A promise should alway be carried out to whomever, when it fails revenge will take place. A promise should alway be carried out to whomever, when it fails revenge will take place. In the short story The Demon Lover, Bowen uses the primary character Mrs. Drover, to depict how far one person will go for revenge and the internal conflict of a memory. Mrs. Drover is murdered by an ex-lover who wants his bitter revenge after a failed promise.
Elizabeth Bowen was born in 1899 and died in 1973, she was an upper middle class writer, from Dublin, Ireland. The turn of her life was the death of her mother, she incorporated the abandonment in her fiction (Bowen 1228). When her mother passed she was sent off to boarding school, …show more content…
He plans to kill Mrs. Dover on the twenty fifth anniversary of their parting (“A More Sinister Troth” questia.com). The ex lover is aware of her exact arrival to the London home she once shared with her family, only to plan the kidnapping and the revengeful murder. The ex lover reminds her of the day she parted due to his leaving and he seeks the equality of her promise.
Mrs. Drover began to review the behavior of the soldier and wonders why she put herself through the pain. He was never kind to me and what could he have provoked me with to make the dreadful promise (Bowen, 1235). The soldier knew she loved him and always would. The soldier knew how vulnerable she would be to him and used it against her.
Mrs. Drover has full realization that the ex lover is around and is coming for her. She began to prepare only to end in supply of no information. While she plans her escape to find a taxi she realizes,”Under no conditions could she remember his face” (Bowen, 1235). Mrs. Drover can not protect herself from a face that is unknown. The ex lover knows her so well to know she would not be able to sustain herself from him and know his revenge is …show more content…
The short story The Demon Lover by Elizabeth Bowen portrays the vision of revenge and the battle with memory. The betrayal between two lovers and a broken promise result in the murder of Mrs. Drover. The murder demonstrated just how far human nature will go to obtain revenge.
Works Cited Page
Bowen, Elizabeth. “The Demon Lover.” 1945. Print.
Calder, Robert L. “A More Sinister Troth’: Elizabeth Bowen’s ‘The Demon Lover”questia.com.1994.www.questia.com/library/Journal/1G1-15356414/a-more-sinsiter-troth-elizabeth-bowen-s-the-demon.
Coy-Dibley Isabelle. “Reconceptualising Elizabeth Bowen’s WWII Stories and the Queer perspective.Academia.edu-shareresearch.18Jan.2013,www.acadmia.edu/9378811/Reconceptualising_Elizabeth_bowen_S_WWII_Stories_and_the_queer_perspective.
“Obo.” Elizabeth Bowen- British and irish Literature- Oxford Bibliographies, 4 jan 2018. www.oxfordbibliographies.com/view/document/obo-9780199846719/obo-9780199846719-0032.
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Thompson, Terry W,”A Face You Do Not Expect’: The Female Other in Elizabeth Bowen’s Journal of the short story in English. Les Cahiers De La Nouvelle, Presses Universities
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