Psyche Twice Punished: Objectification and Desirability in Apuleius’ Metamorphoses

Kate Hildreth (Rutgers University)

This paper examines the treatment of Psyche in Apuleius’ inset tale of the Metamorphoses (4.29-6.25). I shall consider the dual punishment that Psyche endures due to her beauty and voyeuristic curiosity. First, she is punished by Venus, jealous of her beauty, who renders her almost untouchable, an act that situates Psyche in the realm of detached objectification. Later in the episode, Psyche disobeys her husband, driven by curiosity, and becomes in turn the spectator, rather than the object of spectation, by objectifying Cupid and, in doing so, wounding him. By showing his active engagement with Ovid (e.g. Ars 1.289-92)  and the tradition of the Cnidian Aphrodite (e.g., NH 36.21), I argue that Apuleius invites us to see Psyche’s active role in viewing the divine as simultaneously a reversal of her earlier role as object and a fraught exercise in erotic-aesthetic experience. In my view, however, this episode is not without a potential exhortation to moral reading, especially for the first-time reader, who in the scenes of inappropriate spectatorship, experiences with Psyche the dangers of transgressing the divine.