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Talal Saleh Dheyab

Assist. Prof. Siham Hattab Hammdan, PhD

British Novel

23th October 2023

Elizabeth Bowen’s The Death of the Heart:

A Journey of the Individual

Analysis

Elizabeth Bowen’s (1899-1973) The Death of the Heart (1938) is a

novel written in the period between the two World Wars. It tells the story
of Portia [sixteen years old] who lost her father as a child, and lost her
mother at the age of sixteen. It is worth mentioning that although her
father was married [Thomas’s mother], he had an affair with another
woman [Portia’s mother]. As a result, his wife asked for divorce, and
achieved it. The father flees after the scandal with his concubine. After
the death of her parents, Portia travels to live with her half-brother,
Thomas, and his wife, Anna, in London. Portia is interested in
interpreting and analyzing others through documenting events in her
diaries.

Psychologically speaking, fear of abandonment plays a role in the

above scene. After the traumatic experience of the death of her parents,
she fears being alone. She chooses to live with her brother, which reflects
her needs for emotional intimacy. Another example, she seeks intimacy
when she falls in love with Eddie, who works with her brother (Tyson
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23). Things changed when she becomes more mature. As a reaction to

real life, she has come under the concept of a defense mechanism. Thus,
avoidance is suitable for the process of leaving others to avoid anxiety, as
happened in the following examples (15). Portia discovers that her lover
is tricky, which leads her to ignore him. Moreover, St. Quentin [Anna’s
friend] informs Portia that Anna discovered her diary. As a result, Portia
leaves home and moves to a hotel. She tells her brother that she will not
come home until they do the right things. Finally, The Death of the Heart
ends openly.

The novel is narrated from various points of view. The tone of

narration depends on the numerous places presented in the novel. They
are structured in three parts, including “The World, The Flesh, and The
Devil”. Part one takes place in London during the winter. Part two
follows Portia as she moves to Seale-on-Sea in the spring. Then, part
three returns to London as summer approaches. The first is connected
with earthy desires where Portia saw the outside world. The second is
linked with lust when she was attracted to Eddie. Then, the third is related
to temptation and deception when her diaries are shared with others.
These events are intervened together to reflect the difficult domestic life
in the 1930s. Lack of love and communication, deception, broken
relationships, homelessness, appearances, and silence, are all portrayed in
The Death of the Heart.

The Death of the Heart deals with the moral burden in which the
collapse and decay of ethics took place in western societies after the First
World War. And here is a personal and emotional condolence novel by
Elizabeth Bowen about the death of social values, which is highly
connected with the title. In this case, “heart” symbolizes emotions,
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values, and ethics. Bowen presents ambiguous death of parents for the
sake of developing the characters in her literary works. Although such
characters echo the experience of the novelist’s childhood, they are
unable to express their early past, indicating their silence and crises of
identity (Lassner 8).

As a realistic domestic work, The Death of the Heart discusses a

female character who is under self-discovery through the process of
writing and interpreting others, depicted in Portia’s character and her
diary. Portia’s journey to find an active social life and love, was a step
towards her recognition of understanding her early life, and her next
choices. She is conscious of her value as a woman. She lives a current
transnational life. Also, it is mere a consequence of homelessness. Portia
insists on discovering her present condition by stating, “Why am I ...
What made me be?” (99). She was transforming from a life of innocence
into experience, from a mother’s lap as a little child into the outside
exploitive world.

To do so, Bowen presents another female character, who is Anna,

to face her heroin. With this conflict, Portia understood that her early
romantic life in the bosom of her mother was a lie in comparison with this
difficult life that lacks true love. Anne is portrayed as a woman who has
lost her self-sense. She was shocked and unsatisfied when she discovered
Portia’s diary. As mentioned, this was the reason behind leaving home,
which was required to develop Portia’s character. Such disorder and
transformation are sympathetically tackled by the narrator:

… So, she and Irene had almost always felt sad when they
looked round a hotel room before going away from it for
always. In unfamiliar places, they unconsciously looked for
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familiarity. It is not our exalted feelings, it is our sentiments

that build the necessary home. The need to attach themselves
makes wandering people strike roots in a day: wherever we
unconsciously feel, we live. (101)

Thus, the novel seeks familial and social stability. It is the voice of
order in the disorder world, whether economically, socially or politically.
To dig deeper, the domestic life represented by Thomas and Anna was
cold and unhealthy. They have no children, which indicates the sterility
of their lives. Anna is not at peace with herself because she rejected her
first love for the sake of appearances. Thomas and Anna preferred to
pretend to be upper middle-class members. Thus, their marriage is
doomed to fail because it is not based on love or firm foundations, but on
shallow thinking. Like Portia, Anna is a silent character who aims to
protect her domestic life. Even when she discovered Portia’s diaries, she
did nothing. At the same time, Portia uses her pen instead of her tongue.
This could be influenced by the patriarchal society at that time (103).

A feminist, Gayatri Spivak tackles such a case in her essay “Can

the Subaltern Speak?”. She writes that the subaltern woman is silent.
Thus, woman is oppressed. Spivak concludes her essay that the
intellectual woman must speak and represent herself. Although Portia
discovered herself and developed her character, she could be an escapist.
Such an idea was built on that Portia was unable to face others. That is
why she devoted herself to writing. In fact, the characters are aware of
their own tendencies. Moreover, Elizabeth Bowen writes about The
Death of the Heart, that:

“a novel which reflects the time, the pre-war time with its high
tension, its increasing anxieties, and this great stress on
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individualism. People were so conscious of themselves, and of

each other, and of their personal relationships because they
thought that everything of that time might soon end” (Gymnich‫‏‬
et al. 107)

In conclusion, The Death of the Heart traces a journey of life from

innocence to experience. The novel expresses the psychological trauma
and the inner feelings of the individual after the First World War. It also
shows empty and shallow social relationships. The novel ends with no
solutions, reflecting the ambiguous ending. The reader is the one who is
responsible for judging, evaluating and analyzing the events.
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Works Cited

Gymnich‫ ‏‬et al,. The Orphan in Fiction and Comics since the 19th
Century: UK: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2018. Print.

Lassner, Phyllis. Women Writers: Elizabeth Bowen. London:

MACMILLAN EDUCATION LTD, 1990. Print.

Tyson, Lois. Critical Theory Today: A User-Friendly Guide. 2nd Ed. New
York: Taylor & Francis Group, 2006. Print.