Student Question
What descriptive details create suspense in "The Demon Lover"?
Quick answer:
Detailed descriptions about the “unfamiliar queerness” of the setting and how Mrs. Drover “felt intruded upon” all create suspense in “The Demon Lover.” The narrator’s frequent emphasis on how Mrs. Drover is alone and how "no human eye" watches over her also creates suspense.
Elizabeth Bowen’s short story “The Demon Lover” is full of descriptive details. Right from the start, there is something peculiar about the atmosphere. Consider how the narrator describes the setting:
In her once familiar street, as in any unused channel, an unfamiliar queerness had silted up; a cat wove itself in and out of railings, but no human eye watched Mrs. Drover’s return.
Her street was “once familiar,” which suggests that Mrs. Drover no longer feels a sense of familiarity and that something is off. She instead feels an “unfamiliar” suspicious feeling and is alone in the night. But the phrase “no human eye” suggests that while she is not around humans, she might not be alone.
Then, as she goes into the house, the narrator states matter-of-factly, “Dead air came out to meet her as she went in.” The personification of the air here and...
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the use of the worddead are unsettling and suggest that something bad is going to happen inside this house. Another suspenseful moment comes when Mrs. Drover is about to open the letter. The narrator describes the scene and says,
The room looked over the garden and sharpened and lowered, the trees and rank lawns seemed already to smoke with dark. Her reluctance to look again at the letter came from the fact that she felt intruded upon—and by someone contemptuous of her ways.
The description of the darkening surroundings is quite ominous. The fact that she feels “intruded upon” even though she is alone also makes the scene feel eerie and makes the reader wonder if something bad is going to happen to Mrs. Drover. Similarly, the rich descriptions of the setting when Mrs. Drover leaves the house build a great deal of suspense. For instance, consider how the narrator describes what the street is like:
The rain had stopped; the pavements steamily shone as Mrs. Drover let herself out by inches from her own front door into the empty street. The unoccupied houses opposite continued to meet her look with their damaged stare. Making toward the thoroughfare and the taxi, she tried not to keep looking behind. Indeed, 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 on hers unheard.
The use of descriptive detail here paints a vivid portrait of what this night is like. The street is not just deserted and quiet, but there is an “intense,” all-consuming silence and it is as if the houses are staring at Mrs. Drover. Once again, Bowen’s use of detail has created an eerie atmosphere and it seems as if something scary could happen at any moment.