Discussion Topic
The promise Mrs. Drover made to the soldier in "The Demon Lover."
Summary:
Mrs. Drover promised the soldier she would wait for him and stay faithful until he returned from the war. This promise becomes a source of haunting tension as the story unfolds, highlighting themes of memory, obligation, and supernatural elements in Elizabeth Bowen's "The Demon Lover."
What promise did Mrs. Drover make to the soldier 25 years ago in "The Demon Lover"?
We never actually find out exactly what promise Mrs. Drover made to her soldier twenty-five years before the action of “The Demon Lover” begins, but we can infer what it may have been.
Mrs. Drover is now married and has a family, but when she returns to their London house to check on it, she finds a strange letter reminding her of an appointment arranged long ago, a meeting for this very day. Mrs. Drover thinks back in time to the days of World War I when she was engaged to a soldier. Before the man left for war, he made her a promise that he will be with her if only she waits.
The mysterious letter also mentions a promise that Mrs. Drover made to the soldier. Mrs. Drover recalls that “unnatural promise” as well, a promise that even at the time she felt came “between her and the rest of all human kind.” She cannot remember why she made such a promise, but she knows the effects of it.
Again, we do not know the exact content of the promise, but we can infer it from the story's details and from the title. Mrs. Drover, when she was still the young, vulnerable Kathleen, seems to have promised her soldier-lover (was he really human?) that she would remain faithful to him, perhaps even that she would give herself totally to him, body and soul. She also seems to have promised to meet him at a particular time twenty-five years in the future, a meeting that must be kept no matter what the events in between.
Now that day has arrived, and the soldier, who apparently isn't really dead at all, seems to have come back for his Kathleen to hold her to her promise.
What might the promise Mrs. Drover made in "The Demon Lover" have been?
The promise that Mrs. Drover made to her fiancé is never made explicit. However, it is possible nonetheless to determine what it might have been. As the young man is about to leave Kathleen and head for the front, he implies that the two lovebirds have made a promise to each other:
"I shall be with you," he said, "sooner or later. You won’t forget that. You need do nothing but wait."
As Kathleen doesn't respond to this, one can only surmise that she's tacitly promised that she will wait for her lover to return, come what may. But it isn't very long before she regrets making such an "unnatural" promise, which though it has strengthened the bond between Kathleen and her lover has isolated her from the rest of humankind. As soon as her fiancé has departed, Kathleen feels hopelessly lost all of a sudden. She also feels the crushing burden of the promise that she's made.
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