Beauty vs. Ugliness Theme Analysis

Throughout the novel, the characters’ physical appearances often reflect their interior morality and goodness. However, it’s difficult to say for sure whether characters’ appearances are only symbols of their true beings, or whether their appearances and the way others interact with them as a result forms their interior for good or evil. Specifically, Orual is taught from an early age that her ugliness will prevent her from marrying, and that people will want to keep their distance from her. As a result, when people such as Psyche, the Fox, and Bardia do love her, she guards their love particularly jealously because she finds it so hard to believe that they really love her. Psyche, on the other hand, receives the love of everyone around her because of her beauty, which makes it easy for her to love without jealousy. Her beauty gives her a sense of safety in others’ love.

In a way, Psyche and Orual are opposites. Psyche has a perfect beauty and, by extension, moral purity. Orual, on the other hand, is regarded as monstrously ugly and has a correspondingly ugly, violent, possessive character. Orual herself associates her appearance with her interior being, as she compares her early attempts to make herself prettier with her later attempts to mend her soul to satisfy the gods. Furthermore, she hides her face with a veil when she doesn’t want to acknowledge her own moral faults.

Psyche’s beauty corresponds to her pure way of loving, which allows her beloveds to maintain their independence. Meanwhile, Orual’s ugliness manifests itself in the extreme lengths to which she will go to keep the ones she loves under her control—her love hurts her beloveds, rather than nourishing them as Psyche’s love does.

Finally, beauty becomes a marker of divinity. Psyche is regarded as a goddess at first for her physical beauty, and Orual describes the gods as so beautiful that mortals can hardly bear to look upon them. The ugly Orual remains entirely detached from the gods, unable to understand the signs they send her. As she eventually works to recognize the ugliness of her soul and make it more beautiful, however, she comes to more clearly understand the mysteries of the gods. When she ultimately purifies her soul, her physical appearance becomes correspondingly beautiful. In fact, she sees her reflection as almost identical to Psyche’s. Essentially, in the book, physical beauty works as a manifestation of moral goodness and divine love.