Into the Wardrobe

Why?

What attribute of Psyche would you want to have?

What was so attractive about Cupid/The God of the Mountain?

I'd be interested to know.

I don't know about the man-in-a-woman's-body concept. Orual is a woman. If she does not do the things we attribute to being a woman--marry, have children, love a man--it is because she has grimly concluded that these things are barred from her due to the fact that she is (supposedly) ugly.

Now I say "supposedly," and this has been debated before, but I throw it out again. Was she really ugly? In some ways, the text seems to suggest she was. Her father drags her in front of a mirror and says "Would the gods want this?" And when she rips off her veil to show Barda's wife her looks, I assume there's something unattractive about her.

On the other hand, Till We Have Faces is about the face, about facing God, about how we present ourselves, through what was once called our "countenance" to the world. Maybe Orual's face was ugly only because it reflected her grasping, controlling, domineering, selfish personality. Maybe she was a little homely (as we say in America, meaning plain or unremarkable) but her unattractive spirit made her face repulsive in some way.

I remember that Batta says she could be attractive if she would just do her hair and put on make-up. She dismisses this suggestion, and a lot of people on the list point out that Batta is a sycophant and only wanted to worm her way into Orual's affection. But at that point in the novel Batta had nothing to gain by saying so, since Orual was not in power and it did not look like she would ever be in power, so maybe there was some truth in what Batta was telling her and she just didn't want to listen. I think her hanging of Batta after she becomes queen is one of the prime acts of brutality Orual commits before she changes. Perhaps Batta was not being entirely untruthful when she said Orual could be attractive if only she wanted to.

Thanks Adam L.,

This is a significant moment for me. It's taken me twenty-five years to articulate the misconceptions I had about this book. The extended rant I posted a few months back was what finally got all my misconceptions articulated. It wasn't until then that i could finally look at them and see that they were misconceptions. It's taken me these last few months to do that.

I felt personally accused of being Orual. I could never appreciate the ending of the book. I couldn't even see or remember the ending of that book, no matter how many times I have read the book. I'm still having trouble seeing the ending. It's like I blip over it or something. Complete unconscious blinding.

In my mind, there was no redemption for Orual... or myself. I felt damned. By my hero.

The gift has been restored and at a deeper level. Yes.

Best wishes to you too.

Chris/sehoy

I had forgotten the thing about Tarin "teehee." It brings up the interesting point that we only meet characters like Redival and Lasarleen through other females' perceptions of them: Orual and Aravis respectively. Its interesting to wonder what a man would have thought of them. Would they have been distracted by their beauty and charms like Digory was temporarily with Jadis (but not Polly), or would they also have seen them as silly females: or possibly have indulged in both of the emotions, but at different times.

It always felt to me like Lewis never gave "that kind of female" much of a benefit of the doubt, which as you say may be because he didn't meet them in social situations, or because he (like Orual) lacked the context to appreciate them. But it does seem interesting how often he brings up the topic of interfemale relations in the books. Both that jealousy, and the flip side, as when Jane Studdock meets Camille Denniston in THS, he talks about women feeling a certain admiration for women whose beauty is of a different type than their own, or when Lucy sees the seahorse girl at the end of VDT. It always felt like Lewis saw this as a particularly femininine characteristic, on the one hand greater jealousy than a man might feel, or the other side a quicker bond. I'm reading THS at the moment, and it feels to me that while he's clearly talking about the dangers created by the interactions of groups of men when it comes to the tempation of Mark Studdock, those pitfalls have more to do with "the group, the in-crowd" rather than individuals. Though of course Marks alternating warmth and trust and loathing of Feverstone might prove me wrong.