The Golden Ass

by

Apuleius

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The Golden Ass: Book 5 Summary & Analysis

Summary
Analysis
Psyche falls asleep on the soft greenery of the valley. She wakes up refreshed and then walks around to find a mansion, which has such splendid architecture that it seems to have been built by a demigod. As she’s exploring the mansion, she suddenly hears a disembodied voice who tells her that the riches she sees are all for her. Psyche continues to explore before finally going to bed.
Perhaps because Psyche put up with all her trials without complaint, she has been rewarded. Unlike many other characters, she does not initially display any signs of greediness, and so it is surprising and perhaps even ironic that she has become so spectacularly wealthy.
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That night, Psyche hears a low sound in the darkness, and she fears for her virginity. Psyche’s unseen new husband climbs into bed, seems to have sex with her, then takes off again before dawn. The process continues for several nights, and Psyche begins to enjoy it. Meanwhile, her parents don’t know where she is and mourn her, believing she may be dead.
If the prophecy of Apollo is accurate, then Psyche’s new husband is hiding himself because he’s a snake-like monster. But the affectionate treatment Psyche receives seems to contradict this prophecy, raising questions about what is really true.
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One night, Psyche’s husband (whom she can hear but not see) warns her that her sisters are coming to find her and that if Psyche hears their voices, she shouldn’t respond—otherwise, it will lead to sorrow. Psyche pleads to be allowed to see her sisters. Her husband allows it, but he warns that her sisters have a plot and will try to get Psyche to investigate his appearance, which will lead to no good. Psyche promises that nothing will ruin their marriage.
Even family members like sisters cannot be trusted in these stories—in fact, many characters are betrayed by the people closest to them. Despite her husband’s warnings, Psyche is naïve and wants to see her sisters anyway.
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Psyche greets her mourning sisters and invites them back to her husband’s mansion. One of the sisters asks who the husband is, and Psyche lies that he’s a young man who’s out hunting in the fields. She sends the sisters back on the West Wind before they can ask more questions. As they leave, the sisters find they are jealous of Psyche.
Jealousy is a recurring emotion in The Golden Ass, and it is often what motivates characters to take some of their worst actions—things they wouldn’t do otherwise. 
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The jealous sisters hatch a scheme to pretend that Psyche is still dead. They hide the lavish gifts Psyche gave them. Ultimately, their plan is to murder Psyche. Psyche’s husband warns her of the plot. He reveals to Psyche that she is about to have a child and that if she is silent and keeps her husband’s secrets, the child will be divine, but if she doesn’t, the child will be mortal.
The fact that Psyche’s sisters are willing to murder Psyche shows how far some people will go on account of jealousy and, in particular, how greed can motivate people. Psyche’s husband is deliberately depicted mysteriously, and this means that there is reason to doubt whether or not his prophecies are accurate or just a form of trickery.
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Psyche is overjoyed to learn she’s pregnant. Time passes until Psyche’s husband warns her that danger is at hand and that she’ll have to resist being tempted by her wicked sisters. Psyche argues that she has proven her loyalty to her husband so far and that she should be allowed to at least see her sisters, and her husband finally agrees.
Psyche is caught between two different loyalties: one to her new husband and one to her old family. This story seems to suggest that the role of spouse takes precedent over the role of a sibling.
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The sisters come to greet Psyche and pretend to be happy about her pregnancy. Psyche is fooled and greets them warmly. When they ask about her husband, Psyche forgets about her previous lie and says he’s an old merchant. One sister notices this lie and points it out to the other. The sisters head back, jealous because they’re convinced that their sister has married a god.
Psyche’s inability to keep her lies straight reveals how she is innocent and naïve. Though this naïve quality is perhaps how she ended up living in such splendid conditions, it also makes her vulnerable to being taken advantage of, particularly by deceptive people like her sisters.
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The sisters come to visit Psyche again. They pretend they’ve been crying. They tell her she’s married an atrocious beast and that her husband is only keeping her around to eventually eat her and her child. Psyche is terrified and admits that she’s never seen her husband’s face. The sisters help her devise a plan: she’ll hide a lamp and a sharp razor in her bedroom. When her husband’s asleep, she’ll light the lamp, then cut off his head.
The lamp in this story recalls the lamp that Thelyphron used while guarding the corpse for the widow in a previous story. In that story, the lamp provided protection and knowledge, but in this story, because Psyche is motivated by excessive curiosity, the lamp symbolizes knowledge in a more dangerous sense.
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Psyche is afraid but goes ahead with the plan. When she lights the lamp, however, she finds that her husband is not a snake-like beast as prophesied, but in fact the beautiful god Cupid. Psyche is unsure what to do, and the razor slips from her hands.
By investigating the identity of her husband, Psyche has put her whole situation in jeopardy. The fact that her husband is Cupid shows that she never had anything to worry about and that her curiosity was unnecessary.
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Quotes
Psyche examines Cupid’s belongings and, in the process, accidentally pricks her finger on one of his arrows. This causes her to fall madly in love with Cupid, and she immediately rushes to kiss him. Cupid is splashed by hot oil from the lamp and wakes up. The lamp helps him realize that he has been betrayed.
Just as Psyche is betrayed by her sisters, Cupid is now betrayed by Psyche. The hot oil of the lamp suggests passion and that Psyche has now become too passionate toward her new husband.
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Cupid explains to Psyche how he ignored his mother, Venus, when she commanded him to make Psyche fall in love with the most pathetic man alive. Instead, he took Psyche as his own wife. He says that as punishment, he will simply leave Psyche alone. He flies away while Psyche watches.
Cupid disobeyed the orders of his mother Venus, suggesting that love, like the love god Cupid himself, doesn’t always follow rules or behave in predictable ways.
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Psyche throws herself into a river in despair, but the river is afraid of Cupid’s retribution and tosses Psyche back out on a shore. There, she meets the he-goat peasant god Pan. Pan says he can tell that she is suffering from too much love but encourages her to stop mourning. He advises her to try to get on Cupid’s good side because he might take her back.
Even compared to other characters in the book, Psyche seems to be particularly susceptible to the whims of Fortune. Even her attempt at suicide is thwarted by a sort of divine intervention. Despite Psyche reaching a low point in her story, Pan offers hope, suggesting that a person’s past luck doesn’t necessarily determine their future.
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Psyche goes back to one of her sisters and tells her about how the sisters were wrong: her husband wasn’t a snake but in fact Cupid. She also lies and says that Cupid divorced her and said he wanted to marry one of the sisters. The sister immediately goes to the crag where Psyche met Cupid and throws herself over the edge, but the West Wind doesn’t catch her, and her body is torn to pieces on the crag. The other sister dies because of a similar trick.
While it might seem extreme that Psyche causes the deaths of her sisters, ultimately, it is the sisters’ own greed and scheming that leads them to jump off the crag to their deaths.
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Psyche travels widely in search of Cupid, who is in the bedroom of his mother, Venus, recovering from the wound the lamp inflicted on him. Meanwhile, Venus hears from a bird about nasty rumors going around about how she and Cupid have abandoned their duties. The bird tells Venus about Cupid’s relationship with Psyche. Venus goes back to her bedroom and finds Cupid there.
Though he is a god, Cupid is still able to feel pain and be injured. The gods in these stories often stand as symbols for larger forces like love or fate. They are also very much characters who act similarly to mortal humans.
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Venus scolds Cupid for disobeying her orders. She threatens to have another, better son in order to humiliate him. She talks about how Cupid has never respected her. She storms out but is greeted by Ceres and Juno. They ask her why she’s angry, and Venus describes what Psyche has done. But Ceres and Juno defend Cupid, saying that he’s still young. Venus doesn’t want to hear this argument and turns her back on them.
The constant anger that Venus feels in this story seems to suggest the intensity of emotions brought out by love. In other stories, characters are motivated to do extreme, often violent things due to love, and so it makes sense that the love goddess herself would be so volatile.
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Quotes