Elizabeth Bowen's stories of suspense

J. A. Morris

pp. 114-129

in: Clive Bloom (ed), Twentieth-century suspense, Basingstoke, Palgrave Macmillan, 1990

Abstract

Elizabeth Bowen (1899-1973) is par excellence a short-story writer of suspense, as the reader of "The Demon Lover", "Look at All Those Roses' and "The Cat Jumps' must surely confirm. But the suspense — the building up of a particular type of nervous tension — is, I shall be arguing, special, idiosyncratic and dependent upon a certain unique mixture of ingredients. In essence, the tension gets its special quality of frisson from the reader's being prevented from seeing or telling with any precision what is really going on beneath surface events while, at the same time, experiencing powerfully the sense of what might be described as "a hidden agenda" of threat or horror. And, as if to confirm that worrying awareness of being able to sense but not rationalise the source of the disturbance, Bowen's stories often possess elements which to varying degrees come from experience, real or imaginary, of the supernatural.