The Heat of the Day

“He took two or three more pulls on his cigarette—perhaps to steady himself, perhaps not—before, still frowning with concentration, unloading more ash on to the Chinese tray. His mind was, where she was concerned, a jar of opaquely clouded water, in which, for all she knew, the strangest fish must be circling, staring, turning to turn away. She glanced at her wrist watch, glanced again at her letters, felt nervous, bit off a nervous yawn.”

Bowen uses the motif of cigarette smoking to add detail to the social interaction (See: Symbols & Motifs). Stella’s thought process about Harrison reflects her uncertainty as to who he is and whether or not she can trust him, as his mind is like “opaquely clouded water” and his presence leaves her feeling “nervous.”

“She then turned full on him, from less than a yard away: they were eye to eye in the intimacy of her extreme anger. There is actually little difference as to colour in the moment before the blow and the moment before the kiss: the negligible space between her and him was now charged, full force, with the intensity of their two beings.”

This passage reflects The Effect of War on Personal Relationships, with Stella and Harrison’s encounter presented as driven by both a sense of antagonism and an erotic charge. While Stella experiences “extreme anger,” the eroticism of the language of “the negligible space between her and him” and “the intensity of their two beings” implies that Stella’s feelings toward Harrison may be more complicated than she is willing to admit.

“The wall between the living and the living became less solid as the wall between the living and the dead thinned. In that September transparency people became transparent, only to be located by the just darker flicker of their hearts. Strangers saying ‘Goodnight, good luck,’ to each other at street corners, as the sky first blanched then faded with evening, each hoped not to die that night, still more not to die unknown.”

This passage is a significant description of The Effect of War on Personal Relationships. Bowen uses the metaphor of the thinning wall between the living and between the living and the dead to emphasize the collective experience of wartime, while also drawing upon the symbolism of light and dark that recurs in the novel (See: Symbols & Motifs).

“This was the new society of one kind of wealth, resilience, living how it liked—people whom the climate of danger suited, who began, even, all to look a little alike, as they might in the sun, snows and altitude of the same sports station, or browning along the same beach in the South of France. The very temper of pleasures lay in their chanciness, in the canvaslike impermanence of their settings, in their being off-time—to and fro between bars and grills, clubs and each other’s places moved the little shoal through the noisy nights. Faces came and went.”

Bowen uses two run-on sentence in this passage. The syntax mirrors the experience it describes, reflecting the flighty movements of the society that remains in London during The Experience and Limbo of Wartime. Bowen describes the banalities and social effects existing alongside war’s dangers.

“Overhead, an enemy plane had been dragging, drumming slowly round in the pool of night, drawing up bursts of gunfire […]. The barrage banged, coughed, retched; in here the lights in the mirrors rocked. Now down a shaft of anticipating silence the bomb swung whistling. With the shock of detonation, still to be heard, four walls […] yawped then bellied out; bottles danced on glass; a distortion ran through the view. The detonation dulled off into the cataracting roar of a split building: direct hit, somewhere else. It was the demolition of an entire moment: he and she stood at attention till the glissade stopped.”

Bowen employs unique diction in this passage to emphasize the surreal nature of the Blitz. For example, words like “yawped,” “bellied out,” and the “cataracting roar” convey uncanny and unfamiliar experiences. The description of the explosion as “coughing and retching” anthropomorphizes the destruction. The description of Stella and Robert standing “at attention” emphasizes the intrusion of war into a domestic space and The Effect of War on Personal Relationships.

“All this, with the amputation of their goodnight as lovers, keyed up her susceptibilities to a pitch. In the sky there was a slow, stealthy massing of clouds: she walked hatless, and once or twice a drop—single, sinister, warmish—splashed on her forehead. She was walking west, towards the torn pale light—this troubled lingering of a day that had been troubling oppressed her, as did the long perspective of the extinct street that so few people frequented and none crossed.”

The continual progression of the long sentences in this passage, broken by punctuation like em-dashes and colons, mirror Stella’s walking progress across the city. The language emphasizes the intrusion of war into daily life with terms such as “amputation” and “extinct.”

“To her, tonight, ‘outside’ meant the harmless world: the mischief was in her own and in other rooms. The grind and scream of battles, mechanised advances excoriating flesh and country, tearing through nerves and tearing up trees, were indoor-plotted; this was a war of dry celebration inside windowless walls. No act was not part of some calculation; spontaneity was in tatters; from the point of view of nothing more than the heart any action was enemy action now.”

Bowen uses stream of consciousness to convey Stella’s thought process. In this passage, her thoughts indicate the complexities of her feeling about the war and the pessimistic, worn-down attitude she at times experiences.

“Dark and rare were the days when she failed to find on the inside of her paper an address to or else account of herself. Was she not a worker, a soldier’s lonely wife, a war orphan, a pedestrian, a Londoner, a home and animal-lover, a thinking democrat, a movie-goer, a woman of Britain, a letter-writer, a fuel-saver and a housewife?”

This passage emphasizes the collective experience of war. Louie’s suggestion that she finds items personally addressed to or about herself emphasizes how she, alongside many others, inhabits multiple roles—including those explicitly related to war, such as “a soldier’s lonely wife” and “a war orphan”—and feels a connection to those undergoing similar trials during wartime.

“‘Nature pursues her course under any circumstances. Birds like that wouldn’t notice there was a war—you might say they were lucky to have no sense. Airman complained how he got in among a pack of birds flying the other day; decapitated, he said he shouldn’t wonder if many of them were. But who’s to say I don’t get decapitated one of these fine nights; and I do have sense and I do have to worry, so where does that get me?”

Bowen represents the contrast between war and nature at several points throughout the text, primarily in scenes that take place in the country locations Mount Morris and Holme Dene. This passage is a particularly stark intersection between nature and war, illustrating Connie’s attitude that war dissolves the boundaries between human and animal.

“The very possibility might not allow her to rest again—but what, now she was forcing herself to think of it, was the possibility? Cousin Francis might have, indeed must have (for if, as Robert said, he was mad, he was still no fool) taken a closeish look at Harrison’s credentials and been satisfied. As against that, Cousin Francis was safely dead, so could not be asked—or rather, could be asked, as often as Stella chose, and could be relied upon not to answer. She understood, with a shock, that here was a question she would be prepared to put to the dead only—why? Because the answer could mean too much.”

Bowen uses complex syntax and stream of consciousness to represent Stella’s convoluted thought process as she confronts Personal Versus National Loyalty. As she questions the possibility of Robert’s guilt, she takes detours, represented by parentheticals, and entertains odd thoughts about asking questions of the dead. Both the form and content of this passage indicate Stella’s inner turmoil.

“Volatility was a great part of Robert, but not the whole of him—laugh he might, but as a man he would not forgive her…Or, he could lie; or rather, lie once again—the first lie spoken not being, in most cases, the first lie acted.—‘Is he,’ Harrison had wanted to know, ‘anything of an actor?’—If actor, to her and for her so very good an actor, then why not actor also of love?”

The use of ellipses in this passage indicates the blank spaces in Stella’s imagining of what could happen if she were to confront Robert about his espionage. The pause symbolizes what she doesn’t know. Bowen also emphasizes the novel’s subtheme of deceit through references to a series of lies and the reference to acting.

“Robert could be felt turning round slowly, unwinding himself from lethargy, frivolity, forbearance, whatever it had been, to stare at the place where she invisibly was. Incredulity not only shook his voice but removed it to such a distance that he and she might no longer have been in the same car.”

Bowen often represents characters’ gestures and thought processes from the point of view of another character. In this instance, Stella observes Robert’s body language and what she imagines about his emotional state after she asks him about Harrison’s accusation that he is an enemy spy.

“One can live in the shadow of an idea without grasping it. Nothing is really unthinkable; really you do know that. But the more one thinks, the less there’s any outside reality.”

At this point in the passage, Stella is attempting to justify the fact that she gave credence to Robert being a spy. Bowen uses physical images, like “grasping” an idea as well as an instance of the shadow motif (See: Symbols & Motifs). The description of thought as physical emphasizes the difficulty of Stella’s emotional turmoil as she confronts Personal Versus National Loyalty.

“Nature hated us; that was a most dangerous position to build a house in—once the fields noticed me with him, the harvests began failing; so I took to going nowhere but up and down stairs, till I met my own ghost. Never anything to be frightened of in the garden—but that has all run wild now, I daresay.”

In this passage, Nettie is describing to Roderick what it was like when she tried to live “as a wife” to Cousin Francis. She anthropomorphizes nature and creates a dark, ominous tone with the apocalyptic images of failing harvests and walking up and down stairs to meet one’s own ghost. Bowen creates ambiguity about whether she is providing a vivid but figurative description of a social experience or if her words are evidence of mental illness.

“Also, this could have been the moment to establish exactly what was queer, wrong, off, out of the straight in the cast of Harrison’s eyes. But she failed to do so: from so close up she only saw the structure of the expression of urgency—the pupils’ microcosms, black little condensations of a world too internal to know what expression was, each mapped round with red-brown lines on a green-brown iris run to rust at the rim.”

This passage indicates a shift in Stella’s perspective on Harrison. She goes from wanting to understand the oddity of Harrison’s eyes to getting lost in them as microcosms of the world. As with some of their earlier encounters, the ambiguous language reflects how Stella’s feelings toward Harrison are complicated.

“Louie, at these words—or at what must have been their vibration, for they could not have reached her end of the room—pivoted round on the stool on which she sat. Holding on with one hand to the rail of the counter, she leaned backwards to stare at Harrison’s table as though it might mean something—and, as soon became evident, it did. Her face lit up; her colour enthusiastically rose. She nodded, lost some of her countenance but went on staring.”

This passage provides an example of Bowen’s use of gesture to reveal aspects of unspoken feeling and motivation. Louie’s body language as she notices Harrison indicates her keen interest in him. Her tenacious desire to connect with him reflects The Effect of War on Personal Relationships, as she is so eager to make a connection to assuage her loneliness that she keeps seeking him out despite his rejection of her.

“‘Funny it would be,’ Louie remarked, ‘to see light like we used to see on that ceiling, standing still. We did used to have a lamp just outside there in the street, therefore you have no idea how different this room used to be all through the middle of the night. It could have kept us awake.’”

Bowen uses the symbolism of light and darkness (See: Symbols & Motifs) in this passage to indicate the stark difference between pre-war life and The Experience and Limbo of Wartime. Louie reminisces on how the lighting in the room used to be different thanks to streetlights, which enables Bowen to emphasize the intrusion of war into even seemingly simple aspects of life.

“Above-stairs Holme Dene was silent: without a creak it sustained the stresses of its architecture and the unsureness, manifestly indifferent to it, of its fate. Upstairs, as elsewhere, it had been planned with a sort of playful circumlocution—corridors, archways, recesses, half-landings, ledges, niches and balustrades combined to fuddle any sense of direction and check, so far as possible, progress from room to room.”

Bowen provides detailed descriptions of architecture and domestic spaces throughout the novel. They often reflect characters’ mental states and provide orientation for the novel’s setting. This passage provides an example of anthropomorphism as Bowen represents the house as playful and indifferent to its fate.

“[U]pstairs life, since the war, had up there condensed itself into very few rooms—swastika-arms of passage leading to nothing, stripped of carpet, bulbs gone from the light-sockets, were flanked by doors with their keys turned. Extinct, at his night hour stygian as an abandoned mine-working, those reaches of passage would show in daylight ghost-pale faded patches no shadow crossed, and, from end to end, an even conquest of dust.”

This passage foreshadows the imminent reveal that Robert is in fact a Nazi spy through word choice. Bowen describes the geometric space of the hallways as “swastika-arms of passage.” The passage includes additional ominous imagery with the reference to stygian (related to the River Styx—the underworld river in Greek mythology) and the phrases “ghost-pale” and “conquest of dust.”

“‘I don’t see what you mean—what do you mean? Country?—there are no more countries left; nothing but names. What country have you and I outside this room? Exhausted shadows, dragging themselves out again to fight—and how long are they going to drag the fight out? We have come out at the far side of that.’ ‘We?’ ‘We who are ready for the next thing.’”

Robert’s reasoning for spying for the enemy is convoluted and vague. Bowen emphasizes his thought process through syntax, and the fact that the passage includes numerous broken questions and instances of breaking off thoughts with em-dashes reflects his evasion and confusion. The passage complicates the theme of Personal Versus National Identity by presenting Robert’s justification that he has not betrayed his country, because no countries really exist anymore.

“There was a star-filled two o’clock in the morning sky. Man in outline against the panes, his communication with the order of the stars became not human: she, turning where she lay, apprehensively not raising herself on the pillows, stared also, not in subjection but in a sort of dread of subjection, at the mathematical spaces between the burning bright points.”

Bowen creates a celestial sense of detachment in this passage. Though Stella and Robert are in the midst of a pivotal conversation, this passage seems to zoom out to the stars and a clinical perspective on the mathematics of the universe. The celestial imagery reflects the emotional distance that also exists between Robert and Stella as the truth is finally revealed.

“‘I’m so glad you came,’ he said. ‘I wondered whether you would. It’s very good of you, Mother.’ ‘Why, because Robert’s dead?’ she asked, showing her ticket at the barrier. ‘Perhaps it is better for you having something to do. I had been wondering what you’d most rather I did. I decided I’d leave it and see if you came today; but then, if not, somehow to get to London to you.’”

This passage is significant because it characterizes Roderick, who is kind and solicitous toward his mother, as well as prone to doubting his own actions and choices. It characterizes their relationship, which is Stella’s only remaining close one after Robert’s death.

“‘They’re bombing away again. Isn’t the mistress in it?’ ‘Yes. Why?’ ‘You left her very exposed.' ‘Yes, Donovan, yes. But she’s always done what she’s liked.’ ‘I should say she’d always done what she could. Whatever she went through, she’s very gentle. All the same, it was a pity you couldn’t prevail on her to wait here.’ ‘Wait here what for?’ ‘The better times.’ ‘Oh.’”

This passage emphasizes The Experience and Limbo of Wartime by showing the difference between the perspective of Donovan, who lives in Ireland, and Roderick, who spends much of his time in London. Donovan’s attitude of waiting in the country for “the better times” emphasizes the experience of being in between real life and war, while Roderick’s different experience of war is illustrated in how the idea of “better times” is initially foreign to him.