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

Chapter 9 opens with an epigraph from Davidman’s “Sonnet III” that describes love.

Joy arrives in Southampton, traveling by ship from New York. Journeying to London, she arrives at her friend Phyl’s house, where she will stay until she travels to Oxford. Amid their discussion about Bill and Jack, the chapter includes quotations from a series of letters. The first excerpt is from a letter to Renee describing Joy’s excitement at seeing London. A quotation from a letter from Bill follows, wherein he acknowledges her happiness and apologizes for not sending more money. A quotation from Joy’s response to Bill describes how she is writing daily and mentions experiences that he would have enjoyed.

Joy visits Michal, the wife of deceased author Charles Williams, a member of the Inklings with Lewis and J. R. R. Tolkien. A trio of letter excerpts follows. In the first, Bill is happy that Joy has gone to the doctor. In the second, Renee thanks Joy for a gift and confesses that Bill hasn’t been successful in making money from his writing. Finally, in the third, Joy excitedly shared about her new writing group and health improvements.

Phyl and Joy board a train heading to Oxford to meet Jack in person. 

Chapter 10 opens with an epigraph from Davidman’s “Sonnet I,” describing the speaker’s affection.

Arriving at the Eastgate Hotel, Joy and Phyl walk in to meet Jack, who greets them and introduces them to his former student, George Sayers, who now teaches at Malvern. They discuss England and Joy’s opinion of it and eat before Jack invites them to see Magdalen College, where he teaches.

Chapter 11 opens with an epigraph from Davidman’s “Sonnet VI,” depicting a natural scene as the speaker describes a space between two rivers under a transforming sky.

Joy and Jack walk alongside the Rover Cherwell in Oxford as they both think of a line from Shakespeare’s King John about rivers. Commenting on Oxford’s beauty, they discuss Jack’s writing and its influence on Joy. As he and Joy walk together, somewhat apart from Phyl and George, he explains the history of Magdalen College and its building before they depart.

Chapter 12 opens with an epigraph from Davidman’s “Sonnet VI,” which describes the Magdalen tower bells.

On Joy’s second day in Oxford, Joy experiences fatigue on her way to have lunch with Jack and his brother Warnie at the dining hall at Magdalen Hall. There, she discusses her work in progress on Charles II while Warnie tells her about his current project on King Louis XIV. She tells them about her language abilities as she reads a crest on the wall. Outside the dining hall, she spots a deer and then admits that she wrote a screenplay about deer in Hollywood.

The chapter begins with an epigraph from Davidman’s “Ballade of Blistered Feet,” which depicts Shotover Hill near Oxford.

Jack, Warnie, and Joy hike on Shotover Hill, discussing politics, stories, and Joy’s future travel plans. With one week left in Oxford, Joy will then travel to Worcester and Edinburgh to continue her research on Charles II. At the end of the chapter, two letters between Joy and Bill follow. Bill mentions Renee’s help at home and how important she is to the house. Joy gushes about Oxford and her friend Michal back in London. She also asks for her thyroid medicine to be sent to her.

She stops writing a poem about her day on Stopover Hill and goes to bed.

Chapter 14 opens with an epigraph from Davidman’s “Sonnet VI” that describes the speaker’s memories of Oxford.

Joy catalogs her remaining time in Oxford, describing her love for the city. She visits Jack at his office in Magdalen College, where he gives her a first edition of Mere Christianity, with a signed dedication to her. They discuss her progress on her book, The Ten Commandments.

Later, she revises her poem describing the hike on Shotover Hill while also arranging her research on King Charles II. She then considers how she writes sonnets instead of a journal.

Chapter 15 opens with an epigraph from Davidman’s “Bread-and-Butter Sestina” with a command to overwhelm the speaker’s senses.

Continuing to discuss her activities in Oxford, Joy shares that she has written letters to Bill and Renee and packed some material for Jack’s planned Oxford History of English Literature for her trip to Worcester.

She and Jack stroll along Addison’s Walk, and she recognizes it as the place of his conversion when he walked there one night with Tolkien. After he details his conversation, she asks him to describe an average day. Thinking of the sonnets she’s written for him—which might be rightly called love sonnets—she decides he will never see them.

Chapter 16 opens with a quotation from Davidman’s “Sonnet XII” with a confession about the speaker’s lack.

On her last night in Oxford, Joy meets Jack in a pub where she meets his fellow Inkling Tolkien. Tolkien seemingly disapproves of her, asking her questions and responding to her inquiries with veiled criticism. After Tolkien leaves, Jack admits his friend can appear brusque. Later, Jack compliments Joy but inadvertently hurts her feelings. Describing their love as chaste—borrowing terminology from his work on the four loves—he jokes about only liking blondes, further hurting her feelings. He gives her a copy of The Lion, Witch, and the Wardrobe, signed for Davy and Douglas. He and Warnie ask her to return for Christmas.

Chapter 17 opens with a quote from Davidman’s “Apologetic Ballade by a White Witch.”

On the train ride to Worcester, Joy meets a woman who asks her where she’s going. As the woman compares staying in Edinburgh and Worcester to a man one loves until one lives with him, Joy thinks about her history with Bill and her disintegrating marriage. Considering the solace of her poetry, she confesses the primacy of God’s love.

Chapter 18 begins with an epigraph from Davidman’s “Sonnet XXVII,” discussing the speaker’s figurative hunger.

In Worcester, Joy imagines the events surrounding Charles II that took place there. When she finds herself wanting to share Worcester with Jack, she exiles the thought. Two letters follow from Joy to Bill, with the first describing her hosts in Worcester and the second a request for money and responses, with a dour note about their marriage.

Visiting Edinburgh, she writes to Jack and then begins to feel ill. Writing Bill, she describes the tie between bodily pain and her spiritual health. Bill responds, extolling Renee’s virtues and admitting their marriage is likely over. In her response, she compares her present time in London to Dante’s Inferno before telling him they’ll discuss their marriage when she returns home.

Chapter 19 opens with an epigraph from Davidman’s “Apologetic Ballade by a White Witch,” which describes the chill of Oxford.

Joy meets with Michal at a lounge in the Mitre Hotel near Hyde Park, where she and Michal discuss Jack and Joy’s marriage to Bill. Commenting on the uncertainty regarding the probate of her deceased husband’s estate, Michal asks about Joy’s work. Joined by Jack and Warnie, Michal reminisces with them about her husband while Joy listens.

Bill writes Joy, telling her about the deficiencies of her novel Weeping Bay after he reread it and praises the poem she sent him.

Chapter 20 opens with an epigraph from Davidman’s “Whine from a Beggar” that voices a desire for the love of another.

At the London Public Library, Jack gives a talk about children's literature and reads The Chronicles of Narnia to an audience of children. Before he begins, one of the librarians mistakes Joy for a mother, and Jack corrects her assumption, drawing attention to Joy’s reputation as an author.

Afterward, he and Joy meet Warnie at a pub, where Jack criticizes his performance before mentioning that Joy’s son Davy has written Jack.

Chapter 21 opens with an epigraph from Davidman’s “Sonnet V,” describing the speaker’s cold and hunger.

Tired and cold, Joy awakes to head to Oxford. She recounts how life progressed for her in London. Having finished her book on the Ten Commandments, Joy reunited with Dorothy Heyward, the wife of the author of the novel upon which Porgy and Bess is based, who explains how she helped transform the novel into the play. The chapter includes two excerpts from Joy’s letter to Bill, in which she vows never to be apart from her sons and acknowledges his part in her hurt.

Arriving in London, Joy meets with Victoria, with whom she stays in Oxford. She attends a crowded lecture given by Jack on 15th-century theology. The chapters end with a quotation by 15th-century anchoress and mystic Julian of Norwich.

The chapter opens with an excerpt from Davidman’s “Blessed Are the Bitter Things of God,” linking the speaker’s expressions to lust.

As Joy works on Jack’s Oxford History of English Literature, she receives a letter from Bill admitting to a relationship with Renee, with whom he’s fallen in love. He contends that Renee has made and will make him a better wife than Joy. Shocked by the clinical tone of the letter, Joy heads to Westminster Abbey, where she cries for her losses and her sadness. The next day, she walks to St. Paul’s Cathedral, visiting the Whispering Gallery in the cathedral’s dome, where whispers can be heard across the space. As a verger passes by Joy, he encourages her to climb to the belfry to hear the bells ring.

Chapter 23 opens with an epigraph from Davidman’s “Sonnet VIII,” in which the speaker depicts her actions toward her lover.

Having escaped the dangerous smog in London, Joy finally arrives at the Lewis family home, The Kilns, where the housekeeper, Mrs. Miller, greets her. Jack and Warnie give her a tour of the house as Warnie explains its history. She meets one of their dogs, and noticing a slanted fir, she compares the grounds to Narnia. Back inside, she tells Jack about Bill’s letter, and they play Scrabble together.

Chapter 24 opens with an excerpt from Davidman’s “Sonnet VII,” which describes the effect of the wind and time.

Waking up in The Kilns, Joy joins Jack for breakfast before they walk to a church and discuss religion. He explains the connection between the small church and his conversion and subsequent writings. On the way back to The Kilns, she and Jack discuss Tolkien. Joy then returns to editing Jack’s work on English literature.

Chapter 25 opens with an epigraph from Davidman’s “Sonnet X” that discusses idolatry.

Jack and Joy discuss Jack’s experiences at Oxford and his frustrations at his perceived lack of respect and the lack of promotion or advancement. Describing his failure to gain a position there, he attributes it to his popular fiction.

Later, Jack edits Joy’s manuscript on the Ten Commandments, offering to write a preface for the British edition. As they work together, Joy finds a pile of childhood drawings by Jack and Warnie that anticipate Narnia’s beasts. After she shares her find with Jack and Warnie, Joy agrees to coauthor a book with Warnie focused on King Louis XIV’s wife. She resumes writing her sonnet and realizes the truth they have hinted all along: She is in love with Jack.

Chapter 26 opens with a quotation from Davidman’s “Sonnet X,” which acknowledges the addressee’s humanity and the addressee’s freedom from the poem’s speaker.

Joy celebrates Christmas with Jack and Warnie. Although she misses her children, she finds happiness with them, giving each man a book for Christmas. Jack gives her a copy of his Great Divorce, signed by him, and his personal signed copy of a George MacDonald book they read during childhood. Praising her work on The Oxford History of English Language, he promises to cite her in the acknowledgments for her work in editing it.

Jack and Warnie recall their early family life.

Chapter 27 opens with an epigraph from Davidman’s “Sonnet XII” about love.

The morning of her departure from the Kilns arrives, and, at breakfast, Joy tells Jack the story of her nightly sojourns to the Bronx Zoo. Connecting Narnia and the great lion Aslan to the lions she petted at the zoo, Joy stresses the literal meaning of this link, calling it love. They express sympathy for her as she heads back to her seemingly inevitable divorce before she promises to return.