Husbands and Gods As Shadowbrutes: Beauty and the Beast from Apuleius to C
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Marshall University Marshall Digital Scholar English Faculty Research English Winter 1988 Husbands and Gods as Shadowbrutes: Beauty and the Beast from Apuleius to C. S. Lewis Gwenyth Hood Marshall University, [email protected] Follow this and additional works at: http://mds.marshall.edu/english_faculty Part of the Classics Commons, Comparative Literature Commons, and the English Language and Literature Commons Recommended Citation Hood, Gwenyth. “Husbands and Gods as Shadowbrutes: Beauty and the Beast from Apuleius to C. S. Lewis.” Mythlore 56 Winter (1988): 33-60. This Article is brought to you for free and open access by the English at Marshall Digital Scholar. It has been accepted for inclusion in English Faculty Research by an authorized administrator of Marshall Digital Scholar. For more information, please contact [email protected]. Page32 MYTHLORE5 6: Winter 1988 ::.'· ::-· .: .· :·.··· ..... <:;:/;} ::·.':· ::.·:·. ... '··. • .. ·.··.· :·. ()/:'~·· . ' ~ :: .._ .. ": '.. -.....: Itr:-:.'.':\. :<·.·" · : ,. - ~ .. MYTHLORE 56: Winter 1988 Page33 Jius6ancfs anc£ (jocfs as Sliac£ow6rutes: 'Beauty and tfie 'Beast from .9Lpu{eius to C. S. Lewis (jwen ytfi :J--{ooc£ n the center of his long narrative, The Metamorphoses, Jupiter" ("pinnis volitans super aethera .... quod ipse I (translated by Robert Graves under the title The Golden tremit Jovis" IV, 33) will take her as wife. Though dis Ass ) and composing a large part of the story, Apuleius in· tressed, the parents obey (Graves 100).1 The girl herself serts the tale of "Cupid and Psyche." Like most of the tales tries to comfort them and goes bravely. After abandon interwoven into the narrative, it had been popular before ment, the terrified Psyche is caught up by the West Wind his time (Neumann 153), and many parallel tales exist in and wafted to a valley where she finds a preternaturally the folklore of widely separated cultures. The most famous splendid palace. There she is hailed as mistress ("domina"), modem version is the French tale, "Beauty and the Beast" waited upon by unseen servants and pampered with every which inspires popular artists to this day. The myth also imaginable luxury. When she goes to bed at night, a hus underlies the genre of the gothic romance, for example, band comes for conjugal visits, but he always leaves before Charlotte Bronte's Jane Eyre and Daphne du Maurier's sunrise, so that she never sees him (Graves 104). Rebecca. wo lines of interpretation are usually adopted for these tales: they explore the relationship between husband This way of life continues for some weeks, and Psyche and wife, and they explore the relationship between the is content with it until her husband tells her that her sisters human and the divine. Mythopoeic writers doubtless are coming to the spot where she was abandoned to mourn wished to make these motifs work together, since hus her. Then suddenly she is very unhappy until he reluctant bands are more glorious when they carry that aura of the ly agrees to let them visit. They do, and are both smitten divine, and the humanity is more inspired when drawn to with envy; furthermore, they figure out (because she tells the divine by erotic desire. However, in the evolution of them inconsistent lies) that she has not seen her husband. the tale in Western Culture, it has veered away from the They come back pretending they have discovered that he divine and more toward the human, as a study of "Beauty is a "huge snake slithering with many great coils" ("im and the Beast" will attest. Portraying gods as dangerous manem colubrum multinodis voluminibus serpentem"; beasts was troublesome for the Christian culture, while a V, 17; Graves 114) who intends to devour her when her beastly husband was more acceptable. Then, in the fifties, pregnancy is far advanced. They urge her to bring a lamp C. S. Lewis re-treated the "Cupid and Psyche" myth itself, and a blade into her bedchamber, to see the monster and adopting Apuleius as his main source (Lewis, Till We Have then kill him. Faces 311-13) and rejoining it to human-divine interpreta tion. Could Lewis, indeed, make a success of this motif, Pysche resolves to do so, but when she lights the lamp, which had embarrassed even the pagan Apuleius? she sees lying in her bed, asleep, not a viper but the beauti ful god Amor. Mortified, Psyche drops her blade and kis ses him, accidentally spilling a drop of oil on his shoulder. Part I: Apuleius and Parallels He wakes, reproaches her bitterly and flies off (V, 17-24; In Apuleius' work, the tale "Cupid and Psyche" is Graves 112-118). recounted in the hearing of Lucius, the man turned ass, by an old bandit's moll, for the benefit of the captive girl, After a vain attempts at suicide and flight, and after Charite. The plot is roughly as follows. Psyche, the luring her sisters to their deaths by pretending that Amor youngest daughter of an unnamed king and queen, is so will now marry them, Psyche is forced to submit to the beautiful that people praise her above the goddess Venus, furious Venus, who advertises for her capture as a thus arousing that goddess' envy. Venus accordingly com runaway slave. Venus scourges and tortures Psyche and mands her son, called both Cupido (Desire) and Amor then poses her impossible tasks which are intended to be (Love) to afflict her with a passion for the most miserable fatal. The first three, - sorting out a huge heap of mixed of men. After seeing the maiden, however, Amor chooses seeds, obtaining the fleece of ferocious golden sheep, and otherwise. collecting a bowl of the water of the river Styx - Psyche manages to accomplish with the help of various creatures Meanwhile, none seek Psyche in marriage, for without who befriend her or give her advice. With the fourth and Venus' blessing her beauty does not arouse sensuality. final task, however, she again violates a taboo. She has Therefore, her parents inquire at Apollo's oracle what been sent into the underworld to bring back a cask of should be done about her. The oracle commands that beauty from Proserpina, the Queen of the Dead; but after Psyche be exposed upon a mountainside where a "beastly doing this successfully, she decides to take some of the and snaky evil" ("ferum viperuemque malum") which, beauty for herself to keep the love of Amor. So she opens "flying on wings through the heavens ... terrifies even the cask and falls into deathlike sleep. All seems lost. Page34 MYTHLORE 56: Winter 1988 But now Amor, having recovered from his burn, comes pretation, though it contains some sophisticated to her rescue, puts the mysterious sleep back into the cas mythological and philosophical jokes. ket and sends her on to his mother. Then he goes to Jupiter to overrule Venus, make Psyche a goddess and recognize The classical pantheon of Roman divinities which her marriage to Amor. Jovially, Jupiter agrees, and the two Apuleius presents us resemble human society more than live happily ever after. They have a daughter named they do Apuleius's concept of the true divine. Although ''Pleasure" ("Voluptas") (VI, 20-26; Graves 140-143). Isis in her appearance in Book XI claims that Venus ("Paphiam Venerem" XI, 5; Graves 265) is one of her The allegorical possibilities of this story were recog manifestations, his portrayal of Venus bears no nized as soon Apuleius wrote it. After all, the heroine's resemblance whatever to his portrayal of Isis. Nor does it name is Psyche, meaning "soul" in Greek, and she becomes make much sense even in the old mythology. Why should a goddess through the mediation of erotic love, that desire not the God of Love fall in love, and who is Venus, of all to possess and increase the good and beautiful by which goddesses, to resent it? Apuleius only confuses the issue Plato said the soul could be united with divine (Frost 80- by having her fellow goddesses raise these very questions 87). (V, 19; Graves, 125). But if we regard Venus as a Roman aristocrat, her behavior immediately becomes plausible. On the other hand, the allegorical weight of the name She speaks and acts like a wealthy matron, not quite "Psyche" was less heavy for Apuleius than for us. In Greek recovered from the trauma of a recent divorce. She will not it also means, "butterfly" (Purser 76) or "moth" (Neumann let her son grow up, partly because motherhood is her only 168). It is linguistic fossil of the ancient belief in the soul as stable relationship and partly because to acknowledge his a winged birdlike or mothlike creature which flies out of maturity is to acknowledge her own middle age. She im one's mouth on one's death. As a woman's name, it had plies bitterly that she is too young to be a grandmother, both beauty and mystery, and allegorically would have (VI, 9; Graves 132) a surprising concern for an immortal been no more heavy-handed than such modern names as and eternally youthful goddess. She is not even above al Rose, Lily, Dawn, Jewel, Pearl, Ruby, Hope and so forth. luring him sexually in order to hold him. After demand ing that he punish Psyche for stealing her worship, she kis In any case, there are other reasons for taking the story ses her son "with parted lips, long and urgently" ("osculis as an image of human love. Cupido, or Amor, was the god hiantibus ... diu ac pressule" IV, 30; Graves 98) and as of love, especially human sexual love. Many aspects of the Neumann notes, there is a hint of incest in this (91).