A Literary Analysis Of Kathleen Bowen's The Demon Lover

The events in Elisabeth Bower's 'The Demon Lover'; can be explained naturally. The story being as vague as it is leads most to concur with the title of the story and imagine that there is a supernatural aspect in the story. In the short story, Kathleen has returned to her home in London that has been abandoned during the bombing of World War II. She is not expected, yet she finds a letter addressed to her on a table in the hallway. Twenty-five years has past since the leaving of her former lover during World War I. Kathleen's lover is had been presumed dead after months of being missing in action and she has moved on. She is now married to a William Dover and living the countryside with her immediate

In the “Demon Lover”, Elizabeth Bowen uses foreshadowing, flashback, and point of view to convey a story of a young woman haunted by her pass. In the short story The Demon Lover, Mrs. Drover returns to her home to collect some personal belongings during the aftermath of a recent bombing, while gathering things she finds a letter and thinks of her long-dead fiancé. This causes for questions to rise. Imagery, flashback, and point of view are all used to convey the story of The Demon Lover by Elizabeth Bowen.

In "The Demon Lover," by Elizabeth Bowen, Kathleen Drover returns to London from her house in the country in order to gather some things that she and her husband had abandoned during the bombings of the war. It is a humid, rainy day in late August and her once familiar street is now mostly deserted. The caretaker of her house is supposed to be out of town for a week and her arrival is assumed unknown. Mrs. Drover enters the old musty house and discovers a letter addressed to herself and it is marked with the present date. Curious to know if the caretaker is back in town and a little annoyed by the letter seeming to have no urgency in being mailed to her, she proceeds upstairs to her old bedroom to read it. In utter shock and complete

A contemporary reading of The Drover's Wife suggests that the author, Henry Lawson, is engaging in a little misdirection. That is to say that the title of the story deemphasizes the principal character's autonomy by referring to her as the wife of a hapless drover instead of the fearless, rugged, self-reliant woman she proves to be. The idea that she belongs to the drover, that she is his property (as opposed to him being her husband/property) is a hard pill to swallow after the reader learns of her exploits in the unforgiving bush.

The battle with love is a major struggle to even the most pure souls. The obsessive nature controlling ones mind can cause people to act in demonic ways. In Demon Lover written by Elizabeth Bowen, the author portrays the short story in a setting surrounded by distress and chaos. The gloomy background followed the protagonist Kathleen Drover throughout the entire story, portraying her twisted fate. Like this story, the Scottish ballad of Demon Lover, whose author is unknown, had the protagonist in a similar predicament. The stories relate in the same plot and some of the main similarities include that both women were being stalked and hunted down, both women had families away kept away from their ex lovers, and both women end up with their lovers

Carol Karlsen 's "The Devil in the Shape of a Woman” was written to provide the reader with an understanding of the role of the “witch” in colonial New England. During the early colonial period, pilgrims lived in a male-dominated society and the classical witch hunts were conducted in an attempt to maintain this societal structure. Since these hunts were placed under a religious guise, it was simple for these individuals to act as if they were maintaining the safety and justice of society. Karlsen explains that in many instances, women who were labelled as witches were often females that had managed to acquire great economic and social status and society. In fear of these women, the neighborhood targeted them and called them witches to weaken their power. Independent of guilt, women who were accused of witchcraft could not possibly recovered. If they claimed their innocence, they would be stoned or burned to death because the counsel would decide that they were not being truthful. If they admitted to their guilt, their place in society would be marred and they would be embarrassed for partaking in these evil acts. Through this violence, men have been able to maintain their place in Puritan society. In her book, Karlsen aims to provide the reader new insight into the witch trials, demonstrating the societal, rather than religious causes for this well-known historic tragedy.

Beneath the gore and smoke and loam, this book is about the evanescence of life, and why some men choose to fill their brief allotment of time engaging the impossible, others in the manufacture of sorrow. In the end it is a story of the ineluctable conflict between good and evil, daylight and darkness, the White City and the Black. (Larson

“The Devil and Tom Walker” by Washington Irving, “The Black Cat” by Edgar Allan Poe, and “Prey” by Richard Matheson all utilize grotesque or bizarre occurrences and a mysterious nature as their two themes. These authors used these themes for individual purposes that were not the same but all to give a lesson. Washington Irving wrote about how money can’t buy you happiness, Edgar Allan Poe wrote about how you cannot hold on to the past, and Richard Matheson wrote about how you cannot take control of your loved one’s life.

“The Demon Lover” by Elizabeth Bowen is a short story that takes place during World War II in London, England. The main character, Mrs. Drover travels by herself to the bombed city to return to her boarded-up house. While gathering belongings, Mrs. Drover notices particular and out of place that begins to haunt her. The reader witnesses her mental state deteriorate as she begins dreaming of safety. The use of vivid imagery and flashbacks in “The Demon Lover” by Elizabeth Bowen develops the mysterious and paranoid mood throughout the piece of literature.

Charlotte Gilman, through the first person narrator, speaks to the reader of the stages of psychic disintegration by sharing the narrator's heightened perceptions: "That spoils my ghostliness, I am afraid, but I don't care--there is something strange about the house--I can feel it" (304). The conflicting

Though set in entirely dissimilar countries at different points in history, Margaret Atwood’s ‘Alias Grace’ and Hannah Kent’s ‘Burial Rites’ possess significant comparisons. Both for instance, are fictionalized historical novels following the tribulations of a female protagonist convicted of murder and both have been widely acclaimed for their incredible literary style which merges classic poetry, epigraphs, folklore and historical articles with fiction. The most striking parallel between each novel that can be drawn, however, is the way in which authors masterfully craft the stories of untrustworthy, cunning and deceptive criminals to elicit sympathy from their audiences. Readers of the novel and secondary characters alike are gradually pulled into sympathising with ambiguous and untrustworthy female leads, Grace Marks (Alias Grace) and Agnes Magnusdottir (Burial Rites). Despite the heavy suspicions of others and a lack of evidence to support their claims of innocence, these characters present artfully manipulated features of their defence stories to provoke empathy, sympathy and trust from those within the novel, and those reading it.

“The Devil’s Wife” by Carol Ann Duffy is a tragic and powerful poem. Written in the form of a dramatic monologue, Duffy adopts the persona of Myra Hindley, the notorious Moors Murderer. The poem consists of five individually titled sections, each describing an individual part of Hindley’s experiences from meeting Brady to feeling sorry for herself while sitting in her prison cell. At the end of her life. Themes relating to avoiding responsibility, self-pity and her fear of society’s reaction to her crimes are explored as Duffy creates an effective persona.

The Turn of the screw by Henry James is regarded as one of the most fascinating psychological thrillers of all time. Published in the late nineteenth century, this novella sets up a narrative story of a young lady who appears to have seen the ghost of the former dead employers of the place where she was working. In this novella Henry James combined drama, suspense, and mystery to make it one of the most preferred stories among the readers of all generations. The Turn of the Screw raises many questions, however: Is the governess going crazy? Is she really seeing the phantoms of those dead former state workers? Is she innocent? Is she the villain or the heroine of

Mrs Hayward is a contradictory character who is established through Stephen’s fragmented memory to be both a character of smiling perfection and a broken woman, sitting in the dust weeping. She is both the embodiment of a perfect British wartime wife and a character of suspicion; a spy, a traitor, the epitome of deceit and the focus of two young boys’ overzealous imagination.

The atmosphere of this exposition is clearly foreboding: "the dark clouds, broken chimneys, unused street, solitary cat, and dead air" all prove ominous and reflect the sordid ruling mood. Failed culture and solitary of aimless women ("a cat moved itself in and out of railing") not knowing exactly what to do about their predicaments in which