Unsettling Language in Elizabeth Bowen’s The Demon Lover Essay

Unsettling Language in Elizabeth Bowens The devil rooter Elizabeth Bowen retells a popular folk tale in her short story, The heller Lover. The title aims that the plot consists of a woman being confronted by a demon lover from her past. Bowen does not stray far from this original tale. kinda of originality, Bowens prose relies on the use of subtleties to keep the story interesting. The storys subtleties feed us questions that continually grab our interest. Bowen immediately begins to create a sense of uneasiness in the first paragraph. As Mrs. Drover, the protagonist, walks toward her London house, an unfamiliar queerness had silted up a cat wove itself in and out of railings, but no kind-hearted ticker watched Mrs. Drovers return (36). The authors use of the word queerness puts the reader on base hit for something out of the ordinary. She then follows it by the description of a cat-a mysterious creature-wondering take down the street with no regard to any passersby. The phr ase no human eye watched seems to be overstating the situation. Instead of just saying that nothing was ceremonial occasion Mrs. Drover, the author chose to say that no human was watching her. We are conduct to question whether the cat was the only non-human watching her or not. And, if not, what else was watching her?The tang of uncanny continues throughout the next paragraphs. The house Mrs. Drover enters is given characteristics that suggest that it is living. There is a bruise in the wallpaper and a gentle had left(p) what looked like claw-marks (36). On their own, these descriptions would not have created uneasiness. But, the house that bruises and piece of furniture that leaves claw-marks contribute to the sense of uneasiness that had already begun to develop. W... ... no resulting rescue (40). Her utter leads us to believe that she had in fact gotten into the demon lovers taxi. As the number one wood made off with her into the hinterland of deserted streets, we are s till left questioning who exactly the driver was, how he had come back from the dead, what Kathleen had promised him, and whether she had really remembered her promise and had used it as an escape to her monotonous life (40). every(prenominal) of the unanswered questions, along with subtle uses of unsettling language, create an unsettling effect throughout the story. The title, The Demon Lover, gave a good general idea of what Elizabeth Bowen was writing about, but her capable writing left interesting questions lingering throughout the story and rase after its end.Works CitedBowen, Elizabeth. The Demon Lover. Collected Stories of Elizabeth Bowen. New York Knopf, 1981.