The Beauty of Orual

One thing that really struck me in Till We Have Faces was the beauty of Orual. On the outside, no one would call her beautiful, but when she put on the veil, many noticed the beauty of her voice. A particular time comes to mind when Trunia came to Glome in the night in Chapter 17.

“Who are you?” said I, wrenching my hand free and leaping back as it I had touched a snake. “Come out and show yourself.” My thought was that it must be a lover of Redival’s, and that Batta was playing bawd as well as jailer.
A slender, tall man stepped out. “A suppliant,” he said, but with a merriment in his voice that did not sound like supplication. “And one who never let a pretty girl go without a kiss.”
He’d have had an arm around my neck in a moment if I hadn’t avoided him. Then he saw my dagger point twinkle in the moonlight, and laughed.
“You’ve good eyes if you can see beauty in this face,” said I, turning it on him to make sure he saw the blank wall of the veil.
“Only good ears, sister,” said he. “I’ll bet a girl with a voice like yours is beautiful.”
The whole adventure was, for such a woman as I, so unusual that I almost had a fool’s wish to lengthen it. The very world was strange that night. But I came to my senses.

I wonder if part of Orual liked using the veil to hide her hideousness and feign beauty. Certainly there were many rumors circulating about what kind of face lie behind the veil. It seems to me that part of her did enjoy that mysteriousness she could exude. With the veil, some people thought of her as beautiful. In the scene above, Trunia remarks on the beauty of her voice. Later in Chapter 18, Trunia even proposes that they get married. Orual had never had that before; someone commenting on a beautiful trait she possessed. She was so used to being Orual – the ugly one. “The whole adventure was, for such a woman as I, so unusual that I almost had a fool’s wish to lengthen it. The very world was strange that night.” Orual was experiencing something new and different – the world the Psyche always had, but that Orual was never a part of: being loved for beauty. But, she didn’t stay in that world. “I came to my senses,” she says. As if that thrill of being loved and being desirable is a shallow and superficial emotion. She never lets herself really feel that again. Maybe it's because she doesn't want to be hurt again, like she felt hurt by Psyche?