The Demon Lover

3 Pages 814 Words

During times of war, “people [are] often led down strange paths in search of indestructible landmarks in a destructible world” (Mitchell 44). Hallucinations provide such landmarks in extreme moments. Paranoia appears to those who encounter the intense emotions of war. The psychological shocks of war deprive and fray emotions. Pressures from a previous war threaten uncertainties and fears. In “The Demon Lover,” Elizabeth Bowen reflects how war can take revenge on a person’s emotions through her use of setting and characterization.
In “The Demon Lover”, Bowen’s use of setting exemplifies that war can take revenge on a person’s emotions. While walking up to Kathleen Drover’s old home, “an unfamiliar queerness” fills her from the inside out (346). The visit home in which she experiences war, unsettles her. Memories of war escalate inside her. For Mrs. Drover, already prone to a sense of loss, “the return to the house is a shattering revelation, a threshold experience that activates her dormant hysteria” which brews inside her after all these years (Hughes 52). As Kathleen nudges her front door open, “dead air” greets her with remembrance of her past feelings (346). A ghost-like presence overwhelms Mrs. Drover, which ignites wartime emotions. The aged residence suggests the consciousness of time and the company of death. “The hollowness of the house . . . cancelled” many memories that Kathleen bears in her mind from her youth (350). Voices, ways of life, warmth and love fill her home until war rips it apart. The uninviting existence of her surroundings produces her present condition of madness. Mrs. Drover comprehends that down in the basement “a door or window was being opened by someone” to cause the draught that hits her face while she stands at the top of the staircase (351). The intensity of what Kathleen feels and experiences is as real as the war she experienced. “Through th...