The snow on the earth, the snow on the branches

[dolorosa_12]

This weekend has been calm, relaxing, and wintry. Yesterday's skies were clear and blue, and it was a real pleasure to walk out to the gym for my two hours of classes, watched through the windows by myriad cats as they observed me make my way through the freezing air. After lunch, Matthias and I assembled the growhouse we bought for germinating this year's vegetables. All things being equal, I'm hoping to start with tomatoes, cucumbers, radishes, and some herbs by the end of the month.

In the evening, we went out for a meal at this place — a former stately home that's now a boutique hotel and events venue, just slightly out of town near the village of Stuntney. It's not reachable by public transport, and the last time we ate there we got taxis back and forth, but this time around we decided to try walking. It's not the most picturesque walk: you walk along a paved footpath next to a main road for about half the trip, then you have the option of continuing along the main road with no footpath (i.e. walking on the verge), or going slightly out of the way into Stuntney village, walking the length of the village and then rejoining the main road when the village ends. We went with the latter (the idea of walking along the verge of a main road in the dark did not appeal), and the whole thing took just under an hour. It was definitely a good way to work up an appetite! It was lovely to sit in the bar next to an open fire, drinking champagne, before moving into the restaurant for the meal, which was fairly solid gastropub-type food, in a conservatory with views back across the fens to the cathedral, and a woman singing covers of various pop songs. The whole experience was so warming and cosy.

It was meant to start raining and snowing at 1am, but in actual fact this only really arrived in the light of the morning — drenching me when I ducked out to the bakery to pick up pastries for breakfast. We had deliberately planned to spend the whole of Sunday indoors, and the advent first of heavy rain, and then of snow, confirmed the wisdom of this decision! The snow was intense: fat flakes that danced through the air, and settled all over the trees, roofs, and ground. It lasted for a couple of hours, although it's all well on the way to melting now, and turning to slush. While it lasted, it was a beautiful backdrop to some slow yoga, watching the Olympics, and lots of reading.

You may recall that a few weeks back, I was asking for recommendations of fairytale/mythology/folktale retellings, and this week is when I've made proper efforts to start with some of the books you recommended. This somehow worked out as being two very different Eros/Cupid and Psyche retellings: The Sharpest Thorn (Victoria Audley) and Till We Have Faces (C.S. Lewis), both doing very different things with the myth, both doing them well.


The Sharpest Thorn is probably the more straightforward of the two retellings, and really digs into the element of family cruelty — both Psyche's human family, and the divine family of the Greek gods — which runs through the tale. It's a book about love which emphasises that enduring cruelty for the sake of family bonds is not worth it, that family 'love' which finds sole expression as a series of impossible demands is no love at all, and that the relationships and connections people find outside the family can sometimes be a lifeline, and reaching for that lifeline and not letting go is a way to find and save oneself.

As for the Lewis, I went into this with some trepidation that I'd tried to overcome due to my general trust in the taste of the people who'd recommended it. I last read Lewis more than twenty years ago, when I was assigned That Hideous Strength to read for a university class during my undergrad degree, and felt the book's misogyny with an almost physical force. It remains one of only two books that made me so angry that I literally hurled them at the wall, and I had determined then to never, ever read another C.S. Lewis book again.

I genuinely cannot reconcile the writing of women (from a woman's first-person perspective, even) in Till We Have Faces with the seething, misogynistic contempt of That Hideous Strength. It's almost as if the books are written by two entirely different people. This retelling tells the story of Cupid and Psyche from the point of view of one of Psyche's sisters (who, in the original versions of the tale, out of jealousy of their sister's material circumstances, convince her to break her divine husband's taboo on viewing him, sparking Psyche's exile, misery, and ill-treatment), and what it's really concerned with is the gulf between the human and the divine, and how the former are only able to perceive the latter dimly, through darkness. I'm not doing it full justice with that description — really, it's something that has to be read to experience fully — but I'm just in awe, really. It's one of the few works of fiction that really conveys the yawning gulf between mortal and immortal ways of being, seeing, and experiencing existence. Per Lewis, ordinary human beings are for the most part so incapable of understanding the divine that they fill in this chasm with darkness, with symbols, with metaphor, and with monstrosity. What an incredible book (although I couldn't help rolling my eyes indulgently at the whole Golden Bough of it all — oh mid-twentieth-century authors with interest in comparative religion, never change).

In the time since I've started this post, the snow has now melted fully, and that silvery snowlit quality in the sky has been replaced by soggy grey. The afternoon is, I suppose, somewhat running away from me. This cosy conclusion to the weekend, however, holds nothing more complicated than some slow-cooking Iranian food for dinner, cups of smoky tea, and a fire in the wood-burning stove. It's been a good two days all around.

Comments

[kore]

Isn't Faces good? Usually his wife, Joy Davidman, is seen as a late influence in his life on this and other works (Surprised by Joy).

[dolorosa_12]

I've heard that, and it makes sense, although it's a bit sad. 'I didn't see adult women as people, capable of understanding their own minds and aspirations, until I married one,' and so on.

Face is staggeringly good.

[troisoiseaux]

I genuinely cannot reconcile the writing of women (from a woman's first-person perspective, even) in Till We Have Faces with the seething, misogynistic contempt of That Hideous Strength. It's almost as if the books are written by two entirely different people.

RIGHT?????

[dolorosa_12]

The contrast is unbelievable!

[pauraque]

I loved Till We Have Faces. I've found all the Lewis I've read as an adult really insightful and rewarding--though I deliberately skipped That Hideous Strength because I was warned that it would lower my opinion of him!

[dolorosa_12]

That's a very wise decision! You're not missing anything, and I think if anything, coming to That Hideous Strength after some of his other work (if it's of the quality of Till We Have Faces) would feel like a betrayal.

[ermingarden]

I read Till We Have Faces a couple of years ago, during my bar prep summer, and adored it - for much the same reasons as you, I think!

I have read a whole lot of Lewis and generally find his works to be about four parts “heck yeah!” to one part “what the heck?!” I do think he tends to be weird about gender overall, and will sometimes identify a way in which people differ but ascribe it to gender when I don’t think it’s related - for example, in The Screwtape Letters, he writes that “up to a certain point, fatigue makes women talk more and men talk less,” and while I do agree that fatigue makes some people (e.g., me) talk more while others (e.g., my mother) talk less, I don’t think it has much to do with gender.

I haven’t yet read That Hideous Strength - I liked (but did not love) Out of the Silent Planet, but haven’t read the rest of the Space Trilogy, though I do intend to - and now have some trepidation about it!

I do wonder if some of the difference between Lewis’s attitude in the two books has a biographical explanation. I have read that Lewis took inspiration for the character of Orual from Joy Davidman, whom he would later marry; That Hideous Strength was published several years before he even met her. It would not surprise me if forming a close personal relationship with a woman he viewed entirely as his intellectual equal affected Lewis’s views on women and gender more broadly.

[dolorosa_12]

I do wonder if some of the difference between Lewis’s attitude in the two books has a biographical explanation. I have read that Lewis took inspiration for the character of Orual from Joy Davidman, whom he would later marry; That Hideous Strength was published several years before he even met her. It would not surprise me if forming a close personal relationship with a woman he viewed entirely as his intellectual equal affected Lewis’s views on women and gender more broadly.

I think this is pretty much the consensus (you're not the only person to suggest this in the comments), and while I'm glad that it meant he produced writing of such quality — such as Till We Have Faces, it's still kind of sad to me that it took meeting and marrying a woman for Lewis to be able to see women as people with interior lives and aspirations.

Weird about gender overall sums up my experience with Lewis thus far.

[ermingarden]

I should have checked the comments before becoming the umpteenth person to bring up Joy Davidman, lol! I agree that it’s sad - though I suppose Lewis deserves some minimal credit for actually changing his mind about women in general based on knowing Davidman, which is a low bar but one that many people fail to clear. (I am reminded of a man I knew in law school, otherwise intelligent, who was a conservative Catholic and convinced himself - and said to me - that I was just not like other gay Catholics, when really the only distinction was that he knew me personally and liked me. I think it is sadly more common for people to convince themselves that a particular person is somehow exceptional than to allow their existing opinion of a group to be altered.)

Have you read anything else by Lewis, or just That Hideous Strength and Faces?

[dolorosa_12]

I think it is sadly more common for people to convince themselves that a particular person is somehow exceptional than to allow their existing opinion of a group to be altered.

Oh indeed — I've seen this play out many times in relation to many different types of marginalised groups.

I read all the Narnia books when I was a child, and I feel certain I've probably read pieces of Lewis's academic writing at various points when I was studying medieval literature at university, but only Faces (for positive reasons) and That Hideous Strength (for extremely negative reasons) made particularly strong impressions on me. I may try some of his other writing for adults, although I'm not super keen to give the earlier books in the Space Trilogy a go.

[ermingarden]

Absolutely - certainly didn’t mean to suggest my experience there was unusual, only that it’s what came to mind.

I’d be curious what you think of The Screwtape Letters, if you ever read that one! (I didn’t think Out of the Silent Planet was among his best works, so you’re probably not missing much with the Space Trilogy.)

I’m reminded of a conference session I once attended, where one of the presenters - a modern comp-lit guy - was presenting on Lewis. His argument was basically that, although people think of Lewis only as a children’s book author, he was a serious scholar of medieval literature! We should take him seriously! We should all read The Discarded Image! And a roomful of medievalists, all of whom took Lewis seriously and most of whom had read The Discarded Image, stared back awkwardly…

[dolorosa_12]

I’m reminded of a conference session I once attended, where one of the presenters - a modern comp-lit guy - was presenting on Lewis. His argument was basically that, although people think of Lewis only as a children’s book author, he was a serious scholar of medieval literature! We should take him seriously! We should all read The Discarded Image! And a roomful of medievalists, all of whom took Lewis seriously and most of whom had read The Discarded Image, stared back awkwardly…

Hahaha, this is amazing!

Absolutely - certainly didn’t mean to suggest my experience there was unusual, only that it’s what came to mind.

I definitely wasn't trying to imply that you thought that — apologies if that's how it read — I was just trying to agree with you!

[ermingarden]

There’s preaching to the choir, and then there’s rolling up to a medieval studies conference and declaring you’ve rediscovered C.S. Lewis!

[ermingarden]

And I'm sorry - looking back now, I think my last comment definitely came out wrong! I didn't mean to imply that I thought you thought I thought that (that's tangled!). Unfortunately, that's something we can definitely agree on.

[eglantiere]

Apparently he married Joy Davidson and discovered that woman are people! But no, idk either, but isn't this book amazing.

[dolorosa_12]

It is exactly as amazing as you (and many others) kept telling me it was! I loved it so much.

[skygiants]

I read Til We Have Faces for the first time two years ago or so and it hit me with such force that it almost feels like it somehow time-travelled through my personality, like it was retroactively formative even though I didn't read it at the time when I was being formed. Just an incredible work.

[dolorosa_12]

Retroactively formative is exactly how I would describe it. I'm astonished at how good it is, and how much it spoke to me.

[chestnut_pod]

I have to read Faces, I really do. I will! Eventually.

[dolorosa_12]

This was me, when eglantiere and others kept repeatedly recommending it to me, whenever I asked for recommendations of mythology retellings, or books where human beings interacted with divinity (I want very specific things in that kind of story, and most books don't give them to me). I hope you get to it eventually, it really is that good. I think even if you dislike it, you'll enjoy arguing with it.

[lirazel]

I'm dipping through your journal to see what I missed during my hiatus, both in your life and in your reading (though I'll probably comment more on the latter!). I am thrilled that you enjoyed Faces as much as you did. It's a really singular book, and it's so so so important to me, so it fills me with joy whenever someone encounters it for the first time and appreciates it.

I agree with you that it's sad that it took Lewis developing a relationship with Joy to actually understand women, but I do think it's slightly mitigated by the fact that he was born in the Victorian era, his mother died young, and then he essentially never spent much time around women until late in his life. His Oxford and Cambridge and his whole social circle was VERY much a men's world, and I really think he's just never had to actually confront women's humanity until he became friends with Joy?

And obviously he's definitely culpable for a lot that since, um, women are half of the human race and he absolutely could have sought them out at any point, but I do think that part of the blame is on the society in which he was raised and operated. I am grateful that once he actually spent a lot of time with a woman, he went, "Oh! Women are people too!"

It's also interesting to me that he was capable of writing really good female child characters in the Narnia books even before he met Joy.

I'm not saying all this to excuse him! But I do think his particularly kind of misogyny was quite different than the kind we encounter now in ways that I find interesting.

[dolorosa_12]

You're absolutely right — I've even met elderly professors during my time at Cambridge who were sort of the tail end of the Oxbridge environment you're describing. It was a very monastic and sealed environment — just a bunch of scholarly men, living in their own little world in which everything was devoted to the life of the mind. As you say, it's not an excuse, but it is an explanation, and that he was capable of changing his mind based on experience is to his credit. (The closest current day equivalent I can think of is formerly homophobic or transphobic people who see the error of their ways when faced with gay or trans family members, and realise that their bigotry actually affects real people who they care about.)

The kind of misogyny we encounter now is in some ways a lot worse, because most of those misogynists presumably have living mothers, some would have sisters, they would have gone to co-ed schools and universities, and have wives or girlfriends — and yet hold such dehumanising views about women.

I am thrilled that you enjoyed Faces as much as you did. It's a really singular book, and it's so so so important to me, so it fills me with joy whenever someone encounters it for the first time and appreciates it.


skygiants said in her comment that Faces somehow time-travelled through my personality, like it was retroactively formative even though I didn't read it at the time when I was being formed, and that's an accurate summary of my own feelings!