For example, this is a short post. But I hope it will have a lot of comments.
This is a space I'm setting aside for my church book club. We all read Till We Have Faces by C.S. Lewis last month. Unfortunately, we weren't able to meet. I've talked to most of the members of the book club individually, but not all together. So, I'm creating this space. If anyone has read the book and wants to make comments about it, they can do so here. I look forward to a good discussion after the jump! (And I expect spoilers, so if you haven't read the book, you've been warned!)
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4 comments:
I'll start out with a few observances I made. This quote from page 282 really stuck out at me:
"No man will love you, though you gave your life for him, unless you have a pretty face. So (might it not be?) the gods will not love you (however you try to pleasure them, and whatever you suffer) unless you have that beauty of soul. In either race, for the love of men or the love of a god, the winners and losers are marked out from birth. We bring our ugliness, in both kinds, with us into the world, with it our destiny."
The very same day, I read this scripture, found in Alma 5: 14, 19
14 And now behold, I ask of you, my brethren of the church, have ye spiritually been born of God? Have ye received his image in your countenances? Have ye experienced this mighty change in your hearts?
19 I say unto you, can ye look up to God at that day with a pure heart and clean hands? I say unto you, can you look up, having the image of God engraven upon your countenances?
These two quotes seem to be saying the exact opposite things, and I can't decide if that view has changed by the end of the book when Orual discovers that she, too is Psyche and is acceptable to the gods. (Does she discover that? Can we discuss the end now that I've finally finished it?)
I also want to say thanks to Melyngoch for suggesting this book. It's amazing! And I do like the portrayal of women in it. It's the most accurate portrayal Lewis gives, I think.
Melyngoch, why do you like this book so much?
Ferskner and Sher-ill, do you like it more now that you've let it sit awhile? Does the ending make more sense with time? Tell me your thoughts!
Hmmmm . . .
Diving right into the middle (I don't know where else to begin), I think the quote you draw from Orual about beauty of soul is, at least in part, the position that's contravened by the reversal at the end of the book. Except that Orual doesn't so much discover that she _does_ have beauty of soul, as that the gods love (or loathing) for her isn't really dependent on anything she is or does. The reversal here is fascinating she doesn't have some miraculous discovery of her self-worth, so much as of her self-smallness. When she finally hears her own complaint in others' ears, she realizes how petty and mean her complaints have been -- how desperately human, how insignificant, from the divine perspective. So in the end, it isn't divine love that resolves her anger; it's a recognition of divine distance.
I'm not sure how well that sits with me as a theological principle, but I find it a very satisfying answer to the problems the books raises; and it raises problems of its own that are worth thinking through. As Mormons (as low Christians generally), we tend to emphasize God's closeness, concern, and caring -- we believe in a personal God who is personally invested in even the minutia of our lives. The gods of this novel remind me more starkly of the God of Job, whose answer to Job's (strikingly Orualesque) complaint is, roughly paraphrased, "Well, I'm God, and I said so." While the warmer Mormon vision is much nicer to live with, and more useful much of the time, and certainly not untrue to my experience, there's something honest and humbling in recognizing that God is, after all, _not_ like us; that God may care about us, but that does not make our small mortal dramas worthy of God's care. At any rate, I think it's worth complicating either notion of God, the loving or the arch, with the other.
I love this book more personally (I love it for the theological problems it raises, but that's more as an intellectual tract than a novel) because it portrays a person who spends her life in a fight with God (something I relate to), and comes to an answer. It isn't an easy answer, or even a particularly comforting answer, but it's an answer that answers that allows her to recast her life as something she can live with.
(And this problem of lived hermeneutics is another essential problem the book raises that I'm fascinated by, but I won't bring it up here because this comment is already kind of long; still, if anyone else is fascinated too, have at it!)
Lewis works a difficult balancing act between portraying a character who is angry, bitter, resentful, alive with self-pity, and quite obsessed with her own sense of being wronged; and yet a character who is at the same time tragic, abused, misunderstood, and even self-sacrificing. She's never exactly likable, I never quite sympathize with her, even as I relate to her, but nor does she grate. Her insistence on seeing herself as a victim drives her not to passive naval-gazing suffering (which would be maudlin and uninteresting to read about (or it might just be Dosteyevsky)), but to an active, decisive life, which makes me respect her, at least.
So, I'm delighted DeskSet liked the book, and curious what ferskner and Sher-ill didn't like about it. Do tell!
. . . and that was a poorly copyedited comment, ironically. oh, well.
Thanks, Melyngoch! Your comments helped me understand the ending better. And yes, that quote I brought up is given before her complaint with the gods is resolved.
As for Orual's character, I too appreciated that, although much of the book is her complaining and whining, that's not all she does. She leads an active and productive life. She tries to make the world a better place to live. Her complaints are definitely relatable, even if the circumstance is not.
On a very superficial level, I complained to Ferskner and Sher-ill that one thing I disliked about Orual was the fact that her looks were so obviously "ugly" to everyone around her. I realize that this is to set her apart from Psyche, but someday I would like to read a book where a normal girl who is neither stick thin and gorgeous nor so hideously ugly that she must go around veiled is the main character.
I will admit that Orual ends up using her ugliness this to her advantage. (Or at least as motivation to be a better ruler than her father.) By being veiled, she overcomes herself and becomes like a god to her people. Something both wonderful and terrible at the same time. All the while, she has this hidden grudge, this longing for a chance to be accepted for who she really is. It's an interesting predicament. One that we all struggle with on some level, I think.
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