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Allegory
Flashbacks
Explanation and Analysis—After Twenty-Five Years:
Roughly halfway through "The Demon Lover," the narrative dives into a flashback that immerses readers in Mrs. Drover's final moments with her fiancé. Though this flashback is somewhat abrupt, the narrative does signal the shift, as Mrs. Drover thinks disjointedly to herself before trailing off:
'The hour arranged...My God,' she said, 'what hour? How should I...? After twenty-five years...'
In this passage, Mrs. Drover tries to make sense of the letter she has just read, which indicates that she can "expect" her fiancé "at the hour arranged." This throws her into an apparent state of confusion, and it's not quite clear in the narrative whether or not she knows what the letter is talking about. The questions she poses herself here suggest that she has no idea what's going on, but the last phrase—"After twenty-five years..."—implies otherwise, indicating that she at least has an inkling that the letter is from her former fiancé, whom she hasn't seen in 25 years. The next paragraph begins with a flashback:
The young girl talking to the soldier in the garden had not ever completely seen his face. It was dark; they were saying goodbye under a tree.
Although the narrative has partially signaled the shift into the past with Mrs. Drover's mention of 25 years having passed, the beginning of this flashback is still pretty sudden. The effect is jarring, as readers are suddenly tossed into a completely different scene. This sense of disorientation mimics Mrs. Drover's own feelings of confusion and fear. In the same way that readers feel destabilized even if they have at least some contextual grounding, Mrs. Drover is perplexed by the letter despite the fact that she seems to know—on an intuitive level, at least—exactly what it's referencing. Furthermore, the flashback provides insight into the nature of Mrs. Drover's relationship with her former fiancé, making it clear that although he continues to haunt her thoughts, she never seemed to know him all that well, given that she never "completely" saw his face.
Related Themes:
