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 1-3
Part 1
Chapter 1 Summary
The novel opens with an unnamed narrator explaining that she is an old woman, a queen with no immediate family, whose crown will pass to her nephew. She no longer fears the gods. In fact, she intends, in this book, to make a complaint against them and to leave it to her reader to pass judgment.
She then tells us that her name is Orual and she is the eldest daughter of Trom, King of Glome. The people of Glome worship a goddess called Ungit—whom the Greeks call Aphrodite—who takes the form of a black stone. It is primarily against Ungit’s son, the god of the Grey Mountain, that Orual’s charge is laid.
She begins her story with the day her mother died, when she and her sister Redival were taken into the garden and had their heads shaved in a traditional ritual of mourning. While their nurse, Batta, scares them with tales of evil stepmothers, the girls first acquire a tutor, a Greek slave known as the Fox because of his red hair. The King tells the Fox to practice teaching his daughters until he has a son and to try to make Orual wise, as “it’s about all she’ll ever be good for” (2). Orual loves the Fox, unlike Redival, who mocks him, and she is enthusiastic about her education. Orual calls the Fox grandfather and he calls her daughter.
Soon after the Fox’s arrival, the King takes a new wife, the third daughter of a powerful king whose lands lie close to Glome. The wedding night introduces us to the Priest of Ungit, a man Orual fears and who always smells holy—“a temple-smell of blood [...] and burnt fat and singed hair and wine and stale incense” (4). Despite the stories she has heard about terrible stepmothers, on the night of the wedding, as the naked bride is laid on the King’s bed, Orual cannot help but notice how frightened the young woman is.
Chapter 2 Summary
Orual doesn’t have the chance to get to know her father’s second wife, who dies in childbirth less than a year after her marriage. However, she was not a scary person and behaved more like a sister to Orual than a stepmother.
Despite the many sacrifices the King makes to Ungit, his third child is another daughter. This, coupled with the death of his wife, throws him into one of his customary rages, and he kills a slave boy to vent his anger. He asks the Priest why his sacrifices have been ignored by Ungit, but the Priest is unimpressed with the King and his temper.
When the Priest doesn’t react, the King takes his anger out on Orual and the Fox, beating his daughter and ordering the slave to be sent to the mines. Orual begs the Fox to run away with her but he refuses; he won’t risk the punishment for being caught. However, once the King calms down, he decides not to send the Fox away, finding him useful as a scribe and an adviser.
Orual and Redival have their heads shorn again to mark the queen’s death, and they are introduced to their new sister, Istra. The Fox tells them that in Greek, Istra’s name would be Psyche, and this is what he and Orual call her. Psyche is a lovely, quiet child: “Helen herself, newly hatched must have looked so” (9). Orual takes responsibility for caring for Psyche and, like the Fox, loves her dearly. Redival is not nearly as interested in her new sister and, having always been the pretty sister, seems jealous of Psyche’s astonishing beauty. In fact, the Fox declares her more beautiful than a goddess, a comment which makes Orual nervous; that is no way to speak about Ungit.
The Fox gains the King’s trust over the years and is eventually allowed to take the girls out of the palace on trips into the countryside. Psyche grows to love the mountain that looms over Glome and dreams of being a queen there, in a palace of amber and gold.
Chapter 3 Summary
Orual tells us that Redival brought an end to the happy times she spent alone with the Fox and Psyche. When Redival is caught in a lover’s tryst with a young soldier named Tarin, the King blames the Fox and Orual for the indiscretion and insists that they watch her all the time. Tarin is castrated and sold as a slave. Redival hates being in her sisters’ company all the time, a situation made worse when she hits Psyche and Orual beats her as punishment.
Glome seems an unlucky place that year: there are bad harvests and the King fails to find a third wife. One day, a peasant woman asks Psyche to kiss her daughter, so that she might be beautiful too. When Psyche does, the woman bows and lays myrtle at her feet in thanks. Redival witnesses this and mockingly calls her sister a goddess. Orual is worried when she hears about this; despite the Fox’s philosophical skepticism, she knows the gods are jealous. Redival knows this too and agrees to keep quiet about the incident if they do what she wants.
The following year there is a rebellion, led by Tarin’s father. The rebels are defeated by the King, defeated so viciously that his authority is left weaker than before. That year, a second bad harvest is followed by an outbreak of fever, and the Fox falls ill. Orual takes his place as her father’s adviser in the Pillar Room, which seems to make the King hate her less. She mentions that, because the King doesn't have a son, no one is sure who will succeed him and that his power is under threat.
While Orual helps her father, Psyche nurses the Fox, who makes a full recovery. This leads to rumors that she has healing hands, and the common people demand that she heal them of the fever. Under increasing pressure and the threat of another rebellion, Psyche goes out and lays her hands on everyone who is ill. It takes her a whole day, and she returns to the palace exhausted and eventually succumbs to the fever herself. In return, the people leave offerings for her, including pigeons, “which are specially sacred to Ungit” (14). Orual is increasingly worried that Psyche will incur Ungit’s wrath, especially when Redival becomes very pious and begins to spend more time at the House of Ungit. Orual insists that she take a slave woman with her to try and keep her out of mischief and acknowledges that Redival desperately wants a husband.
Chapters 1 – Chapter 3 Analysis
In the opening chapter we meet Orual, the narrator who is determined to lay her story before the reader so that they may pass judgment on her complaint against the gods. Despite the fact that she tells us she has neither family nor fear of the gods, she begins her tale by describing those she loves best in the world: her sisters and her tutor, the Fox. Thus, the reader expects that Orual will suffer some tragedy or loss, though what form it will take is not yet clear.
There are repeated references to Orual’s physical ugliness: her father even calls her his “goblin daughter” (11) at one point. For this reason, despite his cruelty to her otherwise, he encourages her education in the hope that this will make her useful to him. Her ugliness stands in contrast to the appearance of the other women in the novel: the King’s second wife, Redival, and, most particularly, Istra or Psyche. This draws our attention to the fact that women in Glome are valued for their beauty more than anything else. Redival embraces this reality and is determined to use the power her beauty brings her by attracting a lover or a husband as soon as she can. However, the King needs her to remain a virgin if he is to make an alliance with any of his neighbors by marrying her to one of their sons.
While Redival is physically beautiful, her behavior can be ugly. This is a major distinction between Redival and Psyche, whose inner beauty is as startling as her physical attractiveness. This accounts, in part, for Orual’s favoring of her younger sister, whom she loves almost obsessively. The idea that beauty can also be dangerous is attested to by Orual’s increasing fear of the goddess Ungit’s jealousy, as Psyche’s beauty increases.
Orual’s fear seems justified by Glome’s increasingly bad luck as it suffers failed harvests, drought, epidemics, and rebellion, despite the fact that regular sacrifices are made to Ungit. The people’s faith in Ungit is personified by the fearsome Priest whose presence terrifies Orual. The Fox, a slave originally from Greece, educates Orual in philosophy rather than religion, teaching her to be skeptical about the gods and their powers. Despite the trust she has in her tutor, however, Orual cannot completely deny Ungit’s existence and grows increasingly worried about what will happen to Psyche if she makes the goddess jealous. This opposition between philosophy and religion is a key theme in the novel.
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By C. S. Lewis
