The Golden Ass: Cupid and Psyche story
An elderly woman tells a tale of how the most beautiful woman in the world comes to be envied by the goddess Venus in an effort to conform a kidnapped young woman.
28 total · 2 choice · 9 major · 17 minor
| Theme | Level | Motivation |
|---|---|---|
| female-female rivalry | choice | The story considered the rivalry of Venus with Psyche regarding who was the most beautiful. |
| jealousy | choice | Venus was jealous of Psyche's beauty. Psyche's sisters were jealous of Psyche's marriage to Cupid. Psyche's sisters were jealous of her because of the wealth and status that came with her marriage to the god Cupid. |
| Ancient Roman mythology | major | The story told of Roman deities and their antics. |
| curiosity killed the cat | major | A central point in the story is the fact that Psyche disobeyed her husband because she had a cat-killing urge to find out who he was. This was later spelled out after Psyche could not resist opening the box that was said to contain some of Proserpina's beauty. |
| epic love | major | The god Cupid and the world's most beautiful woman Psyche fell passionately in love. |
| female vanity | major | Central to the story was various women's obsession with being evermore beautiful. |
| husband and wife | major | The relationship between Cupid and Psyche is explicitly referred to as that of husband and wife, Venus being the wicked mother-in-law. |
| mother and son | major | Cupid disobeyed his mother Venus by pursuing a romantic relationship with her rival in beauty, Psyche. |
| mother-in-law and daughter-in-law | major | The story concerned the relationship between Venus and Psyche after the latter had married the former's son, Cupid. |
| obsessive love | major | Because of Cupid's love inducing arrows, Cupid and Psyche came to be obsessively in love to the extent that Cupid upset the heavenly order (angering Venus) and Psyche nearly gave her life chasing after Cupid. |