bottoming out

'Till We Have Faces and Cognitive Demands

C.S. Lewis’s ‘Til We Have Faces is a strikingly told story of the myth of Cupid and Psyche, told from the perspective of Psyche’s (allegedly ugly) sister Orual. Rather than hearing the story from a third-person omniscient narrator as we might when reading Greek mythology, we are confined to Orual’s head, forced to view the world and the travails of Psyche (also called Istra) story through her (likely) unreliable eyes.

Summary

I’ll avoid a summary and just link to the Wikipedia one here, which I think does a good job.

Orual’s Complaint

From the beginning, Orual’s tale is presented as her complaint against the Gods. Indeed, Orual feels slighted that she was prevented from “seeing” and understanding what had happened to Psyche, and her disbelief that Psyche had truly married a God and lived in a castle were then punished. To Orual, this feels unfair: how could she not worry about her sister and doubt Psyche’s tales with no evidence of them?

As a reader, it’s hard not to agree with Orual. How could she possibly believe that there is indeed a God on the Mountain and that Psyche lives in the palace in which she claims to reside? But later, as a queen, Orual hears a version of Psyche’s story in which she is portrayed as having deliberately ruined her sister’s life out of jealousy. The Gods continue to be silent, unseen, and unforgiven.

The Demand for Reasons

There’s a vague metaphysical intuition about how our minds have to process and understand the world as though events occurred for particular reasons. The Principle of Sufficient Reason states that for everything that exists or obtains, there must be a reason.

When contending with matters we cannot understand, as Orual does with Psyche’s situation, we look for reasons and explanations. For Orual, the demands from Psyche’s husband had to be explained by either hallucination or the fact that her “husband” was not who he claimed to be.

But as we learn when Orual finally voices her complaint, it is precisely this process of attempting to use reason that leads Orual astray and brings on her sister’s misery: "She had no more dangerous enemies than us. And in that far distant day when the gods become wholly beautiful, or we at last are shown how beautiful they always were, this will happen more and more. For mortals, as you said, will be come more and more jealous. And... will all be in league to keep a soul from being united with the Divine Nature" (347).

The Question Answers Itself

The climax of the novel occurs when Orual, possibly/seemingly in a dream, finally voices her complaint to a “court.” But when she finishes reading it, she only receives the response: “Is your complaint answered?” Indeed, it was:

"The complaint was the answer. To have heard myself making it was to be answered... 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 the 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 they mean? How can they meet us face to face till we have faces?" (335)

At least when I first read this, I didn’t find the message entirely straightforward. I think the main idea Lewis wants to get across here is the role of faith. A complaint against the Gods, a demand for reasons from them, might be nonsensical or lead us astray.

For someone of faith, why should we expect "answers" of a higher power? Indeed, merely saying what we really mean should itself be enough. As Haley Stewart points out in a blog post, "[Orual] misunderstood the gods because she did not know herself until they gave her the grace to see." From a Christian standpoint, it is the grace of God that can help us unveil ourselves, to go past our self-deceit and truly understand what we are, beyond shame and all else. Indeed, the physical veil Orual dons for a great deal of the book, ostensibly to hide her ugliness, now seems a motif for it is ripped from her in front of the tribunal where judge and jury heed her complaint.