Symbolism And Gothicism In Elizabeth Bowen's The Demon Lover

Psychology is the scientific study of the human mind and its functions, especially those affecting behavior in a given context. After the war, Kathleen Drover returns to her home in London to collect her families items that they left behind. As she is in her old, broken down home, she notices a letter on the table but convinces herself that her soldier lover has come back for her because he told her to wait for his return from the war. “On the supernatural side of the letter’s entrance she was not permitting her mind to dwell” (Bowen 1). In “The Demon Lover”, Elizabeth Bowen develops the themes of identity, revenge, and doubt through symbolism and gothicism.
Elizabeth Bowen uses symbolism to demonstrate Mrs. Drover's unstable mind. “Dead air …show more content…
“Kathleen behaved well when, some months later, her fiance was reported missing and presumed killed. Her family not only supported but were able to praise her courage without sin because they could not regret, as a husband for her, the man they knew almost nothing about. They hoped she would, in a year or two, console herself--and has it been only one question of consolation things might have gone much straighter ahead. But her trouble, besides a little grief, was a complete dislocation from everything,” (Bowen, 3). The isolation she feels when he is gone makes her feel lonely for a few years after his passing. She felt obligated to wait for him, and to not break the promise they had made. Her family encouraged her to move on from this man that they did not know because they noticed how alone she had been. He caused her mental state to feel extremely isolated and alone once he died. “Inside the house she is once again in her old married setting feeling isolated, lonely, and apprehensive. Her vulnerability is made clear in the passage in which the narrator quotes ‘the desuetude of her former bedroom, her married London home’s whole air of being a cracked cup from which memory, with its reassuring power had either evaporated or leaked away, made a crisis,’” (Gardiner-Scott). She is caught in the moment feeling alone, in a way she has not felt in many years. The letter she had received was only …show more content…
Drover imagines that someone has entered her home, it is actually a symbol of how repressed she is. “She heard nothing—but while she was hearing nothing the passé air of the staircase was disturbed by a draft that traveled up to her face. It emanated from the basement: Down where a door or window was being opened by someone who chose this moment to leave the house” (Bowen 4). The person in the basement who leaves the house at the same moment Mrs. Drover lets herself out the front door is a projection of herself and how she has held back how she felt and who she was when she was engaged to the soldier. She imagines that someone is there with her in the house, but in reality it’s an example of gothicism. She imagines someone is there the whole time watching her, but it is just an symbol of herself and her mind going back to the times where she was controlled by her Soldier Lover. “The fact that the letter was signed K suggests that she wrote the letter herself which is a sign of the remembrance of her lost self” (Lee and O’brien 2). The house represents her life as Mrs. Drover but also her repressed identity. She imagines he has come back and the letter is a symbol of how her mental state has affected her. The thought that he has come back confuses her and causes her to be more