48 pages • 1 hour read
The Dearly Beloved
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Themes
Faith Versus Doubt
The characters’ relationships with faith and doubt play an essential role in the novel. On the one hand, Nan has a strong faith in God from an early age, and Charles experiences a calling from God leading him to faith. On the other hand, James struggles with his faith in God, and Lily lacks religious faith completely. Throughout the novel, the characters grapple with faith and doubt in different ways, eventually finding their own paths to and definitions of faith.
James and Lily, who struggle with finding faith the most, begin experiencing faith when they learn to use it to create change in others’ lives. James, who starts the novel as an agnostic, grapples with his faith and ultimately discovers faith in social justice. This leads him indirectly to faith in God, helping him define faith through action.
Lily, a staunch atheist with a disdain for religion, goes through an even greater transformation in faith. When Will is diagnosed with autism, Lily refuses to believe that he is incapable of loving her and Charles or of being happy. She becomes determined to help him in any way she can, using her anger and knowledge to drive her. When she finds Dr. Foster and Annelise, who help Will, she even starts to believe in signs and miracles. She explains to Charles, “I accept your faith, Charles. I understand it now, because I have faith in Will. Because I will choose to believe, for my entire life, that we can help him, and that he loves us, in his own way. If I do not, I will go crazy” (311). Lily remains an atheist but develops a faith in her son that helps her support him.
In contrast, Charles and Nan are devout Christians with strong faith in God, but each has severe crises of faith in the novel. Nan starts to question God when she feels violated by the sight of a naked man in church, believing that such a thing should not happen to her, as “[she] ha[s] always been the best lovely girl” (29). Her faith is most shaken by her two miscarriages, but her grief turns to anger and jealousy when Lily becomes pregnant. She fails to accept her childlessness as God’s will, and this leads her to trust in James. James helps Nan adjust her faith by telling her that while she thinks “God rewards,” he believes that “God pursues” (245). This teaches her that accountability is part of faith and that success and failure do not depend on God alone.
Charles has his major crisis of faith when Will is diagnosed with autism, admitting to the church that he ha[s] “turned away from God” and wants to “close that door” (286). When Will starts making progress, Charles becomes guilt-ridden and distances himself from his family. He loses faith in himself as well as faith in God. Lily helps Charles reignite his faith by telling him to give himself grace and that faith brings out the best in him. Charles and Nan end up being pulled back into their faiths by their spouses, who initially rejected faith in God. The four gain faith by accepting each other’s beliefs and developing better understandings of each other.
The Impact of Personal Beliefs on Relationships
The characters’ differing beliefs often create tension in their relationships with each other. Charles enters a relationship with Lily knowing that his Christian faith and her atheism will complicate their relationship. He notes that disagreeing on something as fundamental as religious faith makes a relationship less likely to prosper. Lily has the same concerns. However, Charles and Lily decide that they love each other enough to make their relationship work. They maintain happiness through their marriage, though Charles sometimes wishes he could share his world of ministry with Lily. Lily also feels alienated by Charles’ devotion to his congregation, which is something she does not share. After Lily gives birth to Will, however, she starts to accept Charles’s faith. His faith is “worthwhile” because of what it gives him and their family.
James and Nan’s relationship is also affected by their differing beliefs. While James has more faith in God than Lily, Nan worries early in the relationship about his doubts. After he goes into ministry, their disagreements center more on James’s reluctance to compromise his belief in social justice. While Nan supports most of his causes, she values the status quo and does not want James’s activities to endanger his or the church’s reputation. They disagree about how faith should manifest in the world rather than whether one should have faith or not. This causes a temporary rift, but each commits to seeing the other’s point of view. After Lola’s birth, James recognizes Nan’s willingness to accept the world as it is, while Nan starts to see James’s desire to change the world for those about whom he cares.
The characters’ struggles with faith reflect larger controversies about the role Christian faith played in the 1960s amid significant social change. While some adherents embraced traditional values and sought to maintain established norms, others within the Christian community, like James, actively engaged in social justice movements, advocating for civil rights, peace, and economic equality. The civil rights movement, for instance, saw the participation of numerous Christian leaders and congregations, driven by a sense of moral duty to combat racial injustice. Simultaneously, various Christian groups grappled with theological and cultural shifts, prompting internal debates on issues such as gender roles, sexuality, and the role of the church in society. In some ways, Nan represents this more traditional view.
The characters struggle with different beliefs in both their personal and social contexts, which creates rifts and conflicts they are forced to confront. However, they start to tolerate and accept each other’s differences as they experience life and see the world from others’ perspectives, giving them insight into marriage, parenthood, and the world’s problems at the time.
The Search for Meaning and Purpose
Like many people, the characters in the novel search for the thing that will give them purpose in life. Each starts out in a comfort zone that they must leave to achieve this goal. Charles starts out satisfied with a life of study but soon realizes that he is not content to study God in the abstract. His epiphany that God is real and his calling to preach give him a sense of purpose that helps him thrive as a minister and be a better husband and father.
James seeks meaning and purpose through his vision of a better world. James goes into ministry for this reason and starts to see his purpose while in London: “He was determined to find jobs for those who had been maimed, find meals for those who are hungry, petition for those who were victimized” (122). Seeing his father struggle to survive after the war motivates him to make sure that others do not suffer that fate due to a lack of social justice. This sense of purpose carries into his work in New York City, where he creates social outreach programs at the church and later turns the space into a progressive school for children with autism.
Nan also seeks meaning in her life. Living a life of privilege when she was young gave her the false belief that God was rewarding her for her goodness. Because of this, she struggles to find purpose in uncomfortable or difficult events, believing that God should only be bringing her good things. Her search for meaning is particularly tested by her two devastating miscarriages, which lead her into a depression. She regains her sense of purpose when she starts making things right with Lily and when she and James get their surgeries and conceive Lola.
Lily is the character with the most complicated relationship with meaning and purpose. After trying to make sense of her parents’ deaths, she becomes overwhelmed with anxiety because she cannot find their deaths’ purpose:
Was it to spare her parents from aging, to let them exist for their loved ones as ever young, ever handsome, ever charming and at ease? Or, […] was their death meant, in fact, for her—did she need to wake up, to grow up, to suffer, to learn? And if so, why? Was she so judgmental, so impatient, so spoiled? Were her parents so casually expendable? (73-74).
She only gains relief when she decides that “[t]here is no God” and “[t]here [i]s no redeeming value in her parents’ deaths” (74). However, her grief still overwhelms her throughout her life, making her cold and disdainful of others’ faith and joy. When Will is diagnosed with autism, however, she starts to develop a sense of purpose—to make sure that Will is happy and does not end up an orphan like she did. She explains to Nan, “I used to think my parents died for no reason. […] But now I think they died so I would know that Will isn’t dead” (261). She refuses to give up on him, and his happiness helps her make sense of and peace with her parents’ deaths.
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