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 13-15
Part 1
Chapter 13 Summary
When Orual returns to the palace, she finds the Fox waiting in the dark outside her room. After washing and changing her clothes, she reveals that Psyche is alive and tells him the story of their meeting. The Fox is distraught and assumes that Psyche, whom he loves like a daughter, has been duped by a mortal villain living on the mountain. Once the Fox has reasoned Psyche’s story away, they are left with the question of what to do.
The Fox tells Orual that lions have been seen in Glome again and the King is occupied with organizing a lion hunt. He will be away for some days which will give them a chance to act.
Orual is furious at the thought of Psyche pregnant with a “beggar’s brat” (70)—the royalty of Glome are considered to have divine blood in their veins and it is illegal for them to mix with common people. She suggests that once they rescue Psyche they could hide her at Bardia’s house; the Fox disagrees. He tells her that even if Bardia himself agreed, the man is under his wife’s thumb and insists that they send Psyche away from Glome altogether. Orual warns him that Psyche won’t come willingly and that they might have to use force.
Orual feels solely responsible for protecting Psyche and the honor of their house. Even the Fox, who agrees to risk his life by leaving Glome with them, leaves her to get some sleep, and she feels abandoned by him. Trying to fight her feeling of desolation, Orual prays to the gods and asks for a sign.
Orual tries to sleep but she is restless, contemplating the problem before her. Both Bardia and the Fox have provided an answer to what happened to Psyche on the mountain, but Orual knows that one of them must be false. Orual is “the child of Glome and the pupil of the Fox; I saw that for years my life had been lived in two halves, never fitted together” (72). Unlike the two men, she has considered the possibility that whoever or whatever is visiting Psyche at night, is good or fair, and she is once again tempted to let her sister enjoy her happiness on the mountain. However, she eventually decides to be both Psyche’s “mother and her father, too” (73) and resolves to be stern with her. She is determined to return to the mountain the following day.
Chapter 14 Summary
The next day, Orual prepares for her journey, taking with her an urn, a lamp, oil, wedding linen and food. Once the King’s hunting party has left the palace, she goes to find Bardia and tells him of her plan. On this occasion, however, he cannot help her: he has been left behind to guard the palace and cannot leave it while the King is away. He can recommend a companion for her though, a quiet man named Gram whom Bardia trusts. Orual agrees to this and asks Bardia to get her a dagger; he is concerned by this request but does as she asks. Orual bids farewell to Bardia, unsure of when she will return.
When they reach the valley, Orual prepares to ford the river with a heavy heart. She calls to Psyche and, facing each other across the river, the sisters “might have been two images of love, the happy and the stern” (75).
Orual once again tries to assert her authority over Psyche, but Psyche resists, reminding Orual that she must obey her husband now. At this mention of Psyche’s husband, Orual provokes her sister by asking, “What sort of god would he be who dares not show his face?”(76). She continues, offering Psyche the choice between the Brute and a mortal vagabond—the explanations that Bardia and the Fox had suggested to Orual—but Psyche rejects both of these.
Orual persists in her interrogation and Psyche embarrasses her, saying that it is not fitting to answer such questions from her sister, who is a virgin. In response, Orual proposes a test that, she argues, will resolve the matter once and for all: Psyche must take the lamp Orual gives her and, when he is sleeping, look upon the face of her husband. At first, Psyche refuses—her husband has forbidden her to do so—but then Orual threatens to kill herself if Psyche will not conduct the test. To prove her determination, she pierces her arm with the dagger “till the point pricked out on the other side” (79).
Psyche helps her to bind the wound but tells Orual that she is teaching her about a new kind of love, one that is close to hatred and that “whatever comes after, something that was between us dies here” (79). Psyche is convinced that her husband will forgive her, and so she tells Orual that she won’t hide her looking from him. She swears an oath on Orual’s dagger, knowing that “before sunrise, all my happiness may be destroyed forever” (80).
In the face of Psyche’s coldness and determination, Orual has second thoughts about her plan and begins to cry, but Psyche merely sends her back across the river.
Chapter 15 Summary
Orual tells us that she must have fainted when she reached the other side of the river because there’s a gap in her memory. When she wakes she is aware of her cold, thirst and hunger, but she is reluctant to call on Gram and regrets Bardia’s absence.
She waits by the river to watch for the light that will tell her Psyche has performed the test. She fondly imagines her distraught sister crossing the river to seek comfort in her arms. At the same time, she is plagued by doubt and has to fight the urge to cross the river and release Psych form her oath. Beneath these confused thoughts, “was the cold, hopeless abyss of her scorn, her un-love, her very hatred” (81).
Psyche’s light soon appears and, while waiting for something to happen, Orual, prompted by the pain in her arm, imagines her funeral, where she is mourned by Bardia, the Fox and Psyche: “Everyone loved me once I was dead” (81).
Then, another light appears and a great voice breaks the silence of the night: it is the voice of a god. The god’s incomprehensible speech is followed by the sound of weeping and Orual thinks her heart “broke then” (82). A ferocious storm of thunder and lightning destroys the valley before Orual’s eyes. She thinks that she has been proven right, that Psyche’s husband was “some dreadful thing” (82).
However, after the storm has passed, there comes “a lightning that endured” (82) and within it, the image of something like a man, whose beauty Orual cannot bear to look upon: “He rejected, denied, answered, and (worst of all) he knew, all I had thought, done or been” (82). Then, the god speaks to her, telling her that Psyche has been exiled for her actions and that she, Orual, “also shall be Psyche” (83).
The light and the voice end at the same instant, and all the Orual can hear is the sound of Psyche’s terrible weeping moving to the other side of the valley, where Orual cannot go.
Orual returns to where Gram has camped, and they begin their journey home. Now she knows for certain that the gods exist and that they hate her, all that is left to do is wait for her punishment. Strangely, though, she is not afraid.
On the way home, she considers the god’s words—that she will also be Psyche—and wonders if they mean that she will also be forced into exile. It is not the worst fate she can think of, and if she cannot bear Psyche’s punishment for her, she would be glad to share the same punishment as her sister.
She must also decide what to tell Bardia and the Fox.
Chapter 13 – Chapter 15 Analysis
These chapters represent the climax of Orual’s quest to save her sister, Psyche, and are, she argues, key to understanding her complaint against the gods. Despite the fact that she claims to be motivated by her love for Psyche, her actions in these chapters reveal a selfish and troubled nature. She refuses to accept Psyche’s love for her husband because it is a kind of love she has not known, cannot understand and cannot share. While Orual earlier suggested that Psyche’s faith in the gods allowed her to live in a different world, her actions on her return to the valley make her “more and more a stranger” (80) to Psyche. Significantly, when Orual considers the god’s message that she will also be Psyche, she takes comfort for the idea that they will share the same punishment; it will be as if they are sharing the same world again, even though they are apart.
When she returns from her first trip to the mountain, Orual is sure that Bardia is right and that Psyche has been taken by the Brute. Listening to the Fox, however, she becomes convinced that Psyche’s mysterious husband is none other than a mortal criminal. She later admits that she did consider the possibility that Psyche is married to someone good and fair but that, influenced by the two men she respects most, she dismissed her own ideas in favor of theirs. This is another example of the way in which Orual has lived her life in “two halves” (72). The daughter of Glome’s king, and educated by a Greek philosopher, Orual doesn’t know what or who to believe. Her reluctance to believe Psyche, however, suggests that whether they are from Greece or from Glome, she is more likely to heed a man than a woman.
Orual reacts to her own sense of insecurity about where she belongs by asserting her right to protect the dignity of her house and the royal bloodline. In fact, she feels solely responsible for maintaining and caring for her family, a job her father has never even attempted. It is up to her to be both mother and father, as well as sister, to Psyche. This responsibility is accompanied by a feeling of resentment; Orual thinks that people fail to appreciate and return the love and care she offers them. This is evident in her daydream about her funeral where she imagines the grief those dearest to her would feel when she died. Similarly, Orual’s reaction to the Fox’s need for sleep is an extreme one and suggests how vulnerable she feels. That she considers his tiredness abandonment indicates that she is constantly waiting for people to abandon her, a feeling intensified by Psyche’s refusal to leave the valley.
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By C. S. Lewis
