Becoming Mrs. Lewis: The Improbable Love Story of Joy Davidman and C. S. Lewis

“There are countless ways to fall in love, and I’d begun my ash-destined affairs in myriad manners.”

Framing her marriage as one of her many affairs or encounters with men, Joy describes the different ways love can begin. She foreshadows that her marriage will end by using imagery of fire and ash, linking beginning passion and ending destruction with her ultimately unhappy marriage to Bill.

“I opened the old Coolerator—more white coffin than fridge—and stared at the lonely shelves.”

As Joy prepares hot chocolate for her husband and sons, she looks inside their refrigerator and notices the lack of food. The empty shelves remind her that she doesn’t have time to write, as domestic duties consume her life. He appliance designed to preserve food—and thus preserve life—becomes a coffin that represents how her marriage is killing her and her dreams of being a writer, illustrating The Impact of Marriage.

“The winter afternoon howled with a coming storm; my sons played knights fighting for the maiden, my husband closed himself into his office, and I sealed a letter to C.S. Lewis, shedding all my masks.”

Writing her letter and response to C. S. Lewis, Joy acknowledges her history and the masks that represent her life and identities before her conversion. The imagery of a storm foreshadows her crumbling marriage, with her husband isolated and distant. Her sons playing knights foreshadows their future relationship with Jack and his dedication of The Horse and His Boy to Davy and Douglas.

“The firmament demanded nothing of me, yet offered everything.”

Using an archaic word for the sky that carries religious connotations, Joy personifies the sky. This empty space is paradoxically full and has no expectations for her, unlike her husband. Despite its fullness, the vista does not offer anything she needs, such as hope, joy, or love.

“I stood on the aft deck, my dress flapping like a bird that couldn’t get off the ground.”

Joy travels to England aboard an ocean liner, and her dress flutters in the wind. Using a simile, she compares it to a bird that moves its wings but can’t fly. This image symbolizes Joy’s current position, locked in a marriage and unable to fly away.

“The shape of my soul was changing with every view; I wanted to be strong and steady before I met Jack in person.”

Having arrived in England, Joy makes a connection with the country. The landscapes she sees change Joy, and she uses figurative language to describe her soul as a material object that transforms. Unlike the empty sky back home, England is already feeding her soul.

“Men rushed past in black robes, open and flapping in the wind, like so many crows.”

Visiting Oxford with Jack, Joy sees the teachers and scholars walking through campus. Their black robes, indicating their place in Oxford, echo Joy’s dress at the end of Part 1. This simile, comparing them to crows, suggests these men have the freedom to fly and explore.

“Oxford held ancient secrets, and if I leaned close enough and was quiet, I could hear its whispers, and then maybe hear my own.”

Coming to Oxford, Joy falls in love with the city. Personifying the city, she characterizes its history as ancient secrets, which the city holds like a human. Feeling a connection, Joy hears its secrets as whispers which blend with her own. Unlike the despair of New York, there is now expectation and wonder.

“Libraries are sanctuaries, and the one in Edinburgh was a sacred space, with its soaring ceilings and hovering lights dropping circles of gold onto tables and floors.”

As Joy travels to Edinburgh to do research for her book on Charles II, she imagines a library as a quasi-religious haven, one that feeds the mind. This space seems like a cathedral, which she understands within her framework of conversion. Comparing the lights to gold, Joy reinforces the sacred qualities of the space.

“As we neared the churchyard he opened a wrought iron gate to enter a graveyard with a stunted forest of headstones.”

Walking with Jack, Joy explores the countryside, coming to the Headington Quarry’s Holy Trinity Church. Entering the church, she sees the cemetery, comparing the tombstones to a forest, linking death to nature, and possibly foreshadowing the inevitability of her death at the novel’s end.

“In an instant, like a snake’s strike, his hands closed around my throat.”

Returning to America, after hearing about Bill’s relationship with her cousin Renee, Joy enters the house. As she argues with Bill, his temper rages out of control, and he grabs her throat. Joy uses a simile to compare this to a snake who lunges at their prey. The snake is also a Christian symbol representing lies, indicating she has returned to the lair of a liar, her husband, Bill.

“I gathered the memories like wool to keep me warm.”

As Joy languishes in America, isolated in her house, she thinks about her time in England. Using a simile, Joy compares these memories to wool, which metaphorically brings her comfort. It also calls to the sheep so prevalent in the English countryside.

“As movers and trucks came to dismantle my life piece by piece, I felt I was crumbling along with the rotten wood on the porch.”

Joy prepares to move to England after filing for divorce from Bill. Moving out of her house, she links her house and her possessions to her life, equating the two. Continuing the connection, she links the decayed wood of the house to her as she breaks down. Her life has been disassembled and is now in pieces and will be rebuilt in England.

“The memory of Bill rose like bile in these moments, a raging ghost.”

Taking her sons to meet Warnie and Jack, they wonder if Jack will answer their questions about Narnia. Joy sees these questions as one of the consequences of their father’s rages. Her and her sons’ memories of Bill cause discomfort and pain, coming up like a sour taste that haunts them. She makes this comparison using a simile linking memory and bile.

“Together we walked down the winding staircase, and instead of taking my breath, this time the stairs slaughtered my knees, but our voices continued in conversation.”

At Magdalen College, she and the boys explore the campus. Personifying the staircases, Joy describes the pain she feels in her knees, suggesting the stairs have killed her knees. This pain in her leg also foreshadows the shattering of her leg caused by cancer that has spread to her bones.

“My first spring in England was like the first day of being alive in the world, a deaf woman’s first chord of Beethoven.”

After a long winter in New York, Joy feels reborn in the emerging nature and greenery. Echoing the description of Narnia’s creation in The Magician’s Nephew, these markers of Spring are likened to the first day of life using a simile. She likens the bursting forth of nature to the moment a Deaf person hears Beethoven for the first time, implying that it would rouse the senses in the same way.

“Even as Jack withheld his body from mine, he pressed his heart and mind as close to me as skin to bone.”

Joy considers how she and Jack grow closer despite their chaste relationship. She uses similes that emphasize the body and corporeality to characterize her spiritual connection to Jack. These metaphors also recall a break between body and soul that characterize early English poetry that centers on the soul speaking to the body and accusing it of damning the soul.

“Jack and Warnie, as undefended with me as an eternal hallway of flung-open doors, had never once discussed the two women who had lived some twenty-odd years at the Kilns.”

Joy thinks about Mrs. Janie Moore and her daughter Maureen and the brothers' silence about them. Using figurative language, Joy compares the brothers’ openness to a never-ending hallway with no closed doors. She employs this comparison to draw attention to their silence about an important and painful topic.

“This was dangerous territory in the land of love—he wasn’t yet gone, and I already missed him.”

As Jack leaves for two weeks, he gives Joy his offices to use, which implies both trust and intimacy. Knowing he will leave, Joy begins to pine for him, comparing her emotional state and desires to a perilous physical place.

“Twilight turns to night and my head rested on his shoulder and the palm of his hand was on my neck, stroking my skin with gentleness as if consoling a small child after a frightful storm.”

Joy and Jack clash about her love and desire for physical affection. As Joy turns from him, he implores her not to turn away. He consoles her, hugging her chastely, using a simile to compare her to a frightened child and their clash to a storm.

“The pain of shattered illusion swept through me like glass blown through a room after a bomb.”

Joy realizes that her pursuit of Jack has been contrary to her inborn character and motivations. Calling herself loved by God, Joy discovers that she should have been pursuing God rather than Jack. She did exactly what Chad advised her not to do. She compares the destruction of her fantasy and its sensation to the destruction of glass after a bomb.

“Flames licked the insides of my thigh.”

Joy tries to walk, and then she collapses, unable to walk. Describing the pain, Joy employs figurative language, using a metaphor of flames to convey how excruciating her leg feels.

“The two diagnoses scattered around the room like dark dust, like evil.”

After going to the hospital, Joy talks to Jack, who tells her what he has heard. Jack tells Joy that her pain and illness is leukemia or another kind of cancer, and she uses a simile to compare these diagnoses to soot or dirt before reinforcing that simile with another: The diagnoses strike her as evil.