Fairy Hardcastle

[rusmeister]

[jo]

I wasn't suggesting you back out :) You're as welcome here as me or anyone else. I was just saying that, really, you can't dictate the terms of the conversation and if people want to discuss Lewis's failings then they do have the right to do that..

[sehoy]

[Erekose]

[rusmeister]

[sehoy]

I didn’t get to finish my thoughts on Orual in that last long post, so here goes.

Orual is not a woman. Just because C.S.Lewis says she is, doesn’t make it so. As I read the book this time, I kept thinking, “these are the motives and emotions of an elder brother perhaps or a lover/suitor to Psyche. These are not a woman’s motive and emotions towards another woman.” The capper is Orual sinking a dagger into her arm to force Psyche to do what she demands. This is really foreign to me. This is what a desperate lover would do. Not another woman. Not even a sister.

Orual’s crime is disordered maternal love, says Lewis. In the original myth, the problem between the two sisters, the two women, was jealousy. Lewis changes it to disordered maternal love. Why?

So, Orual’s crime is disordered maternal love for Psyche. First of all, I’m not buying that, since it feels more like the love of an older brother or lover to me. Second of all, Orual is purged of her disordered maternal love by her life of suffering that follows. The majority of her purging and perfecting is that she becomes more and more like a man, until at the end, the priest Arnom, ends her book with: This book was all written by Queen Orual of Glome, who was the most wise, just, valiant, fortunate and merciful of all the princes known in our parts of the world.

Say what? Is this a misprint.

What does this say to me? What has this said to me, for the majority of my young adulthood?

That the best woman is the one who is most like a man, with the face of Psyche glued on. That in order to see God, face to face, the real me must be a beautiful man.

[jo]

I had not considered that .. that Orual's love was a lover's love. I guess if anything i had accepted the 'disordered maternal' love theory .. that Orual obsessively loved Psyche because she was denied children of her own. Hmm .. on examination, though, her actions are not very much like those of a mother towards her child.

[kbrowne]

[jo]

[David]

[jo]

[David]

[jo]

[David]

[jo]