SOURCE: "Ambiguous Ghosts: The Short Stories of Elizabeth Bowen," in Journal of the Short Story in English, No. 8, Spring, 1987, pp. 71-9.

In the following essay, Jarrett discusses the ambiguous line between reality and fiction in Bowen's short stories.

Elizabeth Bowen felt early what she called the 'Anglo-Irish ambivalence to all things English, a blend of impatience and evasiveness, a reluctance to be pinned down to a relationship.' This, I would argue, richly affected her fiction.

Bowen may be compared with the Anglo-Indian Kipling, with his similar ambivalence to all things English. Each was early exposed to betrayal, alienation, and compromise, and each sought refuge through 'magical' fictions. Kipling, born in Bombay, was abandoned as a small child in England. The hell of bullying into which he was delivered laid, he says, 'the foundation of literary effort.' He played imaginary games in which he literally fenced himself...