Daniel V. Fraustino's The Demon Lover

The main character of this short story, Mrs. Drover, is traumatized after the Blitz, the catastrophic aerial bombardment which took place over London between 1940 and 1941. Because of her psychological instability, Mrs. Drover confuses World War II with World War I. Returning home to collect some personal belongings, she remembers her long-missing fiancé to the point where one does not know if this is a gothic story that has some supernatural happenings or simply a story of one character's neurotic mental state.[1] Critics like Daniel V. Fraustino are determined that this story is not about the trauma of World War I and World War II but a “murder mystery of high drama”[2]. It ought to be underlined that the essay you are reading is aiming to analyze "The Demon Lover" on a more psychological/psychoanalytical basis unlike what Fraustino did… Nevertheless, he is very right in last paragraph of his essay saying that this psychological interpretation having “its own kind of special appeal,”[2]). Indeed, this approach is
It is due to rain; there is a certain stress in the air and as the main character enters the street covered with clouds, one can sense that she is having this very same tension, the suppression the weather has. Thus, Mrs. Drover, a “prosaic” woman goes back to her London house “to look for several things,”[3] but what “things”? These “things” are unknown to the reader, as it is indeed unknown to Mrs. Drover herself and this is why she has a suppressed feeling around, a sense of waiting, the tension before the rain… She is indeed going there to confront the house that she had left since war has started; in some other sense she is going to face herself in the image of the house to understand what kind of damage has been done while experiencing the measure of this damage deep inside. This personification theme linked between Mrs. Drover and the house, is one of the most important elements of the