian looking for an entree into world of Lewis, this is the place to go. What a delight to discover this book at last!

Recommended, with a shooing motion towards the bookery of your choice and a firm admonishment to buy it soon. show less

First alerted to the charm of this work after reading Apuleius' GOLDEN ASS in Theology School, and reading that Lewis was "haunted" for years by the the story of Psyche.

Lewis provides his version of the often retold story of Cupid and Psyche. The Narrator is Psyche's older uglier sister Orual, who begins by having bones to pick with the gods. She discovers that her first-hand accusations are tainted by her own shortcomings. It appears that Lewis echoes Book of Job, in which the God of Levins and Wind asks those who challenge him, by questioning them, "Who are you to ask me?"

In this work, Orual herself explains: "it’s a story belonging to a different world, a world in which the gods show themselves clearly and don’t torment men with show more glimpses, nor unveil to one what they hide from another, nor ask you to believe what contradicts your eyes and ears and nose and tongue and fingers. In such a world (is there such? it’s not ours, for certain) I would have walked aright. The gods themselves would have been able to find no fault in me. And now to tell my story as if I had had the very sight they had denied me . . . is it not as if you told a cripple’s story and never said he was lame, or told how a man betrayed a secret but never said it was after twenty hours of torture? And I saw all in a moment how the false story would grow and spread and be told all over the earth; and I wondered how many of the other sacred stories are just such twisted falsities as this."

Once Orual realizes that the gods have lied to her--the sacred stories that spread through worlds are no better than the tales invented by commoners--she resolved to write out her accusations: "I could never be at peace again till I had written my charge against the gods. It burned me from within. It quickened; I was with book, as a woman is with child."

Why must holy places be dark places? The gods set Orual up for torture. Orual loved her dear little sister Psyche and then separated them, and then drove jealousy between them. Orual realizes, far too late, and so perduring and sharply, that "there is no creature (toad, scorpion, or serpent) so noxious to man as the gods." And they never have to answer.

After the death of the man she loved, at trial, Orual reads her complaint aloud. "Perhaps a dozen times", each time certain it was her own, in experience and voice. Then the judge stopped her, and in the silence asked "Are you answered?" Yes.

The complaint was the answer. "To have heard myself making it was to be answered." And "When the time comes to you at which you will be forced at last to utter the speech which has lain at the centre of your soul for years, which you have, all that time, idiot-like, been saying over and over, you’ll not talk about joy of words. I saw well why the gods do not speak to us openly, nor let us answer. Till that word can be dug out of us, why should they hear the babble that we think we mean? How can they meet us face to face till we have faces?"

In the second process of the trial--all trials and all Greek myths are process theology--a grandfather Fox shows her the pictures of what she just endured, but as Psyche, beautiful beloved Psyche, is enduring it. How? "That was one of the true things I used to say to you. Don't you remember? We're all limbs and parts of one Whole. Hence of each other. And "Another bore nearly all the anguish".

Through all the enemies and wailing Psyche endures, and we say we love her, "She had no more dangerous enemies than us." And in that old terrible time when she appears cruel, perhaps she suffers. "This age of ours will one day be the distant past. And the Divine Nature can change the past. Nothing is yet in its true form." Clearly, our Author is a Process Theologian. We are silenced with joy.

In a kind of postscript, CS Lewis writes: "This re-interpretation of an old story has lived in the author’s mind, thickening and hardening with the years, ever since he was an undergraduate. That way, he could be said to have worked at it most of his life. Recently, what seemed to be the right form presented itself and themes suddenly interlocked: the straight tale of barbarism, the mind of an ugly woman, dark idolatry and pale enlightenment at war with each other and with vision, and the havoc which a vocation, or even a faith, works on human life." show less

I read - and reread - the Narnia books when I was a growing up. I read Lewis’s Space trilogy in high school and since then I’ve read some of his essays and at least one book about Lewis himself. I’ve had nebulous intentions of reading more by Lewis for years. I finally read Till We Have Faces and it surpassed my expectations.

It is a retelling of the Cupid and Psyche myth, from the perspective of Psyche’s sister, Orual, who sets out to write about her relationship with her sister and her complaints against the gods. It’s a story about love and (in)justice. All I knew beforehand about the Cupid and Psyche myth was that it had similarities to East of the Sun and West of the Moon and Beauty and the Beast. Some of the narrative show more beats were familiar, but not very many.

Till We Have Faces is surprising, powerful and occasionally heartbreaking. Orual is fierce her in love and anger (and in bitterness, too) and her relationships are complex, often more so than is first apparent. She’s not so much an unreliable narrator as a biased one, and I found it really interesting how that plays out in the end. Also interesting is all the ways in which Orual does not conform to conventional ideas of womanhood - not as a woman of Glome nor as the protagonist of novel written in the 1950s.
(Maybe she’s even surprising and unconventional by modern standards? I don’t know, I’d want to read the book again, and carefully, before making that sort of claim.)

I listened to the audiobook narrated by Nadia May. It was excellent.

I am old now and have not much to fear from the anger of the gods. I have no husband or child, nor hardly a friend, through whom they can hurt me. My body, this lean carrion that still has to be washed and fed and have clothes hung about it daily with so many changes, they may kill as soon as they please. The succession is provided for. My crown passes to my nephew.
Being, for all these reasons, free from fear, I will write in this book what no one who has happiness would dare to write. show less