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The Demon Lover Essay

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“The Demon Lover” is a short story about a woman, Kathleen Drover, returning to her abandoned home in London to collect old belongings. The moment Kathleen reached her destination at the house, she began to feel unsettled and anxious. Kathleen’s once familiar home now gave off an unfamiliar queerness (Bowen 1). Kathleen and her family evacuated their quaint house to move to the countryside for safety from the destruction of war. As Kathleen explores her house more, she encounters unexpected items and occurrences. Several book critics have varying opinions on what the moral of the story is. I believe that there can be a great number of interpretations of The Demon Lover; however, the theme of the story is the effects that war has on civilians. …show more content…

At the beginning of the story, the readers are told that Kathleen has returned to her old house in London to collect a few belongings. Almost immediately, the tone of the story is eerie and uneasy. She has trouble unlocking the house and is overwhelmed by a sense of oddness as she investigates the remains of her former home. She soon discovers a letter left on the escritoire that was dated for the same day she had arrived. Kathleen reads the mysterious letter and soon realizes it is a letter from her supposed dead fiancé, a soldier, from two decades ago (Bowen 3). The letter is vague and she had not remembered what promise the letter had referred to. I believe the author wants the readers to infer that the promise made was the promise for Kathleen to marry the soldier, but when the soldier was presumed dead, Kathleen had no obligations to wait anymore, and she could move on with her life. Mrs. Drover romanticized soldiers and I believe she was only infatuated with the idea of her old fiancé and she did not love him for who he was. When his presumed death was announced, she did not feel an enormous amount of grief, yet, Kathleen was almost relieved. I believe Kathleen realizes that she did not love her fiancé, and that she has barely even knew him before he left for the war (Bowen

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