SOURCE: "'A More Sinister Troth': Elizabeth Bowen's 'The Demon Lover' as Allegory," in Studies in Short Fiction, Vol. 31, No. 1, Winter, 1994, pp. 91-7.

In the following essay, Calder suggests that "The Demon Lover" is an allegory of war, drawing parallels between the story's imagery and the cultural context of its composition.

Of all of Elizabeth Bowen's short stories, none has been anthologized as often as "The Demon Lover." First published in The Listener in November 1941 and reprinted in The Demon Lover and Other Stories (1945) and Ivy Gripped the Steps and Other Stories (1946), it is usually introduced as a clever tale of occult possession. Early critical commentary is typified by Allen E. Austin's remark that "'The Demon Lover' is a ghost story that builds up and then culminates like an Alfred Hitchcock movie."

This interpretation was first challenged by Douglas A. Hughes in his 1973 note "Cracks in the Psyche: Elizabeth...