The Heat of the Day
Encyclopedia
The Heat of the Day is a novel written by Elizabeth Bowen
, first published in 1948 in Great Britain
, and in 1949 in the United States of America.
The Heat of the Day revolves around the relationship between Stella Rodney and her lover Robert Kelway, with the interfering presence of Harrison in the tense years following the Blitz
in London
. Harrison, a British intelligence agent who is convinced that Robert is a German spy, uses this knowledge to get between the two lovers and ultimately neutralize Robert. Stella finds herself caught between spy and counterspy, and ends up spying on Robert to find out for herself if Harrison's accusations are justified. The narrative reveals the "inextricable knitting together of the individual and the national, the personal and the political."
. After Harrison rudely leaves Louie he goes to visit Stella in her rented flat. He tells her of his suspicions that her lover, Robert Kelway, is a spy, while proposing that she leaves Robert to become his lover. While she is coping with the possibilities, her son, Roderick, visits her on leave from his army training. In her conversation with her son and the memories of her divorce from his father, Stella begins to doubt if she (or anyone) can ever really know anyone else. Roderick, meanwhile, is ruminating on Mount Morris, the house he has just inherited from an Irish cousin, Francis Morris.
The narration goes on to recount Cousin Francis's visit to his wife, Cousin Nettie, at Wisteria Lodge, a special care house for the elderly and the insane/mad. He is using this visit as an excuse to leave neutral Ireland
and reach Britain in order to offer his services to the Allied effort. He dies just before the reunion with his wife. At Francis's lawyer's request, Stella attends the funeral, and is told that her son will inherit the estate, even though Roderick and Francis have never met. Here, Harrison, who is unknown to anyone at the funeral, and Stella meet for the first time. Harrison insists on accompanying her on the train back to London.
The narration then recounts Stella and Robert's first meeting two years ago and their subsequent romance. Back in the narrative present, Stella shows an interest in meeting Robert's family and so they go to Robert's family house, Holme Dene.
At Holme Dene, Stella meets Robert's authoritarian mother, his managerial sister, Ernestine, and their wards, Robert's other sister's two children. His mother reluctantly allows Robert to show Stella his room, in which is a collection of photographs of Robert throughout his life. Robert tells Stella about his troubled relationship with his emasculated father. That evening they return to London.
Harrison and Stella meet again. Harrison points out to her that in visiting his family, Stella is accepting the possibility that Robert is a spy. Harrison reiterates his insinuations that she should leave Robert and start a new relationship with Harrison. Stella does not accept his offer to stay the night.
The narration jumps back to Louie. Louie has made friends with Connie, an air warden. Connie and Louie are both newspaper fanatics; Connie is suspicious of everything she reads, while Louie believes everything she reads.
Returning to the main plot, Stella leaves for Ireland to visit Mount Morris and take care of affairs for Roderick. While there, she decides to confront Robert with Harrison's accusations. Robert and Ernestine pick her up in a car at the train station. After dropping Ernestine off, Stella finally asks Robert directly if he is a spy. Robert is angry that she could entertain such an idea, and is hurt that she has been harboring such thoughts for two months. Then he proposes marriage. She says no, after which they discuss their relationship and Harrison.
Roderick, who feels guilty inheriting Mount Morris without Cousin Nettie's permission, goes to visit her at Wisteria Lodge. In the course of their conversation, it becomes obvious that Cousin Nettie is not really mad, as she is pretending to be. Her feigned insanity is her excuse to never return to Mount Morris, which she hates. Nettie reveals the true story of Roderick's parents' divorce. Everyone assumed Stella was the guilty adulteress, but in fact Victor (Roderick's father) left her for a nurse. Roderick is stunned by the revelation and calls his mother to ask her about it as soon as he can.
Stella receives Roderick's call during one of Harrison's visits just before they leave for dinner. It prompts Stella to share her history with Harrison, which she hasn't done for many other people. At dinner, Harrison confirms that Robert fulfilled his predictions about exactly how Robert would change his behavior if Stella ever revealed that he was being watched. Louie happens to be at the restaurant and makes up an excuse to talk with them. In coded language in front of Louie Stella offers herself sexually to Harrison in exchange for Robert's safety. Harrison rejects the offer, and Stella and Louie leave the restaurant together. Louie is attracted to Stella, and tries to describe her to Connie.
Robert goes to Holme Dene because the family has received an offer to buy the house. Mrs. Kelway and Ernestine refuse to make a decision without him, but clearly he has no real influence. He is tense throughout the scene.
He returns to Stella in London and confesses that he is indeed a spy for the Germans. Robert tries to justify his actions and expounds on his fascist politics. Robert accuses Harrison of interfering in their relationship, which eventually leads to his confession. Although Stella still loves him, their relationship is marred. They know Harrison is waiting outside. Robert insists on leaving via the roof.
A couple days later Stella goes to visit Roderick and reveals that Robert is dead. Back in London, she gives a report to the coroner's office in which she comes out looking like a femme fatale
and Robert's treachery is hidden. Louie reads the report in the papers and (mistakenly) believes her first impression of Stella was wrong. The narrative gives a sweeping overview of the next few years of the war. Harrison visits Stella again years later during another bombing. He tells her that his first name is Robert. Their resolution of their relationship is left ambiguous. Louie gets pregnant in the course of her extramarital affairs. Connie takes care of her, and Tom dies in combat without ever knowing. Louie leaves London to give birth to her son, Thomas Victor. She retires with him to her hometown, Seale-on-Sea, with the intent to raise him as if he were her heroic husband's child.
Robert Kelway: Robert is an attractive man in his late thirties who remains in London during the war after being wounded at the Battle of Dunkirk. Robert limps from this wound, but only when he feels “like a wounded man.” His identity is in constant flux throughout the course of the novel as Stella’s investigation of his potential espionage unfolds. Robert’s fascist sympathies are due to a combination of his wounding at Dunkirk and his growing up under the rule of his authoritarian mother and the example of his emasculated father.
Harrison: Harrison is a counterspy for England. His eyes are described as being uneven so that he gives the uncanny impression of looking at people with both separate eyes at once, or of looking at them twice. He is a quiet man, and his “emotional idiocy” leads him to making uncomfortable and brash statements through the veiled double-speak of spies and counterspies. He sees “no behavior as being apart from motive, and any motive as worth examining twice.” At the end of the novel, he reveals that his first name is Robert.
Roderick Rodney: Roderick is Stella’s son. He is a young soldier but is still in England, training, over the course of most of the novel. Roderick becomes a soldier because that is what young men in his time do, rather than out of any particular patriotic fervor. Stella worries that he is too emotionally distant, and indeed he makes no effort to maintain an emotional relationship with any besides his mother with the exception of his friend Fred, a fellow soldier (who we never actually see in the novel), for whom Roderick demonstrates an almost hero-worshipping devotion.
Louie Lewis: Louie is a twenty-seven year old working-class woman looking for a model on which to base her life. She is alone in London: her husband, Tom, is away at war and her parents were killed by a bomb in her hometown of Seale-on-Sea. Flirtatious, flighty, and credulous, Louie is constantly seeking human contact as a means to form her own identity.
Ernestine Kelway: Robert’s loquacious and busy widowed sister
Mrs. Kelway (“Muttikins”): Robert’s authoritarian mother
Cousin Nettie: Cousin Francis’s widow, who pretends to be mad so that she can live in exile at the madhouse Wisteria Lodge rather than return to her late husband’s house
Colonel Pole: one of Stella’s estranged ex-in-laws, a mourner at Cousin Francis’s funeral.
Fred: Roderick’s best friend and fellow soldier
Tom: Louie’s husband, off at war through most of the book, dies by the end
Victor: Roderick’s father, died in World War I
Both are willing to have sex outside their monogamous relationships for monogamy’s sake. Louie carries on her adulterous affairs because she feels closer to her husband with any man than she does with no man. Stella ultimately offers herself sexually to Harrison to try and protect the man she actually loves, Robert.
Both are mothers who lie to their sons about the sons’ fathers. In both cases, the mother is making the father look better than he is. However, Louie is also making herself look better by claiming that Thomas Victor’s father is her husband, whereas Stella is accepting the blame for adultery that she didn’t commit in her lie to her son. Whether or not this makes her look worse is a matter of perspective—yes, she looks guilty, but she rejects the role of a victimized wife (which she really is).
Both are involved in espionage, Robert being a nazi spy and Harrison being a counterspy for England. Furthermore, both are betraying their home country—Robert by spying for Germany, Harrison by trying to buy Stella’s sexual favors with his influence as a counterspy.
Harrison has an uneven gaze with his off-balance eyes; Robert has an uneven gait because of his limp.
Both are named Robert.
Neither one has a proper home that we know about, and where they go when they are not with Stella is a mystery. Maud Ellmann argues that this means neither one is a proper “character” by the standards of realism, a deliberate move on Bowen’s part.
They have very similar sounding names—at Cousin Francis’s funeral, Colonel Pole accidentally calls Roderick Robert.
Roderick looks “more like himself” in Robert’s dressing gown.
Robert believes in fascism because he thinks people can’t handle freedom. Roderick eagerly accepts his destiny to be a landowner at Mount Morris, and Stella is relieved that her son has such a script laid out for him rather than being free to be nothing.
Both live duplicitous lives, Robert as a German spy in London and Cousin Nettie as a sane woman who feigns insanity.
Both are trying to establish gender identities by rejecting certain gender roles. Robert is not honoring his fatherland and running a household, but he tells Stella that being a spy in secret makes him a man again, meaning that he is a man, but only in secret. Cousin Nettie tries and fails to be a proper wife to Francis, and only is able to settle down and establish her own domestic space by feigning madness and leaving her married house for good.
Time also appears foregrounded in an existential sense, particularly in relation to Stella and Roderick. Stella is constantly conflicted by “the fatal connection between the past and the future having broken before her time. It had been Stella, her generation, who had broken the link”. Once he learns he will inherit Mount Morris, Roderick appears often planning, discussing or simply musing over his own future at the house. Finally, the novel closes with a projection into the future after Louie’s son is born and the war is over: “the projected English future and the rejected Irish future [are] both figured as pacific in the repeated figure of the three swans.”
Finally, time is foregrounded in the materialization of daily life events. Characters are usually pressed for time in the streets and, particularly for those involved in espionage and plotting activities, every minute is essential. Consequently, we may find several passages in which a number of characters (Stella, Harrison, Louie and Roderick among others) express their reluctance to waste their time or are heard discussing that concept. One should also note that time is meticulously measured during Stella’s meetings with Harrison.
, in which you are what you are perceived to be.” On his part, Roderick changes and becomes more mature and responsible after inheriting Mount Morris. Stella’s exploration of Robert’s identity, one of the narrative pillars of the plot, remains open until immediately before his death, where he finally unveils his political views and philosophy of life.
becomes prominent (usually in connection with the war) mostly when seen from outside the countryside. The characters that do leave the city to go either to Mount Morris, in Ireland, or to Holme Dene, in the Midlands
, think of their country in rather gloomy terms. Except for reports provided by the narration, the consequences of the war upon the country are seen chiefly mainly from the outside too. On the surface, London during the Blitz is not particularly characterized by strong displays of nationalism
; instead, life the present is celebrated by the imminence of the possibility of being killed during the bombings. However, the actions of the two main male characters seem to be motivated by their relationship with the nation. While Harrison tries to put an end to Robert’s act of treason to the country, the latter charges against [nationalism] and national pride as a reason to fight the war: “‘what do you mean? Country?⎯there are no more countries left; nothing but names.”
plays an essential role in the book, as well as the disclosure of the concealed identities of the spies and intelligence agents. On her part, Stella is also concerned by her progressive detachment from her son Roderick and begins wondering if she in fact knows him as she thinks she does.
Roderick is determined throughout the narration to unbury the real story of Victor’s adultery, Cousin Francis’ actual reason for visiting to Britain and Nettie’s motivation to check herself in at Wisteria Lodge.
Stella becomes especially sensitive towards the way certain events are narrated, such as her divorce. “Bowen makes it very clear that it is not the author of the Heat of the Day who is constructing these two pasts, but Stella herself.” She also emphasizes that story-telling is the mechanism we have to perceive and remember the past: “‘Whoever’s the story had been, I let it be mine. I let it ride, and more⎯it came to be my story, and I stuck to it’.” One of the strongest arguments Robert uses to justify his act of treachery is a critique of public and official discourses: “Don’t you understand all that nation-related language is dead currency?”
Houses are described, in contrast to Stella’s London flats, as removed and self-contained locations that provide perspective to events happening in London. Holme Dene, Robert's family house in the Midlands, gives off an aura of mystery and deceit: “though antique in appearance, [it] was not actually old. The oak beams, to be perfectly honest, were imitations.” Moreover, it is dominated by a rigid hierarchy headed by Robert’s mother: it was “Mrs. Kelway’s house.” Finally, in the environment of the “man-eating house” Robert’s masculinity is fetishized due to the fact that he is the only son and male family member left alive. "Contrasted to Holme Dene is the traditional sanctity and loveliness of Mount Morris" Roderick inherits Mount Morris, a country house in Ireland from which Stella is told about an important advance of the British army: “‘Montgomery is through!... It’s the war turning’.”
London
. The action in the novel is located in London for the most part, which is contrasted by some of the characters’ visits to the countryside. Material destruction or detailed descriptions of the urban landscape are generally absent. Nonetheless, Louie, like many other characters, is stuck in the city due to the current events: “She now… never left London, having been left with no place to go.”
, the violence of war is usually absent from the narration: "two years after the Blitz, Londoners, no longer traumatised by nightly raids, were growing acclimatised to ruin." Rather than a period of material destruction, war functions instead as a circumstance that alters normality in people’s lives. Stella confesses to Robert: “‘we are friends of circumstance⎯war, this isolation, this atmosphere in which everything goes on and nothing’s said.” There are, however, some isolated passages that deal with the bombings of London: “Never had any season been more felt… Out of mists of morning charred by the smoke from ruins each day rose to a height of unmisty glitter; between the last of sunset and first note of the siren the darkening glassy tenseness of evening was drawn fine.”
Mirrors also underscore Stella’s concerns about her own appearance and her identity as perceived by others: “She carried the lamp to meet one of its own reflections in a mirror, and, lifting it, studied the romantic face that was still hers.”
wrote an adaptation for television directed by Christopher Morahan
in 1989, starring Patricia Hodge
as Stella, Michael York
as Robert and Michael Gambon
as Harrison.
Bowen, Elizabeth. The Heat of the Day, First Anchor Books 2002 edition. ISBN 0-89966-259-5
Corcoran, Neil. "War’s Stories: The Heat of the Day and its Contexts." Elizabeth Bowen: The Enforced Return. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003. ISBN 0-19-818690-8
Ellmann, Maud. Elizabeth Bowen, A Shadow Across the Page. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2003. ISBN 978-0-7486-1703-6
Piette, Adam. Imagination at War: British Fiction and Poetry, 1939-1945. London: Papermac, 1995. ISBN 978-0-19-818690-8
Elizabeth Bowen
Elizabeth Dorothea Cole Bowen, CBE was an Irish novelist and short story writer.-Life:Elizabeth Bowen was born on 7 June 1899 at 15 Herbert Place in Dublin, Ireland and was baptized in the nearby St Stephen's Church on Upper Mount Street...
, first published in 1948 in Great Britain
Great Britain
Great Britain or Britain is an island situated to the northwest of Continental Europe. It is the ninth largest island in the world, and the largest European island, as well as the largest of the British Isles...
, and in 1949 in the United States of America.
The Heat of the Day revolves around the relationship between Stella Rodney and her lover Robert Kelway, with the interfering presence of Harrison in the tense years following the Blitz
Blitz
-Armed conflict:*The Blitz, the German aerial attacks on Britain in WWII. The name Blitz was subsequently applied to many individual bombing campaigns or attacks.*Blitzkrieg, the "lightning war", a strategy of World War 2 Germany-People:...
in London
London
London is the capital city of :England and the :United Kingdom, the largest metropolitan area in the United Kingdom, and the largest urban zone in the European Union by most measures. Located on the River Thames, London has been a major settlement for two millennia, its history going back to its...
. Harrison, a British intelligence agent who is convinced that Robert is a German spy, uses this knowledge to get between the two lovers and ultimately neutralize Robert. Stella finds herself caught between spy and counterspy, and ends up spying on Robert to find out for herself if Harrison's accusations are justified. The narrative reveals the "inextricable knitting together of the individual and the national, the personal and the political."
Summary
The novel opens with an encounter between Louie Lewis, a London factory worker seeking self-identity, and Harrison at an outdoor concert at Regent's ParkRegent's Park
Regent's Park is one of the Royal Parks of London. It is in the north-western part of central London, partly in the City of Westminster and partly in the London Borough of Camden...
. After Harrison rudely leaves Louie he goes to visit Stella in her rented flat. He tells her of his suspicions that her lover, Robert Kelway, is a spy, while proposing that she leaves Robert to become his lover. While she is coping with the possibilities, her son, Roderick, visits her on leave from his army training. In her conversation with her son and the memories of her divorce from his father, Stella begins to doubt if she (or anyone) can ever really know anyone else. Roderick, meanwhile, is ruminating on Mount Morris, the house he has just inherited from an Irish cousin, Francis Morris.
The narration goes on to recount Cousin Francis's visit to his wife, Cousin Nettie, at Wisteria Lodge, a special care house for the elderly and the insane/mad. He is using this visit as an excuse to leave neutral Ireland
Ireland
Ireland is an island to the northwest of continental Europe. It is the third-largest island in Europe and the twentieth-largest island on Earth...
and reach Britain in order to offer his services to the Allied effort. He dies just before the reunion with his wife. At Francis's lawyer's request, Stella attends the funeral, and is told that her son will inherit the estate, even though Roderick and Francis have never met. Here, Harrison, who is unknown to anyone at the funeral, and Stella meet for the first time. Harrison insists on accompanying her on the train back to London.
The narration then recounts Stella and Robert's first meeting two years ago and their subsequent romance. Back in the narrative present, Stella shows an interest in meeting Robert's family and so they go to Robert's family house, Holme Dene.
At Holme Dene, Stella meets Robert's authoritarian mother, his managerial sister, Ernestine, and their wards, Robert's other sister's two children. His mother reluctantly allows Robert to show Stella his room, in which is a collection of photographs of Robert throughout his life. Robert tells Stella about his troubled relationship with his emasculated father. That evening they return to London.
Harrison and Stella meet again. Harrison points out to her that in visiting his family, Stella is accepting the possibility that Robert is a spy. Harrison reiterates his insinuations that she should leave Robert and start a new relationship with Harrison. Stella does not accept his offer to stay the night.
The narration jumps back to Louie. Louie has made friends with Connie, an air warden. Connie and Louie are both newspaper fanatics; Connie is suspicious of everything she reads, while Louie believes everything she reads.
Returning to the main plot, Stella leaves for Ireland to visit Mount Morris and take care of affairs for Roderick. While there, she decides to confront Robert with Harrison's accusations. Robert and Ernestine pick her up in a car at the train station. After dropping Ernestine off, Stella finally asks Robert directly if he is a spy. Robert is angry that she could entertain such an idea, and is hurt that she has been harboring such thoughts for two months. Then he proposes marriage. She says no, after which they discuss their relationship and Harrison.
Roderick, who feels guilty inheriting Mount Morris without Cousin Nettie's permission, goes to visit her at Wisteria Lodge. In the course of their conversation, it becomes obvious that Cousin Nettie is not really mad, as she is pretending to be. Her feigned insanity is her excuse to never return to Mount Morris, which she hates. Nettie reveals the true story of Roderick's parents' divorce. Everyone assumed Stella was the guilty adulteress, but in fact Victor (Roderick's father) left her for a nurse. Roderick is stunned by the revelation and calls his mother to ask her about it as soon as he can.
Stella receives Roderick's call during one of Harrison's visits just before they leave for dinner. It prompts Stella to share her history with Harrison, which she hasn't done for many other people. At dinner, Harrison confirms that Robert fulfilled his predictions about exactly how Robert would change his behavior if Stella ever revealed that he was being watched. Louie happens to be at the restaurant and makes up an excuse to talk with them. In coded language in front of Louie Stella offers herself sexually to Harrison in exchange for Robert's safety. Harrison rejects the offer, and Stella and Louie leave the restaurant together. Louie is attracted to Stella, and tries to describe her to Connie.
Robert goes to Holme Dene because the family has received an offer to buy the house. Mrs. Kelway and Ernestine refuse to make a decision without him, but clearly he has no real influence. He is tense throughout the scene.
He returns to Stella in London and confesses that he is indeed a spy for the Germans. Robert tries to justify his actions and expounds on his fascist politics. Robert accuses Harrison of interfering in their relationship, which eventually leads to his confession. Although Stella still loves him, their relationship is marred. They know Harrison is waiting outside. Robert insists on leaving via the roof.
A couple days later Stella goes to visit Roderick and reveals that Robert is dead. Back in London, she gives a report to the coroner's office in which she comes out looking like a femme fatale
Femme fatale
A femme fatale is a mysterious and seductive woman whose charms ensnare her lovers in bonds of irresistible desire, often leading them into compromising, dangerous, and deadly situations. She is an archetype of literature and art...
and Robert's treachery is hidden. Louie reads the report in the papers and (mistakenly) believes her first impression of Stella was wrong. The narrative gives a sweeping overview of the next few years of the war. Harrison visits Stella again years later during another bombing. He tells her that his first name is Robert. Their resolution of their relationship is left ambiguous. Louie gets pregnant in the course of her extramarital affairs. Connie takes care of her, and Tom dies in combat without ever knowing. Louie leaves London to give birth to her son, Thomas Victor. She retires with him to her hometown, Seale-on-Sea, with the intent to raise him as if he were her heroic husband's child.
Main Characters
Stella Rodney: Stella is the novel’s protagonist, an attractive, sophisticated, and independent woman. She is middle-aged, but is also “young-looking—most because of the impression she gave of still being on happy sensuous terms with life.” She works for a government agency called XYD, and the sensitive nature of her job leads her to be guarded. She is not inquisitive because she does not want to answer questions herself. Her patriotism is shaped by the fact that her brothers died serving in WWI. Stella has clear class prejudices, being herself descended from (now un-landed) gentry.Robert Kelway: Robert is an attractive man in his late thirties who remains in London during the war after being wounded at the Battle of Dunkirk. Robert limps from this wound, but only when he feels “like a wounded man.” His identity is in constant flux throughout the course of the novel as Stella’s investigation of his potential espionage unfolds. Robert’s fascist sympathies are due to a combination of his wounding at Dunkirk and his growing up under the rule of his authoritarian mother and the example of his emasculated father.
Harrison: Harrison is a counterspy for England. His eyes are described as being uneven so that he gives the uncanny impression of looking at people with both separate eyes at once, or of looking at them twice. He is a quiet man, and his “emotional idiocy” leads him to making uncomfortable and brash statements through the veiled double-speak of spies and counterspies. He sees “no behavior as being apart from motive, and any motive as worth examining twice.” At the end of the novel, he reveals that his first name is Robert.
Roderick Rodney: Roderick is Stella’s son. He is a young soldier but is still in England, training, over the course of most of the novel. Roderick becomes a soldier because that is what young men in his time do, rather than out of any particular patriotic fervor. Stella worries that he is too emotionally distant, and indeed he makes no effort to maintain an emotional relationship with any besides his mother with the exception of his friend Fred, a fellow soldier (who we never actually see in the novel), for whom Roderick demonstrates an almost hero-worshipping devotion.
Louie Lewis: Louie is a twenty-seven year old working-class woman looking for a model on which to base her life. She is alone in London: her husband, Tom, is away at war and her parents were killed by a bomb in her hometown of Seale-on-Sea. Flirtatious, flighty, and credulous, Louie is constantly seeking human contact as a means to form her own identity.
Minor characters
Connie: Louie’s best friend and an avid and suspicious reader of newspapersErnestine Kelway: Robert’s loquacious and busy widowed sister
Mrs. Kelway (“Muttikins”): Robert’s authoritarian mother
Cousin Nettie: Cousin Francis’s widow, who pretends to be mad so that she can live in exile at the madhouse Wisteria Lodge rather than return to her late husband’s house
Colonel Pole: one of Stella’s estranged ex-in-laws, a mourner at Cousin Francis’s funeral.
Absent Characters
Cousin Francis: dead Irishman who bequeathed his ancestral home to RoderickFred: Roderick’s best friend and fellow soldier
Tom: Louie’s husband, off at war through most of the book, dies by the end
Victor: Roderick’s father, died in World War I
Stella and Louie
Stella and Louie are displaced women in London. Louie is from Seale-on-Sea and only came to London to be with her husband who is now away at war. Stella rents her flats and all her furniture, she has no place to call hers, no permanent home, and not even any things (all her furntiture etc. is in storage somewhere.)Both are willing to have sex outside their monogamous relationships for monogamy’s sake. Louie carries on her adulterous affairs because she feels closer to her husband with any man than she does with no man. Stella ultimately offers herself sexually to Harrison to try and protect the man she actually loves, Robert.
Both are mothers who lie to their sons about the sons’ fathers. In both cases, the mother is making the father look better than he is. However, Louie is also making herself look better by claiming that Thomas Victor’s father is her husband, whereas Stella is accepting the blame for adultery that she didn’t commit in her lie to her son. Whether or not this makes her look worse is a matter of perspective—yes, she looks guilty, but she rejects the role of a victimized wife (which she really is).
Robert and Harrison
Both are attracted to Stella, and their simultaneous vying for her person (sexually and psychologically) is central to the plot.Both are involved in espionage, Robert being a nazi spy and Harrison being a counterspy for England. Furthermore, both are betraying their home country—Robert by spying for Germany, Harrison by trying to buy Stella’s sexual favors with his influence as a counterspy.
Harrison has an uneven gaze with his off-balance eyes; Robert has an uneven gait because of his limp.
Both are named Robert.
Neither one has a proper home that we know about, and where they go when they are not with Stella is a mystery. Maud Ellmann argues that this means neither one is a proper “character” by the standards of realism, a deliberate move on Bowen’s part.
Roderick and Robert
Both are men that Stella loves, one as a son and the other as a lover.They have very similar sounding names—at Cousin Francis’s funeral, Colonel Pole accidentally calls Roderick Robert.
Roderick looks “more like himself” in Robert’s dressing gown.
Robert believes in fascism because he thinks people can’t handle freedom. Roderick eagerly accepts his destiny to be a landowner at Mount Morris, and Stella is relieved that her son has such a script laid out for him rather than being free to be nothing.
Cousin Nettie and Robert
Both come from houses that affect them negatively: Cousin Nettie from Mount Morris, where generations of Anglo-Irish women went mad or nearly mad, and Robert from Holme Dene, a “man eating house."Both live duplicitous lives, Robert as a German spy in London and Cousin Nettie as a sane woman who feigns insanity.
Both are trying to establish gender identities by rejecting certain gender roles. Robert is not honoring his fatherland and running a household, but he tells Stella that being a spy in secret makes him a man again, meaning that he is a man, but only in secret. Cousin Nettie tries and fails to be a proper wife to Francis, and only is able to settle down and establish her own domestic space by feigning madness and leaving her married house for good.
Time
Time is essential in the novel and its presence is manifested in a variety of ways. As the general temporal location of events, the present is determined by the irruption of the war in the lives of the characters and is understood, in that context, as a rupture between the past and the future: “vacuum as to future was offset by vacuum as to past.”Time also appears foregrounded in an existential sense, particularly in relation to Stella and Roderick. Stella is constantly conflicted by “the fatal connection between the past and the future having broken before her time. It had been Stella, her generation, who had broken the link”. Once he learns he will inherit Mount Morris, Roderick appears often planning, discussing or simply musing over his own future at the house. Finally, the novel closes with a projection into the future after Louie’s son is born and the war is over: “the projected English future and the rejected Irish future [are] both figured as pacific in the repeated figure of the three swans.”
Finally, time is foregrounded in the materialization of daily life events. Characters are usually pressed for time in the streets and, particularly for those involved in espionage and plotting activities, every minute is essential. Consequently, we may find several passages in which a number of characters (Stella, Harrison, Louie and Roderick among others) express their reluctance to waste their time or are heard discussing that concept. One should also note that time is meticulously measured during Stella’s meetings with Harrison.
Identity
The novel “works towards an affirmation of the undecidability of identity,” which is explored from several angles. Evidently, every character that plays a role as a spy in the novel presents at least a two-sided identity. Additionally, Stella and Louie are painstakingly concerned with their self-image and constantly wonder how others perceive them: the novel “is governed by an almost Berkeleyan metaphysicsMetaphysics
Metaphysics is a branch of philosophy concerned with explaining the fundamental nature of being and the world, although the term is not easily defined. Traditionally, metaphysics attempts to answer two basic questions in the broadest possible terms:...
, in which you are what you are perceived to be.” On his part, Roderick changes and becomes more mature and responsible after inheriting Mount Morris. Stella’s exploration of Robert’s identity, one of the narrative pillars of the plot, remains open until immediately before his death, where he finally unveils his political views and philosophy of life.
Freedom
Stella’s anxiety about her own freedom determines much of her actions and thoughts; coaxed by Harrison to expose Robert, she is trapped in a plot that encroaches upon her freedom whether she decides to give him away or not. Besides, Robert’s fascist views on freedom negate the possibility of individual freedom: “‘Who could want to be free when they can be strong? Freedom, what a slaves’ yammer!… We must have law⎯if necessary let it break us’.”Nation
The idea of BritainUnited Kingdom
The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern IrelandIn the United Kingdom and Dependencies, other languages have been officially recognised as legitimate autochthonous languages under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages...
becomes prominent (usually in connection with the war) mostly when seen from outside the countryside. The characters that do leave the city to go either to Mount Morris, in Ireland, or to Holme Dene, in the Midlands
English Midlands
The Midlands, or the English Midlands, is the traditional name for the area comprising central England that broadly corresponds to the early medieval Kingdom of Mercia. It borders Southern England, Northern England, East Anglia and Wales. Its largest city is Birmingham, and it was an important...
, think of their country in rather gloomy terms. Except for reports provided by the narration, the consequences of the war upon the country are seen chiefly mainly from the outside too. On the surface, London during the Blitz is not particularly characterized by strong displays of nationalism
Nationalism
Nationalism is a political ideology that involves a strong identification of a group of individuals with a political entity defined in national terms, i.e. a nation. In the 'modernist' image of the nation, it is nationalism that creates national identity. There are various definitions for what...
; instead, life the present is celebrated by the imminence of the possibility of being killed during the bombings. However, the actions of the two main male characters seem to be motivated by their relationship with the nation. While Harrison tries to put an end to Robert’s act of treason to the country, the latter charges against [nationalism] and national pride as a reason to fight the war: “‘what do you mean? Country?⎯there are no more countries left; nothing but names.”
Knowing/Knowledge
The novel poses general questions such as whether or not one can know somebody completely and whether two people can know a third person in exactly the same way, as illustrated by the triangle Stella-Robert-Harrison. Specifically, one of the main tensions in the book lies in the degree of knowledge that each of the male characters may or may not have about the other, using Stella as intermediary: “‘If you mean Robert,’ she flashed out, “he doesn’t know you’.” As expected, propagandaPropaganda
Propaganda is a form of communication that is aimed at influencing the attitude of a community toward some cause or position so as to benefit oneself or one's group....
plays an essential role in the book, as well as the disclosure of the concealed identities of the spies and intelligence agents. On her part, Stella is also concerned by her progressive detachment from her son Roderick and begins wondering if she in fact knows him as she thinks she does.
Roderick is determined throughout the narration to unbury the real story of Victor’s adultery, Cousin Francis’ actual reason for visiting to Britain and Nettie’s motivation to check herself in at Wisteria Lodge.
Narratives
In The Heat of the Day "everyone seems trapped in someone's else's story." Relationships of any type become dependent on language, on what is talked about and how: “The ‘story’ which Harrison tells Stella about Robert, and then the stories which this novel tells us about what both Stella and Harrison do with that story have their direct public consequences.” Indirect language and code are often used, as is to be expected in a novel involving [espionage]. “White information and propaganda,” two different forms of telling, are discussed as to the way they are produced and consumed by Louie and Connie. Additionally, the war in London gains a fictitious dimension, seen “as story-telling” and as if “out of a thriller.”Stella becomes especially sensitive towards the way certain events are narrated, such as her divorce. “Bowen makes it very clear that it is not the author of the Heat of the Day who is constructing these two pasts, but Stella herself.” She also emphasizes that story-telling is the mechanism we have to perceive and remember the past: “‘Whoever’s the story had been, I let it be mine. I let it ride, and more⎯it came to be my story, and I stuck to it’.” One of the strongest arguments Robert uses to justify his act of treachery is a critique of public and official discourses: “Don’t you understand all that nation-related language is dead currency?”
Place
Stella does not settle down in a specific flat, but moves from one to another, which symbolizes the fleetingness of her life. Descriptions of her flats often seem be a reflection of her attitude at given moments: before receiving a crucial visit from Harrison, “she had left the street door unlatched and the door of her flat, at the head of the stairs, ajar.” Like a good mysterious spy, "Harrison himself has no address."Houses are described, in contrast to Stella’s London flats, as removed and self-contained locations that provide perspective to events happening in London. Holme Dene, Robert's family house in the Midlands, gives off an aura of mystery and deceit: “though antique in appearance, [it] was not actually old. The oak beams, to be perfectly honest, were imitations.” Moreover, it is dominated by a rigid hierarchy headed by Robert’s mother: it was “Mrs. Kelway’s house.” Finally, in the environment of the “man-eating house” Robert’s masculinity is fetishized due to the fact that he is the only son and male family member left alive. "Contrasted to Holme Dene is the traditional sanctity and loveliness of Mount Morris" Roderick inherits Mount Morris, a country house in Ireland from which Stella is told about an important advance of the British army: “‘Montgomery is through!... It’s the war turning’.”
London
London
London is the capital city of :England and the :United Kingdom, the largest metropolitan area in the United Kingdom, and the largest urban zone in the European Union by most measures. Located on the River Thames, London has been a major settlement for two millennia, its history going back to its...
. The action in the novel is located in London for the most part, which is contrasted by some of the characters’ visits to the countryside. Material destruction or detailed descriptions of the urban landscape are generally absent. Nonetheless, Louie, like many other characters, is stuck in the city due to the current events: “She now… never left London, having been left with no place to go.”
War
Even though events occur mainly World War IIWorld War II
World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...
, the violence of war is usually absent from the narration: "two years after the Blitz, Londoners, no longer traumatised by nightly raids, were growing acclimatised to ruin." Rather than a period of material destruction, war functions instead as a circumstance that alters normality in people’s lives. Stella confesses to Robert: “‘we are friends of circumstance⎯war, this isolation, this atmosphere in which everything goes on and nothing’s said.” There are, however, some isolated passages that deal with the bombings of London: “Never had any season been more felt… Out of mists of morning charred by the smoke from ruins each day rose to a height of unmisty glitter; between the last of sunset and first note of the siren the darkening glassy tenseness of evening was drawn fine.”
Clocks, watches and natural time
The importance of time and its measure is foregrounded by the presence of clocks in the novel, especially in the actions where Stella is involved: “It was some minutes since she had heard eight strike.” Time is also seen as measured by natural processes: “nothing spoke but the clock... the petals detached themselves from a rose in the bowl.” There is a particular emphasis on time during the meetings between spies-lovers: “even her wrist watch seemed to belie time,” “their two wristwatches… never perfectly synchronising.” Also, time in the isolated Holme Dene seems to work in a unique way: “the grandfather clock, on the other hand, must have stood there always⎯time had clogged its ticking.”Photographs
In Stella’s flats, photographs emphasize the importance of the past and the problematic of representation. We are told that there “were two photographs, not framed yet⎯the younger of the two men was Roderick, Stella’s twenty-year-old son.” Photographs of Robert in Holme Dene seem to contribute to the construction of Robert’s identity: “sixty or seventy photographs, upward from snapshots to crowded groups, had been passepartouted or framed… All of the photographs featured Robert.”Windows and mirrors
By making Stella look through windows and into mirrors, the author highlights the importance of perceiving the environment, most importantly during scenes involving plotting and espionage: “Over the photographs, hung a mirror⎯into which, on hearing Harrison’s footstep actually on the stairs, she looked; not at herself but with the idea of studying, at just one more remove from reality, the door of this room opening behind her.” Her looking through windows dramatizes the isolation and partial safety in which the citizens lived through the Blitz at their homes, and it also symbolizes the tensions between her self-image and how she may be regarded from the outside.Mirrors also underscore Stella’s concerns about her own appearance and her identity as perceived by others: “She carried the lamp to meet one of its own reflections in a mirror, and, lifting it, studied the romantic face that was still hers.”
Newspapers
Newspapers are the main vehicle for information and propaganda dissemination. Additionally, the novel problematizes the way they may determine people’s perception of the war: “Bowen’s point is that these two ways of reacting to newspapers are fundamentally similar: one brashly independent-minded, the other fragilely seeking for a sense of self, but both caught up in the war as story.” In particular, Louie is seen to be profoundly affected by the discourse of newspapers: she “now felt badly about any part of herself which in any way did not fit into the papers’ picture… [she] came to love newspapers physically.”TV Adaptation
Playwright and script writer Harold PinterHarold Pinter
Harold Pinter, CH, CBE was a Nobel Prize–winning English playwright and screenwriter. One of the most influential modern British dramatists, his writing career spanned more than 50 years. His best-known plays include The Birthday Party , The Homecoming , and Betrayal , each of which he adapted to...
wrote an adaptation for television directed by Christopher Morahan
Christopher Morahan
Christopher Thomas Morahan CBE is an English stage and television director and producing manager.-Training and career:Morahan was born in London in 1929, and was educated at Highgate School...
in 1989, starring Patricia Hodge
Patricia Hodge
Patricia Ann Hodge is an English actor.-Early life:The daughter of the Royal Hotel owner/manager Eric and his wife Marion , Hodge attended Wintringham Girls' Grammar School on Weelsby Avenue in Grimsby and then St...
as Stella, Michael York
Michael York (actor)
Michael York, OBE is an English actor.-Early life:York was born in Fulmer, Gerrards Cross, Buckinghamshire, the son of Florence Edith May , a musician; and Joseph Gwynne Johnson, a Llandovery born Welsh ex-Royal Artillery British Army officer and executive with Marks and Spencer department stores...
as Robert and Michael Gambon
Michael Gambon
Sir Michael John Gambon, CBE is an Irish actor who has worked in theatre, television and film. A highly respected theatre actor, Gambon is recognised for his roles as Philip Marlowe in the BBC television serial The Singing Detective, as Jules Maigret in the 1990s ITV serial Maigret, and as...
as Harrison.
Sources
Bennett, Andrew and Royle, Nicholas. Elizabeth Bowen and the Dissolution of the Novel: Still Lives. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 1995. ISBN 0-312-12048-6Bowen, Elizabeth. The Heat of the Day, First Anchor Books 2002 edition. ISBN 0-89966-259-5
Corcoran, Neil. "War’s Stories: The Heat of the Day and its Contexts." Elizabeth Bowen: The Enforced Return. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003. ISBN 0-19-818690-8
Ellmann, Maud. Elizabeth Bowen, A Shadow Across the Page. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2003. ISBN 978-0-7486-1703-6
Piette, Adam. Imagination at War: British Fiction and Poetry, 1939-1945. London: Papermac, 1995. ISBN 978-0-19-818690-8