Joy Gresham
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Joy Davidman (born Helen Joy Davidman on April 18, 1915, died July 13, 1960) was an American writer, a radical communist and an atheist until her conversion to Christianity in the late 1940s. Her first husband was the writer William Lindsay Gresham. They had two children together: David Gresham and Douglas Gresham. Her second marriage was to the writer and Oxford don, C.S. Lewis.
Gresham came from a Jewish family. She moved from her native New York to England in 1953, where she met and married Lewis, having been inspired by his books on Christianity. Davidman was brought to examine and subsequently convert to the Christian faith, largely through Lewis' writings. When she moved to the UK, he married her so that she would not have to return to America. In time, and especially after she fell ill with cancer, he realized how much he loved her and proposed to marry her properly, "before God".
She recovered briefly, but eventually succumbed to cancer at the age of 45 on July 13, 1960. Lewis wrote A Grief Observed in response to her death.
Shadowlands, a dramatized version of her life with Lewis starring Anthony Hopkins as Jack (C. S. Lewis) and Debra Winger as Joy, was released for HBO in 1993 and is now available on DVD. It was preceded by a BBC production and a stage play; all were more or less loosely based on Douglas Gresham's book Lenten Lands.
[edit] Epitaph
- Here the whole world (stars, water, air,
- And field, and forest, as they were
- Reflected in a single mind)
- Like cast off clothes was left behind
- In ashes, yet with hopes that she,
- Re-born from holy poverty,
- In lenten lands, hereafter may
- Resume them on her Easter Day.
This epitaph by C. S. Lewis was originally written on the death of Charles Williams; he later adapted it to place on his wife's grave.
[edit] See also
Douglas Gresham
C. S. Lewis
A Grief Observed written by Lewis from his experience following Gresham's death
