SOURCE: "Elizabeth Bowen's Stories of Suspense," in Twentieth-Century Suspense: The Thriller Comes of Age, edited by Clive Bloom, St. Martin's Press, 1990, pp. 114-29.

In the excerpt below, Morris asserts that the supernatural aspect of "The Demon Lover" helps to convey social and historical meaning. The critic also examines the tension as it builds in the story.

'The Demon Lover' (1941) belongs to the years of the Second World War and is set in London, as were a number of [Bowen's] most effective and atmospheric stories. It has been frequently anthologised in collections of tales of horror and suspense, where it rubs shoulders with disturbing pieces by writers like Poe and James, Saki and Ambrose Bierce, Susan Sontag and Vladimir Nabokov. And yet it has also attracted scholarly and erudite discussion concerning precisely how in this story Bowen achieves her formidable effect. For example, in a penetrating analysis Valerie Shaw...