SOURCE: "The Tree of Jesse and the Voyage Out: Stability and Disorder in Elizabeth Bowen's Friends and Relations" in Durham University Journal, Vol. 84, No. 2, July, 1992, pp. 291-302.

In the following essay, Coates examines the essentially conservative framework of Friends and Relations, arguing that the narrative defends family and social institutions despite its characters' personal weaknesses.

Elizabeth Bowen (1899–1973) is a novelist highly praised in standard works of reference and literary histories. Yet, oddly, critical attention has not kept pace with general acclaim. There is an obvious reason for this. Academics, at least in Britain, are not, on the whole, sympathetic to Bowen's conservative social and moral position. They cannot and do not deny the distinction of her style and the skill of her design but her vision does not appeal to them.

In many ways this is unfortunate. Whatever the reader's own political or moral sympathies, there is no...