Psyche has been condemned to be sacrificed. Orual and the Fox try and convince the King to take action. When this fails, Orual visits Psyche, but is it to receive or give comfort?
S3E4: “The Comfort of Orual” (Download)
If you enjoy this episode, you can subscribe manually, or any place where good podcasts can be found (iTunes, Google Play, Podbean, Stitcher, TuneIn and Overcast), as well as on YouTube.
Time Stamps
01:45 – Drink-of-the-week
02:42 – Quote-of-the-week
06:38 – Chapter 6 Summary
28:56 – Chapter 7 Summary
00:00 – 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
• It turns out that “dichotomous” is a real word!
• Matt was still drinking Macallan 12 and I was drinking a nice cup of English Breakfast tea which I made with the new Kettle which I bought my office.
• The quote-of-the-week came from the lips of Psyche:
Do you think it all meant nothing, all the longing? The longing for home? For indeed it now feels not like going, but like going back. All my life the god of the Mountain has been wooing me…. I am going to my lover.
C.S. Lewis, Till We Have Faces (Chapter 7)
• Matt went away for the weekend, visiting a friend. He’s also been prepping for the Hallo talks.
• I gave a talk in Canada last week. I’ll be speaking in Imperial Valley on Friday.
• I commented that, when listening to the previous episode, I noticed a theme of theosis. The pregnant woman wanted Psyche to kiss her because she thought her unborn child would then come to have some share in Psyche’s beauty. The crowd wanted her to touch them so that they would share in her health.
• This was my summary of Chapter 6:
King Trom says that Psyche is to be sacrificed the following day. The Fox complains that he would have fought for more time and tried anything to save her life. The King scoffs. Orual attempts to appeal to the King’s pride, but to no avail. She offers to stand in Psyche’s place. In response, Trom shows Orual her reflection in a mirror and reminds her that Ungit demands the best and she doesn’t even come close. Orual leaves and then meets Redival. It is confirmed that she had a part to play in Psyche’s fate. Orual continues to the room where Psyche is being held. She pleads with the guard, Bardia, to let her visit her sister, but he refuses. She returns with a sword and attacks him. After easily disarming her, he is moved by her courage and relents, letting her in to see her sister.
Summary of Chapter 6 of Till We Have Faces
• The King starts off as a slightly better human being:
…my father’s hands were gentler than I expected… “Here, lass, this’ll do you good,” he said when they had put me in the chair, holding a cup of wine to my lips. If there’s a bit of raw meat still to be had in this dog-hole of a palace, you must lay it on your bruises”
C.S. Lewis, Till We Have Faces (Chapter 6)
…but the true man quickly comes through:
“Faugh, you’re spilling [the wine] like a baby… look, daughter, you shouldn’t have crossed me like that. A man can’t have women (and his own daughters, what’s worse) meddling in business.”
C.S. Lewis, Till We Have Faces (Chapter 6)
As a result, Orual sees her father clearly:
He seemed to me now a very vile, pitiable king.
C.S. Lewis, Till We Have Faces (Chapter 6)
• The King is angry at the reaction of Orual and The Fox:
“You both look at me as if I were some sort of two-headed giant they frighten children with, but what’d you have me do? What would you do yourself, Fox, with all your cleverness, if you were in my place?”
C.S. Lewis, Till We Have Faces (Chapter 6)
• When the Fox suggests that the King gives away anything in order to save Psyche, Trom responds with one of my favourite lines:
“Be a little less free with other men’s wealth…I am a King. I have asked you for counsel. Those who counsel kings commonly tell them how to strengthen or save their kingship and their land. That is what counselling a king means. And your counsel is that I should throw my crown over the roof, sell my country to Phars, and get my throat cut. You’ll tell me next that the best way to cure a man’s headache is to cut off his head.”
C.S. Lewis, Till We Have Faces (Chapter 6)
The Fox’s response is snarky:
“I had forgotten that your own safety was the thing we must work for at all costs”
C.S. Lewis, Till We Have Faces (Chapter 6)
• Orual tries to convince the King by appealing to his pride:
“How will it sound if men say when you are dead that you took shelter behind a girl to save your own life?”
C.S. Lewis, Till We Have Faces (Chapter 6)
In response, the King reveals that he views Psyche as his property:
“Sheltering behind a girl, you say. No one seems to remember whose girl she is. She’s mine; fruit of my own body… What did I beget her for if I can’t do what I think best with my own?”
C.S. Lewis, Till We Have Faces (Chapter 6)
I said this reminded me of The Great Divorce. It’s the kind of possessiveness we see in the “Mother Ghost” who says of her son: “He is mine, do you understand? Mine, mine, mine”
• The King can’t comprehend that Orual is motivated by love:
There’s some cursed cunning that I haven’t yet smelled out behind all your sobbing and scolding. You’re not asking me to believe that any woman, let alone such a fright as you, has much love for a pretty half-sister? It’s not in nature. But I’ll sift you yet.”
C.S. Lewis, Till We Have Faces (Chapter 6)
The King rationalizes his daughter’s death:
“What’s one girl — why, what would one man be — against the safety of us all? It’s only sense that one should die for many. It happens in every battle
C.S. Lewis, Till We Have Faces (Chapter 6)
This comment reminded me of the Gospels:
…the chief priests and the Pharisees gathered the council, and said, “What are we to do? For this man performs many signs. If we let him go on thus, every one will believe in him, and the Romans will come and destroy both our holy place and our nation.” But one of them, Ca′iaphas, who was high priest that year, said to them, “You know nothing at all; you do not understand that it is expedient for you that one man should die for the people, and that the whole nation should not perish.”
John 11:47-50
• Orual offers herself in Psyche’s place and her father says that he’s not worthy:
“Ungit asked for the best in the land as her son’s bride,” he said. “And you’d give her that.” He held me there a full minute in silence; perhaps he thought I would weep or turn my eyes away.
C.S. Lewis, Till We Have Faces (Chapter 6)
• When Orual leaves the Pillar Room, she notes that the Palace is full of people from the Temple:
There were many of the temple guard lounging in the porch; some temple girls sitting in the hall. From the courtyard came the smell of incense, and sacrifice was going on. Ungit had taken the house; the reek of holiness was everywhere.
C.S. Lewis, Till We Have Faces (Chapter 6)
• Orual meets her sister, Redival:
“Oh Sister, Sister, how dreadful! Oh, poor Psyche! It’s only Psyche, isn’t it? They’re not going to do it to all of us, are they? I never thought — I didn’t mean any harm — it wasn’t I — and oh, oh, oh . . . .”
C.S. Lewis, Till We Have Faces (Chapter 6)
In response to this, Orual threatens her and tells her something of her character:
“Redival, if there is one single hour when I am queen of Glome, or even mistress of this house, I’ll hang you by the thumbs at a slow fire till you die.”
C.S. Lewis, Till We Have Faces (Chapter 6)
…I had known Redival’s tears ever since I could remember. They were not wholly feigned, nor much dearer than ditchwater.
…It’s likely enough she meant less mischief than she had done (she never knew how much she meant) and was now, in her fashion, sorry; but a new brooch, much more a new lover, would have had her drying her eyes and laughing in no time.
• Orual goes to the five-sided room and attempts to get in, but her way is blocked by Bardia:
He looked away from me and said again, “I’m sorry.” I turned from him without another word. Though his was the kindest face (always excepting the Fox) I had seen that day, for the moment I hated him more than my father or the Priest or even Redival.
C.S. Lewis, Till We Have Faces (Chapter 6)
• Orual gets a sword and attacks Bardia. He disarms her easily, but offers a compliment (of sorts):
“It’s a thousand pities, Lady, that you weren’t a man,” said Bardia. “You’ve a man’s reach and a quick eye. There are none of the recruits would do as well at a first attempt; I’d like to have the training of you. It’s a thousand — “
C.S. Lewis, Till We Have Faces (Chapter 6)
It turns out that she would have been happy if he’d have killed her:
“Ah, Bardia, Bardia,” I sobbed, “if only you’d killed me. I’d be out of my misery now.”
C.S. Lewis, Till We Have Faces (Chapter 6)
Orual’s courage moves Bardia to let her in to see her sister:
“Curse it,” said Bardia, “I can’t bear this.” There were tears in his own eyes now; he was a very tender man. “I wouldn’t mind so much if the one weren’t so brave and the other so beautiful. Here! Lady! Stop it. I’ll risk my life, and Ungit’s wrath too.”
C.S. Lewis, Till We Have Faces (Chapter 6)
“Quick. In you go. Heaven comfort you both.”
• I offered my summary of the next chapter:
Orual enters the five-sided room where Psyche is being held and the two embrace. Rather surprisingly, it is Psyche who comforts Orual, drawing on the stoic lessons of The Fox. She speaks about her childhood longing for the Mountain and how this will be fulfilled in her upcoming sacrifice. None of this pleases Orual, who wants Psyche to cry and be angry. In the absence of this, she even questions Psyche’s love for her. Bardia knocks on the door and Orual is forced to leave the chamber.
Summary of Chapter 7 of Till We Have Faces
• I asked Matt if he saw any significance in Orual’s comment about the image of Psyche, the bed and the lamp:
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 6)
Matt said that he thought of St. Veronica, but didn’t think of any significance.
• Rather surprisingly, it is Psyche who offers Orual comfort:
“Sister, what have they done to you? Your face, your eye! He has been beating you again.” Then I realised somewhat slowly that all this time she had been petting and comforting me as if it were I who was the child and the victim. And this, even in the midst of the great anguish, made its own little eddy of pain. It was so unlike the sort of love that used to be between us in our happy times
C.S. Lewis, Till We Have Faces (Chapter 6)
Psyche speaks to her like a child:
She was so quick and tender that she knew at once what I was thinking, and at once she called me Maia, the old baby’s name that the Fox had taught her. It was one of the first words she ever learned to say.
C.S. Lewis, Till We Have Faces (Chapter 6)
This is why I chose “The Comfort of Orual” as the title for this episode – it’s purposefully ambiguous. Is it referring to the poor standard of comfort she gives, or the comfort which she receives from Psyche?
• Psyche reveals that much of her calmness comes from the teaching of The Fox:
“…you make me think I have learned the Fox’s lessons better than you. Have you forgotten what we are to say to ourselves every morning? ‘Today I shall meet cruel men, cowards and liars, the envious and the drunken. They will be like that because they do not know what is good from what is bad. This is an evil which has fallen upon them not upon me. They are to be pitied…’”
C.S. Lewis, Till We Have Faces (Chapter 6)
This bothers Orual:
All she was saying seemed to me so light, so far away from our sorrow. I felt we ought not to be talking that way, not now. What I thought it would be better to talk of, I did not know
C.S. Lewis, Till We Have Faces (Chapter 6)
• Psyche refuses to curse Redival for her betrayal:
And for Redival — ”
C.S. Lewis, Till We Have Faces (Chapter 6)
“Send her your curse. And if the dead can — ”
“No, no. She also does what she doesn’t know.”
“Not even for you, Psyche, will I pity Redival, whatever the Fox says.”
“Would you like to be Redival? What? No? Then she’s pitiable…”
This was reminiscent of Jesus’ words: “Father forgive them, for they know not what they do”.
• Orual continues to complain that Psyche isn’t sad enough:
“I believe you are not afraid at all,” said [Orual], almost, though I had not meant it to sound so, as if I were rebuking her for it.
C.S. Lewis, Till We Have Faces (Chapter 6)
• When Psyche does cry, this actually makes Orual happy:
And now she did weep and now she was a child again. What could I do but fondle and weep with her? But this is a great shame to write; there was now (for me) a kind of sweetness in our misery for the first time. This was what I had come to her in her prison to do.
C.S. Lewis, Till We Have Faces (Chapter 6)
• Psyche explains what she has learnt from the Priest:
The Priest has been with me. I never knew him before. He is not what the Fox thinks. Do you know, Sister, I have come to feel more and more that the Fox hasn’t the whole truth. Oh, he has much of it. It’d be dark as a dungeon within me but for his teaching. And yet … I can’t say it properly. He calls the whole world a city. But what’s a city built on? There’s earth beneath. And outside the wall? Doesn’t all the food come from there as well as all the dangers?
C.S. Lewis, Till We Have Faces (Chapter 6)
• Orual affirms belief in the gods, but says that they’re evil:
Of course the Fox is wrong. He knows nothing about her. He thought too well of the world. He thought there were no gods, or else (the fool!) that they were better than men. It never entered his mind — he was too good — to believe that the gods are real, and viler than the vilest men.”
C.S. Lewis, Till We Have Faces (Chapter 6)
…but Psyche offers an alternative understanding of the gods:
…”they are real gods but don’t really do these things. Or even — mightn’t it be — they do these things and the things are not what they seem to be?”
C.S. Lewis, Till We Have Faces (Chapter 6)
• Orual notes again how disappointed she is at Psyche’s sense of calm:
The parting between her and me seemed to cost her so little. Had I not come to her to give comfort, if I could? Surely not to take it away. But I could not rule myself.
C.S. Lewis, Till We Have Faces (Chapter 6)
• Psyche comments that other philosophies of the Greeks have a different understanding of death:
“We have made little use of the Fox’s teaching if we’re to be scared by death. And you know, Sister, he has sometimes let out that there were other Greek masters than those he follows himself; masters who have taught that death opens a door out of a little, dark room (that’s all the life we have known before it) into a great, real place where the true sun shines…”
C.S. Lewis, Till We Have Faces (Chapter 6)
• This still doesn’t please Orual:
“Oh cruel, cruel!” I wailed. “Is it nothing to you that you leave me here alone? Psyche; did you ever love me at all?”
C.S. Lewis, Till We Have Faces (Chapter 6)
• Psyche points out that life is short, and their happiness would have been taken away one way or another:
Sister, you will follow me soon. You don’t think any mortal life seems a long thing to me tonight? And how would it be better if I had lived? I suppose I should have been given to some king in the end — perhaps such another as our father. And there you can see again how little difference there is between dying and being married.
C.S. Lewis, Till We Have Faces (Chapter 6)
• I said that this reminded me of a letter which Lewis wrote to the dying Mary Shelburne:
Has this world been so kind to you that you should leave it with regret? There are better things ahead than any we leave behind.”
C.S. Lewis, Letter to Mary Shelburne
• The chapter draws to a close with Psyche describing her longing:
“I have always — at least, ever since I can remember — had a kind of longing for death… It was when I was happiest that I longed most. It was on happy days when we were up there on the hills, the three of us, with the wind and the sunshine . . . where you couldn’t see Glome or the palace. Do you remember? The colour and the smell, and looking across at the Grey Mountain in the distance? And because it was so beautiful, it set me longing, always longing. Somewhere else there must be more of it. Everything seemed to be saying, Psyche come! But I couldn’t (not yet) come and I didn’t know where I was to come to. It almost hurt me. I felt like a bird in a cage when the other birds of its kind are flying home… …my country, the place where I ought to have been born. Do you think it all meant nothing, all the longing? The longing for home? For indeed it now feels not like going, but like going back. All my life the god of the Mountain has been wooing me. Oh, look up once at least before the end and wish me joy. I am going to my lover
C.S. Lewis, Till We Have Faces (Chapter 6)
• Orual is self-aware enough to see that her love is mixed in with bitterness:
…as she spoke I felt, amid all my love, a bitterness. Though the things she was saving gave her…courage and comfort, I grudged her that courage and comfort. It was as if someone or something else had come in between us.
C.S. Lewis, Till We Have Faces (Chapter 6)
• Bardia knocks on the door and Orual has to leave her sister:
So, the last, spoiled embrace. Those are happy who have no such in their memory. For those who have — would they endure that I should write of it?
C.S. Lewis, Till We Have Faces (Chapter 6)
