Now, I'm a huge C.S. Lewis fan, and because of that, I kind of wish I had not read this book. Becoming Mrs. Lewis is the fictionalized account of Joy Davidman's relationship with C.S. Lewis that eventually ended in their marriage. The problem from the start was that she was already married and had two little boys. Instantly, I was thinking that there's no way this ends well. Either her husband dies (probably through suicide at he threatens) or there's a divorce. Either way, the two boys are irrevocably harmed. It was hard to image the C.S. Lewis I thought I knew becoming a part of this train-wreck.
Joy writes to Lewis after reading several of his books—he's already a famous author—to ask him questions about her newfound "foxhole" faith. He writes her back and they begin a two-year letter-writing correspondence. Inappropriately, in my opinion, she begins to discuss her marital woes with him.
After suffering from health issues, she believes taking a few months off of her life with her erratic, cheating, and alcoholic husband and visiting England is just what the doctor ordered. Leaving her boys with this awful husband and her gorgeous cousin, off she sets for the adventure of a lifetime, meeting Lewis face-to-face, as well as the other Inklings, including Tolkien. After spending Christmas with him, she returns home for the new year. All the while she claims despair at being away from her boys and is slightly concerned when her husband stops writing.
In an "how could you not have foreseen this" moment, she is told her husband and cousin are in love and want to start a life together with the boys if she will only give him a divorce. She refuses, telling us once again that her marriage and family are the most important things to her. Finally, with Lewis urging her on, she divorces her husband and takes the boys across the Atlantic Ocean. But not to him. Not right away.
However, Lewis has never shown a romantic interest in her, and actually has hurt her feelings several times by letting her know it is her mind he enjoys. So there is no romantic climax as they create a new family and solve all her problems. Rather, it takes a visa crisis to propel him to offer a platonic marriage in order to secure her ability to stay in England. It is not until her health takes a rapid turn for the absolute worst that they decide to make their marriage a real one based on love. And this takes place as she lays dying in the hospital.
In a miraculous turn of events, Lewis is somehow able to take her physical pain upon himself and give her a three-year reprieve. The boys are denied all access to their father and after she dies Lewis takes custody. Yet he dies three years after that. We are told in an epilogue that one boy is now a Christian and the other is a Jew.
I don't know if it was the reader's tone (I listened on audiobook), the author, or if it was the character of Joy Davidman, but I really didn't like her and I never saw what C.S. Lewis saw in her. The writing certainly suffers from a desire to tell and not show. We are repeatedly told that Joy loves her husband and wants it to work, but we see no evidence. Instead it is clear she is having an emotional affair with Lewis through the letters. Her boys are supposedly the most important thing to her, but she leaves them with an abusive and alcoholic husband and her single, gorgeous cousin for months. If her mind is what attracted Lewis, I see no evidence of it in this decision. Joy also makes it clear that she is a WRITER, and as such, she MUST write. Yet at the same time, very little of her work is published and she struggles her whole life to scrape together enough money to survive. Her husband is likewise caught up in his own illusions of grandeur in that he, too is a WRITER. In fact, as he loves to remind her, he is a better writer than she. And yet, neither are able to make a living at it. I kept telling the characters, "Writing is your HOBBY. Get a real job!" In fact, each chapter begins with an original Joy Davidman couplet, as try as I might, I was never as convinced as she by her greatness. Also, she was apparently a committed, militant atheist and Communist before her conversion. We are told.
Finally we are repeatedly told that C.S. Lewis was absolutely enthralled by her original mind and ability to keep up with and challenge one of the greatest thinkers of the twentieth century. Yet we never see this. Not once does she say or argue anything remotely interesting, much less of the caliber of Lewis. I'm tempted to think, since the author largely relied on Joy's papers and her son's recollections, that Joy was mistaken in the esteem in which Lewis held her. We are told the marriage was platonic because, being divorced, Lewis couldn't marry her in the church. Yet this rings false. The love of your life, your intellectual equal, the woman you cannot live without, and you set her up in home down the street and keep the marriage a secret? Tolkien didn't warm to her and I'm inclined to side with him on this.
One final irony. Joy tells us repeatedly that she doesn't want to be "someone's wife." She wants an identity as a writer and an intellectual. Yet again, that whole, "my marriage and my boys are my world" trope makes a repeated appearance. And yet, not really. Lewis becomes her world, even physically taking her away from her family. (Again, not on his recommendation but of her own suggestion.) Yet the book is titled, "Becoming Mrs. Lewis." I thought that at some point, her pride and budding feminism were finally brought under the loving submission to a great man for whom she would gladly be known as "Mrs. Lewis." Nope. We see nothing of this. It is clear that she desperately loves him, but their marriage is initially secret, so she is not actually Mrs. Lewis. And at the end, it's a brief 3-year honeymoon in which they don't really have a life as a traditional husband and wife. I'm not clear that anyone knew her as Mrs. Lewis. It's a bad title and actually the opposite of what happens. If anything, she becomes the ex-wife of Bill Gresham, and the biggest fan girl of Lewis the world has known. She never moves beyond her own sense of victimhood or even into a deep relationship with Christ. It's almost like the whole book is fan fiction and the real C.S. Lewis gallantly chose not to sue.
Unfortunately, I didn't like Mrs. Lewis, and through her eyes, I didn't like C.S. Lewis much either. I'm going to try to forget I read this and remember him with the esteem he deserves.
