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The Death of the Heart is a 1938 novel by Elizabeth Bowen set in the interwar period. [1] It is about a sixteen-year-old orphan, Portia Quayne, who moves to London to live with her half-brother Thomas and falls in love with Eddie, a friend of her sister-in-law.
- Elizabeth Bowen
- 1938
The Death of the Heart is a 1938 novel by Elizabeth Bowen set in the interwar period. It is about a sixteen-year-old orphan, Portia Quayne, who moves to London to live with her half-brother Thomas and falls in love with Eddie, a friend of her sister-in-law.
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9 mag 2000 · To her, Eddie is the only reason to be alive. But when Eddie follows Portia to a sea-side resort, the flash of a cigarette lighter in a darkened cinema illuminates a stunning romantic betrayal--and sets in motion one of the most moving and desperate flights of the heart in modern literature.
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- Elizabeth Bowen
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The Death of the Heart, novel by Elizabeth Bowen, published in 1938. It is one of Bowen’s best-known works and demonstrates her debt to Henry James in the careful observation of detail and the theme of innocence darkened by experience. The novel is noted for its dexterous portrayal of an adolescent’s stormy inner life.
- Elizabeth Bowen
- 1938
- Introduction
- Author Biography
- Plot Summary
- Characters
- Media Adaptations
- Themes
- Topics For Further Study
- Style
- Historical Context
- Compare & Contrast
Published in 1938, The Death of the Heart is Elizabeth Bowen's most well-known and popular novel. She was a prolific writer, and by the time she had published this, her sixth novel, her writing career had been fifteen years in the making. By this time, Bowen had nine other published books, the Irish Academy of Letters had elected her a member, and ...
Elizabeth Bowen's early years—while not quite as grim as those of Portia, the main character in her most well-regarded novel, The Death of the Heart—were unstable. She found herself at various times being raised by a group of aunts. On occasion, Bowen moved from house to house, similar to the treks from hotel to hotel that Portia and her parents ma...
Part One: The World
In the opening of The Death of the Heart, Anna and her good friend St. Quentin walk through the park in the winter while Anna relates the story of how sixteen-year-old Portia has come to live with her and her husband, Portia's older half-brother, Thomas. Anna is especially vexed because she has found Portia's diary and read some of it, and it is not complimentary to Anna. The arrangement made by Portia's father, Mr. Quayne, that Anna and Thomas should take care of Portia, is not going well. P...
Part Two: The Flesh
Portia arrives in Seale-on-Sea where she will stay with Mrs. Heccomb while Thomas and Anna are in Capri. Mrs. Heccomb's seaside house is called Waikiki, and the household is comprised of her stepson Dickie, stepdaughter Daphne, and their many friends. Portia receives three letters her second day at Seale-on-Sea, one of which is from Eddie, who says he misses her and muses about coming to see her at the Heccombs' house. Portia goes shopping with Mrs. Heccomb and enjoys herself immensely. She i...
Part Three: The Devil
Portia returns from Seale-on-Sea to London. Matchett comments on Portia's "color" and that she seems to be speaking up more than before she went away. Portia is frantic when Matchett tells her that Eddie called the day before. The next afternoon, Anna and Thomas return from Capri. Anna thinks about the cache of letters she still keeps from when she and Robert Pidgeon were lovers. Also, she thinks about how Portia makes her feel "like a tap that won't turn on." A week later, Portia comes home...
Cecil Bowers
Cecil is a friend of the Heccomb family who is brought to Daphne and Dickie's Saturday night party for Portia. Cecil and Portia become good friends while Portia is at Seale-on-Sea.
Major Eric "E. J." Brutt
Major Brutt is a lonely, retired soldier. Anna, along with Thomas and Portia, runs into him after the movies, and he mistakenly calls her Miss Fellowes, her maiden name. Major Brutt remembers Anna from before her marriage when she was with her lover, Robert Pidgeon. The family invites him back to the house for a drink, and he visits them on a number of other occasions although both Anna and Thomas are snippy about him behind his back. Portia likes him a great deal, and he gives her puzzles as...
Eddie
Eddie is twenty-three, charming, self-centered, a heavy drinker, and a ladies' man. He can swing from one emotional extreme to the other in a matter of minutes. He encourages Portia to fall in love with him even though he has no intention of honestly returning her affections. Early in the novel he claims to be in love with Anna and constantly visits the house to flirt with her. Anna finds a job for Eddie in Thomas' advertising firm because she believes him to be clever but in need of somethin...
In 1985, Granada Television (United Kingdom) produced a television movie version of The Death of the Heart, starring JoJo Cole as Portia, Wendy Hiller as Matchett, Patricia Hodge as Anna, and Miran...
The Outsider
Anna and Thomas Quayne live in an insular world, comfortable knowing what will happen from one day to the next. Into their lives comes Portia, the daughter of Thomas' father and his mistress (later his second wife), Irene. Portia's very presence is a source of discomfort to the couple, and she enters their house as the consummate outsider. She is an orphaned love child in a childless household where two miscarriages have occurred. Even before she came to London, Portia was an outsider, banned...
Family
Portia is an orphan from a family that is barely legitimate, wrapped in shame. Her first sixteen years are hardly what most would call normal, moving from hotel room to hotel room, never attending school or making a steady set of friends. She is more like a mother to her own mother, offering tea and comfort after Irene has a crying spell and helping her mother to the hospital when she becomes ill. Living with Thomas and Anna does not make Portia part of their family even though Thomas is her...
Coming-of-Age
Portia and the adults around her seem to be from two distinct countries, but this sense can be attributed primarily to their different generations. Portia has seen little of the world while the Quaynes and their friends have lived through World War I, which left millions dead and changed how people thought about society and humanity altogether. Anna does not quite know how to treat Portia, so she enforces her opinions and choices on Portia without much consultation. Surprisingly, Matchett chi...
In The Death of the Heart, Anna has a job doing interior design before she is married to Thomas. Research the status of British women in the 1930s and whether it was typical for a young woman from...In the novel, Portia comes to London with little or no formal education. Anna and Thomas put her in a school that appears to be for wealthy girls who have not done well at school. Investigate how w...Choose one chapter from The Death of the Heartthat you find particularly interesting; adapt this chapter as a scene in a play. Act out the scene with a group of students. What insight can be gained...In The Death of the Heart, Portia runs away because she is upset by how Anna, Eddie, and others have treated her. Choose another literary work that features a teenage runaway and compare and contra...Point-of-View
The story in The Death of the Heartis told from numerous viewpoints. The primary narrator is generally omniscient, as if looking over the story from above, and speaks with an authoritative voice. This narrator sets the stage, for example, when each of the three parts of the book begins, describing the park in parts one and two, and the Quayne's house in part three. As well, this narrator describes characters' thoughts in a way that is clearer than the characters themselves could. Daphne's fir...
Setting
Bowen's descriptions of the novel's various settings contribute to the tone of the story, and she is careful to offer detailed pictures of the characters' surroundings. The house the Quayne's live in is a huge, grand house on Windsor Terrace, filled with the best furniture, drapes, and rugs. Anna is attentive to every detail of how the house looks, complaining when Portia does not maintain her room as Anna believes it should be maintained, and reprimanding Thomas for placing a glass in his li...
Structure
The Death of the Heartis divided into three parts of similar length, and each of these parts is, in turn, divided into chapters. Each part takes place where Portia is during a season: Part one is set in London during the winter; in part two, Portia moves to Seale-on-Sea for the spring; and in part three, she is back again in London with summer coming. The three parts of the book are entitled, "The World," "The Flesh," and "The Devil," considered among Christians to be the three things humans...
The Inter-War Years
The period between World War I and World War II (1918–1939) was an era in which many people became disenchanted with society, politics, and traditional institutions. The carnage of the First World War had disillusioned many British, who once felt that the new century would be the start of a fresh and prosperous period for humanity in general and the United Kingdom specifically. This may be one reason why, in The Death of the Heart, the Quayne household seems isolated from most of the local an...
The Depression
The worldwide economic depression, which began with the stock market crash of 1929, had a debilitating affect on Britain's economy. Even though there were signs of recovery by the mid-1930s, Britain still had an unemployment crisis and was experiencing a decline in its traditional export industries, making it difficult for the country to pay for its imports of foods and raw materials. But, while these traditional export industries, such as coal mining and cotton manufacturing, remained depres...
The City of London
In the 1930s, the depression and the growing unease about what was happening in Germany had a sobering effect on the atmosphere of the city of London. Dance halls, which were so popular during World War I and immediately afterwards, became less prominent. The skyline of London had changed only gradually since the 1600s, giving London a sense of permanence and history. Public transport expanded a great deal in the first quarter of the century in and around London with the establishment of tram...
1930s: Women in England, like Daphne and her friends, are enjoying the first decade of equal voting rights with men, granted to them in 1928. Today:With the 1997 general election, 120 women are now...1930s: Women are just beginning to see the possibilities of working outside the home in England. During World War I, more than a million women took over jobs left vacant by men who were fighting, b...1930s: Upper-class women such as Anna regularly have "low tea" with friends in the after noon each day, a small meal to tide one over until the larger evening meal. In addition to drinking tea, par...1930s: Only well-to-do families can afford the time and money spent on vacations abroad, such Anna and Thomas Quayne's trip to Capri. Today:Six in ten British residents take at least one long holid...The Death of the Heart is perhaps Elizabeth Bowen’s best-known book. As she deftly and delicately exposes the cruelty that lurks behind the polished surfaces of conventional society, Bowen reveals herself as a masterful novelist who combines a sense of humor with a devastating gift for divining human motivations.
To her, Eddie is the only reason to be alive. But when Eddie follows Portia to a sea-side resort, the flash of a cigarette lighter in a darkened cinema illuminates a stunning romantic betrayal--and sets in motion one of the most moving and desperate flights of the heart in modern literature.
