Clive Staples Lewis

[crickhollow]

Originally posted by RÃ*an
crickhollow - one of the parts that I didn't get in TWHF is when (oh shoot, can't remember their names offhand, and I loaned my book out!!) anyway, near the end when the older sister (was it Orual?) tried to do things, like get fleece from the rams, and couldn't; then Psyche came after and did it with (apparently) divine help and guidance (she took the wool off of the bushes). What do you think that meant? That we can't do things on our own, but "with God, all things are possible"? But it also seemed like Psyche was doing it FOR Orual, like Christ died for OUR sin. What do you think?

okay, here we go (three more cheers for the campus library, which carries four copies of TWHF)

After Orual convinces Psyche to light the lamp and look upon the face of her husband...

"Now Psyche goes out into exile. Now she must hunger and thirst and tread hard roads. Those against whom I cannot fight must do their will upon her. You, woman, shall know yourself and your work. You also shall be Psyche."

p. 173-4 this was Cupid speaking to Orual--Orual was later haunted by the sound of Psyche's weeping.

Later on, Orual writes:

And the continual labour of mind to which it put me began to overflow into my sleep. It was a labour of sifting and sorting, separating motive from motive and both from pretext; and this same sorting went on every night in my dreams, but in a changed fashion. I though I had before me a huge, hopeless pile of seeds, wheat, barley, poppy, rye, millet, what not, and I must sort them out and make spearate piles, each all of one kind. Why I must do it, I do not know; but infinite punishment would fall upon me if I rested a moment from my labour or if, when all was done, a single seed were in the wrong pile.

In the vision with the rams, the rams trample Orual, leaving Psyche free to gather the wool caught by the thorns.

Then, while she is waiting for her trial with the gods, she finds out htat she bore Psyche's anguish, while Psyche carried out the actual tasks, and in the end, Orual is also redeemed, and the gods declare that she is Ungit no longer, but has become like Psyche.