Is this the line you are referring to?

"Not that this ever really happened," the Fox said in haste. "It's only lies of poets, lies of poets, child. Not in accordance with nature."

I didn't take this to mean that Fox didn't believe in the gods, I only took it to mean that he didn't believe the poets' stories about the gods. Based on something a teacher of mine said back in high school, I'd guess most of them probably felt this way. -But I could be wrong.

So far I've only seen Fox try to separate the facts about the gods from the fiction. I haven't seen any evidence that Fox thinks the gods themselves are fiction.

Could it be that the Fox's problem was his inability to reconcile the Supernatural with human experience? I think he believed in the gods, but it was a vague kind of Deism--an acknowledgement that there were realms outside of human understanding--but he did not believe that the gods were concerned with human troubles. The kind of language he uses, Nature, The Whole, etc., all imply to me a distant and impersonal view of the gods, and perhaps a denial of human ability to come to an objective understanding of them. Maybe the Fox was an early kind of Emergent.

This dichotomy between body and soul, physical and material, God and Man, is a big theme not only in Till We Have Faces, but also in much of Lewis' other work. Remember the scene in HHB where Bree is amazed to find that Aslan is really a beast? I think the Fox rejected the poet's tales because he could not believe that the gods were really men.

Seeing then that we have a great high priest, that is passed into the heavens, Jesus the Son of God, let us hold fast our profession. For we have not an high priest which cannot be touched with the feeling of our infirmities; but was in all points tempted like as we are, yet without sin. Let us therefore come boldly unto the throne of grace, that we may obtain mercy, and find grace to help in time of need.

Hebrews 4:14-16

GladiusCould it be that the Fox's problem was his inability to reconcile the Supernatural with human experience? I think he believed in the gods, but it was a vague kind of Deism--an acknowledgement that there were realms outside of human understanding--but he did not believe that the gods were concerned with human troubles. The kind of language he uses, Nature, The Whole, etc., all imply to me a distant and impersonal view of the gods, and perhaps a denial of human ability to come to an objective understanding of them.

Agreed. The Fox often states something along the lines of, "the gods flow in and out of each other and in and out of man," and he talks about the "divine nature," as well as speaking of the god in himslef. So I assume that he believes in some sort of distant gods, but definitely not the gods of the poets.

This i s my first time reading Till We Have Faces, I'm really excited to be able to join in this time!

*is going to answer the questions before she reads what others have said* Hopefully I don't sound like a parrot.

1. "I will write in this book what no one who has happiness would dare to write. I will accuse the gods..."
Why would no one with happiness dare to do this? What assumption is present about the nature of the gods (especially the god of the Grey Mountain)?

The gods of this book seem to be of the variety that would take everything from you if you insult them; since Orual feels that she has no happiness, she does not feel that she can lose anything more then she already has.

2. To what extent is the King of Glome a bad king? Is he a king who has good intentions but whose temper gets in the way, or is he a tyrannical dictator? What does the manner in which he treats his children show us about his character?

I lean more towards a tyrannical dictator. He married again to provide a male heir and is frighteningly livid when he has a third girl. He killed the servant boy with hardly a thought, because the boy slipped. The second woman he married was an alliance gone wrong which made his power decrease as king. The way he considers his daughters is shown in his behavior towards Orual's lack of beauty as being something which needs to be made up for with whatever the Fox can teach her. Also his reaction to Redival's sweetheart is disturbingly showing of his temper.
And yet, I can't quite call him a dictator. He has a terrible temper, and I'm not too sure about his good intentions, but I do not see outright dictator behavior.

3. From the very first, the Fox was accepting of his fate; the fact that he was captured, and then treated very badly by his captor seemed to make no difference in his attitude. Apparently he was content with teaching Orual and Redival and working with/for the King. Up until when the King threatened to send him off to the mines, he didn't even seem to have any desire to escape. Was this because of his personality, or because, as he argued later, it would be impossible to escape? Perhaps a combination of both?

A combination of both, I guess. I think he enjoyed having an attentive student in Orual and knew the King's temper well enough to know that a failed escape attempt would be much, much worse then his current conditions.

4. The Fox conflates Glome's goddess Ungit with the Greek goddess of love, Aphrodite. On first glance, they seem like opposites. Why would the Fox believe they are the same?

Umm, I really don't know much about Greek gods. So, I dunno.

5. Right after Psyche is born, we have a great deal of focus on her beauty, particularly through Orual's narration. How is this important to the story, particularly since we know that Orual herself isn't exactly beautiful? What can we discover about Orual's character by the way that she treats her newborn sister? How does beauty seem to be important to the people of Glome? Is outer beauty important in our world? Why or why not?

Orual has been told some not-so-kind things about her ugliness, so the fact that she can watch and raise someone that she sees as having above average beauty allows her to absorb some of the compliments directed as Psyche.
Outer beauty is important to our world and Glome. People judge people by how they look and present themselves. I'm not saying that we should, but most people do; and, in turn, people play up their "good points" and play down their "bad points" in order to appeal to the world. Not that we shouldn't care how we look, we should take care to look neat and clean, and at least attempt to dress in a way that flatters us and isn't frumpy, but we should not become obsessive about either looking fashionable or about taking care not to look fashionable. [/incoherent rambling]

6. "I wanted to be a wife so that I could have been her real mother. I wanted to be a boy so that she could be in love with me. I wanted her to be my full sister instead of my half sister. I wanted her to be a slave so that I could set her free and make her rich."
Is this a healthy love? Why or why not?

Unhealthy. It suggests an obsessive love as well as a lack of acceptance of being loved as a sister.

A few comments. . .

The Fox seemed like a character who was quite amiable and phlegmatic even when torture was decreed to him.

Hmm, I'm not so sure about the torture point; if you mean the mines as torture, he was going to commit suicide to avoid being sent to the mines. That doesn't seem to be amiable and phlegmatic.

It seemed Orual valued beauty a lot, since she knew she was ugly, and people treated her badly because of it. So she seemed that she was enjoying Psyche's beauty vicariously.

That's what I was trying to say earlier. You phrased it well.

I'll comment on/finishing reading pages 2&3 later.

Your answers to #5 weren't in the least incoherent, Lady L. They made a lot of sense. (as did all your other answers.)

Hmm, I'm not so sure about the torture point; if you mean the mines as torture, he was going to commit suicide to avoid being sent to the mines. That doesn't seem to be amiable and phlegmatic.

Really? I must have missed that by having just scanned his and Orual's conversation as just talking poetically of how he was going to take what was given, etc. etc.
Which screams how much I need to now reread the book.

"I will write in this book what no one who has happiness would dare to write. I will accuse the gods..."
Why would no one with happiness dare to do this?

Perhaps another question is, why would a person who has happiness feel the need to accuse the gods? To me, it suggests the book of Job, where, only after his possessions and such are stripped away does Job feel the need to question God.

Question 2: I think the king of Glome does what he thinks a king should do, and his relationships with his daughters isn't something he knows how to deal with, so he ignores it and blusters and rages to cover up the idea that he's not raising them correctly. (Correctly to him, meaning useful in doing what a king does: form alliances and keep or enlarge his territory.)

Question 3: I think the Fox was interested in avoiding pain, and that was his biggest motivator for all his actions. I can't remember anything pointing towards the Fox actually being treated badly; he wasn't beaten or sentenced to hard labour.

Question 6: It may not be healthy, but isn't it the opposite of what Orual thinks she's had?

Does anyone have any more thoughts on "the step-mother?" I felt sorry for her and liked what little we saw of her.

Same here. She didn't seem mean like they were expecting, and I felt quite sorry for her.

Excellent response to question 6, Movie Aristotle.

Ditto! Good thoughts, I haven't read that book by Lewis.

Better late than never! I've minimized my reading of the other responses, so some of this may be repeated. Maybe I'll try to be clever in how I restate it.

1. "I will write in this book what no one who has happiness would dare to write. I will accuse the gods..."
Why would no one with happiness dare to do this? What assumption is present about the nature of the gods (especially the god of the Grey Mountain)?

As Janis Joplin sang so many years ago, "Freedom's just another word for nothin' left to lose." In this case, it's the freedom to speak openly about perceived injustices from the gods. Someone who's happy may not speak up for fear of losing it; someone with 'nothin' left to lose' can look to the Mountain and say, "Go ahead. Make my day."

All this does imply that the gods are like those of the classical Greek pantheon - more powerful than humans, but with all their failings. They're unpredictable, even mercurial -pun intended - in their treatment of mortals. (Zeus, for example, turned some people into animals for the rest of their mortal lives, while others got to be preserved in the heavens as constellations). So you don't want to risk offending them, because they might respond angrily.

2. To what extent is the King of Glome a bad king? Is he a king who has good intentions but whose temper gets in the way, or is he a tyrannical dictator? What does the manner in which he treats his children show us about his character?

"Beauty is only skin deep" would appear to be an alien concept to him. His words to Orual are often brutal. The irony may be that his own character isn't very deep - he's obsessed with a male heir and disappointed that his offspring are girls.

3. From the very first, the Fox was accepting of his fate; the fact that he was captured, and then treated very badly by his captor seemed to make no difference in his attitude. Apparently he was content with teaching Orual and Redival and working with/for the King. Up until when the King threatened to send him off to the mines, he didn't even seem to have any desire to escape. Was this because of his personality, or because, as he argued later, it would be impossible to escape? Perhaps a combination of both?

He did seem to be a pretty 'laid-back' personality. And in a culture where slavery was common, even sanctioned, perhaps he grew up knowing that escape was difficult or impossible - and that free men were occasionally pressed into slavery. It was just a fact of life. It sounds like his life was all right, though a gilded cage is still a cage...

4. The Fox conflates Glome's goddess Ungit with the Greek goddess of love, Aphrodite. On first glance, they seem like opposites. Why would the Fox believe they are the same?

Perhaps he's skeptical of all the gods. I don't see any clear parallels - other than that mercurial nature of the ancient gods - between Aphrodite and Ungit (who required human sacrifices).

5. Right after Psyche is born, we have a great deal of focus on her beauty, particularly through Orual's narration. How is this important to the story, particularly since we know that Orual herself isn't exactly beautiful? What can we discover about Orual's character by the way that she treats her newborn sister? How does beauty seem to be important to the people of Glome? Is outer beauty important in our world? Why or why not?

Orual could very easily have been very jealous of her beautiful baby sister, but instead she loves her - as best she can, I think, given her own life experiences. That says something about a selfless aspect of her own character. But if she's possessive it indicates she may be vicariously seeking recognition through her sister's beauty instead - a selfish motive.

6. "I wanted to be a wife so that I could have been her real mother. I wanted to be a boy so that she could be in love with me. I wanted her to be my full sister instead of my half sister. I wanted her to be a slave so that I could set her free and make her rich."
Is this a healthy love? Why or why not?

Not if it's maintained much past Psyche's childhood. An older sister - who has probably experienced nothing of a selfless kind of love and thus may not be able to display it - may be expressing love in the only way she knows how. And love directed toward small children is different than that shown to them when they're older; it's protective and sheltering. Though appropriate for toddlers, to an older recipient, these qualities would come across as limiting and even stifling. So Orual's love for her little sister may just need to change as Psyche grows older.

I hope you don't mind my posting my tuppence worth.

Question 1. Why would no one with happiness dare to do this? What assumption is present about the nature of the gods (especially the god of the Grey Mountain)?

Easy. Like many of you have said, Orual has nothing to lose. Someone favoured by the gods, with everything his/her heart desired, would not complain or feel hard-done-by. Surely they would feel ungrateful if they did. But then, what about godly jealousy of those who are too fortunate? This aspect definitely featured in my understanding of the Greek pantheon. Or doesn't this particular aspect feature in Orual's experience of Ungit and Aphrodite?

2. To what extent is the King of Glome a bad king? Is he a king who has good intentions but whose temper gets in the way, or is he a tyrannical dictator? What does the manner in which he treats his children show us about his character?

I agree that the King of Glome is a bad king, not necessarily from an administrative point of view, given he had able helpers at his fingertips. But he treated his wives, his children and his subjects as personal property, which they weren't. He was too occupied with what the other neighbouring kingdoms would think, and he did not appreciate what he had.

I'll agree I brought my own personal prejudices to my reading. A good father accepts what children he gets, and makes the best of it, regardless of sex, ability and beauty. A good king tries to find out why there are problems in the land and tries to sort out what he could do about them to everyone's benefit. Instead of cravenly handing the responsibility to priests etc. And a good man doesn't contract a marriage with some unfortunate girl just because he wants a male heir. Childbirth was a deadly sort of activity before the 19th century.

3. From the very first, the Fox was accepting of his fate; the fact that he was captured, and then treated very badly by his captor seemed to make no difference in his attitude. Apparently he was content with teaching Orual and Redival and working with/for the King. Up until when the King threatened to send him off to the mines, he didn't even seem to have any desire to escape. Was this because of his personality, or because, as he argued later, it would be impossible to escape? Perhaps a combination of both?

I don't think the Fox had any choice about what he could do. And maybe where he was in Glome, he found consolation with his work. Surely there were compensations. Unlike other slaves, who were treated worse, the Fox could read and write, a big advantage up to the modern era. And so his life wasn't too bad, in a kingdom where such attributes were really rare.

And from my initial reading of 'Til we have faces', I think the Fox grew fond of Orual. Maybe, even when she was a child, he saw in her someone who was a suffering human being just as he was. I was impressed throughout this tale how the Fox did his utmost to help Orual, as if he was all the family both needed.

4. The Fox conflates Glome's goddess Ungit with the Greek goddess of love, Aphrodite. On first glance, they seem like opposites. Why would the Fox believe they are the same?

That is what gets me about both Ungit and Aphrodite. Neither 'goddess' seems all that loving. It all seems like a business in which the appointed priests conduct a scam on the general population. Ungit seems like Astarte, the Canaanite goddess of love, more than the Aphrodite of legend, even though I agree was a selfish goddess. Conflating Greek and foreign gods and goddesses is how the Greeks and Romans both operated in Ancient History. Which is why we have in our Solar system, Uranus (Greek God), Saturn/Cronos (Roman God) and Jupiter/Zeus (Roman God)

5. Right after Psyche is born, we have a great deal of focus on her beauty, particularly through Orual's narration. How is this important to the story, particularly since we know that Orual herself isn't exactly beautiful? What can we discover about Orual's character by the way that she treats her newborn sister? How does beauty seem to be important to the people of Glome? Is outer beauty important in our world? Why or why not?

I found myself wondering exactly how ugly Orual was. Evidently her father thought so, and so it seems she wasn't considered marriageable. In all this discussion, we have been introduced to Redival, Orual's full sister, who looked better than Orual, herself, but somehow she gets locked out. And as reasonably good looking as Redival was, Psyche is a better looking personage, even as a baby?

Of course Psyche's beauty is important to the story, nonetheless. Remember what I said about gods and goddesses, ancient style, envying those who were too well endowed with good fortune?

6. "I wanted to be a wife so that I could have been her real mother. I wanted to be a boy so that she could be in love with me. I wanted her to be my full sister instead of my half sister. I wanted her to be a slave so that I could set her free and make her rich."

It also seems that Orual compensated for her father's lack of affection, the absence of her own mother, and the unfortunate loss of Psyche's own mother, by her devotion to the abandoned infant Psyche. Although Orual was aware of what other relationships the poor little motherless scrap could have, she also needed this deep emotional relationship to fulfil her own unloved background.

Is this a healthy love? Why or why not?

No it isn't. Either for Psyche, herself, or Orual, who needs more in her life. But then, what is a healthy love?

Well, I'm pretty late at this, but hopefully I'll be able to catch up!

1."I will write in this book what no one who has happiness would dare to write. I will accuse the gods..."
Why would no one with happiness dare to do this? What assumption is present about the nature of the gods (especially the god of the Grey Mountain)?

I think she felt that she had nothing to lose if the gods got upset at her. She’s already unhappy, & so there is nothing to risk in her accusing the gods of what they have done. I don’t really know much about the Grey Mountain god, so I can’t really say much about him besides that you can infer that he’s pretty much an awful tyrant like the other gods.

2. To what extent is the King of Glome a bad king? Is he a king who has good intentions but whose temper gets in the way, or is he a tyrannical dictator? What does the manner in which he treats his children show us about his character?

He seems like a very selfish man who is only concered with his own well being, & other people just seem to annoy him & get in his way. This would probably make him a tyrannical dictator. He treats his children very abusively, & that just shows how mean & tyrannical he is.

3. From the very first, the Fox was accepting of his fate; the fact that he was captured, and then treated very badly by his captor seemed to make no difference in his attitude. Apparently he was content with teaching Orual and Redival and working with/for the King. Up until when the King threatened to send him off to the mines, he didn't even seem to have any desire to escape. Was this because of his personality, or because, as he argued later, it would be impossible to escape? Perhaps a combination of both?

It seemed like the Fox just thought that the situation was hopeless, & there was no way out. His character & personality seems very easy going & accepting of challenges, & it’s like he felt there was no real reason to panic, & that everything was going to be okay.

4. The Fox conflates Glome's goddess Ungit with the Greek goddess of love, Aphrodite. On first glance, they seem like opposites. Why would the Fox believe they are the same?

I think that Fox knew more about the Aphrodite than most people did, & he knew that she was under the surface of her own “love”, she was really just as bad as Ungit. Although Ungit was more open about being evil.

5. Right after Psyche is born, we have a great deal of focus on her beauty, particularly through Orual's narration. How is this important to the story, particularly since we know that Orual herself isn't exactly beautiful? What can we discover about Orual's character by the way that she treats her newborn sister? How does beauty seem to be important to the people of Glome? Is outer beauty important in our world? Why or why not?

Her beauty is important to the story because Psyche was elevated above others & dubbed “goddess” by some because of her beauty. Orual seemed to elevate her because she was attracted to her beauty. We can discover that Orual is someone who sees the outside of a person just like other people, but it’s even more beautiful to her because of how kind & sweet she it, unlike her older sister. Beauty seems to be very important to the people, & they seem very shallow & anyone not like her is somehow inferior. Our world can definitely be like that. People look at the outside, not on the inside. And so we make looking beautiful more important that a person’s character.

6. "I wanted to be a wife so that I could have been her real mother. I wanted to be a boy so that she could be in love with me. I wanted her to be my full sister instead of my half sister. I wanted her to be a slave so that I could set her free and make her rich."
Is this a healthy love? Why or why not?

This is not a healthy love, because it’s very possessive & wanting. To love someone is to want what is best for them, not wanting them to fulfill our needs. Unfortunately, a lot of people “love” each other like this, which is not how God loves us!