Department of Studies in Drama and Pre-1800 English Literature, University of Łódź
Abstract
Set during the midst of the London Blitz, Elizabeth Bowen’s The Heat of the Day revolves
around a narrative of espionage, but unlike many novels from the spy genre, it refuses to
disclose all of its secrets. Instead, the novel’s dense and complex language, which so effectively
expresses the dislocating effects of a city under attack, resists an easy or uncomplicated
reading. This article examines the motif of reading within the novel, which manifests when its
protagonist, Stella Rodney, learns her lover Robert is a Nazi spy. In her efforts to locate proof
of his defection, Stella becomes caught in a recurrent but indeterminable task of rereading
past events, a movement which attempts to remember the past but also foregrounds a
fundamental inability to ever wholly resolve its enigmas. When Stella fails to read her past for
lost clues, she is prevented from viewing the events of her life as a coherent and meaningful
narrative. The novel’s difficult language reflects this lack of resolution, refusing to assimilate
the events it depicts into a straightforward account. With its wartime setting as a disorienting
backdrop, The Heat of the Day undermines the purpose of reading as the discovery of sense
and meaning, producing instead only more questions and mysteries
