Analysis on THE DEMON LOVER by Elizabeth Bowen

THE DEMON LOVER by Elizabeth BowenElizabeth Bowen

Elizabeth Bowen (1899 to 1973-Dublin) was a well known writer of short stories and novels. Her best known work is the novel,The Heat of the Day(1949) which is considered one of the best literary treatments of London during the WWII years. She moved to London at age eight. She attended art school in London but decided that her primary talent was writing. She socialized with various Bloomsbury members and was a friend of Virginia Woolf. Bowen is mentioned twenty times in Hermione Lee's biography ofVirginia Woolf.One gets the feeling that Bowen had an attitude of near worship toward Woolf. The friendship between Woolf and Bowen was not as important to Woolf as her friendships with Katherine Mansfield and Vita Sackville-West were. By the time Woolf and Bowen became friends, Mansfield had already died and Woolf was quite famous. "The Demon Lover" is the best known and most highly regarded of Bowen's short stories. The summary of the storyMrs. Kathleen Drover returned to London from her house in the country in order to pick up some things from the house that she and her husband abandoned because of the bombing of London by the Germans during 1940-41.It was a humid day in late August when she went back to her mostly deserted street. When she entered the house, she saw all of the telltale stains and dust left when she and herfamilymoved out. The house had some cracks in it because of the bombing, and she wanted to check on it. She is totally shocked when she sees a letter has been left for her on the dining table as there is no one who would bring a letter addressed to her inside her house. As the story goes on we see a letter written by Kathleen addressed to herself . She has already forgot about it. She considers it written by her fianc. The letter is about the promise which should have been kept. She has been suffering for a long time and she thinks she has to be punished because she could not wait him and got married. She has been feeling guilty for the last twenty five years of her life. Place: London-The story takes place in a house with "some cracks in the structure, left by the last bombing" that is situated on a deserted street and gives an eerie atmosphere to the story.

Time: Post World War II era

Weather Condition: Wet and humid in late August

Social condition: Deserted and quiet

SettingThe PlotRising actionAs she was passing her hall table, she noticed a letter addressed to hera strange sight, considering that the caretaker did not know of her return and that her house was boarded up and all of her mail had been forwarded to the country address. She wondered who was it from and how the letter got there?

ConflictThe conflict is internal one because she has been feeling guilty for the last twenty five years of her life. She promised to wait her fianc the day she sent him to war. But, she could not keep it and got married and became Mrs. Drover.

Climax

When Kathleen boarded the taxi in her attempt to escape from her dead lover and when the taxi driver turned around to look at her from the glass panel.

DenouementWhen finally, she does not have to repress anything or control her feelings but she screams. She spent her days thinking about the promise and consequences she had to pay for not keeping it. At last, she accomplished; she came across with all the realities; the next step is much easier now; because she is not willing to return to the town without the 'objects' she has come to fetch.

The tone of the story-Mystery: The letter from the dead lover requesting that Kathleen keep to the promises she had made what are the promises and how did the letter get there.As the story goes on we see a letter written by Kathleen addressed to herself. She has already forgotten about it. She considers it written by her fianc. The letter is about the promise which should have been kept. She wrote the letter in order to relieve from the feeling of guilt. She comesback to the house in their anniversary date. She believes she has to suffer.

-Suspense: The meeting that is supposed to take place at the hour agreed during their anniversary.

The charactersThe main Character:

Mrs. Kathleen Drover

The story is seen through Mrs. Kathleen Drover. The story centers on the perceptions and actions of Mrs. Kathleen Drover. When she finds a letter addressed to her in her abandoned London home, she thinks back to her former nameless soldier-lover during World War I. She is keenly aware of her surroundings: the atmosphere, weather, and particularly, a sense of strangeness. The letter lying on the table compels her to imagine the various possibilities for how the letter got there in the first place.Because of the overwhelming sense of the strangeness of her situation, Mrs. Drover rushes upstairs to check herself in the mirror: her "most normal expression was one of controlled worry, but of assent. [she] had . . . an intermittent muscular flicker to the left of her mouth, but . . . she could always sustain a manner that was at once energetic and calm." To herfamilyMrs. Drover is a picture of stability and dependability.

Other charactersThe Lover "Kathleens ex-fianc

Twenty-five year absence of the lost soldier is said in the story to have begun with his departure for the Great War in 1916. The soldier-lover is portrayed as an over-bearing persona in Kathleens life as a young girl. Before he left for France, he met Kathleen for the last time and reminded her of their promise. Although Kathleen was quite apprehensive about it, but he kept on insisting that I shall be with you, sooner or later. You wont forget that. You need do nothing but wait.The taxi driver

Through the aperture driver and passenger, not six inches between them , remained for an eternity eye to eye.

The main themesDoubt and Ambiguity:The theme of appearance and reality is central to "The Demon Lover." The dubiousness of the appearance of the letter puzzles Mrs. Drover. How did it get on the table? Who placed it there? Her house is obviously deserted and untouched, which makes the appearance of the letter even more enigmatic. To verify her own conception of reality, Mrs. Drover looks in the mirror, and she sees herself, looking familiar and reassuring.Her mind races, however, back in time to her mysterious, nameless soldier-lover with whom she was in love as a young girl. This vision reinforces the sense of him as potentially the "demon lover" of the title. He is remembered not with warmth but for his sense of his power or control over her. Mrs. Drover's association of the letter with the soldier-lover makes the reality of the letter questionable, although it is a physical object. When she escapes into a taxi, she sees the face of the driver.Guilt:Mrs. Kathleen Drover is caught in her own guilt for not keeping to her promises to her ex-fianc. She gets annoyed upon seeing the letter because she knows that it could only come from one person her lover and it could only serve to remind her about their agreement.

The main ideaThe main idea of the story The Demon Lover is that sometimes is very hard to confront our past especially when we keep a secret which we can not confess. Mrs. Drover seems ready to confront with her past; but she is not willing to control her life; she has always been a woman suffering and scarred by a repressed emotional event from the past. The messageKEEP YOUR WORD! If we dont keep our promises we live with this pressure all the time.Also forget all bad things and events from the past and try to live with no remorse. The Symbols of the story

War symbolizes troubled times and troubled minds.

Houses and ghosts - are also attributable to war. Houses play a prominent role in The Demon Lover, as a symbol of cultural and family values threatened from without. The Demon Lover also employed the motif of ghosts, which portray war-shocked characters with a "saving hallucination" and to re-create the sense of a blurred distinction between reality and fantasy created by war.

Piano symbolizes joy, happiness, peace, warmth and harmony. When the piano was left when they moved away from London Kathleens life becomes melancholic her tranquility erased.

The TitleThe title of the story The Demon Lover is indirect because it reflects an enigmatic one which confuses the reader and makes him read the story. It doesnt show us what is the plot about; it only offers general impressions about the context.

Stylistic devices

Stylistic devices

Stylistic devices

Epithets : Showery day; familiar street; dead air; empty street; family life.Personification: a cat wove itself in and out of railings; the air came to meet her; light came down into the hall.Polysyndeton: Theroomlookedoverthegardenandsharpenedandlowered,thetreesandranklawnsseemed alreadytosmokewithdark.Enumeration: twobusesimpassivelypassedeachother:Women,a perambulator,cyclists,aman.Rhetoric questions: WhatshallIdo,whatshallI do?; How shouldI...?Aftertwenty-fiveyears...

Conclusion The most I like in this story is the way the author uses some description of weather as: " It was late August; it had been a steamy, showery day : at the moment the trees down the pavement glittered in an escape of humid yellow afternoon sun.'' This description represents also the inner world and tells readers a lot about the mood of the characters. The story is short and beautifully told and I can say that people should read this story.