By Maxwell Wilkens
The second-century love story between the Roman gods Cupid and Psyche has inspired sculptures, paintings, and even a tattoo on soccer star David Beckham’s arm. But these depictions often omit the darker themes found in the original story, says Sonia Sabnis, a professor of ancient Mediterranean studies at Reed College.
“I cannot stand a lot of the romantic interpretations in European art and the assumption that the story of Cupid and Psyche is a fairy tale with a happily-ever-after ending,” Sabnis told a UC Santa Barbara audience last week. Because of this, her research “has involved looking for the darker reception of it, one that shows how creepy the story is.”
Sonia Sabnis, a Classics professor at Reed College, spoke at UCSB about how the “creepy” love story of Cupid and Psyche was received by 20th-century America.
She spoke at an annual lecture organized by the Center for the Study of Ancient Fiction, which is co-directed by Classics Department professors Emilio Capettini and Helen Morales. The interdisciplinary Center began nearly two years ago, and includes the departments of English, Spanish and Portuguese, and Religious Studies, among others.
Sabnis discussed the impact that the story had on 20th-century American literature. “The American reception allegorizes not the struggles of the soul, as is popular in early modern Europe, but the strictures of marriage and motherhood for increasingly independent American women,” she said.
Sabnis compared Psyche’s anxieties about marriage and motherhood to the plot of Rosemary’s Baby, a story where a young woman gives birth to the Antichrist.
In the myth, Psyche is so beautiful that she angers the goddess Venus, who orders her son, Cupid, to make Psyche fall in love with someone hideous. When Cupid visits Psyche, however, he falls in love with her, and the rest of the story shows how they overcome impossible odds to marry each other. Although their romance is a large part of the story, Psyche experiences a disturbing motherhood after she is impregnated by an invisible Cupid and is forced to carry a baby without knowing the father, Sabnis pointed out.
Richard Matheson’s short story “Button, Button” is one of the best-known pieces of 20th-century American literature that was influenced by the dark themes in Cupid and Psyche, since it was adapted into a Twilight Zone episode in 1986, and a movie titled “The Box” in 2009.
“Its themes of a woman’s curiosity ruining her marriage and the instability of knowledge in what should be the most intimate of relationships, are indicative of a larger pattern of American revision and allusion to the Psyche story,” Sabnis said.
The centerpiece of Sabnis’ talk was Ira Levin’s novel “Rosemary’s Baby,” which was adapted into a popular horror film starring Mia Farrow. “Both ‘Rosemary’s Baby’ and Cupid and Psyche are essentially whodunit stories, in which knowledge of an unborn baby’s father’s identity produces a second interpretation of the text,” Sabnis said. “Rosemary Woodhouse and Psyche are both ingenious, curious, lonely characters deceived by their husbands and deprived of their social ties and bodily autonomy.”
Sabnis said that her survey is not only useful to understanding maternal anxieties in 20th century America, but in the ancient world as well. “Reception analysis should stimulate new questions about the ancient text,” Sabnis says. “So, my study of the American reception of Psyche has inspired me to think more deeply about Roman anxieties and laws about marriage and reproduction.”
Maxwell Wilkens is a third-year UC Santa Barbara student majoring in Communication and Music Studies. He is a Web and Social Media Intern for the Division of Humanities and Fine Arts.