Comparison of “Til We Have Faces” and “The Golden Ass”
Recently I have had the pleasure of reading “Till We Have Faces” by C. S. Lewis and “The Golden Ass” by Apuleius. Both are accounts of the myth of the marriage of Cupid and Psyche. Since they are in essence the same story, there are of course many things similar in both stories. However, since both stories were written in such different time periods by such different authors, there are also many differences. In this essay I will present and discuss both these similarities and differences.
The stories both begin in the same manner. A king has three daughters of whom the youngest is so beautiful that men worship her as a goddess and neglect the worship of Aphrodite for her sake. This results in consequences that are different in each account. The king consults the oracle of Apollo for guidance and is told that Psyche, as the daughter is called, is destined to be the bride of a God or a beast of the Gods and should be taken to the mountaintop and left there. The king does as he is advised.
But Aphrodite is jealous of Psyche’s beauty, and has ordered her son, Cupid, to afflict the girl with love for the vilest and most disgusting of men. Cupid sets off to do so, but upon seeing Psyche falls in love with her himself. He has the West wind carry her to a secret place where he has prepared a beautiful palace. He visits her only at night, and forbids her to see his face. In both versions Psyche is visited by her sisters (one or both, depending on the story).
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The story Oedipus the King has been known for its tragedy. Sophocles gave us a hero in the character of Oedipus who shows a greatness and strength of a man in body and mind. He is the main character in the story who undertakes a fight with faith and destiny. Oedipus was born to the king and queen of Thebes, Laius and Jocasta. An awful and terrifying divine curse hung over with the baby boy. The ...
She tells her sister/s about her husband, and how he only visits her at night.
They convince Psyche that her husband must be hiding something from her. The sisters tell her that she should take a lamp into the bedroom and night, and bring it out when her lover falls asleep to see what he is hiding. She follows this advice, but when she brings it out a drop of hot oil falls from her lamp and burns her husband on the shoulder, waking him. He wakes, and is so angry with his wife that he decides to banish her from the valley.
After many miseries Psyche is captured and punished by Aphrodite. She attempts to drown herself, but is stopped by the God Pan. Aphrodite sets her out with what are meant to be impossible tasks. The first is sorting out a pile of seeds into separate heaps; the second is to get some fleece from golden, man killing sheep. Third she is supposed to gather some water from the river Styx, and finally she is told to go to the underworld and get the beauty of Persephone and bring it to Aphrodite in a box. She completes all of these tasks through the help of different creatures. The stories both have different ending, but both basically end up with all involved living happily ever after.
As aforementioned, there are many differences in each version. The first and most noticeable is the style in which each story is presented. Apuleius tells us the myth himself, while Lewis uses the oldest sister, Orual (who is not even given a name in “The Golden Ass”) as his narrator. This itself brings about many more differences, like the amount of details given, and what they are given about. The style of Apuleius is more like a myth, while Lewis’s account is more like a novel.
The way the family is discussed in each story is different. A major difference is the presence of a mother. In “Till We Have Faces”, Psyche’s mother is different than the mother of her sisters, and this mother dies shortly after giving birth. In “The Golden Ass” the mother is not discussed in much detail (none of the family members are), but she is present when Psyche is taken to the mountain. Also different is the description of the sisters. In Lewis the older sister is hideously ugly, while the other sisters are pretty. In Apuleius, all three sisters are described as being beautiful.
The Essay on The Tale of Cupid and Psyche. Love Stories
Love Stories Introduction Virgil’s Aeneas and Dido is a love story that has been in existence for decades. It is about Dido, the queen of Carthage who falls in love with Aeneas, a Trojan soldier. In the story, it is evident that Dido has fallen for Aeneas since she finally confides in her sister concerning her love for Aeneas. Dido is a widow; although she had sworn never to fall in ...
Also different is the reason that Psyche is sent to the mountain. In Apuleius her immense beauty and worship makes the men of the kingdom view her as more of a Goddess than a woman, and because of this none will seek her hand in matrimony. This deeply depresses and confuses the king, causing him to seek guidance from the oracle, who tells him she is to be the bride of a God. In Lewis, Psyche’s beauty makes the people of the kingdom believe that she has a healing touch. When plague sets in the village, the people come to the castle to be “healed” by her. Since she is not really a goddess, her touch does not heal all the people. They begin to see her as cursed, and believe she is the reason that the kingdom is experiencing famine. The oracle tells the king that only the sacrifice of the cursed one will save the kingdom.
The account of the sisters’ visit to Psyche after she is taken to the mountain varies greatly in each version. In the account as told by Lewis, only Orual (the oldest sister) goes to visit. She doesn’t go to the mountain seeking out her sister; she wants to get closure by burying the bones of her sister she is certain she will find. She finds Psyche alive and well, and is shocked to learn that she is living in the palace of the God. Sadly, mortal eyes can not see the palace, and Orual wonders if her sister even does live with a God, or if she has gone mad. When Apuleius tells it, both sisters go to the mountain, after Psyche begs her husband to let her see them, and they dine in the palace and receive wonderful gifts from their younger sister.
In both stories, Psyche is convinced to deceive her husband and try to see his face. The motivation of the sisters to advise her of this is different in each story because the events of the meetings are so different. When the story is told as Orual going alone, she wants her sister to see her husbands face out of fear for her safety, and fear that her husband is not a God at all, but a vagabond of the mountain. When the story is told with both sisters going they are jealous of their sister’s fate and want her to deceive her husband out of spite.
What happens to the sisters because of their actions in each version is also different. In Apuleius, the sisters are punished for their part in Psyche’s deception by death. In Lewis’s account, nothing happens to Redival (the middle sister) because she has no part, and Orual is punished, but not exactly by death. As part of her punishment, she has visions, and it is unclear to the reader if they are real or imagined, but in these visions she bears the brunt of the work involved in the tasks that Psyche has to perform for Aphrodite. She is the ant that separates the seeds; she diverts the attention of the golden sheep and is thus trampled by them, and so on and so forth.
The Term Paper on Grey Mountain Psyche Orual Gods
... of seeing). Psyches new godly husband keeps his face veiled and only comes to her in the night. Orual first takes her sister for ... destined for another world is one found not only by Lewis. Dietrich Bonhaffer, the German theologian martyred for his anti-Nazi ... when she is summoned to read her complaint against the gods. Her book, 'life's work' however, appears strangely small, dirty and ...
Not surprisingly, the stories end quite differently. Apuleius tells that all the Gods are present when Psyche is forgiven, she marries Cupid, and they all live happily ever after, in true fairy tale style. Psyche is also forgiven according to Lewis, but Orual is present instead of the Gods, and it is never said for sure whether she is reunited with her husband or not. Orual, who is by now queen of the kingdom, simply awakes from a vision, and dies while trying to record the events that transpired.
After reading both versions, I think that I enjoyed “Till We Have Faces” more. The writers both obviously had different reasons for writing. Lewis wrote an entire book, to entertain, and Apuleius wrote only the account of the myth, as a part of another book. Because of this I felt more of a connection to the characters in Lewis, since I knew more about their lives. Both were enjoyable readings, and I thought that reading them together was even better, as they complemented one another very well.
Bibliography
Lewis, C. S. “Till We Have Faces” 1956. William B. Eerdman’s Publishing Company. Grand Rapids, Michigan.
Apuleius. “The Golden Ass” 1967. AMS Press. New York.
