'Until We Have Faces' by C.S. Lewis

In this timeless tale of two deadly princesses – one beautiful and one unattractive – CS Lewis reworks the classic myth of Cupid and Psyche into an enduring piece of contemporary fiction. This is the story of Orual, Psyche's bitter and ugly older sister, who loves Psyche in a possessive and harmful way. Much to Orual's frustration, Psyche is loved by Cupid, the god of love himself, setting the troubled Orual on a path of moral development.

Set against the backdrop of Glome, a barbaric, pre-Christian world, the struggles between sacred and profane love are illuminated when Orual discovers that we cannot understand the intent of the gods “until we have faces” and sincerity in our souls and selves. .

MY THOUGHTS:

I had seen this highly recommended adult CS Lewis costume and discovered my retro copy in a second-hand bookstore. I'm so glad I bought it, because of the spotlight it shines on human nature. This is Lewis's adaptation of the Greek myth of Psyche and Cupid. (Okay, I recommend you stop reading here and now and Google a quick summary of the myth. This may sound like spoilers, but it's really not. Because Lewis comes from a place that expects us to know this, and he is about to turn the myth on its head. If we don't know anything about it, there's no way we'll be as dazzled as he intends. And that would be a waste of the book.)

(Are you back? Good.) This story begins in the nation of Glome under the reign of King Trom. Lewis tells his story from the point of view of Princess Orual, Psyche's beautiful older sister, who is born to take on a stressful role in the palace and soon realizes that she is notably ugly. Orual appears in real myth as one of the evil sisters who convince Psyche to unmask her incognito husband, leading to her own terrible downfall. But Lewis' Orual insists that his motives were much purer than the myth would have us believe, and that is what this story is about.

All people worship at the temple of Aphrodite, which is known throughout Glome as Ungit. The goddess is represented by an ancient, rough, bumpy rock that seemingly came from nowhere. The temple's frightening old priest exudes what Orual has come to consider a 'sacred' smell; pigeon blood, burnt fat, singed hair, wine and rancid incense. One day, he demands the beautiful young Psyche as a sacrifice. She is being blamed for the famine and unrest in the land, for supposedly 'imitating the gods' and stealing the worship that is due only to Ungit. And a perfect sacrifice is needed for the temple of Ungit anyway.

Orual's desperate measures cannot save Psyche, who is the treasure of her heart. But instead of dying on the mountaintop, Psyche is rescued by an anonymous savior who takes her as his wife but refuses to let her see his face. However, Psyche thrives in her new lifestyle, until Orual discovers that she has survived and immediately seeks to undermine her happiness with doubts about the supposed deity's identity. Convinced that she has only Psyche's best interests at heart, Orual receives support from her two most trusted advisors, after constructing the story in a carefully biased manner to maximize her settlement.

The girls' beloved tutor and mentor, known as Fox, is a captured slave from Greece who maintains the vision and wisdom of his homeland, which is impressive but limited. He has a Greek inclination to explain everything through science and ignore everything that doesn't filter the evidence from his five senses. The invisible realm is brushed aside as inconsequential and non-existent.

On the other hand, Bardia, the captain of the royal army, has enormous respect for all folklore and superstition of the gods. These two counselors poke fun at each other's worldviews, but get along well enough to work in sync and, interestingly, come to the same conclusion that Psyche's invisible 'husband' must be harmful.

This is well-intentioned intrusion taken to the extreme. The trio become convinced that they have reached an inevitable conclusion, Occam's Razor. They decide that Psyche's husband must be a bestial being, dirty at worst, or a cunning trickster at best, otherwise why would he refuse to let Psyche see his face? If the simplest possibility is probably correct, he would certainly let Psyche see him if he had nothing sinister to hide. Whenever the possibility that her happy, healthy sister might be telling the total truth crosses Orual's mind, she dismisses it as unfeasible. Thus, his love interference turns into intense emotional blackmail with terrible consequences.

The entirety of Part One is narrated as Orual's fervent self-defense to protect herself against intolerable guilt. She resents the gods for misrepresenting her and appeals to the reader to agree with her and judge the gods as capricious, distant, and utterly irrational. Why make it so incredibly ugly if they have control over these things? And why remain so silent in response to desperate calls for answers? How should she react to their non-response other than with bitterness and confusion?

I tell you, it's easy to hope, 'Yes, you will, Orual' and keep turning the pages to see if there will be an answer to this.

Without divulging plot points, what unfolds is jaw-dropping. In a nutshell, Orual's own complaint It is the answer of the gods. It has everything to do with humans' successful self-deception. We are adept at pulling the wool over our own eyes to present ourselves in the best light possible. Desperate not to face the truth about our deepest, most dubious motivations, we invent acceptable-sounding jargon that we hope the gods will buy into, because we have bought into it ourselves. Orual discovers that one of the main reasons the gods don't seem to respond is that they don't deign to bother responding to insincere babble that we think we really mean. For, 'how can they meet us face to face until we have faces?' Aha, we know that when the book title comes to meet us, we have struck gold.

(I believe Lewis presents a similar theme in The Magician's Nephew, when Digory faces Aslan for the first time and faces his own dark motivation throughout the story, but this book, being written for adults and delivering the culmination of Orual's life, story, has even more impact.)

When it's laid out so clearly, all the pieces fall into place. It offers a sacred moment in history for readers who pause to contemplate the magnitude of what we have just taken in. half-truths she clings to that make her life miserable, and the fact that she hasn't considered others' full stories makes perfect sense.

It's extremely profound and revealing, especially as Lewis subtly makes it clear that Orual is a mirror for any of us. Even people without their physical ugliness undoubtedly have some mental and spiritual warts and blemishes that they take great care to hide.

It's a book I'll have to read again along the way. I've exhausted my supply of prints for now, but I suspect it's the kind of story that will always meet us where we are with something new. I can't help but wonder what I would have thought of this in my twenties, but I'll never know. For now, wow!

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