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

Writing and survival are synonymous for Joy, and her books, poems, and essays grant her an afterlife. From the beginning of Joy’s narrative, she links writing to her very survival. In each of the four parts of the novel, Joy’s writing is central, signaled by its use as epigraphs for the chapters. Trying to catalog her feelings for Jack, persevere through her crumbling marriage to Bill, or understand her bodily mortality, Joy turns to the written word and printed page repeatedly. Early on, she echoes Bill’s expectations as she attempts to balance her domestic duties and professional ambitions. She criticizes the value she places on her writing, hating “[her] selfishness that cared more for the page, the writing than for [her] family’s meals” (16). This attitude that sees writing as less than sustenance changes for Joy. Seeing that Bill’s affections have turned to contempt and her marriage has become one-sided, Joy focuses on her writing. Returning to New York following her first revelatory trip to England, she writes to process her traumatic existence with Renee and Bill. Between her old life in America and her new life in England, Joy writes, “as if sentences were blood, as if they would save me” (215). Linking her existence physically to writing, she treats her corpus of writing as her own corporeal body, foreshadowing how her writing becomes a kind of afterlife.

Married to Bill, Joy sometimes sees writing as a luxury. The end of her marriage changes this reality. After, she must write to make money, especially once she moves to England after her divorce. Confronted with the reality that “nothing sold” (262) from her writing in England, Joy struggles. Her faith in her writing appears as dogged as her faith in God, and Joy has “every intention of all my writing paying off” (263). The novel makes clear that her writing does help support her—right before she receives her terminal diagnosis, Joy has become a success with money coming in from her Cinderella project with Warnie and a contract to write on the seven deadly sins.

With Jack and Warnie, Joy finds others who appreciate the written word as much as she does but without any of Bill’s jealousy or derision. There is mutual admiration and inspiration. Jack appreciates her drafts, even while suggesting changes. She inspires Jack in his retelling of Cupid and Psyche, helping him to shape and improve the story so much that he freely admits that she was a partner on the project. In this idyllic time of creativity and partnership between Joy and the Lewis brothers, writing still helps her survive, but it finally also allows her to thrive in an environment that builds her up instead of tears her down.

As she gains a modicum of comfort and security materially, Joy uses her poetry— originally intended for her eyes only—to process her emotions and yearning for Jack and God through her writing. With the sonnets, she lessens “the pain and loneliness by forging sheaves of poetry no one would ever read” (263). They allow her to survive being in constant proximity to a man whom she loves and desires but cannot be with romantically. Later, she presents to Jack the sonnets with her honest passion and deep love reflected in her words as a gift before their civil marriage. Her sonnets—which helped her survive the pain of a love that could not be expressed or acted on—are a prelude to the emotions that Jack finally acknowledges before their religious wedding. She no longer needs to write her feelings of love after she shows him the poems, a reflection of her heart.

In the epitaph, the reader learns that those same sonnets—intended first for her eyes and then only for Jack—somehow survived, only to be found by Joy’s son, Douglas and published in 2015. Her other works also remain in print, a testament that Joy’s words penned to aid her physical or emotional survival have timeless value for generations of readers.