The one rule that Cupid gave Psyche was that she not look upon his face. Psyche, the younger sister, was so beautiful that Cupid himself desired her for his bride.

Orual was the older sister and so ugly that she spends most of the book with her face veiled. Their childhood was filled with great love, but eventually, tragedy strikes. The first part of the book shows the sisters Orual and Psyche growing up together, along with their mentor the Fox. In doing so, he depicts a life centered on one such abuse of love that is far more extreme than that of the teenager and her parents. Lewis retells the myth of Cupid and Psyche. Rare indeed is the person who has not treated love so poorly.

The only lever she has to persuade her parents is their love for her. Reeling at the blow to her social life, the words bubble up, “you don’t really love me!” She says this only because she knows that her parents do love her and that it will hurt them to hear these painful words. Picture the scene, cliché as it is: A young teenager’s parents have just refused her permission to go with friends to a concert this Friday. produced.' -New York Herald TribuneĪ novel, suggested by the tale of Cupid and Psyche, of the struggle between unselfish faith and selfish pride, of the spirit and the flesh.“Love is not a thing to be so used” -The Fox 'The most significant and triumphant work that Lewis has. deepens for adults that sense of wonder and strange truth which delights children in The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, Prince Caspian, and other legends of Narnia.' -New York Times 'Till We Have Faces succeeds in presenting with imaginative directness what its author has described elsewhere as ‘the divine, magical, terrifying and ecstatic reality in which we all live’. Only at the end of her life, in visions of her lost beloved sister, will she hear an answer. Orual is left alone to grow in power but never in love, to wonder at the silence of the gods. Psyche is forbidden to look upon the god’s face, but is persuaded by her sister to do so she is banished for her betrayal. Disfigured and embittered, Orual loves her younger sister to a fault and suffers deeply when she is sent away to Cupid, the God of the Mountain. Lewis wrote this, his last, extraordinary novel, to retell their story through the gaze of Psyche’s sister, Orual. Haunted by the myth of Cupid and Psyche throughout his life, C.S. Why should they hear the babble that we think we mean? How can they meet us face to face till we have faces?” “I saw well why the gods do not speak to us openly, nor let us answer.

Cupid and psyche cs lewis