Curse Breakers

I've had the opportunity recently to watch a charming movie and re-read one of my favorite novels, and while on the surface they seem very different (and they are), they deal with a similar problem but come to opposite conclusions.

Penelope is a sweet fairytale-ish movie that has been in release for some time. In this story with a contemporary setting, the daughter of a wealthy family has been placed under a terrible curse: She is born with a literal pig face, complete with snout and pointy ears. As in most fairytales, the curse can be broken when she finds true love "with one of her own kind." Penelope spends most of her early years trapped inside the family mansion with her overbearing mother and clueless father, protected from gawkers. But as she reaches marriageable age, her mother begins an all-out search among the world's wealthiest bachelors (those who are of Penelope's own kind)to find true love for Penelope and break the curse.

While I'm being intentionally vague here, trying not to spoil the ending for those of you who want to see this movie, the curse (of course) is broken--but not in the way you would expect. Penelope's character develops through the course of the movie as she decides she'd rather live her life with stares and giggles than hiding away in a dark old mansion, never having lived life at all. She becomes a teacher, and in the final scene of the movie, she is telling her story to her students. One of the children asks what the story means. Several children offer up their hysterical theories, based on what they just heard. But the last, wise child offers this up as the moral to the story: "It's not the power of the curse; it's the power you give to the curse." With self-love and determination, Penelope has saved herself. In the end, she was dependent on no one or nothing for her "salvation."

In Till We Have Faces, perhaps C. S. Lewis's least known but most critically acclaimed novel, a heroine named Orual suffers a fate similar to Penelope's: She has an ugly face, and all who see her agree. Lewis has given us a "myth retold" rather than a fairy tale in this story, and his setting is the ancient country of Glome, a barbaric, pre-Christian culture. Although Orual begins life as a princess (and eventually becomes a powerful queen), she is very angry with the gods, who--she believes--have robbed her of everything beautiful in life. In the first 250 pages of this novel, Orual angrily and bitterly makes her case against the gods, telling the story of her life and tracing the injustices that have been thrust upon her. Indeed, she lives under a terrible curse, and her ugliness is only a small part of it.

In part 2, Orual, now an old woman, receives the gods' answer, and here I marvel at the genius of Lewis, who sets his story in a pagan culture, using mythic gods, but gives us a story that can be understood only as the Christian story of sin and salvation. Through a series of revelations, the gods show Orual herself--in all of her selfishness and ugliness--inner ugliness. As the gods do their work on her soul, they show her that they are, in fact, beautiful. And as Orual truly sees herself and realizes that she has received mercy, not justice, she views her reflection in the water and sees herself--now beautiful as well.

Unlike Penelope, Orual learns to despise her selfish ways and hate her bitterness. And it's then that the gods can break the curse. Orual acknowledges, "Why should [the gods] hear the babble that we think we mean. How can they meet us face to face till we have faces?" The curse is broken because the gods have given Orual a face--with eyes--that allow her to see.

And so in Lewis's myth we see the reflection of reality: We can never break our own curse by believing in ourselves, by loving ourselves, by recognizing our significance. The curse can be broken only when we recognize our complete dependence on the One who bore our curse for us. So Penelope, as fun as it is, remains a fairytale, and Lewis's myth becomes a beautiful allegory of death to self and new birth in Christ.

"And we, who with unveiled faces all reflect the Lord's glory, are being transformed into his likeness with ever-increasing glory, which comes from the Lord, who is the Spirit" (2 Corinthians 3:18).