SOURCE: "Humanistic Psychology in C. S. Lewis's Till We Have Faces: A Feminist Critique," in Studies in the Literary Imagination, Vol. XXII, No. 2, Fall, 1989, pp. 185-98.

In the following essay, Bartlett provides a feminist reading of Till We Have Faces from the theoretical perspective of humanistic psychology. According to Bartlett, feminists and humanistic psychologists would object to Lewis's presentation of "self-effacing women" who submit to male control.

C. S. Lewis writes in his concluding note in Till We Have Faces, "The central alteration in my own version [of the Psyche myth] consists in making Psyche's palace [the palace given her by the god Amor] invisible to normal eyes…. This change, of course, brings with it a more ambivalent motive and a different character for my heroine [one of Psyche's sisters] and finally modifies the whole quality of the tale." I believe Lewis is correct in his analysis of...