Till We Have Faces

Veils, masks, and obscured identities recur throughout the novel. The most obvious example is the veil that Orual chooses to wear on her second return from the mountain. In one sense, the veil represents her attempt to erase her identity as Orual—and with it, Orual’s grief—and become, simply, the Queen. In another sense, it represents the fact that, in light of her newfound knowledge of the gods’ existence, she is no longer sure who she is or what she believes in. In the novel, a person’s face comes to define their identity, as suggested by the section from which the novel’s title is taken: Orual asks, how can the gods “meet us face to face till we have faces?” (138) 

The visibility or otherwise of Psyche’s palace represents the “central knot” (116) of Orual’s complaint. She argues that if she had been able to see the palace—as the Priest of Istra claims she could—then she never would have acted as she did. If she had had tangible proof of the god’s existence and Psyche’s comfort, then she would have been satisfied. As the novel makes clear, however, the onus is on