Reading Notes: Cupid and Psyche, Part B

• Part 1 "Venus and the Goddesses" - Venus finds out what Cupid has done and is furious.
• We can see Venus is very self-conscious, saying, "Where can I turn now everyone’s laughing at me?" when no one is laughing at her.
• Juno and Ceres try to set Venus straight, saying "What god, indeed what mortal, could endure your sowing the seeds of desire everywhere yet constraining love bitterly where your own home is concerned, and shuttering the official workshop where women’s faults are made?”
• How can she bring the world love when she is so consumed by jealousy and hatred?
• Part 9 "The Wedding Feast" - Psyche is made immortal and so she and Cupid are officially married.  Psyche gives birth to a daughter.
• Part 10 "The Escape" - the captured princess escapes on Lucius the donkey.
• Just like how Psyche was helped by animals and voices, after contemplating suicide, the princess was helped by Lucius the donkey, after she too had contemplated suicide in the beginning of the story.

Marriage of Cupid and Psyche; photographed at Brooklyn Museum by Katie Chao.

Source: flickr

Bibliography: "Cupid and Psyche" by Apuleius and translated into English by Tony Kline. Source: Cupid and Psyche