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

Part 4 begins with an epigraph from The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, depicting Mr. and Mrs. Beaver’s discussion of Aslan as they prepare to take the children to meet Aslan.

Chapter 32 begins with an epigraph from Davidman’s “Sonnet XXXVII,” where the female speaker desires to switch gender identities with her male addressee.

Renting a space near her friend Phyl in London, Joy helps her sons get used to their move. Dealing with her own doubt, she shows her sons London, including Westminster. At Trafalgar Square, Davy connects the carved lion on Admiral Nelson’s monument to Lewis’s Aslan from The Chronicles of Narnia.

As Joy explains to her landlord that she can’t pay the rent for her rooms much longer, the landlord, Mrs. Bagley, offers more suitable accommodations for less money. In a letter to Bill, Joy demands he send them money and stop hurting his children financially to wound her. Davy hears her discussing their lack of money.

Beginning with an epigraph from Davidman’s “Sonnet VIII” describing the speaker’s disobedience, Chapter 33 opens with Joy recounting her first trip to see Jack. Taking him a Christmas present, Joy and her boys travel to Paddington Station on their way to Oxford.