Exiled from Eden: the displaced person in the novels of Elizabeth Bowen

Abstract

Like Elizabeth Bowen herself who relocated at age seven with her mother Florence, the typical Bowen character is often a displaced person. The exile, the alien, the traveler abound and are recorded with sensitivity in short story and novel alike. This study focuses exclusively on the novels where an intriguing progression of displacement becomes evident. In The Hotel, The Last September, Friends and Relations, and To the North, displacement most frequently results from the loss of one's home. In The House in Paris and The Death of the Heart, displacement from the loss of one's home is compounded by the concomitant loss of social acceptance. In Bowen's war novel, The Heat of the Day, literal displacement from home is intensified by wartime disorientation. But in A World of Love, The Little Girls, and Eva Trout, displacement comes from the loss of one's grip on reality. Although literal displacement is still evident, it is metaphorical displacement from reality that Bowen examines with care in her last novels.