What happens after Mrs. Drover leaves the house in "The Demon Lover"?

After Mrs. Drover leaves the house, a lone taxi pulls up to pick her up.

The text tells us that Mrs. Drover walks to the main road after she leaves the house. At the busy thoroughfare, a taxi pulls up. It is as if the driver instinctively knows that Mrs. Drover needs a ride.

Unfortunately for Mrs. Drover, the taxi driver begins to drive back to her house. She begins to panic when she realizes what is happening. As she had not given any previous instructions to the driver, she is horrified at this unforeseen development. Frantically, she scratches on the glass panel to get the driver's attention.

Almost immediately, the driver brakes, causing the car to come close to stopping. The sudden action plunges Mrs. Drover forward, so that her eyes meet the driver's. It takes only a moment before a horrible realization dawns on Mrs. Drover. At this point, the author does not confirm who Mrs. Drover has seen.

However, we suspect that she has just seen her lover from the past, and this is what shocks her. Of course, the touch of magical realism here makes the ending even more startling. The question begs to be asked: did Mrs. Drover recognize the "spectral glitters" in her former lover's eyes? The word "spectral" refers to an otherworldly presence. So, has the lover returned in spirit form to take Mrs. Drover back to himself?

The author suggests that this is exactly what happens in the last line of the story. The word "hinterland" evokes images of otherworldly regions, beyond the comprehension of our human consciousness.

After that she continued to scream freely and to beat with her gloved hands on the glass all round as the taxi, accelerating without mercy, made off with her into the hinterland of deserted streets.

What happens after Mrs. Drover leaves the house in "The Demon Lover"?

     There is not much that happens after Mrs. Dover leaves the house, but it is where everything in the story comes together.  She leaves the house when a draft of air suggests someone is leaving the basement or is in the house with her. She quickly descends the stairs and exits the house with some relief her disturbing journey is near completion. Mrs. Dover quickly finds a taxi in a deserted area and is thankful for her luck. However, upon entering the cab it begins to drive back toward the house although she has not given directions to the driver. She knocks on the glass to get his attention. Staring into the eyes of the driver she is paralyzed for a few moments. Then she begins to scream.

     The last few minutes of Mrs. Dover's journey make up very little of the overall storyline. However, it is these last few minutes that beautifully tie in the entire story to the culminating point. The reader is left to ponder her ultimate fate.

In "The Demon Lover," why does Mrs. Drover's house seem strange to her?

Mrs. Drover's house appears strange to her because the scene that greets her inside is incongruous with what she sees outside. Essentially, the German bombing campaigns have failed to destroy evidence of previous human activity in the house.

Yet, outside the house, there is destruction everywhere. Parapets and chimneys are broken, and architectural damage in buildings is evident. Meanwhile, an eerie stillness pervades the street where Mrs. Drover's house is located. The only evidence of life appears to be a stray cat, and Mrs. Drover does not see another human being on the streets.

Inside the house, evidence of previous human activity has been preserved. There is a yellow smoke stain above the white marble mantlepiece, a ring left by a vase atop a writing table, and a bruise in the wallpaper left by a china door handle.

Mrs. Drover sees traces of her old life everywhere, and she is besieged by her memories. However, no one can live in the house under the present circumstances. There is the feeling that life is fragile and can be rendered meaningless in the midst of war. So, Mrs. Drover's house appears strange to her because the ambiance inside the house is totally incongruent with what's outside. Essentially, destruction is juxtaposed against a previously normal existence: the two are mutually exclusive in nature.

In "The Demon Lover," why does Mrs. Drover's house seem strange to her?

In "The Demon Lover," Mrs. Drover's house appears strange to her because she is no longer in residence. This is because World War Two has broken out and it is far safer to be in "the country" than in the bomb-threatened city.

The house also seems strange to her because its appearance has changed significantly: the windows are "boarded up," for example, the piano is in storage and all of her furniture is covered in a "film," akin to a smattering of dust. 

By portraying Mrs. Drover's house in this way, Bowen is foreshadowing the appearance of the mysterious letter, purporting to come from her former (and deceased) fiancé. Just as she feels "perplexed" by her dank and dusty house, Mrs. Drover is at a loss to explain the origins of this strange letter. This sets the scene for the story's dramatic climax, in which she flees her house, only to meet with the demon lover himself. 

Why does Mrs. Drover return to the house in "The Demon Lover" by Elizabeth Bowen?

During the bombing of London in World War II, people were forced to abandon their homes, and Mrs. Drover is one of these people. But one day Mrs. Drover decides to return to her house in order to gather some of the family's belongings.

Mrs. Drover went round to her shut­up house to look for several things she wanted to take away. Some belonged to herself, some to her family, who were by now used to their country life.

When Mrs. Drover arrives, she looks around and finds some cracks in the walls from the bombing. As a shaft of daylight makes its way into the hallway, she finds on the hall table a letter addressed to her. She wonders why a letter has come to this address, as she has been having her mail forwarded to the country. When Mrs. Dover reads this letter, she is startled because it reminds her of a meeting she had planned with her lover of years ago. Disturbed at the thought of meeting her former lover, Mrs. Dover leaves the house to hail a taxi. As the taxi pulls away, the driver turns around.

Through the aperture driver and passenger, not six inches between them, remained for an eternity eye to eye. Mrs. Drover’s mouth hung open for some seconds before she  could issue her first scream.

Mrs. Drover continues to scream as the taxi accelerates and takes her into the "hinterland of streets that are deserted." But the reader is left wondering if there were not some force urging Mrs. Drover to return this particular day, the day she had arranged with her lover, who had gone off to war and disappeared years ago.

Why does Mrs. Drover return to the house in "The Demon Lover" by Elizabeth Bowen?

In the story, Mrs. Drover returns to the house to check on her home and to retrieve some of her family's personal belongings. Her family is currently staying in the country in order to avoid the daily bombings in London.

The story is set during World War Two, and the condition of Mrs. Drover's home is indicative of that of many London homes during the London Blitz of 1940. The London Blitz describes the German campaign to terrorize London and to force the British to surrender. Originally, Hitler had ordered bombings on military installations but soon changed to bombing cities in order to bring about Britain's capitulation to his will.

The state of disrepair and air of isolation within Mrs. Drover's home is representative of so many homes Londoners had to flee from during the London Blitz. Those who could not flee to the country had to content themselves with hiding in underground shelters. Periodically, homeowners like Mrs. Drover braved the bombings to check on their homes and to retrieve personal belongings or needed supplies. Also, the caretaker Mrs. Drover has employed does not often check on the home, so Mrs. Drover feels more assured if she checks on her home personally.

How is Mrs. Drover's house described at the start of "The Demon Lover"?

In "The Demon Lover," the author begins by describing Mrs. Drover's London house as "shut-up." In the second paragraph, she elaborates on this by showing that the family abandoned the house rather hastily when they moved to the country, leaving it looking neglected and bare, with various signs of its former inhabitants. There is a yellow smoke stain by the mantlepiece and a ring left by a vase on the escritoire. The wallpaper is stained, and there are marks on the floor where the piano used to be. These signs of dilapidation are all clearly visible because the house has largely been stripped bare.

The war has also left its mark on the house, since there are some cracks in the walls caused by the bombing. It is not clear how serious these are, but they cause Mrs. Drover some anxiety. These prosaic details at the beginning of the story help to built up a picture of desertion and even semi-dereliction. It is clear that Mrs. Drover is completely alone in a house that has been empty for some time. This contributes to the sinister atmosphere and also makes the careful placing of the letter on the hall table appear even more incongruous and inexplicable.

What's your interpretation of Mrs. Drover's psychological state in The Demon Lover?

Londoners faced terror and devastation from the Blitz.  For weeks straight and over a period of years, bombs were dropped by German planes over London.  Many people fled to the countryside.  The constant fear of hearing air raid sirens and low planes flying overhead caused psychological damage in some people.  People developed anxieties.

Mrs. Drover and her family left their London home because of the Blitz.  She returned one day to her abandoned house to fetch a few items.  Once there, she found a strange letter.  It was supposedly from her former lover, a man who was presumed dead long ago.  He had been an ominous fellow.  He had cut her hand many years before, and she still bore the scar.  Mrs. Drover

instinctively looked for the weal left by the button on the palm of her hand ("The Demon Lover").

In the letter, her former lover promised to meet Mrs. Drover on that day, and she dreaded such a meeting.  She quickly left her house.  She found a taxi cab and got into it.  It began to drive and then stopped.  She saw the driver:

Mrs. Drover's mouth hung open for some seconds before she could issue her first scream.  After that she continued to scream freely and to beat with her gloved hands on the glass all round as the taxi, accelerating without mercy, made off with her into the hinterland of deserted streets.

The writer does not clearly state whether Mrs. Drover was indeed held captive in the taxi cab by her former lover, or if it was all in her mind.  The traumatizing effects of the Blitz may have caused her to enter an altered psychological state.  This state may have led her to imagine the encounter with her former lover.

Why has the Drover family left their home in London in "The Demon Lover" by Elizabeth Bowen?  

The story begins when Mrs. Drover arrives at her house, which has been not been occupied for some time.  She has plans to "look for several things she [wants] to take away."  Mrs. Drover and her family had left their London home to live in relative safety in the country.  They had done this to escape the London Blitz.  

Blitz was short for Blitzkrieg, which meant "lightning war" in German.  Blitzkrieg was an attack strategy of bombing raids.  Nazi planes flew over London and other major British citizens.  These planes dropped bombs, causing enormous amounts of destruction.  Mrs. Drover notes this when she observes the "damage of war" in her neighborhood.  

During the Blitz, British citizens of cities had to evacuate to bomb shelters or London Underground stations in order to escape death or injury.  People who could not easily access such shelters were issued Morrison shelters, which were steel tables that they could hide underneath.  

There were periods of time when London was bombed every single night.  This caused fear and anxiety for citizens.  Many people found it difficult to endure the constant fear of bombings.  Some people sent their children to live with host families in the country.  Others moved themselves and their entire families to the country, which was the case with Mrs. Drover.  These people locked their houses up or appointed a caretaker, as the Drover family did.

Why has the Drover family left their home in London in "The Demon Lover" by Elizabeth Bowen?  

The family left London because of the bombings during World War II.

During World War II, there were many serious bombings in London, England.  The Nazis were close enough to reach the country by plain, and people lived in fear of the next raid.  The Dovers and others went to the country, where there are fewer people clustered together and they are less of a target.

The house is boarded up, but Kathleen Dover is coming to check on it.

She had been anxious to see how the house was …There were some cracks in the structure, left by the last bombing, on which she was anxious to keep an eye. Not that one could do anything...

Mrs. Dover has cracks in herself as well.  She is clearly suffering from post-traumatic stress as a result of her experiences in the war, and she is frightened and confused.

In "The Demon Lover," why has the Drover family left their house in London?

Mrs. Drover returned to a London that had been badly damaged by bombings.  As she walked toward her home, she noticed the "broken chimneys and parapets."  In 1940 and 1941, the Nazis bombed London and other British cities by airplane.  Many buildings were damaged.  Some people lost their homes to the German bombs.  Others found their homes damaged by the bombings.  Residents who were able to chose to leave London to escape the stress and danger of the bombings.  They went to the English countryside to live.  This was what the Drover family did, leaving their house to be watched over by a caretaker.  The Nazis strategically chose to bomb cities and large towns, which were densely populated.

Once Mrs. Drover reached her house, she found that her front door had warped and "there were some cracks in the structure, left by the last bombing."  After she left her house, she observed "the unoccupied houses... [which] continued to meet her look with their damaged stare."  As she walked through her neighborhood, she found there to be a "silence exaggerated this summer by the damage of war."  Many of the houses were empty because other neighbors had fled London.  

There was significant evidence in the story of how much London changed after the bombings.  These repeated descriptions of the damage and the mention of empty houses showed the impact of the bombings.  These drastic changes revealed some of the reasons why the Drover family chose to relocate to the country.

In "The Demon Lover," why has the Drover family left their house in London?

In "The Demon Lover," the Drover family has left London for the countryside because of the war. The city has been bombed many times, and the people who live there feel safer living in the country. Mrs. Drover has come to London to retrieve some things from their home to take with her back to the city. She talks about how the city is desolate and that there is nobody there to see her go into the house because everyone has left the city. 

She had been anxious to see how the house was- the part-time caretaker she shared with some neighbors was away this week on his holiday, known to be not yet back. At the best of times he did not look in often, and she was never sure that she trusted him. There were some cracks in the structure, left by the last bombing, on which she was anxious to keep an eye. Not that one could do anything-

The whole story is set so that Mrs. Drover is completely alone in London. When she gets the mysterious letter, we see the fear creep in, and that the isolation is in itself a danger to her. 

How does Mrs. Drover react to her past in Elizabeth Bowen's "The Demon Lover"?

In Elizabeth Bowen's short story, set during World War II, the protagonist, Mrs. Kathleen Drover, has returned from the countryside where she and her family had taken refuge to avoid the bombs falling on London. The familiar streets and house make her reflect back on her past life. When she goes into the house and starts assembling her belongs, she notices a letter on the table, oddly in a plain envelope with no stamp. The letter, signed with the initial "K.", stirs up memories of a previous war, World War I, when she was engaged to a soldier who went missing in action. The narrator treats the engagement as somehow uncanny, although without precise details. 

The letter reads:

Dear Kathleen: You will not have forgotten that today is our anniversary, and the day we said. ... In view of the fact that nothing has changed, I shall rely upon you to keep your promise. I was sorry to see you leave London, but was satisfied that you would be back in time.

Her reaction to the letter is intense. First, she acutely remembers every detail of their final meeting except her lover's face. No matter how she struggles to recall his face, it remains blank. She remembers her lover as "not kind" and unnerving in a way, and is frightened by the letter. When she is spirited away by the taxi at the end of the story, she is terrified and screaming.

In Elizabeth Bowen's short story "Demon Lover," why is Mrs. Drover somewhat reluctant to return to her house in London?

In the beginning of Elizabeth Bowen's short story "Demon Lover," the protagonist Kathleen Drover shows reluctance at returning to her house in London because the story is set during the middle of World War II in which Germany has just launched its Blitzkrieg campaign. The word blitzkrieg is German for "lightning war" and refers to Hitler's military tactic of using air raids to weaken the enemy ("Blitzkrieg").

The setting of the story influences Kathleen's hesitancy to return to London for a couple of different reasons. First, London, being the capital of England, was a dangerous location during World War II, and at any moment, Germany could launch another air raid. Second, Kathleen is very hesitant to be in a house that feels thick with death due to the toll the war has taken on the house, the neighborhood, the city, and even the whole country, as her observation in the last sentence of the opening paragraph indicates: "Dead air came out to meet her as she went in."

What's more, she is particularly hesitant to see the damage of the house caused by prior air raids. For example, she observes that not very much dust has entered the house because all windows are boarded up, yet "each object [in the drawing room] wore a film of another kind." In saying "by another kind," the writer is referring to the soot and debris left over from the bombings. The bombings have even left "some cracks in the structure" of the house.

How does the letter affect Mrs. Drover's feelings in The Demon Lover?

When Kathleen Drover first realizes that there is a letter for her on the hall table, she is merely annoyed. Her feelings of annoyance shift to reflect a sense of alarm and apprehension as she realizes who the letter must be from.

Kathleen and her family have left their home in London to spend some time in the countryside during the war, feeling that they will be safer there for a while. She has left a caretaker in charge of looking after her home in London during their absence. She knows that he is away on holiday, and he has no idea that she had planned to be in London on this day. Her mail is supposed to be redirected to their countryside home, so when she sees the letter, she believes that the caretaker has been "negligent" in his handling of her personal affairs.

Her reaction quickly shifts to shock and even horror as she finishes reading the letter. She drops it onto the bed and must pick it up to examine the details once more. The letter is simply signed "K.," seemingly penned by the fiancé of her youth, who has long been presumed dead. He has asked her to meet him "at the hour arranged," since it is their "anniversary." She also realizes that this man must have somehow entered her house and personally placed the letter on the hall table for her to discover.

Kathleen frantically tries to imagine at what hour this prearranged and long-forgotten meeting might occur. Her "rapidly heightening apprehension" mounts as she begins to recall the last time she saw this man before he returned to fight during World War I.

Why did everyone leave Mrs. Drover's house in The Demon Lover?

The story is set during World War II, in 1941. The Drover family has left their London home to live in the countryside because of the Nazi blitz or bombing raids that were to break the British spirit and help defeat the country. In fact, everyone on Mrs. Drover's street has left, except for a part-time caretaker. The empty, unhomelike quality of a deserted street and a boarded up, deserted house, adds to the ghostly aspect of this story.

Because it is wartime, and because Mrs. Drover has returned to an empty, eerie home, she is triggered to remember an earlier war, World War I, and a soldier she met then, especially because an unstamped letter from him mysteriously appears on the hall table.

War is an important backdrop to this story. We realize as the story unfolds that Mrs. Drover is in the process of living through two world wars. She was young in 1916, when her lover left to go to war, and she is in her forties now, but the trauma of war—and now its repetition—has marked her life, as it did so many people of her generation. It seems appropriate that a threatening lover who left in one war would reappear in ghostly form in the next war.

In "The Demon Lover," why has the Drover family left their home in London, and why does Mrs. Drover return home?

This is one of those questions that can be answered by a close reading of the text.  If you haven't read the story yet, I highly recommend it; it is super suspenseful and haunting.  Near the very beginning of the story, it states that the Drover family left London because of all of the bombings that had occurred in the city; it wasn't safe to stay there anymore.  During World War II, London was aerial bombed pretty badly.  A lot of families left to go to the countryside to live until things settled down.  However, Mrs. Drover needs to return to their home in the city; the text of the story says that she returns "to look for some things," but never gets more specific than that.  She goes alone, and enters the house, which has been locked and sitting there for quite some time.  Everything is dusty and the air is "dead," and she had a hard time even turning the key in the rusty lock.

It is at this point that the story really picks up, because sitting on a table in the hallway is a letter, addressed to her.  She wonders who could have gotten in to put it there, and then the story takes off from there, leading us into her past, and ending in an ominous future.

I hope that those thoughts help; it's a great story well worth the read.  Good luck!