I Am A Wife Now

Orual offers to take Psyche’s place but is refused because she lacks beauty. She is not a good enough sacrifice.
This is why Christ had to handle the payment for our sins. We are damaged and unsuitable for payment.

“I’m surprised that people don’t see that it is about jealousy and possessive love.” – Lewis (27). “The difficulty may be less a failure to see that it is about possessive love than a failure to understand the way possessive love and love-longing oppose each other in rual and the way Platonic and Christian ideas about love and longing give shape to a conflict which threatens to tear her life apart.”

The three natural loves can remain loves only if they are transformed by agape. (T4L)

Woman who “gives up her life” for her husband and makes him miserable – not love.

Selfish love of psyche: she would have been a wife so she could have been her mother, would have been etc. etc., would have been a boy so she could have fallen in love with her. This has nothing to do with her gender, it has to do with selfishness. Her identity was completely explained by what she wanted for herself, not what she actually was.

T4L: The proper aim of giving is to put the recipient in a state where he no longer needs our gift.

“All of my life the mountain has been wooing me” (psyche to Orual before she ‘dies’ 76)

Psyche made into an “ugly doll” when she is taken to the sacrifice, between the kind and the priest. 80

90 bardia teaching her how to sword fight. “but your dress hampers you.”

“Why, yes, it’s a pity about her face. But she’s a brave girl and honest. If a man was blind and she weren’t the King’s daughter, she’s make him a good wife.” And that was the nearest thing to a love-speech that was ever made to me. 92

“Oh, I’ll spin the King a story easily enough. He isn’t with us as he is with you, Lady. For all his hard words he’s no bad master to soldiers, shepherds, huntsmen, and the like. He understands them and they him. You see him at his worst with women and priests and politic men. The truth is he’s half afraid of them.” 93 Bardia to Orual

Veil over her face on 93, underneath she wears a short fencing smock and a man’s belt and a sword.

Temple of Ungit – THE HOLY SHAPE – an egg or a womb from which the whole world sprang. Custom where the priest is locked in and fights his way out, symbolizing that a new year is born.

In this story, the God is female and the savoir (both of them) is female. His favorite book.

P 101 The country of the gods – bright, fertile, blossoming, air warm and sweet. “This may well be the secret valley of the god.”

And there dwelt psyche. The fertile valley of marriage!

102, Bardia, “Careful, Lady… ai! Ai! It’s the bride of the god.

Orual can cross the river into the valley but Bardia cannot.

Right before Psyche is sacrificed she has that sweet drink, then all the animals gather around her, just like the Greer Woman in Perelandra

Jane, the Green Lady, Orual, and Psyche. – do they become less intelligent when they obey God?

‘Don’t you think the things people are most ashamed of are the things they can’t help?” 112 “I thought of my ugliness and said nothing.”

West-wind is a merry, rough god. ☺

“It said, ‘Enter your House’ (yes, it called it my House), ‘Psyche, the bride of the god.” 113

There was no one to be seen. But then the voices came. All round me, bidding me welcome.”
“What kind of voices?”
“Like women’s voices – at least, as like women’s voices as the wind-god was like a man.” 113. And then she bathes, and then she feasts.

Perhaps compare to the woman whose faith has made her well?

At the bath, “I was terribly shy when it came to taking off my clothes, but –“ “You said they were all she-spirits?” “ Oh, Maia, you still don’t understand. This shame has nothing to do with He or She. It’s the being mortal – being, how shall I say it? … insufficient.”

Then dressing beautifully, then the banquet, then music, then bed, then night, then HE.

“The Bridegroom … the god himself. Don’t look at me like that, Sister. I’m your own true Psyche still. Nothing will change that.” 115

Up in the holy place on the mountain, “Bardia had been afraid and even the priests don’t go.”

It is Orual’s FATHER’S fury that falls upon her when she lashes out at Orual after she asks if she sees the palace. Orual even attacks her physically.

In TWHF all the men are weak or afraid in some way.

Psyche, “Her voice was very deep for a woman’s.” And she grew super strong in god-land. Stronger than the manly Orual. Her voice gets lower the more conviction she has.

‘And now she was saying he every moment, no other name but he, the way young wives talk…” 122

“My god, of course. My lover. My husband. The master of my House.” 122


Seemed taller than before.

“Oh Psyche, Psyche! You loved me once…come back. What have we to do with gods and wonders and all these cruel, dark things? We’re women, aren’t we? Mortals.” 124

How can I go back? This is my home. I am a wife. 125.

“If that wise Greek who is to read this book doubts that this turned my mind right round, let him ask his mother or wife. The moment I saw her, my chold whom I had cared for all her life, sitting there in the rain as if it meant no more toher than it does to carrel, the notion that her palace and her god could be anything but madness was at one unbelievable. All those wilder misgivings, all the fluttering to and fro between two opinions, was (for that time) quite over. I saw in a flash that I must choose one opinion or the other; and in the same flash knew which I had chosen. 126 (wanting to protect her from the rain, then DEMNADING that she come home and be safe with Orual).

“Tender in her voice but hard as a stone in her determination, ‘Dear Maia, I am a wife now. It’s no longer you that I must obey.” 127 Now that Psyche is a wife, Orual must obey HER.

Women not obedient to their husbands, they are obedient to GOD.

STEPMOTHER paragraph, schakel 37