![]() Drover, whom they call by her first name, at the “arranged hour” (662). The letter bears “today’s” date, and the sender implies they will meet Mrs. The letter writer notes it is “our anniversary, and the day we said” (662). ![]() Upstairs in her bedroom, she reads the letter as it storms outside. This is curious to her because it must have been hand-delivered all regular mail is being forwarded to the country, and the house’s caretaker is on holiday. Drover makes her way upstairs, she sees a letter on a small table. She decides to go upstairs to get the items she came to retrieve for her family. Drover surveys the stillness and the items that were part of her daily life before the war. The house is stuffy from disuse and feels unfamiliar. She arrives in late afternoon and notices the abandoned street. “The Demon Lover” begins as the main character, 44-year-old Kathleen Drover, returns to her shut-up home to retrieve some items before heading back to the country. There were numerous civilian casualties and many families moved to the countryside for safety. From 1940 to 1941, German forces bombed the city, the country’s major governmental center, in hopes that Great Britain would surrender. “The Demon Lover” takes place in 1941 in London, England, during World War II. This guide references the edition in The Collected Stories of Elizabeth Bowen, published by Vintage Books/Random House in 1982. ![]() It is also a noted example of literary psychological horror several critics have discussed the protagonist’s post-traumatic stress disorder as the cause of her distress. The story uses historical events and the myth of the “daemon lover,” which centers on a figure who abducts their former lover after a broken promise of faithfulness, leading the lover to her death. “The Demon Lover,” one of Bowen’s most famous works, was published in 1945 in the United Kingdom in a collection called The Demon Lover (titled Ivy Gripped the Steps in the United States). She is also famous for her ghost stories. Elizabeth Bowen (1899-1973) was a notable Irish English writer of novels and short stories dealing with Irish life as well as the lives of Londoners in the 1940s.
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