#orual

[tomato-bird-art]

Why must holy spaces always be dark spaces?

(I reread Til We Have Faces and it is up there as one of my favorite books still…)

[knight--error]

If your Greek myth retelling isn't Till We Have Faces, I don't want it.

[rayless-reblogs]

All the Till We Have Faces reblogs reminded me of this exquisite duet by Tracy Grammer and Joan Baez, sung from the perspective of the tortured queen Orual, longing for her lost sister.

She in her silken flora I in my leather drear She with the grace of Cora Upon the road of tears

And did they see us shining Through winter’s dark decree Those gods of time and dying Who reasoned doom to me

[daily-rayless]

Orual the veiled queen from Till We Have Faces.

I've wanted to do a companion picture to my Psyche for a while. While Psyche is intriguing as an ideal, I think Orual is one of CS Lewis' most ambitious and psychologically authentic characters. An antagonist who's poignantly sympathetic, a protagonist who's frustratingly weak -- protective and powerful, self-deluding and dependent, deeply loving and endlessly devouring, mythically heroic yet the reader will see many of their own failures in her.

Lewis gets grief for some of his female characters, but with the help of his wife Joy Davidman (who was an actual genius, by the way, and doesn't deserve to exist in Lewis' shadow), Orual feels so believable to me. Faces isn't an easy book to read (and definitely isn't for kids), but I think it's fascinating, and Orual's a big part of that.

[babu-s]

Doesn't the whole land smell of her? Do you and I need to flatter gods any more? They're tearing us apart... oh, how shall I bear it? … and what worse can they do? Of course the Fox is wrong. He knows nothing about her. He thought too well of the world. He thought there were no gods, or else (the fool!) that they were better than men. It never entered his mind – he was too good – to believe that the gods are real, and viler than the vilest men.

Till we have faces - C.S. Lewis

[anonymous-witness777]

ok for a moment there I was like "hmm not relatable ig" and then I remembered that one of my favorite books is Til We Have Faces. lol

if you're not obsessed with a fucked up female character i hope that changes for you soon. becoming obsessed with a genuinely deranged fictional woman will change your life.

[dimsilver]

over the garden wall / till we have faces by c.s. lewis

[idontwantrobyntodie]

ugly women in fiction. i love u.

[sailermoon]

orual who has never been desired. orual who has always lived in the shadows of her sisters beauty . orual who-

[bitterbareface]

"Holy places are dark places. It is life and strength, not knowledge and words, that we get in them. Holy wisdom is not clear and thin like water, but thick and dark like blood."

"I say the gods dealy very unrightly with us. For they will neither (which would be best of all) go away and leave us to live our own short days to ourselves, nor will they show themselves openly and tell us what they would have us do. For that too would be endurable. But to hint and hover, to draw near us in dreams and oracles, or in a waking vision that vanishes as soon as seen, to be dead silent when we question them and then glide back and whisper (words we cannot understand) in our ears when we most wish to be free of them, and to show to one what they hide from another; what is all this but cat-and-mouse play, blindman's buff, and mere juglery? Why must holy places be dark places?"

"Then I looked at Ungit herself. She had not, like most sacred stones, fallen from the sky. The story was that at the very beginning she had pushed her way up out of the earth--a foretaste of, or an ambassador from, whatever things may live and work down there one below the heat. I have said she had no face; but that meant she had a thousand faces. For she was very uneven, lumpy and furrowed, so that, as when we gaze into a fire, you could always see some face or other. She was now more rugged than ever because of all the blood they had poured over her in the night. In the little clots and chains of it I made out a face; a fancy at one moment, but then, once you had seen it, not to be evaded. A face such as you might see in a loaf, swollen, brooding, infinitely female."

"Do not do it," said the god. "You cannot escape Ungit by going to the deadlands, for she is there also. Die before you die. There is no chance after."

"The Priest has been with me. I never knew him before. He is not what the Fox thinks. Do you know, Sister, I have come to feel more and more that the Fox hasn’t the whole truth. Oh, he has much of it. It’d be dark as a dungeon within me but for his teaching. And yet… I can’t say it properly. He calls the whole world a city. But what’s a city built on? There’s earth beneath. And outside the wall? Doesn’t all the food come from there as well as all the dangers?… things growing and rotting, strengthening and poisoning, things shining wet… in one way (I don’t know which way) more like, yes, even more like the House of [Ungit]."

some other Till We Have Faces quotes that go with this, I think, a year too late

there’s some sort of pipeline between the “Holy places are dark places” quote from Till We Have Faces and the “Hope has dirt on her face… and just spat out a tooth as she rises for another go” quote that circles around here, I just haven’t fully connected the two dots yet

[cultivating-wildflowers]

just found both of my cats' names on a cottagecore baby names list

[andros-paidophonoio]

My take on TSOA and Miller in general just to put it out there is that I like her writing and the way she describes a kind of idyllic, kind of proto paradisial love, it is very evocative and shows a very elegant and intimate presentation of affection in a way that I can see why ppl resonate with it. And the difference between her and some works attempting to imitate that style is....pretty stark lol. I think the stories are executed well in what they are going for, it's just that what is being executed--the approach to comfort and romance, the particular fantasy and desire being displayed is not something that suits my personal tastes or general approach to stuff at all. And this doesn't have to do necessarily even with historical or mythological "accuracy" but more how the stories themselves work for me, as works within their own universes.

(Some of my breakdown of my opinions under the cut. It's not "hate" bc I genuinely do not hate or even really dislike the works. I'm more trying to express my personal thoughts, and I'm happy when I do read things that make me have a lot of thoughts. Also I talk once again about Til We Have Faces)

I think what gets me about both books and the depiction of the ideal love vs cruel world etc is that they are stories that want to believe in the Inherent Internal Goodness of the characters despite their actions and seeks to kind of justify them morally by emphasizing their vulnerability and kindness in the society and world. Which is fine and all, but one thing that I personally find interesting is when one can be interested in and sympathize with characters but also you can see the way they hold and exercise and exploit power over others. Especially in historical settings. I get that especially for more romantic genres, there's a need for some handwaving of this so we can focus on happiness and arc of the focus characters, but it feels honest to me if they're appropriately terrible and unlikeable at times.

I get the fantasy that's kind of being presented is wanting to Be Good and Just and Beloved and have a blissful harmonious familial dynamic but that being in conflict with The Society...if I had to sum it up its very much that 2010s Tumblr "We Deserve a Soft Epilogue my Love" sentiment. Along with a desire and and love for men who are gentle and well-meaning and who have primarily *emotional* reciprocating expression... I get it ...but once again it doesn't really dig deeply into the discomfort of certain dynamics aside from the more acceptable "we must identify with the protagonist so they must be the Persecuted, and those outside are the Persecutors" aka the Homophobic/Toxic Masculinity/Rapist archetypes who are out there, Other.

Personally, after I read and was thinking about these books for a while I pulled out my copy of Til We Have Faces and revisited that. Now, I'm biased bc it's one of my favorite books, but it strikes me a lot as an interesting book to read parallel to Circe. Both retelling a classic myth from the perspective of an antagonistic figure, where a female character is regarded as ugly and abject (and a big source of the abjection coming from an abusive, powerful father) and because of that abjection, find and take comfort in other sources of power and influence. The stories are very different of course in both intention, but I felt like one thing I liked about TWHF is how it allowed its main character, Psyche's ugly stepsister Orual, to both be a rejected figure and one who suffers, but also show well, the way she also exercises privileges and power over people. She is treated terribly, rejected from being gendered as a desirable "woman" and a woman's role bc of her ugliness (while also being denigrated for being a woman), she desires love she has been denied violently, and it's not surprising that she acts in unsympathetic and judgmental ways. Throughout all this, She is also a princess, and later queen who believes she is descended from the gods, and in her society controls and sometimes takes the lives of her slaves, servants, and subjects. There is no contradiction; one can be a victim and also Lord power over others that you do not even realize. Her story and emotional journey is very interesting because it does not shy away from this complexity and discomfort, and it presents a world that is (in that novel, fictitious) but feels very ancient and alien in its practices and values.

In contrast, the worlds of Circe, Circe is not really given a chance to exercise power uncomfortably over anyone in the same way--she does do her cool Witch Behaviors but they are always Justified Actions, against once again The External Persecutors --violent rapist men, or Heartless gods. We don't need to face the discomfort of what it would mean for her to say, have attendants or servants or have a kind of hierarchy or what it means to. She basically Bootstraps herself into her power and is the Underdog the whole time.

Similarly in tsoa, we are presented with the kind and peace-loving Patroclus who is once again the Persecuted (by this time the External Homophobic Mom lol), and it goes out of its way to show his empathy with the womensuffering and the pain at The Society that causes the forbidden love to be forbidden. And maybe all this dancing around makes it easier for the average person to identify with the main characters bc whew who would want to identify with anyone who does anything BAD or in any way right???

But the thing is for me is that maybe we DONT "deserve" the Soft Epilogue, maybe, like Orual, we as people are a mix of shitty and exploitative in ways we refuse to acknowledge, even as we are tormented by our own Persecutors and traumas and lack of power in our lives and etc. but that doesn't mean u can't desire and seek happiness or be someone interesting and worth empathizing with... Idk I'm just not interested in the artistic tendency to want the character to be The Good Person, and the way we show someone is The Good Person is to show How Persecuted They Are, to be worth understanding and loving.

That's just my insta-thoughts, may expand later (I would like to write a more in depth analysis of TWHF bc I'm tired of the Very Christian analysis being the only one) but yeah. Idk in how this translates to my fanwork or whatever I'm not interested in justifying anything anyone does or "defending" or attacking faves. I'm interested in what I'm interested in, and it won't always line up with everything else. But that's ok, there's always room for different things, I'm carving out my spot of fun here like everyone else.

[alibrandi]

just finished till we have faces by c.s. lewis….orual, most wretched and beloved, what a journey.

[hobbitwrangler]

Thank you @swanmaids @imakemywings & @aredhels for tagging me!

Rules: make a poll with five of your all-time favorite characters and then tag five people to do the same. see which character is everyone’s favorite.

I have far too many favourite characters but these are the ones that have been on my mind most recently.

tagging @scyllas-revenge @searchingforserendipity25 @glorf1ndel @lotrlorien @starsuncounted want to do this and haven't already!

[fairtradebananas]

I’m reading Till We Have Faces for the nth time and always noticing and pondering new things. This time, how Orual’s complaint against the gods is based on the notion that they unjustly withhold goodness from her (a good father, a good sister, beauty, etc), while at the same time she’s blind to the gifts they’ve given her that actually answer all of those complaints (the Fox to replace her father, Psyche to replace Redival, the opportunity to behold true beauty rather than possess it). Her complaint eclipses her ability to see the blessings she is constantly being given because they’re not given in the way that she wants them

[thomasstaples]

Quote from "Till We Have Faces: A Myth Retold" by C. S. Lewis -

"You will say—I have said it many thousand times to myself—that, if I saw in her any readiness to dwell on the better part of the Priest’s talk and to think she would be a god’s bride more than a Brute’s prey, I ought to have fallen in with her and encouraged it. Had I not come to her to give comfort, if I could? Surely not to take it away. But I could not rule myself. Perhaps it was a sort of pride in me, a little like her own, not to blind our eyes, not to hide terrible things; or a bitter impulse in anguish itself to say, and to keep on saying, the worst. ‘I see,’ said Psyche in a low voice. ‘You think it devours the offering. I mostly think so myself. Anyway, it means death. Orual, you didn’t think I was such a child as not to know that? How can I be the ransom for all Glome unless I die? And if I am to go to the god, of course it must be through death. That way, even what is strangest in the holy sayings might be true. To be eaten and to be married to the god might not be so different. We don’t understand. There must be so much that neither the Priest nor the Fox knows.’"