An Open Wardrobe Into C.S. Lewis' Love Journey

Lewis’ Surprised by Joy gives an account of his life journey until his moment of conversion. Lewis’ literature was heavily marked by the theme of voyage. This essay will focus on his personal journey depicted in Surprised by Joy; and it will be paralleled with his imaginative literary journey in The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe. This essay will argue that both in Lewis’ personal journey, as well in his imaginative journey on the quest for Joy, only when need-love, gift-love and appreciative love intersect, we find true Joy; that is, in charity, in the moment of conversion, in the moment Aslan rises again. This is confirmed by the sense of voyage in his autobiographical and fictional work; and his dependency on imagination to convey his message.

But if that is the case, the reader might wonder how Lewis could write about moments of pleasure and joy before his conversion. We find this to be true in his friendship with Arthur Greeves, where pleasure was shared.^[1] Lewis also describes the love of books and nature as “the medium of the real joy.”^[2] These glimpses of joy can be classified as pointers. This is not surprising...“Humans are made for meaning. It is intrinsic in human nature to search for it in the world around us (…). We are always questing for what fulfills us.”^[3] In the end of Surprised by Joy, Lewis confirms that these glimpses of joy throughout his life were only valuable “as a pointer to something other and outer.”^[4] They encouraged him to continue the journey and pointed him towards Joy itself. It is in the moment of conversion that the glimpses of joy are fulfilled; that is, the moment when charity is present in our human relationships.

Our first argument rests on the sense of voyage that is observed in both Lewis’ autobiographical and fictional works which unveil a sense of movement, the pilgrimage, the voyage towards the goal. This theme of voyage tells us that until the moment of conversion, Lewis had not yet arrived to his final destination on his quest for Joy; he had not yet understood where to put his spiritual longings at rest. Kort argues that Lewis does not see his conversion as accepting Christ into his life; but “as moving out into something. One begins to live in a different world or to live in the world differently.”^[5] Kort’s language solidifies the argument. The idea of living in a different world expresses much of what one feels when migrating to a new country. In the same way, on his quest for Joy, it is in the moment of conversion that he arrives at a new place, a new world.

In Surprised by Joy, Lewis walks us through his affections, friendships and desires; these are never dissociated from places and he guarantees that Joy is his ultimate desire. Lewis first gives an account of his homely relationships: he speaks of the loss of his mother as the moment when happiness was gone, of the friendship with his brother as a source of partnership and comfort, and his troubled and fragmented relationship with his lonely father. Lewis also introduces the schools where he was educated until he got to Oxford; there he had glimpses of joy but also experienced grief and loneliness. In the same way, Kort argues that even in Narnia, Lewis’ imagination is “primarily spatial.”^[6] In The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe, the different places where the action takes place are associated with relationships and emotions; these can be places of affection, for example, when Aslan licks Susan’s forehead with his warmth breath;^[7] places of friendship, when Lucy and Susan follow Aslan the night he is going to sacrifice himself for the children; places of eros, when Edmund runs away to find the witch, moved by his desire to be a prince, or places of charity, for example, when Aslan dies for the children on the stone table. It is exactly in the moment that Aslan rises again, and in the moment of conversion for Lewis, that all the longings are met. Kort argues that it is  Christianity that provides a house;^[8] after such a long journey, through so many material and emotional places in Lewis’ life, it is the gospel, looking Aslan face to face, where Lewis is most at home; he had now approached the source from which those arrows of Joy had been coming at him since childhood.[9]

Secondly, Lewis’ dependency on imagination (namely, the metaphors and imagery used) verify that on his quest for Joy, he did not rest on affections, friendships or eros as the source of Joy; he actually distrusted emotion. In Surprised by Joy, there are moments in which his distrust of emotion are more prominent, for example, in the growing alienation in the way he related with his father which created a sense of loss and dislocation.^[10] He also saw school as a place where meanness lived and a “furnace of impure loves,”^[11] where a “speedy abandonment of friendship” was clear.^[12] In consequence, Lewis reflects that “nearly all that [he] loved [he] believed to be imaginary.”^[13]

Lewis “assigned a high place to the power and work of the imagination” and believed that it contributed to his conversion; to the moment when he found Joy.^[14] When we look at his fictional work, we see how Lewis depends on his imagination to convey truths about something far deeper: “a glimpse of supernatural reality, a window onto an aspect of the divine nature.”^[15] That is confirmed in Aslan who appears occasionally in the flesh but his presence and influence seem to hover over the whole tale: he is the prime mover of the narrative, just like Christ is for our own stories. Lewis uses this literary device to create an atmosphere where he can communicate a deep reality.^[16]

In The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, the resolution to the quest for Joy is found in Aslan’s sacrifice. After he dies, Aslan’s face “looked nobler, as the light grew and they could see it better.”^[17] In that moment, the reader is invited to see: the supernatural reality, Joy itself, to see charity, to see Christ. In his sacrifice, all of Narnia’s needs are met in Aslan’s gift of love. And the same is true for Lewis; in his moment of conversion, all his need-love is met in the acceptance of Christ’s gift-love. The journey comes to an end. Just like the children saw him larger than they had seen it before, the reader is invited to see that the quest for Joy is complete and that there is wholeness and abundance. You can see all of them happy rolling in Aslan’s fur. And Aslan, a mix between a thunderstorm and a kitten; strong and still vulnerable, completely open for relationship.[18] Both Lewis’ autobiographical and fictional work demonstrate that, in the quest for Joy, the voyage comes to an end in the moment of conversion. Throughout his troubled life of affections, friendships and desires, home is only found in Christ - where Joy and charity abide together. Lewis’ imaginative world communicates this deeper and divine reality. 

So now the question is for the reader: how will you go through the journey? You either aim to live a life of charity (where you recognize your need-love and accept the gift-love), firm on the hope that one day we will enjoy true Joy in the presence of our Creator; choose to run aimlessly in between places of affection, friendship or desire ignoring the source from which the arrows of Joy are coming at us; or, accept what we knew all along, turning the outer, which is whole and pure, into the inner.

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^[1] Lewis, C.S. Surprised by Joy: The Shape of My Early Life. First edition. C.s. Lewis Signature Book (San Francisco: HarperOne, 2017), 142.

^[2] Ibid, 77.

^[3] Root, Jerry, Mark Neal, and Steven A Beebe. The Surprising Imagination of C.S. Lewis: An Introduction (Nashville, TN: Abingdon Press, 2015) 77.

^[4] C.S. Lewis, Surprised by Joy, 238.

^[5] Kort, Wesley A. Reading C.S. Lewis: A Commentary (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016), 26.

^[6] Ibid, 31.

^[7] Lewis, C.S. The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe (New York: HarperCollins, 2005), 162.

^[8] Kort, Reading C.S. Lewis, 31.

[9] C.S. Lewis, Surprised by Joy, 222.

^[10] Ibid, 23.

^[11] C.S. Lewis, Surprised by Joy, 101.

^[12] Ibid, 108.

^[13] Ibid, 170.

^[14] Kort, Reading C.S. Lewis, 25-26.

^[15] Jerry Root, Mark Neal, and Steven A Beebe. The Surprising Imagination of C.S. Lewis, 83.

^[16] Ibid, 85.

^[17] C.S. Lewis, The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, 160.

[18] Ibid, 164.

Bibliography 

Kort, Wesley A. 2016. Reading C.S. Lewis: A Commentary. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Lepojarvi, Jason. 2017. “Four Loves: A Critical Re-Interpretation.” Presentation, C.S. Lewis and the Theology of Love, Vancouver, BC, September 19.

Lewis, C.S. 2017. Surprised by Joy: The Shape of My Early Life. First edition. C.S. Lewis Signature Book. San Francisco: HarperOne.

Lewis, C.S. 2017. The Four Loves. 1st edition, ed. San Francisco, HarperOne.

Lewis, C.S. 2005. The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe. New York: HarperCollins.

MacSwain, Robert, and Michael Ward. 2010. The Cambridge Companion to C.S. Lewis. Cambridge Companions to Religion. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Root, Jerry, Mark Neal, and Steven A Beebe. 2015. The Surprising Imagination of C.s. Lewis: An Introduction. Nashville, TN: Abingdon Press.

Simon, Caroline. 2010. “On Love” in The Cambridge Companion to C.S. Lewis, eds. Robert MacSwain & Michael Wards. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.