The Screwtape Letters

Screwtape reflects on his prior letter’s claim that love—in its most disinterested form—is an “impossibility” because all beings are necessarily in conflict with one another. This is an axiom of Hell, and he is worried he has slipped into “heresy” by previously claiming that God “really loves” humans. He wonders what God’s motives for claiming to love humanity truly are and admits that the question of love has been a point of contention since the fall of “Our Father” (i.e., Satan).

Turning to Wormwood’s letter, Screwtape tells him that “being in love” is simply a neutral state; what matters is how Wormwood uses it (or its absence). For example, Wormwood might encourage the patient to be cynical regarding love, which will likely channel his sexuality into equally “cynical form[s].” Alternatively, Wormwood might “feed him on the minor poets and fifth-rate novelists of the old school until you have made him believe that ‘Love’ is both irresistible and meritorious […] it is an incomparable recipe for prolonged, ‘noble,’ romantic, tragic adulteries” (102).

Wormwood’s patient has resisted the devil’s attempts to tempt him into unchastity—strengthening him against future temptations—and Screwtape is frustrated that Wormwood has not provided him with a list of young women that the patient might be induced to marry for bad reasons. He considers the various trends in what people throughout history have considered physically desirable in sexual partners; these trends were the work of devils, who use them to distract people from partnerships that might otherwise be happy.

Screwtape also argues that men have two basic but opposing images of women in their minds: one that is “terrestrial” and one that is “infernal.” Regardless of whether any given woman is actually as “sinful” as the man imagines, the perception can be alluring: “The felt evil is what he wants; it is the ‘tang’ in the flavour that he is after. In the face, it is the visible animality, or sulkiness, or cruelty which he likes, and in the body something quite different from what he ordinarily calls Beauty” (108). Even marriage to a woman whom the man regards as this latter type can have disastrous consequences and is therefore to be encouraged.

Screwtape begins this letter by saying, “Yes. A period of sexual temptation is an excellent time for working a subordinate attack on the patient’s peevishness” (111). According to Screwtape, humans think that they are masters of their lives and their time. Thus, they can be encouraged to view others as trespassing on their time, which makes them hostile to their neighbors. More broadly, Wormwood should encourage the patient to feel he “owns” all sorts of things he doesn’t—which encompasses anything he might claim, as everything in existence ultimately belongs either to God or Hell.

The patient has fallen in love, and Screwtape is furious. The object of the patient’s affection is a Christian woman. He laments that God is generally in favor of human pleasure and happiness.

Moreover, the patient has met the woman’s family, who are likely to influence him further. Screwtape is so overwrought that he changes form into a “large centipede” and dictates the end of this letter to his secretary. He denies that this transformation is a form of divine punishment and says he is eager to meet Wormwood in an “indissoluble embrace.”