Bowen's The Demon Lover

What Drove Her? In “The Demon Lover,” Kathleen Drover is the protagonist and represents a British wife and mother who returned from the country to her war-ravaged home in London hoping to retrieve some of her family’s personal belongings. Mrs. Drover’s story unfolds as a haunting of supernatural means driven by the ghost of her sweetheart, an un-named soldier presumed to have been killed during World War I twenty-five years earlier. The dark imagery of the story is controlled craftily by Bowen and fosters a heavy sense of circumstance, anxiety, and even ambiguity, which transports the reader through nightmarish stages of suspense and ultimately horror. The tone of “The Demon Lover” is initially set by Bowen as Drover returns to her abandoned,

This sense of strangeness looms as the humid air outside allows the rain to pour down outside around the structure. The short message on the letter, signed K., reminds her of an un-fulfilled promise that she made twenty-five years ago when she was engaged to a soldier who later died in World War I. K. presses Kathleen by assuring her he knows she will keep the date of their planned meeting which is that day’s date. Imagery of fear, guilt, and the emptiness of a vow not fulfilled haunt Drover as, “She dropped the letter onto the bedsprings, then picked it up to see the writing again- her lips, beneath the remains of lipstick, beginning to go white,” (2). This leaves Mrs. Drover with a feeling of discomfort as she feels she is being watched by an unknown stalker. Images of white, as the color leaves her face, link her past fears to the white pearls her husband gave her on their wedding day to the images of the white ghost haunting her still, and Kathleen realizes the time has come that K. alluded to. K. asserted that he would be with her, “sooner or later. You won’t forget that,”

Empty faces, devoid of character, and empty house in disarray, and a pre-marriage marked by years of accumulated emptiness cumulate to establish Drover’s final “drive.” Bowen strategically creates Mrs. Drover’s name to sound like “drove her” which provides for powerful imagery as the reader continues to repeat Drover’s name throughout the story all the while contemplating what truly “drove her” to the emotional state and position in life she assumes. As Kathleen decides to get a taxi to make her escape, she lets herself out to meet the “damaged stares,” (4) of unoccupied houses watching her journey to the taxi, and “the silence was so intense-one of those creeks of London silence exaggerated this summer by the damage of war-that no tread could have gained or hers unheard,” (4,5). Fear is the force that drives the story, and as Kathleen enters the taxi, she realizes that the taxi turns toward her abandoned home without her directions, driving her fear once again. Bowen uses the presence of panic as Mrs. Drover scratches the glass panel between her and the driver, her long lost lover, perhaps? Startled by the drivers abrupt stop, Kathleen is flung forward close to the driver’s face, and Bowen