Cupid and Psyche, Part II: It Was A Teenage Wedding And The Old Folks Wished Them Well

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Cupid and Psyche, Part I:

“A lot of people will try to tell you that the story of Cupid and Psyche is a Neoplatonic allegory for the soul, but don’t you let them. It’s a story designed to reassure the average person that beautiful people aren’t that much happier than the rest of us… Being married to Psyche is a lot like being married to Amelia Bedelia; she cannot hear an instruction without slightly misinterpreting and immediately disobeying it. Things must and do end well, but everyone beautiful must behave very, very stupidly first, so that listeners to the story will not become jealous and discontented.”

[From Apuleius’ Metamorphoses: Adlington version, Bulfinch version]

No one ever seems to be able to agree on just how old Cupid is. Sometimes he’s a beautiful poet-youth of nineteen or twenty, and sometimes he’s a mischievous toddler. This discrepancy is nowhere more confusing than in the various artistic representations of his marriage to Psyche over the last two thousand years. Sometimes they’re both painted as children, which makes the idea of their getting married at best a corny and unsettling joke.

Yet most of Cupid and Psyche’s problems do make more sense if we consider that they are a pair of toddlers trying to build a life together.

“If you look at my face, I’ll have to leave.”

“My mother says your sisters aren’t allowed to come over.”

“Only the wind is allowed to open the front door.”

Sometimes they’re both young adults, which makes the most sense and seems to follow the original story — nothing in Apuleius suggests that either party is unusually young to leave home or to get married. Worst of all are the paintings where Psyche is depicted as a full-grown woman and Cupid as a baby.

This confusion does speak to the broader mythological uncertainty of Just what is Cupid’s deal? Is he an eternal infant as a divine counterpart to Athena, who was born thirty-five? Is it a Peter Pan kind of arrangement, where he can’t grow up? Why is he sometimes a baby and sometimes a young man? Does he grow up partway from time to time and then later grow back down?³

Stranger still, he was depicted most often as a youth during the classical and was more frequently a baby during the Hellenistic period, so people apparently believed he got younger over time. Is love a tall, dark, and handsome stranger? Or a li’l stinker with a frog in his pocket?

Back to the newlyweds. Psyche’s sisters came at last to visit. Whenever they asked questions about her husband’s name, or what color his eyes were, she poured jewels and gold into their laps by way of answer.

“His last name? Have a tiara! I’ve always said you should wear more tiaras.”

A strategy that worked well in the moment, but less well over time. Coming home with an armload of gems can’t help but make one’s surroundings look a little shabbier by comparison, and I’m sorry to say Psyche’s sisters were no exception to the rule.

SISTER #1: Isn’t my husband a little balder, and a little more irritating to talk to, than when I left the house this morning?

SISTER #2: And why does he lack courage when paying my debts? Come to think of it, I thought Psyche was awfully smug in the way she distributed her largesse this morning.

SISTER #1: Thank you. If you’re going to distribute largesse, just distribute it. Don’t draw attention to it by throwing it in people’s laps.

SISTER #2: What did you think about that line of Oh, my husband is a young and comely man, of noble stature, with a flaxen beard, who has great delight in hunting the dales and hills by?

SISTER #1: Listen, I’ve bought a lot this week. But I didn’t buy that.

SISTER #2: Hah! That’s terrible.

SISTER #1: All I can say is my husband may not be much to look at, but at least I can see him.

SISTER #2: Should we deprive her of all bliss?

SISTER #1: Oh, let’s.

So they paid her another sister’s visit. At last, and after long assailing, Psyche protested, “No, he’s not a snake. I’m sure I’d know if he were a snake. You can tell if someone’s a snake even if you’re not allowed to look at them, and I distinctly remember holding hands.”

SISTER #1: But wouldn’t you like to be sure?

SISTER #2: Yes, wouldn’t it feel nice to be sure?

SISTER #1: Be sensible. Just take a look at him next time he’s asleep with a knife. A just-in-case knife.

SISTER #2: You don’t have to use your just-in-case knife. But it helps knowing that it’s there.

SISTER #1: I wouldn’t dream of going to bed without my just-in-case knife.

SISTER #2: Bring out your lamp and take a look. If he’s beautiful, like you say, so much the better. If he’s a snake with hands, that’s what the knife is for.

They left her then, but not in peace; her mind was stirred up and thick with bad thoughts, like soup. Sometimes she would, sometimes she would not; one minute bold, the next fearful, sometimes she hated the beast who held her captive, sometimes she loved her husband. But night came, and with it resolution.

Bad luck and worse! Psyche did just as her sisters had counseled, but her husband was even more beautiful than she had made him out to be when she was lying. A neck like snow, covered in wings, eyes like stars, et cetera. Fit but not too fit, you know? Not too intimidating, not too fussy, not like he spent hours every day in the gym, but someone who could easily calm and ride a horse in the middle of a work day.

After all that, it was the lamp and not the knife which brewed the trouble between them. Psyche leaned forward to get a better look, and even the flame leapt up for joy at his beauty.

She leaned further, the lamp guttered, the oil dripped, and Cupid was singed. Being used as he was to causing injury, and not receiving it, he did not bear his wounds well, but barked like a small dog sitting in front of a ground-floor window. Cupid once nettled, stays nettled, as anyone who has offended a new lover must know.

So you want to kill me. You want me to live in a house of suspicion. You want to set me on fire. My wife tried to set me on fire. My mother tried to warn me about you, and now you’ve gone and cut off my head. Well, if you like your sisters’ advice so much, why don’t you go and live with them? Then he was gone.

Psyche’s sisters had in the meantime died a pair of ironic fairy-tale deaths. Cutting off their toes to fit Cinderella’s shoes — eyes pecked out like ravens — dragged through the streets in a pair of barrels filled with iron nails — you know the kind of death I mean. Dashed to pieces by the wind. Hubris, then humiliation, and then quite a lot of pain.

Psyche, bless her, went out wandering with her simple mind and lovely face and chic capsule wardrobe. If she saw a tall hill, she climbed it, “since that will bring me closer to Heaven.” If she saw a temple, she went inside, “since my husband the god might be living there.”

In one of these temples she found the implemenets of the harvest in great disarray. Sheaves and sickles everwhere. Well, she could tidy, and sweep, and neaten, and who doesn’t like to hear about someone very beautiful and very sad doing a little humble housework? Makes them feel better about themselves. We had such fun imagining those wicked sisters dying terribly, didn’t we, and now we’d like to feel virtuous again.

The gods like that sort of thing too. Demeter was touched, and made herself lightly visible to show her favor. Picture an Arcimboldo portrait — Pears for cheeks, grape leaves for hair, that sort of thing. Kaiser rolls for eyes.

DEMETER: Thanks for the help, duckling.

PSYCHE: Oh! I didn’t think anyone was here.

[People love that sort of thing too. An unself-conscious beauty, who never thinks she’s being watched. Makes you feel better about beautiful people, doesn’t it?]

DEMETER: If you’re looking for your man, I’d try his mother first.

PSYCHE: Oh! But she’s so beautiful and angry.

DEMETER: Yes, and always seems to be in the bath, somehow.

PSYCHE: I’d be terribly afraid to go see her alone.

DEMETER: I’d come with you if I thought it would help, but I’ve never gotten the feeling that Aphrodite likes me. Best I can do for you is a loaf of bread for the journey. But it’s very good bread.

PSYCHE: Thanks very much.

DEMETER: Just tell her that you’re very sorry, and that you’d like to win her forgiveness, and offer her your services.

PSYCHE: What services?

DEMETER: Whatever services you may happen to have. What are you the goddess of?

PSYCHE: I’m not the goddess of anything.

DEMETER: Oh, dear. In that case, have some more bread. Just do your best to look modest and try to be helpful. Can you tamp down your looks any? Maybe try daubing some mud on your cheeks, or putting leaves in your hair — oh dear, I’m afraid that only makes you look chicer.

PSYCHE: I’m sorry.

DEMETER: Are you quite certain you need your husband back? You wouldn’t rather stay here and work for me for a while, for example?

But Psyche had from unanswered love developed a staggering gait, a burning eye, and a pale and piteous cheek. Ma, I love him awful.

Oh, God, that’s too bad.

[Image via]

1. Not actually too late to change it, but I don’t want to now.

2. But you don’t have to tell me the reason to get a free subscription. It’s none of my business what you do with your money!

3. Porphyry of Tyre published an explanatory account in the third century CE: Aphrodite complained that Cupid never grew up, and Themis told her to give him a younger brother to play with, which would allow him to age at the usual rate. So she gave birth to Anteros (love requited), and as long as they were near one another, Cupid grew older, but whenever Anteros left the room, he shrank back down to his infant dimensions.