Gabrielle Hunt - Till We Have Faces 1

Gabrielle Hunt

22 April 2012

Till We Have Faces 1

Orual and Eros

In our class discussion about Eros, it was brought up that Orual may feel some degree of Eros towards her sister, Psyche. While this was tittered about, I don’t think it’s impossible that she should feel this way towards her sister without that romantic engagement that seems to be a crucial part of Eros. Rather than feeling just friendship towards her sister, which is built around similar interests and activities, she may very well feel a love for her sister simply for being herself. She may love her sister because of who she is rather than because they’re accustomed to spending time together. This doesn’t have to be an incestual homosexual love, though it’s easy to see it perceived that way, especially in the context of other remarks Orual makes about Psyche, such as that she would like to be Psyche’s husband etcetera.

In the absence of other non-familial Eros relationships, Orual may be engaging that form of love inappropriately in applying it to her sister, even without the romantic or sexual factors. Because Orual is putting this form of love above Agape love, it leads to disorder in her relationship with her sister as well as her relationships with other people. She becomes overly possessive of her sister, even to the point of manipulating her sister’s sisterly love towards her, which starts to indicate that Orual may not actually love her sister, but rather be obsessed with Psyche, because if one uses love to manipulate then one cannot be truly loving the object of that manipulation, because real love would not manipulate the object of its affection.