This past week we read Till We Have Faces, and even though this book was completely different than anything else I’ve read by CS Lewis, I picked up on some familiar themes.  One that I really noticed was types of love.  Orual “loved” Psyche so much that she didn’t want her to be happy with her new God/husband; she only wanted her to be happy if she was the one making her happy, and she would rather her die than be happy in this new “world”.  Her love was a selfish, prideful love, to the point where it really wasn’t love at all.  A lot of Orual’s thoughts and dialogue sounded very familiar to the mother in The Great Divorce who refused to love God because He “took” her son Michael from her.  She wanted to love him on her own terms and would have dragged him back down to hell if it meant they could be together.  This diseased love blinded her from the reality that was right in front of her—if she could learn to love God more than her son, she would then be able to love her son on an entirely new level and both of them could be happy in God’s love.  Orual’s situation is different, but still similar to the mother in the type of selfish love she possesses.  She doesn’t want what is best for Psyche, and is blind to what Psyche tries to explain to her about the gods.  Stabbing her arm in order to blackmail Psyche was not love, only manipulation and selfishness.  When Psyche refused to listen to Orual, Orual interpreted this as betrayal and thought her sister didn’t love her anymore.  She learn in the end of the book, however, that Psyche truly loved her all along, just in a different and higher way than she was familiar with.