Lewis manages to negotiate some really problematic areas in his usual writing here: the weakness of girls such as Jill Pole in his Narnia books and the imperative of female subordination in That Hideous Strength have shown that his own admissions that he does not understand “the mysteries of the Bona Dea” are not without reason. Here, however, in a powerful re-examining of the Cupid and Psyche myth, Lewis enters a world dominated by the views of one woman.
Orual, unloved daughter of a cruel king, discovers what it is to be human through negotiating the bittterness of losses and wrong choices through her life. This is a powerful psycho-drama as much as it is the retelling of a myth, and Lewis explores the complexity of character and redemption skilfully. The world of petty kingdoms and half-adopted theologies is wonderfully drawn in terms of politics and landscape as much as in Lewis’s appreciation of classical thought, so that the denouement is both tragic and enlightening.
An annual re-read for me.