SOURCE: Christensen, Lis. “Identity.” In Elizabeth Bowen: The Later Fiction, pp. 43-65. Copenhagen, Denmark: Museum Tusculanum Press, University of Copenhagen, 2001.

In the following excerpt, Christensen discusses the ways Bowen establishes her characters' individual and group identities.

‘What a slippery fish is identity,’ reflects Eva Trout; ‘and what is it besides a slippery fish?’ (ET [Eva Trout] 193). Bowen's texts give no answer; but they do refer, in many different words and phrases, to those features that characterize or define a person as being different from anyone else: persona, personality, being oneself, deeper nature, etc., plus the word identity itself.

The ‘slippery fish’ assumes diverse shapes. National identity, for instance, is prominent in the wartime ambience of The Heat of the Day, where Robert Kelway's attraction to the group identity of a totalitarian political regime makes him a traitor to his country. On the opposite side there is the obstinate...