A Love Observed

Now 14 years old, this book doesn’t represent cutting edge scholarship on the marriage between Joy Davidman and C.S. Lewis. I saw it on the shelf at the library, and as a perpetual student of Lewis I was immediately interested.

A Love Observed: Joy Davidman’s Life & Marriage to C.S. Lewis was apparently written to fill in gaps, and correct misimpressions, in the movie Shadowlands. As a former director of the Marion E. Wade Center at Wheaton College, author Lyle Dorsett brings considerable knowledge to bear on his topic.

It makes for interesting reading. I finished the book quickly, gaining a much fuller perspective on Joy Davidman’s life. She appears in other biographies I’ve read of Lewis, yet now that I’ve read this book I realize that she has always been presented as a peripheral figure, and a somewhat stereotyped one at that. Yes, her New York style and assertive manner were part of who she was. But she was many other things as well over the course of her life, and there is much here about the forces and experiences that shaped her from her childhood health issues and parental relationships, through her brilliant scholarly achievements, to her literary development and troubled marriage, her period of committed communism, her conversion, and her eventual relationship with C.S. Lewis.

If I take anything away from a consideration of Joy Davidman’s life, it’s her unapologetic individualism. She was who she was, difficult for some people to deal with, sometimes explosive, but always faithful to her sense of what was true and good. She did not lapse into habit, or into prescribed roles, and she certainly endured her share of hardship and pain.

While there is a sense of great fulfillment for both her and Lewis in their marriage, there is also a curious mutedness to her life’s impact beyond her significance to him. She was an author in her own right, a fiercely intelligent thinker, a force to be reckoned with. Yet if not for her marriage to Lewis, few would know of her. I puzzle over this, and remember Malcolm Gladwell’s book Outliers with its argument that more than mere talent is required for success; one must have certain other personal qualities and interpersonal connections before raw giftedness can achieve its full outcome.

Like any Christian life story, this leaves me with a vivid impression of God’s endless creativity in loving his children and revealing himself to those who truly seek him.