'This may not reach you …’: letters as a location of narrative in Elizabeth Bowen’s fiction

Elizabeth Bowen writes in ‘Notes on Writing a Novel’ that ‘[n]othing can happen nowhere. The locale of the happening always colours the happening, and often, to a degree, shapes it’. Letters in Elizabeth Bowen’s novels, however, often occupy a liminal space – a ‘nowhere’, perhaps – they are often lost, and sometimes found. They play an important role in in the narrative of much of her fiction from delayed letters in The Hotel, hidden letters in The Little Girls, to an undeliverable letter in Eva Trout, or Changing Scenes. Lost, delayed, or found, the letters in Bowen’s fiction serve a narrative function; they impart knowledge, or the emotions of the letter writer secure, perhaps, in the knowledge that the letter won’t reach its intended recipient. They provide information about events and characters, and serve often to provide the impetus of the plot (which, according to Bowen, is the essential element of a novel – in fact, as she writes, ‘[t]he Pre-Essential’ element of good fiction.) These are letters which disrupt, and deliberately confuse; their late arrival may lead to misunderstanding and confusion, or might, by the withholding of the name of the narrattee, as in A World of Love, give rise to the emotions of envy and greed. Through a discussion of a number of letters, this paper will trace Bowen’s use of this narrative device, questioning and discussing their relevance to the furtherance of plot, as Bowen continues to experiment with form and function.