Cupid and Psyche

A sequence of tasks or trials, especially when assigned in a group of three, is a motif that occurs in the fairy tales of many cultures. The tasks typically present successive levels of difficulty and require the protagonist to prove their ingenuity, or their dedication to a goal, before achieving the reward.

The tasks Venus assigns Psyche represent, in a broader sense, the difficulties that someone must go through for the sake of love. It isn’t evident what parallels each task has to the experience of love, but Venus presents them as a test of Psyche’s devotion and therefore her worthiness of Cupid’s love. Likewise, while it isn’t clear what Psyche’s helpers might symbolize individually, together they show that even elements of the natural world like an ant, a reed, and an eagle will work to support the cause of true love.

While the journey through the underworld often represents a rite of passage or a key point in the protagonist’s development, the death-like sleep in fairy tales more often signifies stasis. Examples can be found in stories of Sleeping Beauty and Beauty and the Beast (both of which might have their inspiration in “Cupid and Psyche”).

Psyche undergoes several symbolic deaths in the story. The first is her “funeral” when she is left on the mountaintop by her parents. Psyche expects to be devoured by a monster; instead, she is made the wife of an unseen lover. Next, when she is told she might not see her sisters, Psyche feels that her palace is a prison and in her loneliness she might as well be dead. Finally, when Cupid leaves her, she attempts suicide in a river.

Venus’s command to go to the underworld looks like one last attempt to kill Psyche, or make her prove she is willing to die for love. Psyche makes it through the adventures, but in the last moment her curiosity—or vanity—proves her undoing. She thinks beauty will make her worthy of love and thus is trapped in a suspended state (the sleep) from which only faithful love can awaken her.