Till We Have Faces: Part 2: Chapter 3 Summary & Analysis

For days, the Queen ponders the gods’ signs, wondering if the gods sometimes merge with humans the way they do with each other. She finds comfort in the words of Socrates, who speaks of dying skillfully and fearing the invisible. She decides she must practice philosophy in Socrates’ way, by being calm and stoic, in order to rid herself of Ungit’s influence. Although she tries, she always finds herself reverting to her negative emotions, and she thinks she won’t be able to change her soul any more than she was able to change her ugly face. Orual thinks that the gods won’t love anyone unless they have a naturally beautiful soul. Ugly people, in mind or body, are doomed from birth.

Soon the Queen has another vision. In this one, she’s standing on the bank of a river. On the other side, she sees a flock of giant sheep with golden fleece. She wants to steal a bit of their fleece, thinking it will give her beauty. But when she crosses the river, the sheep trample her in their joy. She realizes that the Divine Nature hurts humans without malice, but simply by existing. When she gets to her feet, she sees a woman leisurely picking the wool out of a hedge, out of danger from the sheep.

Orual doesn’t think she’ll ever rid herself of Ungit. She continues going about her duties, making very fair judgments when she presides in court, but not caring about any of it. Her only comfort is that she loved Psyche well, and the gods are at fault in that quarter. To revel in this, she goes to the garden to reread her own account of her relationship with Psyche.

Before she can begin, Orual has another vision. She’s walking through a desert, carrying a bowl that she must fill with water from the afterlife because Ungit has ordered her to. Eventually she comes to the base of some rocky mountains. She realizes that they’re covered in snakes and scorpions, and she knows she has to cross the mountains to reach the water.

A giant eagle wheels down from the sky, clearly from the gods. When Orual gives her name, he says he’s not there to help her, but he asks what she’s carrying. She realizes it’s her book, not a bowl like she thought. The eagle announces her arrival and tells her to follow him to the court of the gods to give her complaint. A crowd of human-like figures emerges from the mountains and push her into a hole in the mountain. It seems she has been expected.

Eventually Orual finds herself standing in darkness on a platform in a gigantic cave. She sees millions of ghosts standing all around her. A veiled judge commands her veil to be removed, and tells her to read her complaint aloud. But the book she holds isn’t the book she wrote. She wants to protest, but instead she opens it to find strange, cruel handwriting inside, and begins to read against her will.

Orual says the gods will claim that she should know that the real gods aren’t like Ungit, because she saw a real god. She would have preferred if they were like Ungit; she would have preferred if Psyche had been eaten. It’s worse that the gods stole Psyche from Orual. Their beauty lures the best mortals to them with no regard for those left behind. Humans would rather have their loved ones destroyed by the gods than have them kept alive but taken away from the human realm.

Orual knows the gods will say she had enough signs that Psyche’s palace was real, but she didn’t want to acknowledge it. They’ll say she was jealous of Psyche—that Orual was angry because she raised Psyche, and then Psyche became practically a goddess without Orual’s approval. The very existence of the gods ruins human lives. There’s no reason Orual should have been happy for Psyche’s happiness if it meant she couldn’t have Psyche by her side. Psyche belonged to Orual, and the gods stole her.

The judge stops Orual’s speech, and she realizes she has been reading the book over and over. Her own voice sounds strange to her, and she realizes that it’s her real voice. After a long silence, the judge asks whether Orual is satisfied, and she says she is.