Orual, desperate to save Psyche from the life which she says she loves, resorts to some tough love. Orual blackmails her sister into shining a lamp on her “husband” in the middle of the night…with heart-breaking consequences.
S3E12: “Tough Love” (Download)
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Time Stamps
01:10 – Drink-of-the-week
02:20 – Quote-of-the-week
07:00 – Chapter 14 Summary
38:50 – Chapter 15 Summary
56:00 – Closing remarks
YouTube Version
After Show Skype Session
This Season, after each episode, Matt and I will be recording a ten-minute Skype conversation:
Show Notes
• I was joined by Matt “It’s all Greek to me” Bush.
• Matt was drinking honey-lavender tear for the drink-of-the-week. I was drinking a latte with a mixture of almond milk and oat milk. I also had a glass of Benchmark Old No 8 Brand (Kentucky Straight Bourbon Whiskey).
Last week I had a peanut butter whiskey which I said was good in small quantities.
• The quote-of-the-week comes from something which Psyche says to Orual:
“You do not think I have left off loving you because I now have a husband to love as well? If you would understand it, that makes me love you – why, it makes me love everyone and everything – more.”
C.S. Lewis, Till We Have Faces (Chapter 14)
• We had lots of people entering our recent competition. Five people won pint glasses. However, we couldn’t work out who left the review under the name “Willoues”. If that’s you, please contact us and we’ll send you a glass!
• I gave a shout out to listener, Travis Barnes, saying that I hope he is now reading Till We Have Faces to his wife! She sent us a message and said that he had promised, so…
• I recommended a recent episode of the Clumsy Theosis podcast. The episode is called Not Today Satan.
• This was my 150-word summary of Chapter 14:
Taking Psyche’s urn, Orual packs inside linens and food, as well as a lamp and oil. Bardia has been tasked with guarding the palace in the King’s absence, so he assigns a reticent soldier, Gram, to take her back up the Mountain. At Orual’s request, Bardia reluctantly gives Orual a dagger.
Summary of Chapter 14 of Till We Have Faces
Through wind and rain, Orual and Gram return to the hidden valley where the weather is fine. Orual crosses the river. After telling Psyche that she is the only one left who really loves her, Orual presents a series of arguments against Psyche’s “husband”, appealing to logic, emotions, and authority. All fail to persuade.
Orual challenges Psyche to shine the lamp she has brought on her husband during the night. When Psyche refuses, Orual stabs herself in the arm and threatens to do worse… Out of concern for Orual’s life, Psyche relents. As the light fades, Orual leaves, weeping.
• Without the King, the Palace is much nicer. I was confused about the “family” to which she refers:
It was a strange freedom to be in there alone; and indeed, amid all my cares, I could not help perceiving how the house was, as it were, lightened and set at liberty by the absence of the King. I thought, from their looks, that all the family felt it.
C.S. Lewis, Till We Have Faces (Chapter 14)
• Since Bardia has been tasked with protecting the Palace, he assigns another soldier, Gram, to take Orual up the Mountain:
He was a thin-faced man, very black-eyed, and (I thought) looked at me as if he feared me…
C.S. Lewis, Till We Have Faces (Chapter 14)
[Gram] set me up on the horse (touching me, unless it was my fantasy, as one who touched a snake or a witch)
When Orual says goodbye to Bardia, he senses that she might be going away permanently:
“Farewell, Bardia,” said I.
C.S. Lewis, Till We Have Faces (Chapter 14)
“Farewell, Lady? Do you go for longer than a night?” “I don’t know, I don’t know,” said I.
• Whereas the weather was lovely last time they went up the Mountain, this time the weather is terrible, almost like the Mountain is saying “Go away! Don’t do it!”
…the weather cleared so that it was hard not to think the valley had a sunlight of its own and the blustering rains merely ringed it about as the mountains did.
C.S. Lewis, Till We Have Faces (Chapter 14)
• Orual is resolute in her course:
My heart was still as ice, heavy as lead, cold as earth, but I was free now from all doubting and deliberating.
C.S. Lewis, Till We Have Faces (Chapter 14)
• Orual contrasts her version of love with Psyche’s
We might have been two images of love, the happy and the stern — she so young, so brightface, joy in her eye and limbs — I, burdened and resolute, bringing pain in my hand.
C.S. Lewis, Till We Have Faces (Chapter 14)
• Psyche points out that she correctly predicted the future:
“So I spoke truly, Maia,” she said as soon as I had crossed the water and we had embraced. “The King has been no hindrance to you, has he? Salute me for a prophetess!” This startled me a moment, for I had forgotten her foretelling. But I put it aside to be thought of later.
C.S. Lewis, Till We Have Faces (Chapter 14)
…but strangely Orual doesn’t spend any time thinking about how this was possible!
“put it aside to be thought of later…Now, I had my work to do; I must not, now of all times, begin doubting and pondering again.”
C.S. Lewis, Till We Have Faces (Chapter 14)
• When Orual removes her veil, Psyche sees her clearly:
“Oh, Orual,” said Psyche, “what a storm-cloud in your face! That’s how you looked when you were most angry with me as a child.”
C.S. Lewis, Till We Have Faces (Chapter 14)
• In the chapter where Psyche is first introduced, Orual says that she wanted to be her mother, husband and full sister…
Now listen, Psyche. Our father is no father. Your mother (peace upon her!) is dead, and you have never seen her kindred. I have been — I have tried to be and still I must be — all the father and mother and kin you have. And all the King too.”
C.S. Lewis, Till We Have Faces (Chapter 14)
• Psyche tries to explain to Orual the nature of true love:
“You do not think I have left off loving you because I now have a husband to love as well?”
C.S. Lewis, Till We Have Faces (Chapter 14)
“If you would understand it, that makes me love you — why, it makes me love everyone and everything — more”
• Orual tries to persuade Psyche that her husband is some horrible:
“Nothing that’s beautiful hides its face. Nothing that’s honest hides its name”
C.S. Lewis, Till We Have Faces (Chapter 14)
She appeals to emotions:
“In your heart you must see the truth”
C.S. Lewis, Till We Have Faces (Chapter 14)
• Psyche misunderstands what Orual says concerning Bardia in the Fox. Orual doesn’t correct her because she thinks it supports her case:
“Neither he nor I nor Bardia,” said I, “believes for one moment in your fancy that it is the god; no more than that this wild heath is a palace. And be sure, Psyche, that if we could ask every man and woman in Glome, all would say the same. The truth is too clear.”
C.S. Lewis, Till We Have Faces (Chapter 14)
“if that was what she took out of my words, I thought it no part of my duty to set her right. It was an error helping her towards the main truth. I had need of all help to drive her thither”
C.S. Lewis, Till We Have Faces (Chapter 14)
• When Psyche refuses to disobey her husband, Orual argues that it’s because Psyche secretly knows the truth:
“Ah! . . . You see! You will abide no test. And why? Because you are not sure yourself. If you were, you’d be eager to do it”
C.S. Lewis, Till We Have Faces (Chapter 14)
“I can think — Bardia and the Fox can think — of one reason only for such a forbidding. And of one only for your obeying it.” “Then you know little of love.” “You fling my virginity in my face again, do you? Better it than the sty you’re in. So be it. Of what you now call love, I do know nothing. You can whisper about it to Redival better than to me — or to Ungit’s girls, maybe, or the King’s doxies. I know another sort of love. You shall find what it’s like.”
• Orual interprets Psyche’s loving obedience to her husband in the same light as the King’s tyranny:
“Then, even at the best, look what you make of him! Something worse than our father. Who that loved you could be angry at your breaking so unreasonable a command — and for so good a reason?”
C.S. Lewis, Till We Have Faces (Chapter 14)
In contrast, Psyche trusts her husband:
“He is a god. He has good grounds for what he does, be sure”
C.S. Lewis, Till We Have Faces (Chapter 14)
• Running out of time, Orual stabs her arm and blackmails Psyche into doing what she says:
I flung back my cloak further, thrust out my bare left arm, and struck the dagger into it till the point pricked out on the other side. Pulling the iron back through the wound was the worse pain; but I can hardly believe now how little I felt it…
C.S. Lewis, Till We Have Faces (Chapter 14)
“Swear on this edge, with my blood still wet on it, that you will this very night do as I have commanded you; or else I’ll first kill you and then myself.“
Psyche points out that Orual only needed to threaten suicide, not murder as well. Psyche feels betrayed by her sister:
The look in her face now was one I did not understand. I think a lover — I mean, a man who loved — might look so on a woman who had been false to him
C.S. Lewis, Till We Have Faces (Chapter 14)
Psyche assesses Orual’s “love”:
“You are indeed teaching me about kinds of love I did not know. It is like looking into a deep pit. I am not sure whether I like your kind better than hatred. Oh, Orual — to take my love for you, because you know it goes down to my very roots and cannot be diminished by any other newer love, and then to make of it a tool, a weapon, a thing of policy and mastery, an instrument of torture — I begin to think I never knew you. Whatever comes after, something that was between us dies here.”
C.S. Lewis, Till We Have Faces (Chapter 14)
…
“If I do [give my oath],” said she hotly, “it will not be for any doubt of my husband or his love. It will only be because I think better of him than of you. He cannot be cruel like you. I’ll not believe it. He will know how I was tortured into my disobedience. He will forgive me”
…
“I know what I do. I know that I am betraying the best of lovers and that perhaps, before sunrise, all my happiness may be destroyed forever. This is the price you have put upon your life. Well, I must pay it.”
I compared Psyche’s decision to the decision of the priests in the movie Silence, why Jesuits in 17th Century commit apostasy in order to save the lives of others:
• Psyche sends Orual back to the other side of the river:
“The sun is almost down,” she said. “Go. You have saved your life; go and live it as you can.”
C.S. Lewis, Till We Have Faces (Chapter 14)
• I read my 150-word summary of Chapter 15:
Orual returns to the other side of the stream and waits for her plan to be put into effect. While she waits, she feels conflicted, but ultimately remains resolute in her course. In the middle of the night, Psyche shines her light. Momentarily, everything is still. Then a piercing divine voice is heard, followed by the sound of weeping. A storm erupts in the valley, thunder rumbles, lightning flashes, the river rises, and much of the valley is destroyed. The god appears before Orual and pronounces Psyche’s punishment – exile. He tells Orual that “You also shall be Psyche”, although this is not explained. Orual hears Psyche’s heart-breaking weeping growing fainter as she heads off into the distance. In the morning, Orual and Gram return down the mountain and Orual considers what her fate will be, and what exactly she will tell Bardia and the Fox…
Summary of Chapter 15 of Till We Have Faces
• Orual fantasizes about what she hopes will happen:
This time it would be I who helped her at the ford. She would be all weeping and dismayed as I folded her in my arms and comforted her; for now she would know who were her true friends, and would love me again, and would thank me, shuddering, for saving her from the thing the lamp had shown.
C.S. Lewis, Till We Have Faces (Chapter 15)
However, Orual is still angry at Psyche:
…[there] was the cold, hopeless abyss of her scorn, her un-love, her very hatred. How could she hate me, when my arm throbbed and burned with the wound I had given it for her love? “Cruel Psyche, cruel Psyche,” I sobbed
C.S. Lewis, Till We Have Faces (Chapter 15)
Orual even fantasizes about her own death:
And out of that seed there grew up, in one moment, a huge, foolish flower of fancies. For at once (leaping over all question of how it should come about) I saw myself laid on the pyre, and Psyche — she knew now, she loved me again now — beating her breast and weeping and repenting all her cruelties. The Fox and Bardia were there too; Bardia wept fast. Everyone loved me once I was dead.
C.S. Lewis, Till We Have Faces (Chapter 15)
• The light shines in the darkness:
To my eyes, long swilled with darkness, it seemed brighter than you would have thought possible. Bright and still, a homelike thing in that wild place. And for a time longer than I had expected, it shone and was still, and the whole world was still around it.
C.S. Lewis, Till We Have Faces (Chapter 15)
I pointed out that this was an echo of a scene earlier in the book when Orual went to visit Psyche in the Five-Sided Room:
Psyche sat upon the bed with a lamp burning beside her. Of course I was at once in her arms and saw this only in a flash; but the picture — Psyche, a bed, and a lamp — is everlasting.
C.S. Lewis, Till We Have Faces (Chapter 7)
• There is a tremendous sound throughout the mountain from the god:
It was no ugly sound; even in its implacable sternness it was golden. My terror was the salute that mortal flesh gives to immortal things.
C.S. Lewis, Till We Have Faces (Chapter 15)
Despite the destruction around her, Orual actually interprets this as a good sign!
I took these things for a good sign. They showed (so it seemed to me) that I was right. Psyche had roused some dreadful thing and these were its ragings. It had waked, she had not hidden her light soon enough; or else — yes, that was most likely — it had only feigned to be sleeping; it might be a thing that never needed sleep. It might, no doubt, destroy both her and me. But she would know. She would, at worst, die undeceived, disenchanted, reconciled to me. Even now, we might escape. Failing that, we could die together.
C.S. Lewis, Till We Have Faces (Chapter 15)
She then sees the god himself:
There came as if it were a lightning that endured. That is, the look of it was the look of lightning, pale, dazzling, without warmth or comfort, showing each smallest thing with fierce distinctness, but it did not go away. This great light stood over me as still as a candle burning in a curtained and shuttered room. In the center of the light was something like a man. It is strange that I cannot tell you its size. Its face was far above me, yet memory does not show the shape as a giant’s. And I do not know whether it stood, or seemed to stand, on the far side of the water or on the water itself
C.S. Lewis, Till We Have Faces (Chapter 15)
• Psyche’s punishment for her disobedience is exile. The god also utters a strange curse upon Orual:
“Now Psyche goes out in exile. Now she must hunger and thirst and tread hard roads. Those against whom I cannot fight must do their will upon her. You, woman, shall know yourself and your work. You also shall be Psyche.”
C.S. Lewis, Till We Have Faces (Chapter 15)
• There is the sound of Psyche going away, weeping:
Then, in the silence, I heard again the noise of the weeping… If you heard the woman you most hate in the world weep so, you would go to comfort her. You would fight your way through fire and spears to reach her. And I knew who wept, and what had been done to her, and who had done it.
C.S. Lewis, Till We Have Faces (Chapter 15)
