the world, back to Anna and Thomas’ house.

Movie houses seem to hold a special dread for Portia, almost as if they represent the crassness of the world in conflict with her innocence and inexperience. The first time she goes to a movie theater, she is with Anna and Thomas, and “the screen threw its tricky light on her relaxed profile; she sat almost appalled.” This moment, for Portia, with its uncomfortableness, foreshadows an even more horrid evening when she goes to the movies at Sealeon- Sea with Eddie and Daphne and her other friends. There, illuminated for her in the darkness of the theater by a friend’s cigarette lighter, is Eddie’s mockery of her love for him—he and Daphne are holding hands. Eddie later tries to pass it off as just a silly thing he did, but this is the first break in Portia’s fantasy about their love. Even as they occur in places that portray fantasy worlds, these experiences in movie houses underscore just how unprepared Portia is for the “real” world.

Thomas and Anna’s relationship is tense, and that tension is everywhere in their house on Windsor Terrace. The house is filled with a heavy silence, unlike the chatter and sounds of living Portia is accustomed to hearing through the walls of hotels. This is a home where she feels very much not at home, and Bowen’s descriptions of the place and how Portia behaves in it make that perfectly clear. In her diary, Portia writes, “When Thomas comes in he looks as though he was smelling something he thought he might not be let eat. This house makes a smell of feeling.” And when the housemaid Matchett, the only person in the house who seems to care for her at all, asks her to share some tea, Portia later remembers that Matchett said she looked like a ghost. Portia writes in her diary, “But really it is this house that is like that.”

Further displaying just how uncomfortable she feels at Windsor Terrace, and how much an outsider she thinks she is, Portia behaves in the manner of a skittish cat or of someone who is about to be found out. When Anna and St. Quentin come into the house for tea, Portia offers to take their coats and hats. A few minutes later, to compound this sense of submissiveness, Bowen has Portia slink out of the room:

Then, holding herself so erect that she quivered, taking long, soft steps on the balls of her feet, and at the same time with an orphaned unostentation, she started making towards the door. She moved crabwise, as though the others were royalty, never quite turning her back on them.

When she visits her brother in his library, she displays no sense of relief being with him, even though he is a blood relative. She offers to refill his cigarette case, as if she were his valet, and folds herself up in a chair, as if attempting to take up the smallest possible piece of real estate inside the house.

But when Portia goes to stay with Mrs. Heccomb and her adult children at Seale-on-Sea, just after leaving Anna and Thomas’s house in London, her entire demeanor changes, reflecting the relaxed, casual air that pervades the house named Waikiki. Over the weeks she spends in the Heccombs’ lightfilled home by the sea, she comes out of her shell and discovers new aspects of herself. The first evening Portia is at Waikiki, she is still performing her “crabwise” walk. “Portia, as unostentatiously as possible, edged round the room to stand beside Mrs. Heccomb.” And, while she does permit herself to do a little exploring around the house the next morning, she is still cautious. “Before stepping over the wall. . . Portia glanced back at the Waikiki windows. But no one watched her; no one seemed to object.”

However, by the time the first week is out, she has helped roll back the carpeting at Waikiki for a party and has danced, for the first time, with a boy. Portia realizes then that “something edited life in the Quayne’s house,” and that “the uneditedness of life here at Waikiki made for behaviour that was. . . frank.” The house is “the fount of spontaneous living.” She is beginning to question not only how the new people she is meeting live, but how all of the other people she knows live, including Thomas, Anna, and Eddie.

But all of this does not mean that Portia has shed her naiveté at Waikiki. Indeed, one of her Seale-on-Sea friends, Cecil, comments to her that he can tell she is “so young.” And when a family friend of the Heccombs’ comes by for a visit, he asks Portia, “How’s the child of the house?” Portia is stunned, as well, while in Seale-on-Sea, by Eddie’s behavior with Daphne at the movie house, and by Daphne’s irritation with her afterwards, when Portia tries to find out what is going on. Even though the atmosphere at Waikiki to Portia is “life at its highest voltage,” she still has yet to encounter the complete destruction of her innocence, which will come later, at the hands of Eddie and Anna and St. Quentin.

Source: Susan Sanderson, Critical Essay on The Death of the Heart, in Novels for Students, The Gale Group, 2002.

No Bowen novel has a more comically dramatic opening situation than The Death of the Heart. Into the adjusted, unemotional, childless, eight-year marriage of Anna and Thomas Quayne drops Portia, age fifteen, Thomas’s half-sister. The Quaynes open the door of their expensive, overly ordered Regent’s Park home with little enthusiasm to this newly orphaned child who was conceived in adultery. They are somewhat sustained by the possibility she may be shifted to other relatives after they have had her a year as the elder Mr. Quayne has beseeched them to do. The narrative culminates in a series of shocks: Portia is galvanized into action which, in turn, rebounds upon the Quaynes. By the end of the novel, considerable readjustment at 2 Windsor Terrace seems to be in the offing, and Portia’s visit is quite likely a permanent one.

Though much of this “double-stranded” book records Portia’s growth and her necessary loss of innocence, the more basic issue is the revitalization, perhaps simply the vitalization, of the moribund marriage. Much of this novel’s brilliance results from the skillful blending of these two concerns and their subsidiary matters. This is Miss Bowen’s most successful novel, artistically and commercially; and, along with The Heat of the Day, it constitutes the peak of her achievement.

The Quaynes have been living more of an arrangement than a marriage, for each came to it as an emotional cripple. Anna wed on the rebound from the one great love of her life, Robert Pidgeon. Though he dropped her, she has never come to terms with this romantic interlude; she harbors Pidgeon in the recesses of her mind in the same way that she has his letters secreted in a secret drawer of her desk. From her viewpoint, Thomas offered a quiet, undemanding, comfortable marriage, largely because of his passionless nature. Her hopes of establishing a normal role as a mother have long since vanished with her failure to terminate her pregnancies: her disappointment and her consequent adjustment to childlessness contribute to her stiffness toward Portia. She has settled down to find satisfaction in safe male admirers who can entertain and flatter her but who require no physical reward. Three such bachelors are on the scene during the course of the novel: St. Quentin Martin, an urbane novelist; Eddie, a bright young man employed at Thomas’s advertising agency; and latterly, Major Brutt, an older gentleman, a friend of Pidgeon, and recently returned to England and out of touch. As with several other characters in the novel, Anna’s appearance belies her inner being; for beneath her brittle sophistication lies an insecure woman who has never risked much for fear of being something less than the best. She is a dabbler.

Thomas originally wed Anna because she was pleasant, self-possessed, and seemingly unconcerned with emotion: in short, she was an ideal marital companion for a man who found the opposite sex a source of anxiety and who abhorred thoughts of intimacy. Marriage for both partners, then, came as a source of relief and as an opportunity to live a quiet life. However, following the ceremony, Thomas experienced the unanticipated; he fell passionately in love with Anna; but assuming her allegiance to their tacit agreement of quietude, he suffers his pent-up feelings privately. In Bowen terms, both are failing to exercise their full emotional potential and will not likely do so unless their current roles are altered. Clearly, this function is to be played by Portia.

The story opens upon Anna and St. Quentin strolling in a winter landscape. She tells him she has been reading Portia’s diary which she came across accidentally, for Portia’s record of her days at 2 Windsor Terrace has quite unsettled Anna. It is, she says, “completely distorted and distorting. As I read I thought either this girl or I are mad.” Portia has seemingly missed nothing, though “There’s certainly not a thing she does not misconstruct.” Standing on a bridge in Regent’s Park, “their figures sexless and stiff,” Anna and her companion watch swans “in slow indignation” swim down cracks in the frozen surface of the lake.” Fittingly, Portia becomes associated with bird imagery; and her initial condition is not unlike that of the swans. Because Portia does not learn of Anna’s acquaintance with her diary until Part III of the novel, repercussions do not come until then. Most of Part I is devoted to characterizing life at Windsor Terrace and to explaining Portia’s background.

When Portia’s father, the senior Thomas Quayne, was fifty-seven, he had “lost his head completely” and had begun an affair with a woman named Irene, twenty-nine. As Anna explains his situation to St. Quentin: “He and [Mrs. Quayne] had married so young—though Thomas, for some reason, was not born for quite a number of years—that he had almost no time to be silly in. Also, I think, she must have hypnotised him into being a good deal steadier than he felt. At the same time she was a woman who thought all men are great boys at heart, and she took every care to keep him one.”

Mr. Quayne is another instance of retarded adult innocence and of the need, at whatever the risk, for youthful excess. When Irene becomes pregnant, Mr. Quayne tells his wife; and “Mrs. Quayne [is] quite as splendid as ever. . .” She becomes “all heroic reserve,” calms her husband, packs him off to Irene, starts divorce proceedings, and settles down to enjoy her house and garden in contented peace. Like hopeless babies, Mr. Quayne and his bride retire to the south of France and begin a wandering existence in cheap hotels. He suffers because the growing Portia has no proper life; and during a trip to London, he secretly inspects Windsor Terrace and envisions his daughter sharing the normal family life it suggests to him. After he dies, Portia and her mother continue the transient existence; but, when Irene suddenly dies after an operation, Portia becomes her father’s legacy to Regent’s Park.

An inside view of the Quayne affair is provided by an older servant, Matchett, who had worked for Thomas’s mother before coming to Anna along with her mother-in-law’s good furniture when she had died. Matchett, stolid and humorless, but Portia’s only source of affection, makes a distinction between the right action and the good one. In her view, Mrs. Thomas Quayne “meant to do right.” She explains to Portia, “Sacrificers . . . are not the ones to pity. The ones to pity are those that they sacrifice.” She has been a great admirer of Portia’s father who, in her estimation, was unlike his wife in being honest and natural. She views Mrs. Quayne as a role player who was prepared to maintain her concept of herself at whatever cost to anyone else. In the light of Matchett’s views, we see that Thomas and Anna are also doing the “right” rather than the good thing by Portia.

This background detail helps to account for Anna’s report that she and Portia “are on such curious terms—when I ever do take a line, she never knows what it is.” Quite evidently, feelings must come to replace manners. That Portia, however, has two left feet because of her inexperience is humorously brought out in scenes at her private school for girls where she is decidedly unsuccessful in coping with the established decorum: “she had not learnt that one must learn. . .” Small wonder she feels all of London threatening her:

She had watched life, since she came to London, with a sort of despair—motivated and busy always, always progressing: even people pausing on bridges seemed to pause with a purpose; no bird seemed to pursue a quite aimless flight. The spring of the works seemed unfounded only by her. . . . She could not believe there was not a plan of the whole set-up in every head but her own . . . nothing was not weighed down by significance. In her home life (her new home life) with its puzzles, she saw dissimulation always on guard; she asked herself humbly for what reason people said what they did not mean, and did not say what they meant. She felt most certain to find the clue when she felt the frenzy behind the clever remark.

Having a modest relationship with Anna and Thomas, and a closer but milder one with Matchett, Portia grabs rather eagerly at the interest shown in her by the irresponsible Eddie. From the viewpoint of the contemporary British novel, Eddie is an interesting creation because he so evidently anticipates Kingsley Amis’s Lucky Jim; for, like him, Eddie comes from a modest background and is seeking to locate himself in the Establishment, in which he does not believe. A very conscious role player, Eddie prefigures Lucky Jim in his habits of face making and mimicry.

The relationship between Portia and Eddie is undemandingly comfortable from his viewpoint. He takes joy in her childlike innocence, and he feels she is the one person with whom he need not assume an interminable pose. Eddie, as it develops, misjudges in assuming that Portia will place no demands upon him. Really a very self-centered being, he is concerned with his welfare and per- sonal freedom; but his surface superciliousness really cloaks despair. An “experienced innocent,” Eddie bears a resemblance to Emmeline of To the North in his unwillingness to adjust to the nonedenic facts of life, or at least in his unwillingness to adjust without exacting his own price from the world. He seeks to punish and to travesty love because it cannot be what he longs for it to be; he sees only himself as reality since he is the only person he is prepared to trust. Portia, from his viewpoint, is really a new lease on the impossible life; with her, he seeks to sustain the innocence of adolescent love, the state which holds out to him the possibility of beautiful fulfillment so long as it is never tested. Portia, of course, has no such insight as his; but she discovers soon enough Eddie’s unwillingness to allow their affair to progress, and she is left pondering his distress over her unwillingness to sustain their status quo and her desire to grow up.

Part II, “The Flesh,” shifts to a contrasting setting, one which offers Portia an alternate kind of life with its own range of new characters and experiences. Anna, feeling the need of a vacation, whisks Thomas to Capri; Portia is sent to the seaside at Seale to live with Anna’s one-time governess, the widowed Mrs. Heccomb and her two working step-children, Dickie and Daphne. Home is called Wakiki (which is intended to give this sequence overtones of undemanding, irresponsible Pacific Island life), and the household is the antithesis of the highly mannered Windsor Terrace. Wakiki is sustained by blasting radios and by conversation conducted by shouting above them; all is “pushing and frank,” though neurotically proper. Portia discovers “the upright rudeness of the primitive state—than which nothing is more rigid.” Life at Windsor Terrace is “edited,” but that at Wakiki is the reverse. The contrast recalls that between the stately home in The Last September and the huts of the army families.

More at home at Wakiki but still reticent, Portia falls in with the crowd presided over by Daphne and Dickie. Portia soon becomes anxious to invite Eddie for a weekend; and Mrs. Heccomb, assured that Eddie is well known to Anna, assumes his visit will be quite proper. Portia awaits his coming anxiously, for she has decided on the reality of Seale and wishes him to confirm it for her. Eddie has hardly arrived, however, before he declares it “unreal”; for in his self-conscious state he is well aware Wakiki is the unexamined life. The only member of the Seale crown who is at all introspective is barely tolerated—is considered ineffectual and labeled “a cissie.”

Unknowingly betrayed in London by Anna, Portia is to know betrayal in Seale through Eddie. Sitting between Portia and Daphne at a Saturday night movie, Eddie ends up, as Portia discovers, holding Daphne’s hand. Since Eddie has been introduced into the crowd as Portia’s friend, she finds this experience painful. When she is alone with Eddie the next day, she challenges his conduct. The episode, he explains, is innocent enough in his view and was intended to lead to nothing further; but this view is not easily conveyed to Portia. In fairness to Eddie, it must be said that he has warned Portia not to get serious with him and to make demands: “Never be potty about me: I can’t do anything for you.” Furthermore, Eddie anticipates what St. Quentin later elaborates for Portia when he says, “Don’t you know how dreadful the things you say are?”

In her diary Portia views Seale to London’s disadvantage: “In London I do not know what anybody is doing, there are no things I can watch people do. Though things have hurt me since I was left behind here, I would rather stay with the things here than go back to where I do not know what will happen.” Even Portia feels the great temptation of comfort, of seeking out an effortless stasis. However, she must return to London to be greeted by Matchett, who observes, “I can’t see that this change has done you harm. Nor the shake-up either; you were getting too quiet.”

When Thomas and Anna return, it is evident they have not changed. Having been greeted warmly by Portia in the front hall, Anna cannot wait to go up to her bath; and Thomas, claiming a headache, quickly vanishes into his study. Later, Thomas observes to Anna, “Portia gave us a welcome”; and she replies, “It was we who were not adequate.” But Anna remains prepared with her justifications: “let’s face it—whoever is adequate? We all create situations each other can’t live up to, then break our hearts at them because they don’t.” This statement proves a telling one in the light of ensuing action. Though aware of their inadequacy in dealing with Portia, the Quaynes seem prepared to let matters drift. In the Bowen world, they are riding for an upset.

Critics generally agree that the “devil” of the final section is St. Quentin since he imparts to Portia the “forbidden” knowledge that Anna has been reading her diary. However, the devil may more properly be viewed as a situation rather than a person; for a comment Major Brutt makes to Anna provides the clue: “that’s the devil, you know, about not having a fixed address.” This statement assesses the root of the trouble, for what Portia ultimately feels is a lack of any sense of permanency. Her efforts at the close are directed toward finding a sanctuary; and, in a rather roundabout manner, she probably succeeds.

After learning from St. Quentin of Anna’s having read the diary, Portia telephones Eddie to tell him, and he in turn calls Anna; and, though his position with both Thomas and Anna is insecure, he conveys his displeasure. When five days later, Portia arrives home to find Anna and Eddie tête-à-tête over tea, she is convinced they have been talking and laughing together about her. Two days later, when Portia walks out on Windsor Terrace, the time lapse, observes the narrator, is “long enough for the sense of two allied betrayals to push up a full growth, like a double tree. . .” Portia leaves her home after having arranged to meet Eddie; and, unbeknownst to him, she is intent on living with him. After Eddie has been more or less forced into taking her to his apartment and after he has reiterated his earlier claim that she does not know the ropes and has “a completely lunatic set of values” and that he simply cannot risk harboring her, she departs prepared to play her final card. She goes to Major Brutt, tells him she has “nowhere to be,” and informs the poor dazed man that she wishes to marry him. She rather cruelly seeks to enlist him as an ally by telling him that Anna also laughs at him. When he insists that he must call Windsor Terrace, Portia tells him that Thomas and Anna will not know what to do; and she instructs him to say that her return will depend on their doing “the right thing.”

Meanwhile, Portia’s absence has been noted by the Quaynes and St. Quentin, their dinner guest. The air is already tense, and Anna and Thomas have already begun unburdening themselves to each other when the Major’s call comes. Thomas now learns about the diary, and the scene which this disclosure threatens is just barely avoided as they turn their attention to the question of “the right thing.” They quickly enough reject any thoughts of having Portia come across town alone in a taxi or of her being escorted home by Major Brutt. The importance of the issue they do not doubt; Anna points out: “It’s not simply a question of getting her home this evening; it’s a question of all three going on living here. . . yes, this is a situation. She’s created it.”

When St. Quentin initiates an important train of thought by suggesting that Anna and Thomas “are both unnaturally conscious of [Portia]. . .”, Anna seeks to put herself in Portia’s place and to express what her feelings must be: “Frantic, frantic desire to be handled with feeling, and, at the same time, to be let alone. Wish to be asked how I felt, great wish to be taken for granted—.” The right act, really the good act, the natural thing, they decide is “something quite obvious. Something with no fuss.” When Portia is normally brought home, Matchett brings her; so they dispatch Matchett and also decide against calling Major Brutt. Thomas says, “This is a coup or nothing.”

Miss Bowen implies in her closing passage that life at Windsor Terrace will be better, but she once more avoids suggesting any miraculous change. Anna has already shown a humanitarian side, one that Portia is unaware of, in her efforts to find employment for Major Brutt, whose worth she recognizes. And she has also and most importantly come to terms with her harbored past feelings for Pidgeon. She admits to herself, as she never previously has, and tells Major Brutt as much, that Pidgeon did not really care for her, that their affair came to nothing because neither trusted the other. And she and Thomas have talked, as Thomas earlier complained they never did. Having “saved” Portia by pulling her back from a speeding car on one of their recent strolls in the park, he now appears committed to saving her in another sense. Emphasized at the very close, and clearly intended to contrast with the frigid landscape of the opening, is a description of the spring evening with its “intimation of summer coming. . .” And the piano music issuing from an open window as the curtain falls hints at the new harmony seemingly to be realized at Windsor Terrace.

Source: Allan E. Austin, “The Disruptive Children,” in Elizabeth Bowen, Twayne Publishers, Inc., 1971, pp. 47–66.