Katelyn Joyce- Self Love & Jealousy in TIll We Have Faces

  Orual struggles with jealousy all throughout this book. It begins with a lack of self love within herself. This lack of self love and self worth fuels her desire to compare herself with others, especially her sister Psyche. She becomes so fixated on her lack of love for herself and the feelings of jealousy associated with it that she is unable to see the love that many others have for her. It is within this jealousy that she makes several mistakes leading to hurting other people. Reading this, I began to wonder what would be different if she did not view herself was unattractive. Would these feelings of jealousy still be an issue? I believe that jealousy is a result of fear. In the case of Orual, it could potentially be the fear of not being good enough or the inability to measure up to the life of her sister. These fears got in the way of her ability to love. She loved through a means of being overbearing and manipulative. I believe that this stems from the inability to love herself. If she doesn’t know how to love herself, then she will be incapable of not only experiencing love in its truest form, but also being unable to display a pure love to others. I believe that if she did not have such a negative perspective of herself, these issues of jealousy, hurt, and harm would not have arisen. Her lack of self confidence seems to be the issue standing in the way of her fully growing in pure relationship with others. I think this is a lesson that could be learned and then applied to our own lives. If we are unable to fully love ourselves, the love we share with others may be tainted by our jealousy and insecurities.


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