The night that Sookie met Bill in True Blood, she slept in a t-shirt with L’Amour et Psyche, Enfants by William-Adolphe Bouguereau on it, an iconic image of the idealized love of Eros and Psyche. The myth of Cupid and Psyche is the original Beauty and the Beast story, and it is also the story of Bill and Sookie.
The myth is based in the traditional world in which, when a young girl marries, she might truly be marrying a monster. not have know her husband very well or even be physically attracted to him. It is easy to see how an innocent girl, newly married might view her much older husband as something of a monster. Even so, the ideal was always that, no matter what the personalities, ages, or physical appearances of either party, they would get to know each other over time, and eventually come to love one another when their true character was revealed.
So when in the myth, Psyche only comes to really know Cupid as he really is after they are married and she falls in love with him, the story is reflecting the idealized version of a type of marriage that we find abhorrent today.
So how does this relate to Bill and Sookie?
Well, we have a young innocent woman (Psyche/Sookie) with a special gift that draws the attention of a powerful and envious woman (Aphrodite/Sophie Anne) who puts a plan into motion to deceive and manipulate the young woman. She sends the hero (Cupid/Bill) to seduce the young woman into falling in love, but doesn’t count on the fact that the hero may just fall in love himself.
What ensures is a relationship that only takes place at night in the darkness, so that the lover can hide his true identity from his beloved. When the deception is finally revealed, it is ironically, Cupid/Bill who is angry and hurt.
While happily ever after fairytales will always be popular, as will the Cupid and Psyche myth, they cannot hold for us the same meaning or relevance that they did to young women in the past.
Why did Charlaine Harris use this myth to pattern Bill and Sookie’s relationship on?
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Since vampire stories are modern myths, Harris and Ball are making their myth as relevant to our culture as Greek myths were to theirs. Modern woman, like Sookie, still grow up with the dream of a fairytale relationship, but then have to face the reality, which is most often, something else entirely and may even end in a nightmare.
Bill and Sookie are Cupid and Psyche for the 21st century. Instead of a heroine who grows to love a monster and discovers that he is really a beautiful immortal, we have Sookie who jumps blindly into a fairytale relationship with a romantically idealized immortal being but becomes more and more disillusioned as she gets to know him until she finally sees him for the monster he really is.
