#1  She describes it as “shut-up,” “dead,” and dusty  She depicts the air outside as “steamy” and “humid” and “yellow”  She also mentions towering clouds that precede a storm

#2  The letter makes her tense; she wonders who could have possible left it, since the house was closesd up

#3  She looks at herself in the mirror

#4  The flashback describes her last meeting with her fiance, a soldier going off to war

#5  She acts and feels as if she is being pursued

#6  The description creates an atmosphere of foreboding and the suggestion that something supernatural might happen

#7  Her reaction suggests that she is a private, pragmatic woman who has led a sheltered and routine life for many years

#8  Her reaction indicates that she was afraid of her fiance and that he had power over her

#9  It suggests that she has blocked out the memory because it is too frightening for her to recall

#10  She was driven off to a fate in which she will continually feel the same fear and feeling of dislocation her fiance originally caused in her

#11  The omniscient narrator offers the reader details to which Mrs. Drover would be insensible  If the story were told in the first person there would be fewer poetic descriptions of the eerie setting

#12  The flashback intensifies the eerie atmosphere of the story by introducing the fiance as a faceless, frightening figure

#13  opinion

#14  Mrs. Drover is dislocated physically because of the war in the same way she was dislocated emotionally after her fiance died  Setting the story in wartime adds to its mood of strangeness and threat

#15  She suffers from the illusion that by behaving as if life is proceeding normally, she can make it proceed normally  Her relationship with the soldier disillusioned her about love, and the was has added to her disillusionment

Literary Elements #1  Bowen creates a scene in which things appear normal but are not  She includes a threat to her main character, and she describes the mysterious letter

Literary Elements #2  The surprise ending either defies the reader’s expectations that Mrs. Drover will get away or fulfills the reader’s worst fears for her  By not revealing what Mrs. Drover’s fears will be, Bowen heightens the suspense even more