The Heat of the Day

Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 1948

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Summary

Background

Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Chapters 1-4

Chapters 5-9

Chapters 10-13

Chapters 14-17

Character Analysis

Themes

Symbols & Motifs

Important Quotes

Essay Topics

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Discussion Questions

Themes

Personal Versus National Loyalty

The key conflict in The Heat of the Day is Stella’s internal turmoil regarding what to do after Harrison tells her Robert is an enemy spy. The question of personal versus national loyalty contributes to the novel’s tone and its questions of what it means to live in wartime. By addressing the moral ambiguities of Stella’s choice, Bowen suggests that both interpersonal and national loyalty are layered and complex.

First, the terms of Harrison’s “offer” to Stella mean that it is not a straightforward choice of whether or not to turn Robert in for being a spy. Harrison’s suggestion is that Stella enter into a sexual relationship with him to keep Robert out of trouble. As Stella observes, “I’m to form a disagreeable association in order that a man be left free to go on selling his country,” to which Harrison replies, “That’s putting it a bit crudely” (36). Therefore, Stella must decide not only whether or not to believe Harrison and accuse Robert, but also whether she is willing to allow herself to be blackmailed to protect him. That Harrison is on the “right side” as a counterspy for England is also undercut by the unethical blackmail he uses on Stella. Bowen therefore represents notions of morality and loyalty as complicated.

Bowen also explores how questions of personal and national loyalty relate to individual identity. After Stella finally learns that Robert is an enemy spy, she thinks about her family, national identity, and love for Robert as she looks at the photographs of her brothers, who died in WWI and whom she does not resemble:

They had been made heroes while things were simple: heroes were the creatures of a simplicity now gone, he said. But had they left no trace—the revulsion in her against his act? The sale of the country… […] She turned the photograph to the wall, in order to try to picture life without him (312).

Stella sees that she doesn’t resemble her brothers and wonders whether they really left a legacy, but realizes her hatred of Robert’s action is a form of legacy. She also thinks deeply about how she sees Robert and whether she can imagine “life without him,” suggesting how important he is to her life and identity. Robert even tries to persuade Stella that personal loyalty is more important than national loyalty, arguing, “What country have you and I outside this room?” (301).

Stella’s actions are ultimately ambiguous—she does question Robert, which Harrison asks her not to do, but she doesn’t have sex with Harrison to protect Robert, which suggests that she does not act entirely in favor of either love or country. Bowen thus leaves the question ambiguous and open-ended, presenting a complex portrait of what it means to love an individual versus a country and how war complicates both types of relationships.

The Experience and Limbo of Wartime

The novel’s setting in London after the Blitz (See: Background) and during WWII is an important element of the novel’s tone. The action is removed from the front line, and so characters’ lives go on in some ways as normal. However, wartime also pervades various aspects of life and relationships. Bowen represents the surreal experience of wartime London by portraying life as an experience of limbo, with war leaving people in a perpetual state of in-betweenness.

Many descriptions of life in London focus on the sense of being between war and peace: “It was imperfect silence, mere resistance to sound—as though the inner tension of London were being struck and struck on without breaking. Heard or unheard, the city at war ticked over” (59, emphasis added). The language of “imperfect silence” and “inner tension” hints at how wartime London is always charged with a sense of foreboding, as though the apparent calm could be disturbed at any moment.

The war also impacts Londoners’ communal experiences and daily routines: “[A]s the singed dust settled and smoke diluted you felt more and more called upon to observe the daytime as a pure and curious holiday from fear” (98, emphasis added). Whereas living without fear is a feature of peacetime, the threat of another Blitz leaves Londoners experiencing any moment of calm as a “holiday” instead of normality. This sentiment is reiterated in the observation, “in these years the idea of war made you see any peaceful scene as it were through glass” (114, emphasis added). Once again, Londoners cannot fully experience anything “peaceful” as normal, instead regarding it as something from which they are still inherently detached.

Similarly, there are several descriptions of Stella and Robert’s relationship as being a product of war and characterized by its state of limbo: “[S]he and Robert found themselves conscious of a submerged decision to go on as they were, for that ‘time being’ which war had made the very being of time. Wartime, with its makeshifts, shelvings, deferrings, could not have been kinder to romantic love” (109). The idea of war as promoting romantic love through its “makeshifts” and “deferrings” raises questions about whether the couple would be together in peacetime. The word choice of “submerged” also indicates a static, passive sense of inevitability rather than agency in their decision to be together.

In offering this portrait of the citizens of London, Bowen reveals the ways in which war impacts even those who do not fight directly on the front lines. The Heat of the Day thus reveals how war’s influence affects settings and intimate relationships that, even when outwardly calm, struggle with inner tension and foreboding.

The Effect of War on Personal Relationships

The central focus of The Heat of the Day is on the intricacies of personal relationships. The novel includes several examples of how the wartime context drastically affects the ways people interact with each other, thus revealing the interpersonal aspects of war’s domestic consequences.

Relationships are sometimes amplified in importance because of their wartime context. Barriers between people decrease, given the dangerous wartime situation, and “[t]he wall between the living and the living became less solid as the wall between the living and the dead thinned” (99-100). More specifically, Louie’s actions indicate the increased importance that can be accorded to otherwise insignificant relationships in wartime. Her loneliness motivates her to continually speak to Harrison, though he clearly rebuffs her. Her decision to seek a series of lovers is also motivated by her husband’s absence with the army, as “the impulses of incredulous loneliness died down in her […] [which] had made her look for her husband in other faces” (160). The process of seeking connection is portrayed as an attempt to counter the isolation war can produce.

Stella and Robert’s relationship is also contextualized entirely by war. They meet during the Blitz, with their very first conversation interrupted by bombings. The wartime context dictates their decision not to marry, and Stella acknowledges that their relationship may only be possible because of the war. There are also many subtle hints in the novel that their relationship was never as open or as close as Stella initially believes it to be: She is not at ease with Robert’s family, which suggests that she still does not actually know them very well. Stella also often experiences her dynamic with Robert as something that reminds her of fiction: “[Stella] felt herself to be going to a rendezvous inside the pages of a book. And was, indeed, Robert himself fictitious?” (106, emphasis added). Stella’s musings that Robert could be “fictitious” implies that she may not know Robert as well as she thinks she does, even when their relationship still appears outwardly normal. When Robert admits to his treachery, Stella feels lost, torn between her feelings for the man she believed she loved and her sense that his behavior is unforgivable.

The Heat of the Day does not offer any easy resolutions to these interpersonal dilemmas. Louie becomes pregnant with another man’s child, hearing of her husband’s death just as she considers breaking the news to him. Stella ends the novel telling Harrison she is going to marry someone new, but she does not reveal much about how Robert’s death may have continued to impact her emotionally. The novel thus suggests that war impacts even the most intimate of bonds in irrevocable ways, large and small.