My Dear Hemlock Reimagines The Screwtape Letters For The Modern Woman

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If imitation is the highest form of flattery, then it’s no surprise that Christian writers want to imitate C.S. Lewis. In My Dear Hemlock, published Oct. 1 by Canon Press, author Tilly Dillehay reimagines Lewis’ The Screwtape Letters for a female audience to remind readers of both their own sinfulness and God’s sustaining grace. 

My Dear Hemlock focuses on Madame Hoaxrot and her junior devil Hemlock as they tempt a young woman who has just become a Christian. As the woman transitions from fiancée to wife to mother, the demons are at her heels with temptations — to resent her husband for his imperfections, to engage in an emotional affair with a coworker, to gravitate toward friends who complain and gossip. Finally, they try to exploit the fear of death to weaken her faith. But try as they might, Hoaxrot and Hemlock just can’t figure out how to bring the woman to the side of our Father below (I’m sure you can guess who that is). 

Madame Hoaxrot smugly dispenses advice from her perch at the cleverly named Ministry for the Absorption of Women (MAW). “Some tempters overlook this department because they’ve set their eyes on the heady, but limited, violence of the male sex. They are dazzled by the glories of wars and rapes,” she says. “But I believe many avoid woman for another reason: they are threatened. Woman, as the Enemy intends her, is a fearsome, nasty, morbid thing, all practicalities and gentleness.”

The demons are no match for the power of prayer, confession, and good old-fashioned hospitality. Such things keep the patient out of Screwtape’s hands in Lewis’ classic too. Although The Screwtape Letters focuses on a Christian man, it is in no way intended only for male believers. Lewis skillfully wove social, cultural, and religious commentary into the narrative, making it a book that applies to all Christians. Like Screwtape’s patient, Christian men and women alike have faced sexual temptation, social pressures, and familial strife.

Dillehay’s reimagining hones in on specific aspects of the female psyche, from a woman’s desire to be desired to her tendency to equate fussing and fretting with caring. Although the novel’s moral lessons are most applicable to women, Dillehay does manage to bring My Dear Hemlock up to the universal level, delivering truths that apply to all Christians. Madame Hoaxrot gets in some memorable one-liners on such topics. (“Calling sin ‘sin’ is deplorably freeing to both the sinner and the sinned against.” “All worry is good worry.” “A human pretending she won’t die is a human who fears death.”)

Dillehay deserves praise for embodying the unique voice of Madame Hoaxrot. While Screwtape is clinical and conniving, Hoaxrot is saccharine and condescending, signing XOXOXO alongside veiled threats toward Hemlock. Dillehay takes several of the humorous conceits within the novel and makes them her own. “I was on vacation last week, inhabiting the front left wheel of a Walmart shopping cart. Thoroughly enjoyed,” Hoaxrot says at the beginning of one of her letters. Equally humorous is the image of a demon sitting at a desk, forced to write reports for his or her superior. Demons are real, of course, but I doubt they work in the satanic equivalent of human resource departments (although some would argue that is an oxymoron).

Dillehay also builds on a concept central to Lewis’ sequel, Screwtape Proposes a Toast. In the short story, Screwtape compares and contrasts how sinners taste, with more sin making them more delicious. Dillehay includes this concept throughout the book, and it’s the only note of cheesiness that sometimes shifts focus from man’s sinfulness — the real point of the book — to an image of a cartoon devil holding a pitchfork. 

Lewis published The Screwtape Letters in 1941, as Londoners dealt with the harsh realities of World War II. Britons at home were facing their own battles — including bombings, rationing, and conscription of loved ones — and were encouraged by the serial publication of Lewis’ letters in a Christian newspaper. 

In 2024 America, a different war is being waged: a battle of the sexes. Young men’s and women’s political opinions appear to be diverging like never before. As women’s achievements in education and careers have grown, men’s involvement in society has declined, bringing a host of problems for Gen Z men. Young women listen to Taylor Swift; young men listen to Andrew Tate. They don’t want to date each other, much less get married. 

While The Screwtape Letters is sometimes recommended to precocious teenagers, My Dear Hemlock is a book for adults. Dillehay’s discussion of the marriage bed is appropriate for readers who are old enough to marry (or already married). Sex and who’s having it — or not having it — is a hot topic online. In the virtual world, redpilled manosphere bros and man-hating radfems duke it out, but no one ever seems to win. 

Dillehay doesn’t reference or refute these worldviews, but My Dear Hemlock offers a third way by virtue of its subject matter. If there’s one thing Hoaxrot doesn’t want the husband and wife to do, it’s to have sex. It creates emotional intimacy! It’s enjoyed for its own sake! And worst of all, it makes babies! For a Christian wife, sex shouldn’t be a chore, a bargaining chip, or a shame-inducing act. In a Christian marriage, both sides lay down their arms in the battle of the sexes and realize they can win together or lose apart. The marriage bed is a symbol of this joint victory. 

As My Dear Hemlock illustrates, marriage and parenthood are often a huge source of sanctification for a woman. “It seems clear that her marriage is the root of all this nasty holiness. The marriage is out of hand, I write to warn you,” Hoaxrot hisses. But this sanctification doesn’t necessarily come from huge trials and tribulations. The young Christian grows in her faith through the little things: quietly forgiving her husband, learning to listen to older and wiser women, and finding contentment in the rhythms of family life. These actions aren’t glamorous or dramatic, but through them, ordinary women live lives of extraordinary devotion to God.

The demons tempt the young woman to consider herself special — smart enough to resist the influence of nonbelieving friends, strong enough to be good on her own, and too much of a catch to marry a normal guy. Dillehay also plays on the new temptations created by smartphones and social media, technology that definitely wasn’t in Lewis’ original.

“The advantage for us is that our patients can be brought to the end of a wasted life more gently and easily than ever before,” Hoaxrot says.

The world may look at Hemlock’s patient and say she’s wasting her life, but God doesn’t. The woman’s prayers might be simple and short like her grandmother’s, but what matters is that she says them. Her children might be imperfect and impatient, but what matters is that she loves and disciplines them. Her husband might not be the richest or most handsome, but what matters is that they can comfort each other in the face of devastating news.

Perhaps that’s the biggest takeaway from My Dear Hemlock. Sanctification — and resistance to Hemlock and Hoaxrot’s tricks — comes as the woman realizes that her worth comes not from her place in the world but from her obedience to God.