Mrs. Drover and the Demon Lover
The enticing story of “The Demon Lover” draws upon the delusion apparent during the world wars. With the high trauma and uncertainty that filled life in war zones, many people began to experience mental breakdowns as shown with Kathleen Drover. In Bowen’s story, the “demon lover” referred to in the title illustrates how Mrs. Drover has become vulnerable due to the war.
The story opens with an ominous scene as Mrs. Drover enters her house looking for various objects that she had left at her house before moving to the countryside. Suspiciously, she finds a letter on the table who she initially assumes to be the caretaker. Opening the letter, Mrs. Drover finds that her long lost fiance will meet with her at the…show more content… In all the descriptions given in the book about the man she once “loved,” the portrayals are in a melancholy setting in which it does not seem like the mutual affection of love is shared between the couple. To distinctly show this quirky relationship, Bowen sets a major scene in this story in a garden behind her house. The significance behind the garden is that it usually exhibits love and fertility. However, the sense of love does not appear, but rather an intense and dark scene before the departure of her fiance. The overall setting is a dark day, another archetype commonly used to portray despair, and alongside the setting, Kathleen also gets cut by her fiance’s breast button as he holds her hand “without very much kindness.” The pain and desolation shown in this flashback go against the archetype of the garden setting and alerts the reader of the disparity in Kathleen’s love for this man. In addition to the eccentricity of their relationship, “under no conditions could Kathleen remember his face.” If Kathleen did lover this man to a point in which wanted to marry him, one would expect that she would at least remember what he looked like. Furthermore, her only picture of his face was burned by a drop of acid. This not only shows her lack of love for the “demon,” but also that her mental state was already descending before her fiance’s
