5/17/2023 0 Comments Till we have faces reviewBecoming more bitter and twisted as she grows old, she covers up her outer ugliness with a veil.įor most of the book, Orual presents a compelling case, but we begin to see her unreliable nature as a narrator or interpreter of events as the book comes to an end. When Psyche submits to leaving her home to be the ransom for all Glome, Orual vents her anger and hatred upon the gods. The Wedding of Psyche by Sir Edward- Burne Jones (1895) She expresses a love for Psyche that she considers to be akin to maternal love but it is manipulative and devouring. Orual is an unreliable narrator and presents everything in the light of her skewed perspective her outer ugliness a reflection of what’s going inside her. Orual is the ugly eldest daughter of Trom, the widowed King of Glome, an ancient barbaric kingdom, and Psyche is her beautiful younger half-sister. Lewis said of his book that it was, ‘…the straight tale of barbarism, the mind of an ugly woman, dark idolatry and pale enlightenment at war with each other…’ Lewis took the story of Cupid and Psyche originally written about 125 AD by Lucius Apuleius Platonicus (which you can read here) and retold, or re-interpreted it, from the point of view of Psyche’s older sister, Orual. Till We Have Faces is a book I’ve been avoiding for a while, mostly because I had the idea that it would be a stiff and ponderous read, but what a strangely captivating story it turned out to be!
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