Elizabeth Bowen
AKA Elizabeth Dorothea Cole
Born:
7-Jun-
1899Birthplace:
Dublin, IrelandDied:
22-Feb-
1973Location of death:
Kent, EnglandCause of death:
Cancer - LungElizabeth Dorothea Cole Bowen (
7 June,
1899 –
22 February,
1973) was an
Anglo-Irish novelist and short story writer. Bowen was born in
Dublin and later brought to Bowen’s Court in
County Cork where she spent her summers. When her father became mentally ill in 1907, she and her mother moved to
England, eventually settling in
Hythe. After her mother died in 1912, Bowen was brought up by her aunts.
She was educated at Downe House. After some time at art school in
London she decided that her talent lay in writing. She mixed with the
Bloomsbury Group, becoming good friends with
Rose Macaulay, who helped her find a publisher for her first book, Encounters (1923). In 1923 she married Alan Cameron, an educational administrator who subsequently worked for the
BBC.
Bowen inherited Bowen's Court in 1930, but remained based in England, making frequent visits to
Ireland. During
World War II she worked for the British Ministry of Information, reporting on Irish opinion, particularly on the issue of Irish neutrality.
Her husband retired in 1952 and they settled in Bowen’s Court, where Alan Cameron died a few months later. For years Bowen struggled to keep the house going, lecturing in the
United States to earn money. In 1959 the house was sold and demolished.
Bowen received recognition for her work, being awarded Doctorates in Literature by
Trinity College, Dublin (1949) and the
University of Oxford (1952). She was also awarded the CBE.
After spending some years without a permanent home, Bowen settled in Hythe and died of
cancer in 1972, aged 73. She is buried with her husband in Farahy church yard, close to the gates of Bowen’s Court. A commemoration of her life is held annually in Farahy church.
Assessment
Elizabeth Bowen was greatly interested in ‘life with the lid on’ and what happened when lid came off. Her work deals with innocence and betrayal and theirs that lie beneath the veneer of respectability. Her style is highly wrought and owes much to
Henry James. She was also influenced by
Marcel Proust and by the techniques of
Film. Place has a central role in her work. Few have evoked London in wartime as well as she did.
PlotExposition-Mrs. 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 her
family moved out. The house had some cracks in it because of the bombing, and she wanted to check on it.
Conflict-As she was passing her hall table, she noticed a letter addressed to her—a 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?
Climax-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.
Resolution- Kathleen continued to hallucinate as the taxi drove off into the deserted country road.
Setting
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
Symbol
War – symbolises troubled times and troubled minds/trauma
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 – Kathleen’s life becomes melancholic – her tranquility erased.
CharacterMain 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 her
family Mrs. Drover is a picture of stability and dependability.
Flat Character:
The ‘Lover’ a.k.a. Kathleen’s ex-fiancé
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 Kathleen’s 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 won’t 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.”
Point of View-3rd person (Limited omniscient)
The story is seen through Mrs Kathleen Drover.
Tone-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.
-Suspense: The ‘meeting’ that is supposed to take place at the ‘hour’ agreed during their anniversary.
ThemeDoubt 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-fiance. 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 one thing – the promise that she has broken.
