SOURCE: "Elizabeth Bowen's The Last September: The Loss of the Past and the Modern Consciousness," in Durham University Journal, Vol. 82, No. 2, July, 1990, pp. 205-16.

In the following essay, Coates examines the narrative tension in The Last September in terms of the cultural shift that occurred after World War I.

The existence of a seemingly obvious frame of reference for The Last September may mislead the critic. Given the intrinsic interest of the Irish "Troubles" and of the last phase of the Protestant Ascendancy, the historical setting of The Last September, it is tempting to see them as the defining factors of the book's meaning. The strongly autobiographical derivation of the novel which its author herself emphasized ("I was the child of the house from which Danielstown derives"), seems to enforce attention to the Anglo-Irish predicament. As a result critics have often approached the novel as if called upon...