Elizabeth Hardwick
ELIZABETH BOWEN'S FICTION
The mere thought of criticizing Elizabeth Bowen's work
makes one feel like one of the disaffected scoundrels in her novels who
induce the death of the heart. The temptation to think of this author
as she thinks of her heroines is almost irresistible. Her sunny reputa–
tion invites the cheerful, impressionistic remark; disinclination, is rude;
the air here is mild, PQlite, congratulatory. (She's ,not so perfect as
Jane Austen, nor so original as Virginia Woolf, but how glad we are,
etc.) Miss Bowen inspires confidence : the popular novelist, recently
elected a Companion of the British Empire, with a London home
in Regent's Park and a family house in County Cork, a sensitive, care–
ful writer whose fineness of feeling is neatly ruffled with wit and laced
with snobbery. E. Sackville-West speaks of her cleverness, her fresh
and startling style; V. S. Pritchett thinks of her as a poet.
To go on from there is much more difficult. First, there is the
well-bred woman of sensibility, mod<;rately elegant, sensitive to dif–
ferences
in
class, moralistic about taste, courtesy and fidelity; but
there is another Elizabeth Bowen, a sturdy, determined writer, a
romantic feminist who serves up a perepnial dish: the tragedy of the
Fine Girl and the Impossible Man. These are obviously women's
books. The surface is urbane and complex, but unu:;;ually evasive, as
though it were in some kind of secret struggle with the franker soul
which has devised these stories of an innocent woman's maltreatment
by the reprobate, the mysterious man, the weak or unfaithful lover.
This theme, this bold heart throb, perhaps contributes to the
popu~
larity of the novels, and no doubt the decorative writing, the slow,
oblique presentation of character are peculiarly necessary-without
the latter adornments the sophisticated reader might reasonably ques–
tion the whole matter. The style-Henry James? Virginia Woolf and
