The Death of the Heart is Elizabeth Bowen's sixth novel and it was one of her most successful works when it came out in 1938. It encapsulates several recurrent themes of Bowen's writing and also shows some of her subtly experimental techniques which only recently came to be evaluated and re-assessed by critics. Bowen's development of the plot and apparently conventional, even mannered style, are only the surface of her delicate and multiform exploration of consciousness.
Divided into three parts, “The World”, “The Flesh” and “The Devil” (which allude to the temptations as described in the Bible, Ephesians 2, 1-9), the novel revolves around the figure of Portia, a sixteen-year old girl, who after the death …
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Citation: Prudente, Teresa. "The Death of the Heart". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 09 September 2008 [https://staging.litencyc.com/php/sworks.php?rec=true&UID=10655, accessed 22 November 2024.]
