The inevitable Till We Have Faces meta
From the onset of Till We Have Faces, we know that Orual is ugly. This is, perhaps, the trait of which both she and the reader are most certain. Her mirror condemns her; she is ugly.
And yet, it is not until the final chapters of the book that Orual realizes: she isn’t merely ugly. She is ugly. Her soul is ugly and she cannot fix it.
This is not to say that Orual does not have virtues. She is an excellent queen, brave, intelligent, and resilient. She is explicitly said to be the finest and fairest ruler in the region. Her subjects cheer her accomplishments and mourn her impending death. Surely most of us cannot claim such things.
And Orual does do her best to love people well—Bardia, the Fox, and particularly dear Psyche. It’s just that her best isn’t good enough.
Like all writers, C.S. Lewis tends to revisit particular themes. One of his favorites seems to be the journey to the awareness of one’s own sin. He discusses this in a number of his apologetic works and, in Narnia, explores it through the journeys of Edmund, Digory, Aravis, and particularly Eustace. Lewis considered Till We Have Faces his greatest literary work, and in many ways it is his fullest exploration of this theme.
In essence, Till We Have Faces is Eustace’s journey in slow-motion. Both Eustace and Orual have tremendous defects which they consider virtues: Eustace’s is his arrogance (which he calls intelligence) and Orual’s her possessiveness (which she calls love). Both consider the consequences of these defects unjust, until they are suddenly, startlingly confronted with the truth: that their defects have made them monstrous. Eustace looks into the water and realizes that he is a dragon. Orual comes to understand that she is Ungit. Both try to mend themselves: Eustace tries to shed his own skin. Orual tries to mend her behavior. Yet they ultimately discover that only divine intervention can fix them. Aslan “undresses” Eustace, digging his claws into him and tearing off his dragon-hide. And Orual—
With Orual, it’s more complicated. This is the beauty of it. What happens to Eustace in quick, powerful moments—looking into the pool and weeping, feeling Aslan’s claws digging deep—takes a lifetime for Orual. And while I love Eustace’s story like mad, I can’t help but see why Lewis preferred Orual’s. There is more truth in it.
Agonizingly, little by little, Orual comes to understand how she has wronged those she ought to have loved most. Each of these realizations comes slowly, and slowly Orual looks into the water and realizes her own monstrousness. Layer by layer, her self-delusions are stripped away and she is left with the naked truth of who she truly is. Right?
Not quite. When she speaks with Bardia’s widow, Orual bares her face for a moment, realizing that she hated someone she thought she had loved. Yet this is not nearly enough.
No. Orual must be stripped naked in the piercing sight of the gods. She must finally speak the truth of her motivations, the very cry of her heart, in her own true voice. Only then does she see her reflection rightly. What took Eustace only a few moments to understand takes Orual years. Is it not so with us?
Christians often pray, “teach me to hate my sin.” It’s an easy prayer to speak, but a difficult one to reap. God does teach us to hate our sin, and as He does so He peels layers and layers off our hearts. While God’s saving work is done once and forever, His pursuit is relentless and the process of sanctification agonizing. God chases after his people in love, yes. But equally he does it by revealing our need. No human would turn to God unless humbled; unless we were stripped of our self-delusion and truly aware that we have no good apart from Him, we would cling to our pride.
And then after that, the Christian life is one in which we are called to die again and again—to our old desires, to our sins, to our achievements, to our very selves—every day, until we die. And through this glorious work of God, we are given new life.
Orual is ugly. Layer by layer, she finds herself uglier and uglier, more and more naked.
But Orual is not left naked and ashamed. No; the gods are too wonderful for that. The work of God is to take what is ugly and expose its ugliness, yes. But far more than that, the work of God is to take what is ugly and make it beautiful.
Eustace is undragoned. Orual is given a cask of beauty, so that even Ungit may be made lovely. You also are Psyche—you shall be as beautiful as she. And like her sister, Orual becomes her truest self—all that was once only evident in a glance or a gesture, all that one meant most when one spoke her name, now wholly present.
Here’s a metaphor that I love: imagine a beautiful panel of stained glass covered in a century’s worth of dust and grime and dirt. Sanctification is removing of all that grime, layer by layer, bit by bit. Glorification is shining a light behind the glass. Suddenly, the artist’s intention is revealed.
Till We Have Faces is a masterwork because it is steeped in this promise: To encounter the Divine Nature—to encounter God—is to find yourself naked and ugly, terrified and angry. But even more than that, to encounter God is to inescapably, inevitably, indelibly be made beautiful.
