Till We Have Faces, by C.S. Lewis. Geoffrey Bles, 1956.
Lewis considered this, his last novel, to be his best, and many of his readers agree. It is the first-hand story of the ugly princess Orual’s love for her sister, and her complaint against the gods. Orual lives in Glome, a little barbarian kingdom of ancient times. Glome and its closest neighbours are fictional, but Lewis uses his considerable knowledge of classical history to imbue it with all the beauty and horror of pagan culture.
Orual’s kingdom lives under the distant influence of Greece, and her people worship local variations of the Greek gods. Their primary goddess is Ungit, elsewhere known as Aphrodite or Venus. Ungit is not the clean-limbed beauty of the Greeks, however. In Glome she is an almost shapeless black rock, spattered with the blood of sacrifices, crouching in the darkness of her temple.
The King, a violent and insecure man, is always seeking a male heir but gets daughters instead: Orual and Redival with his first wife, and Istra with his second. Istra is a stunningly beautiful child, and Orual, repulsively ugly, loves her whole-heartedly. It is from their foreign tutor, a slave know as The Fox, that Orual learns the Greek version of her sister’s name: Psyche.
Lewis is retelling the classical myth of Cupid and Psyche, refocusing the story on a mortal who has her heart broken by the deeds of the gods. Psyche is loved and worshipped by the people for her beauty, which incurs the jealous anger of Venus/Ungit. The goddess afflicts the lands with a curse, until the people turn on Psyche and send her away as a sacrifice. Cupid, known in Glome as the god of the Grey Mountain, is sent to destroy her, but upon seeing her, falls in love and bears her away to live with him. And thus Orual’s true problems begin.
If this all sounds very complicated and mythic, blame the reviewer. Till We Have Faces is in fact a straight-forward and grittily compelling book. The narrator is a very real woman, part of a dysfunctional royal family, and her story is frank about sex, politics and violence. Her book is, in part, a formal (if bitter) complaint against the gods, so she restricts herself as much as possible to the facts.
This emphasis on showing, rather than telling, may be what makes it Lewis’ greatest novel. It enabled him to bypass what Owen Barfield called his ‘expository demon,’ a temptation to explain everything and to freight his allegories with too much obvious meaning. Orual's story comes across as a simple report of things which happened, and as the self-portrait of a remarkable but talented woman.
It also has a depth that bespeaks Lewis’ spiritual maturity. Some of his earlier writings evince a kind of vehemence, a convert’s testiness. His interpretations of Christian ideas were always fresh and insightful, but there was occasionally a sense that anyone who disagreed with the Lewis version was a fool, and perhaps a damned fool. Till We Have Faces, though, displays a more confident, settled faith. Lewis is more at ease with showing the messiness of life, allowing a number of different voices to speak and waiting until the end to show which contains the greater truth.
It should be remembered that Lewis, while a formidable debater and logical thinker, was led into Christian faith less by rational debate than by story and song. It was, in large part, the unexpected joy and beauty found in pagan myths and epic poems which set him on the path to Christ. In this story he seeks to retrace that journey. Readers familiar with Lewis’ life will find a number of biographical elements and characters (Alan Jacob’s The Narnian does a wonderful job of explaining these.) In Orual's deeply moving story we see the grapplings of one who wrestled with divinity.
5 out of 5.
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8 comments:
Do you own it? If so, I should borrow it. Its been on my list for years. I've always loved the title. :o)
I've ordered it from Hull's. The copy I read was Jan & Paul's. I had a library copy first but then Mel stole it and read it and then it was due.
Short answer: I'll own one soon.
I read that about 9 years ago, I'm gonna have to reread it, cause I read it when my brain was starting to really go bad, and nothing has stuck much.
Question: I can't remember which anthology has the Gene Wolfe story about the Virgin's assumption. The title, I think, was "Night Visit" or "Night Visitors." Do you have a clue?
Mir
thanx for the comment and link... I thought of someone else... see if you can guess who she is.
Her son is one of the youth (I think he still is), and she has an OFFICial position at St.M's. Her name starts with a D... could I give away much more?
http://quiltpixie.blogspot.com/
Never mind, E. It's in Innocents Aboard and titled "Queen." hah.
Mir
Maybe this is straightforward, maybe not. Orual's case against the gods is mostly because Psyche, her sister, who had been the center of her life, is taken from her. But when she presents her case against the gods, she sees that the gods themselves are her answer.
From Reason and Imagination in C. S. Lewis: A Study of Till We Have Faces by Peter J. Schakel. Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1984:
The book closes as it opens, by invoking the book of Job. . . . Both works deal with alleged injustice in the universe; both present a case against God; and both agree that the case is refuted not by reason but by the nature of God. When God makes himself known, whether to Job, to Jane Studdock, or to Orual, the response is the same, a response Lewis believes must be the universal response to a true encounter with the Divine: I had heard of thee by the hearing of the ear,
but now my eye sees thee;
therefore I despise myself,
and repent in dust and ashes (Job 42:5-6) (p. 86)
Martin, I love that point. I know that I always have hated the book of Job (despite the poetic aspects that call to me) because it does paint God as unjust. Any way you cut it using mere reason, He comes across as unfair and capricious.
BUT...if one considers Job's ultimate response, and remember Isaiah's, and anyone's when truly faced with the WHO (instead of the whats), all is silenced and one must worship.
Which makes Satan's rebellion really confounding, huh? :)
God cannot be approached merely upon reason's platform (although He does reason with us).
I still do not like to go back and study Job. I get mad. I get unbelievably mad at God. And I think he's merciful enough to understand why someone who has been chronically ill all her life gets vexed at seeing someone brought low just to, apparently, prove a point to the Adversary. (To hell with you, Satan, I'd rather hear God say.) So, I normally just read the conclusion, and let that suffice for me--to repent in dush and ashes and remember my redeemer lives and the hope of resurrection is ever before me.
Mir
Good points!
I guess I was saying that the story is straightforward, even if the lesson is not.
I also think that Orual does get a kind of answer that her reason can understand. When she reads her complaint to the judge, she says what her heart has been saying, rather than all the fine self-justification she's written down. And when she hears herself she realizes how selfish and mean and blinded she's been. The gods answer without speaking, simply by letting hear herself.
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