This is my favorite book. Till We Have Faces is the final fiction work of world-famous Christian thinker C. S. Lewis, my favorite novel not just of his but of all literature I have read, and yet most to whom I have mentioned the name have never heard it. How can this be? How can something so wonderful a story so skillfully written be so shockingly overlooked? Truth be told, I never knew of Till We Have Faces until a few years ago, when I read it for a college literature class.
Actually, I’m one of those people who never even knew Lewis wrote more than the Chronicles of Narnia until college, let alone read much of it! Of his Chronicles, I remember readingThe Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe and The Horse and His Boy, watching the BBC videos (on vhs) from Lion through The Silver Chair, and listening to my dad read The Magician’s Nephew. Beyond that, I knew nothing of Lewis’s bibliography, not until college where I read first Learning in Wartime, learned of his theological works, and grew to appreciate Lewis as an author through The Problem of Pain. I now own an anthology of Lewis’s major theological works, an anthology of the Chronicles (from which I read my missing Narnia experience, The Last Battle), an anthology containing most of Lewis’s short writings (almost 900 pages worth), the second volume of his space trilogy (my mom has the first and third), and, of course, my favorite book and Lewis’s final story, Till We Have Faces.
So, going back to Till We Have Faces, why do I love it? I will not be covering the personal side of things in this post, as that would be a whole post unto itself, but rather some of more the technical aspects of the story that make it excellent. But first, a plot description:
Till We Have Faces retells the tale of Psyche and Cupid, or Eros, but rather than follow Psyche, the narrator is Psyche’s ugly oldest sister, Orual. The sisters live in the fictional, pre-Christian country of Glome, where Orual raises Psyche after the girl’s mother dies in childbirth. Orual, rejected by nearly everyone for her ugliness, loves Psyche, and Psyche Orual. When tragedy strikes Glome, Psyche is offered to Cupid, God of the Mountain, as a sacrifice. In despair, Orual travels to the mountain, hoping to give Psyche a proper burial only the find her sister alive and well. However, what should have become a joyful reunion instead begins Orual’s distortion and destruction of her most precious relationships.
In my discussion of this story, I wish to begin with characters. To speak on every character would take too much time, so I will only focus on the main characters, Orual and Psyche. For everyone else, I will just quickly mention that, while not detailed, each character is different and has specific influence on the plot and Orual’s character. They are all important, and even their words and actions have consequences.
Now, on Orual, while I do not hold that one needs amazing, realistic characters to have an amazing story (I’ll talk about that some other time), Orual really is incredible. In writing Orual, Lewis did not write a character; he wrote a person. Every time I reread Faces, I encounter a smart, rational, but sensitive girl, driven to cling to any love or acceptance she finds. Due to being ugly in place where beauty and sex are the only worth of a woman, she is rejected by everyone, made to feel inferior and worthless. Furthermore, she has always felt pushed aside by her younger, more attractive sister, Redival. Orual is hurt and craves love, and when she finally receives some, first from her mentor and then from Psyche, she latches on, gripping to those pieces of joy and acceptance. However, because of her fear and insecurity, she hangs on too tight, becoming jealous and obsessive. She is a character with real emotions and pain that lead to tragic decisions with horrible consequences. Orual’s thoughts and actions are influenced by those around her, forming conflict as she tries to understand different thoughts and struggles to think logically. I found myself understanding Orual’s thought process and how she came to her conclusions, even when I knew her to be wrong. Orual is real to me.
In contrast, there is Psyche. Psyche is what most people would label a “Mary Sue.” She is kind, beautiful, gracious, perfect really, the only type of person worthy to be the bride of a god. Now, setting aside any arguments on if “Mary Sue” labeling is legitimate, Lewis’s decision on Psyche’s character is exactly how it should be. Think about it. Our narrator is Orual, someone who loves Psyche to the point of obsession. Psyche is everything that Orual wishes she could be: beautiful, loving, and a person almost everyone adores on sight. Of course Orual would present Psyche as perfect. Maybe Psyche did have flaws, but we can’t know, nor does it matter. It matters not how Psyche really is, only how Orual sees Psyche. Allow me to refer to my own life. I have a younger sister who is talented at art, funny, kind, patient, quietly charismatic, never gets in trouble, pretty much the perfect person… or at least, that’s how my sinful nature painted her, overlooking any flaws and only seeing her as everything I, a competitive, argumentative unfunny, uncharismatic (to name a few issues) person, lacked. Years and many conversations later, I can now see her more objectively. However, when you’re beaten down by rejection and your own flaws and hang around someone who is, in many ways, your opposite, objectivity jumps out the window. Whatever Psyche’s real person, what matters is Orual’s perception of her: a goddess in both beauty and character within mortal flesh.
So we have Orual, ugly and rejected, and Psyche, perfect and embraced. Their story, a powerful tale of twists and emotions and sorrow and love, I will not describe here. I gave a story blurb earlier, and I do not wish to give away any more plot-wise. Just know that Lewis proves himself an amazing storyteller. He manages to retell the myth, even turning Orual into a sympathetic villain, without falling into many pitfalls of retelling stories from the point of view of the villain. Often the villain becomes simply “misunderstood,” and “heroes” become the villains, as with Grendel in one film adaptation of Beowolf, Elphaba in Wicked, and Maleficent in the recent Disney retelling of Sleeping Beauty named after the “Mistress of all Evil.” Lewis skillfully avoids this trap, making Orual “misunderstood” but still wrong, which results in the beautifully woven tragedy that is Till We Have Faces.
Aiding the storytelling and the reality of Orual as a character is Lewis’s writing style. His style sounds natural, as though Orual were a real person writing a personal record. What’s more, Lewis breaks the “rule” of cutting out unnecessary details by adding superfluous tidbits about Glome, as if it were a real place. As much as this might bother the more indoctrinated modern reader/writer to the “rules of good writing,” these details actually give the story more of a realistic feeling, for, although it does not matter story-wise how far the Shennit river might be to the palace and city, it matters to Orual. The inclusion of the geographic and cultural factoids make the story feel much more like the records of a real person than a deliberately crafted fiction. I really cannot praise the writing style enough. Additionally, it’s beautifully written, with masterful use of language, which alone is reason to read the novel.
Finally, I wish to say that the teachings of Till We Have Faces possess power and, in some places, beauty. Like with the plot, I do no wish to spoil too much here However, I will be taking two of these messages, as they are connected, and expounding upon them in a few weeks, messages that also just so happen to be connected to my personal reasons for loving this story. So if you’re curious about some of the messages in this story, just be patient a little longer.
Till We Have Faces is my favorite book. I also hold it to be Lewis’s most skillful pieces of fiction. The characters are amazing, the plot interesting and emotionally impacting, the writing style engaging, and the lessons I have learned from it (and I’m sure there are at least some I still have not understood) continue to impact me and draw me back to the story. Teach and entertain, thereby prompting rereading, and doing all with excellence, now that’s good Christian literature.
Lewis, C. S. Till We Have Faces. New York: Houghton Harcourt Publishing Company. 1984. Print.
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