Till We Have Faces
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Till We Have Faces: A Myth Retold is a novel by C. S. Lewis, first published in 1956.
Lewis, one of the foremost Christian writers of the last century, took a chapter from The Golden Ass of Apuleius as his source for a fantasy novel. It is thought by many to be the best of his novels; Lewis himself considered it his best and was disappointed by its having little success with the public.
The book is set in the tiny kingdom of Glome, "a little barbarous state on the borders of the Hellenistic world" in Lewis's description, in perhaps the third century BC. Consistent with its setting, there is no specifically Christian content in the story (nor any Jewish); the pagan gods are treated as real, and rather primitive and terrifying.
The story is a powerful retelling of the Greek myth of Cupid and Psyche, from the point of view of Orual, Psyche's jealous ugly sister (as she is seen in the usual telling). It begins as the memoirs of an old woman, bitter at the pain and injustice of the world. Far from resenting her beautiful sister, she loved Psyche and was devastated by her loss. Now, after a long and successful reign as queen of Glome, she looks back, not understanding what was wrong with her love for Psyche: it was too fierce and too narrow and without faith, and that had brought ruin.
In the shorter second section of the book we see that, having written the memoir, Orual considered it time to end her miserable life. Like Psyche, she could not die, but rather went through a series of experiences paralleling those of Psyche. In the end, by a harder path than that of Psyche, she reaches understanding and acceptance of True Love and Beauty.
Sources
- Till We Have Faces is in print, ISBN 0-15-690436-5
- Myers, Doris T. (2002). Browsing the Glome Library. SEVEN: An Anglo-American Literary Review 19 (2). This discusses many classical references that Lewis used in the book, now obscure to most readers.