53 pages • 1 hour read
C. S. LewisTill We Have Faces
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 1956A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Chapters 7-9
Part 1
Chapter 7 Summary
In the tower room, Orual and Psyche comfort each other; Orual is surprised by how calm Psyche is. Psyche seems more concerned about the injuries Orual has sustained than about her own fate, and she insists that Orual not do anything rash, like kill herself, insisting that the Fox will need her.
Unlike Orual, Psyche forgives Redival, claiming she didn’t understand what she was doing. However, she has nothing to say to the King. She tells Orual who should have which of her various possessions and again, Orual is struck—and unnerved by—her composure. At one point, Psyche reprimands Orual for making her cry when she is “to be a bride” (32), and Orual finds that she enjoys her sister’s tears.
Psyche confesses that she is not afraid of the Brute; her only fear is that the gods are not real and she will die of starvation on the mountain. Faced with her impending death, however, her faith in the gods is renewed, and she begins to doubt the Fox’s teachings. She wonders what will happen “if I am indeed to wed a god” (33). Orual hates this idea, rejecting it as a fantasy and asks whether Psyche thinks “the Brute’s lust better than its hunger” (33).
Orual’s anger stems, in part, from her grief. Psyche is not only the person she loves most in the world, but also one of the few people who loves Orual. Psyche tries to comfort her by reminding her that they would have been separated eventually: Ï 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” (33). In fact, Psyche seems glad to be going to the mountain, which she has always loved.
Orual tells us that, since she is writing against the gods, she must include what can be said against her too, and admits that amid her love for Psyche there is bitterness too. She accuses Psyche of never loving her and of becoming cruel like the gods. Psyche is distraught, but before they can be reconciled, Bardia knocks three times and they share a last, “spoiled embrace” (35).
Chapter 8 Summary
When she leaves the tower room, Orual is overcome by the pain of her injuries and, despite her determination to accompany Psyche to the mountain, is forced to remain in bed for a number of days. On the day of the sacrifice she manages to get as far as the staircase in time to see Psyche, dressed and painted like a temple girl, carried out of the palace. Back in her bed, she suffers feverish delusions in which Tarin or Bardia becomes her lover and “Psyche was my greatest enemy” (37). When she finally recovers, she is too weak to feel anger or grief; she is almost happy” (38).
After Psyche has been sacrificed, things in Glome improve. A civil war in the neighboring kingdom of Phars means that Glome no longer has to worry about being attacked from that quarter, and the King enjoys the people’s favor again.
Orual learns that on the mountain, before she was chained to the tree, the King had wept and embraced Psyche, for probably the first time ever. She and the Fox are disgusted by his behavior. Orual asks the Fox whether he still believes “that Ungit is only lies of poets and Priests” (39), given that the sacrifice seems to have improved everything. He tells her his beliefs are unchanged and he attributes the change in Glome to “cursed chance” (39). Orual wonders then if Psych died for nothing, and the Fox is overcome with grief, which, he tells her, makes it impossible to philosophize. Instead, they must remember Psyche as best they can. This prompts Orual’s decision to travel to the mountain and to collect Psyche’s remains so that they can be properly burned or buried.
Chapter 9 Summary
The Fox pretends to the King that Orual is still bedridden so that she can travel in secret to the mountain. However, Orual is reluctant to take the trip as it seems to be the last thing in the world she will ever want to do. One day, she meets Bardia, who tells her that he too has known sorrow and that it was cured by the distraction of war. He offers to teach her to use a sword, telling her that she had shown some natural skill when she threatened him outside the tower room. Eventually, Orual agrees and finds sweat “far better than philosophy, a cure for ill thoughts” (42).
After one of their lessons, Orual overhears another soldier making mocking comments about her to Bardia, who defends her. She tells us that his response was “the nearest thing to a love-speech that was ever made me” (42).
When they have been practicing for some time, she tells Bardia of her plan to retrieve Psyche’s remains from the mountain. He thinks it is a good and proper idea and offers to accompany her. Sharing a horse, they travel to the mountain in secret. On their way out of the city, they pass the House of Ungit, which Orual tells us resembles an egg or a womb.
Despite the nature of their journey, Orual finds it hard not to feel joy at the sights of nature they pass on their way. Yet she also tells us that the gods “never send us this invitation to delight so readily or so strongly as when they are preparing some new agony” (44). As they approach the sacrificial tree, Orual begins to worry that they will not find Psyche, dead or alive. There is no sign of her body, but Bardia finds a ruby some way away from the tree. Orual wants to search in that direction, but Bardia resists, telling her that “it’s all gods’ country” (46). Orual insists, however, and soon they find a beautiful valley and in it, alive and well, Psyche.
Chapter 7 – Chapter 9 Analysis
The conversation between Psyche and Orual in the tower room highlights the relationship between marriage and death. As the Priest of Ungit explained earlier in the novel, the person sacrificed to the Brute is both devoured by and wed to the creature. Psyche develops this idea by pointing out that, even if she were saved from the Brute, she would still be given in marriage to a king by her father. This too would be a type of sacrifice, in which the King offers his daughter in exchange for political alliance, in much the same way that Psyche is being offered in exchange for Ungit’s favor.
As both Orual’s and Psyche’s mothers died in childbirth, both women understand the threat of death that accompanies marriage. Psyche’s comments also suggest that marriage is a kind of metaphorical death, involving the end of one stage of a woman’s identity and the beginning of another. Orual’s question of whether the Brute’s lust is better than its hunger points to the fact that women are expected to cater to men’s appetites—sexual or otherwise—regardless of their own needs or desires.
The bitterness that Orual feels mingled with her love for Psyche suggests that hers is a jealous kind of love. In this way, she is reminiscent of Ungit herself, who, Orual has told us, is a jealous god. Ungit is also a mother goddess: her temple resembles an egg or a womb from which the world itself emerged. Interestingly, Psyche calls Orual “Maia,” a Greek word that can mean mother or midwife. In this way, the novel seems to draw a comparison between Orual and Ungit. Orual’s confession of this bitterness suggests that she is trying to be a fair and balanced narrator.
Orual’s bitterness also suggests her deep need to be loved. Unlike Redival and Psyche, who are also motherless, Orual’s ugliness has made her the target of mockery rather than compassion, and Psyche is one of the few people in the world who loves her. This desire to be loved is further suggested by her fever-induced fantasies about Tarin and Bardia being her lovers.
Her relationship with Bardia takes a very different form in real life: he teaches her how to use a sword, and, in doing so, contributes to her transgression of gender norms. Orual’s decision to retrieve and bury Psyche’s remains is another transgression and is prompted by the Fox’s reference to Antigone, a woman from Greek myth who provides a funeral for her brother even though it has been forbidden by her king. In defying the rule of the King, Antigone invokes divine rule, the rules of the gods, to justify her actions. In aligning Orual and Antigone, the novel once again points to a conflict between the secular and the divine.
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By C. S. Lewis
