Mrs. Drover looks into the mirror after reading the letter from her former lover. She sees nothing more than her own reflection, but the passage is significant for two reasons. Firstly, it gives the reader a description of Mrs. Drover's appearance: she is a thin, middle-aged woman dressed in a hat, pearls, and a pink jumper. The description of her hat as "carelessly pulled down" and her pearls as hanging "loosely" from her throat suggests she rushed dressing. She has not reapplied her makeup either, giving the impression that she is more concerned with other matters than appearance or glamor, at least given the war.
Secondly and more subtly, the description of Mrs. Drover looking at herself in the mirror creates a sense of time gone by. She is no longer the romantic young girl she was more than twenty years ago when she made the promise to her former...
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lover. She is now a mature woman with responsibilities such as children, marriage, and a home. There is a new war raging. The sense that she is an almost completely different person now comes through strongly in this passage, aiding in the creation of dread for the former lover's arrival. The description emphasizes why the older Mrs. Drover is someone who would not want to honor that old promise.
How does Mrs. Drover's reflection compare to her feelings?
In "The Demon Lover," Mrs. Drover "polished a clear patch" on her dusty mirror so that she could see herself. When she gazed into the mirror, "she was confronted by a woman of forty-four." The time had seemed to pass quickly after her marriage. Mrs. Drover's physical appearance had been changed by the hardships of war. Rationing of foods had caused her to lose a good deal of weight, and "the pearls her husband had given her on their marriage hung loose round her now rather thinner throat." A recent illness had caused "an intermittent muscular flicker to the left of her mouth." This served as a reminder of the illness she had suffered. She was tired from the hardships of life and the added stress of the war.
Despite this all the recent hardships, her "most normal expression was one of controlled worry but of assent." Mrs. Drover was a woman who had been a source of steadiness and dependability for her husband and three children. She suffered from inner fear and anxiety due to the traumatizing bombings in London, but she still was able to "sustain a manner that was at once energetic and calm." Mrs. Drover held most of her fears and concerns inside of her. She did not want to appear anxious to her family, even though she was. She was also filled with a new fear because of the mysterious and ominous nature of the letter she received.
Mrs. Drover's appearance matched her inner feelings. She was tired, weary, feeling the effects of an illness, underweight, and anxious. She had been changed by the war and by the recent years.