Bowen Stories Compare/Contrast

The Demon Lover and The Happy Autumn Fields are both extremely subtle yet terrifying vignettes centered upon female protagonists with mysterious love interests who are implied to have died before becoming fully betrothed or married to the main character. Both tales also make extensive use of changes in the temporal setting (flashbacks are clearly used in the case of The Demon Lover, but the changes in The Happy Autumn Fields are fairly vague as to which parts are the main setting of the piece). The most significant similarity between the two stories is the ambiguity of the endings. Neither story fully resolves itself in the way most works of fiction tend to. However, the degree to which the ending remains open-ended is far more significant in The Happy Autumn Fields. I have yet to gain what I feel like would be a complete understanding of The Happy Autumn Leaves, whereas the implied conclusion to The Demon Lover is relatively clear. While these stories are Modernist in terms of epoch, they contain many elements of Post-Modernism.

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