The central conflict of the novel lies in the long journey of conversion for Joy, whose discovery of her Christian faith propels the novel’s action. Joy depicts the beginning of her faith, the first step in her full conversion, in Chapter 1, when she breaks down emotionally and falls to her knees, surrendering herself to what Lewis calls the “Hound of Heaven” (22). Describing her conversion as a pursuit, Joy grapples with her spiritual identity as she writes to Lewis, himself a converted atheist. While her sexual and physical desires for Lewis often cloud her search for faith, this amalgamation of sexual and spiritual desire reflects many of the earlier Christian sources Joy alludes to in the novel. While not explicitly sexual, Julian of Norwich blends physical ecstasy and spiritual yearnings in her Revelations, a late medieval English devotional text that exists in two different versions. Joy calls Julian Jack’s “favorite mystic” (155) as she repeats Julian’s famous line about the unfolding of God’s will.

Joy’s conversion takes a lifetime, which Lewis would not find unusual. In Christian theology, believers are called to a life of continuous conversion in an ongoing fine-tuning of attitude and action. Converts, however, tend to moments where conversion is easier to identify, such as when Joy falls to her knees in the nursery.