The Demon Lover
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- For the British ballad, see The Daemon Lover
| Author | Elizabeth Bowen |
|---|---|
| Country | United Kingdom |
| Language | English |
| Genre(s) | Gothic fiction short story |
| Released in | The Demon Lover and Other Stories |
| Publication type | Collection |
| Publisher | Jonathan Cape |
| Media Type | Print (Hardback) |
| Released | 1945 |
"The Demon Lover" is a short story by Anglo-Irish novelist Elizabeth Bowen. It was first published in 1945 in a book titled The Demon Lover and Other Stories.
The story was referred to in The New Yorker magazine after its publication as "a completely successful explanation of what war did to the mind and spirit of the English people".
[edit] Plot summary
The main character of this short story, Mrs. Drovers, is traumatised after the Blitz, the catastrophic aerial bombardment which took place over London between the years of 1940 and 1941. Because of her psychological instability, Mrs. Drovers confuses World War II with World War I. Returning home to collect some personal belongings, she remembers her long-dead fiancé to the point where one does not know if this is a gothic story that has some supernatural happenings or simply a story of one character's neurotic mental state.[1] Though critics like Daniel V. Fraustino are determined that this story is not about the post trauma of World War I and World War II but it is a “murder mystery of high drama”[2]. It ought to be underlined that, the essay you are reading is aiming to analyze "The Demon Lover" on a more psychological/psychoanalytical basis unlike what Fraustino did… Nevertheless, he is very right in last paragraph of his essay saying that this psychological interpretation having “its own kind of special appeal,”[2]). Indeed, this approach is essential to analyze this story properly not alone being appealing because Mrs. Drovers in the story, is not only having some homecoming and witnessing some paranormal activity aftermath; but she is also channeling with her psyche in an abandoned house and seeing the cracks in her soul.
"The Demon Lover" starts on a humid August day. It is due to rain; there is a certain stress in the air and as the main character enters the street covered with clouds, one can sense that she is having this very same tension, the suppression the weather has. Thus, Mrs. Drovers, a “prosaic” woman goes back to her London house “to look for several things,”[3] but what “things”? These “things” are unknown to the reader, as it is indeed unknown to Mrs. Drovers herself and this is why she has a suppressed feeling around, a sense of waiting, the tension before the rain… She is indeed going there to confront with the house that she had left since war has started; in some other sense she is going to face herself in the image of the house to understand what kind of damage has done while experiencing the measure of this damage deep inside. This personification theme linked between Mrs. Drovers and the house, is one of the most important elements of the story.
She tries to open the door for this confrontation but the key lock is quite stiff. She has to force it and then “dead air” of this unvisited house, her unvisited portion of memories welcomes her just before setting her feet inside…[3] This door is indeed a portal of her very own past; she forces it since she hasn’t been thinking of her past but only trying to forget it because all bad memories, all the suppressed traumas are there behind this door so are the “several things”, which she returned to pick up. “Dead air” coming out to greet her shows that these memories are negative… These are especially, about the two world wars she witnessed and this house has suffered from the aerial bombardment that took over London during the war; situated on an abandoned street with its ruined neighbor houses. Mrs. Drovers’ soul is one of the victims who suffered, like this empty, broken, ruined houses. Inside this personification theme follows: The “bruise” on the wall is indeed the bruise in Mrs. Drovers’ psyche. The scratches on parquet which the legs of the piano left while they were moving symbolizes that the joy is taken from her harshly; since piano as an instrument is seen and used as an entertainment object in that era mostly. The windows of the house have blocked, so there is no way to have some fresh air; thus a fresh start is impossible, there is no way to let go of the past and bad memories... She sees that marble mantelpiece has turned to yellow; losing its beautiful whiteness and brightness; it is matte now… Once it used to be white and its function was warm up the house… Mantelpiece is not burning, only full of ashes… It is useless now. It is indeed like the piano taken away… It symbolizes joy, happiness but it also symbolizes peace, warmth and harmony that is lost; the tranquility which is erased from Mrs. Drovers psyche. Now “she is more perplexed than she knew” by everything she saw by these traces of her former life.[3] She goes to upstairs, leaving her parcels down in order to look for the things that are in the bedroom chest… Her proceeding to the upstairs shows that she is jumping one step further for exploring her suppressed memories and bedroom chest again links with the feeling of suppression since it is a way to hide and protect personal belongings mostly. The things inside it are her emotional luggage that is left in the house which represents her soul... These things are newly remembered, forgotten before since she comes to look for them though the house is abandoned. Her search for abandoned identity and memories buried down there are these “things” she needs.
“There were some cracks in the structure, left by the last bombing, on which she was anxious to keep an eye. Not that one could do anything-,”[3]. The cracks she is worried to see, are the cracks that the war created, are the ones, which disintegrated her soul. They are the results of her pain and she is utterly sure that nothing can be done about this situation. She gives away herself slowly to the hands of insanity while progressing one level up in her trauma… Thus, a “refracted light” suddenly shines on a letter that is addressed too her in the hall.[3] This is one of the “things” which she came back for… This refracted spotlight is her own torch she is projecting inside her… She takes the letter while trying to find a logical meaning for its presence in the hall and goes on her journey by following the stairs… She is indeed more like diving down to her unconsciousness; but this progress is symbolized by going up, which is rather showing Mrs. Drovers is bringing out her suppressed feelings, the trauma on the surface with the help of this letter. This letter is the final strike, left there to show the peak point of her delirium because of all this damage that the war has done on the fragile walls of her soul.
In the bedroom, she tries to let some light in while seeing that rain is coming... The tension in air reaches to a climax as the tension which is caused by the suppressed feelings of the main character reaches this very same point. Now that cracks are so deep that Mrs. Drovers loses all her control when she reads this letter, thinking that this a letter which written by her ex-lover who died in the previous war. But the letter is signed with the very same initial, with the letter “K” of her name which is “Kathleen”… Indeed this letter is written by Mrs. Drovers herself. It is her way of making something out of her guilt and her memories since she suppresses them all the time.
[edit] Symbolism
Mrs. Drovers who has confronted with her soul in the image of her house, links and somehow mistakes her old memories about the previous war with this present one. Inside her psyche she loses the notion of time and her mental stability since the “things” she discovered inside are too much for her. She is disintegrated and going insane. As the rain falls; we see this pattern of insanity, this way of letting go which is mentioned above…By surrendering to hysteria the release of the tension comes at the end.
“`The hollowness of the house this evening canceled years on years of voices, habits and steps,´ putting her back into the more dominant awareness of war, and so her demon soldier appears—on one level perhaps an hallucination but on another a symbol of war that will not go away”[4].
This symbolism in the quotation above is the theme that keeps the story going. After seeing herself mirrored in the image of her house, Mrs. Drovers freaks out so much about what she sees. Elizabeth Bowen says in her book Bowen’s Court (1964): "War is not an accident: it is an outcome. One cannot look back too far to ask, of what?"[5]. Here in the story, Mrs. Drovers looks back into her own past through the house image but still she can’t find a logical explanation she wants and since she is the prosaic type she gets trapped with insanity seeing the outcome which is so unlogically horrid. Douglas A. Hughes in his essay states on the psychology of Mrs. Drovers in the abandoned house supporting that this story is not only a homecoming for meeting some supernatural event, but also a melodrama of what war did one’s soul: “War, not a vengeful lover, is the demon that overwhelms this rueful woman,”[6]. And the final image of Mrs. Drovers trapped in the taxi speeding mercilessly into the "hinterland of deserted streets" perfectly portrays the feelings of millions of people who witnessed wasteland of rubble and death in Europe. War is the harsh demon lover which ruined the whole continent and all the souls that hide in houses have their own deep cracks all over.
The plot of the story mirrors the medieval British ballad, The Daemon Lover, in which a married woman is seduced by a lover from long ago, who is actually the devil in human form, who has returned to take her away. In the ballad, the devil lures her onto a ship, and then destroys it, drowning them both and sending her to hell.
[edit] Footnotes
- ^ Napierkowski, Marie Rose (editor) ""The Demon Lover": Historical Context." Short Stories for Students Detroit:Gale, 1998
- ^ a b Fraustino, Daniel V. "Elizabeth Bowen's "The Demon Lover": Psychosis or Seduction?" Studies in Short Fiction Vol. 17 Detroit: Gale, 1980
- ^ a b c d e Bowen, Elizabeth. "The Demon Lover" Oxford Book of Short Stories. Ed. V. S. Prichett. Oxford:OUP, 1981
- ^ Calder, Robert L. "A More Sinister Troth': Elizabeth Bowen's "The Demon Lover" as Allegory." Studies in Short Fiction Vol. 31 Detroit: Gale, 1994
- ^ Bowen, Elizabeth. Bowen’s Court. London:Collins, 1962
- ^ Hughes, Douglas A. "Cracks in the Psyche: Elizabeth Bowen's "The Demon Lover"." Studies in Short Fiction Vol. 10 Detroit: Gale, 1973
