COM 7 UC Davis Literature of Fantasy and the Supernatural Essay in addition to revising and deepening your midterm essay, you must also add a paragraph at

COM 7 UC Davis Literature of Fantasy and the Supernatural Essay in addition to revising and deepening your midterm essay, you must also add a paragraph at the end reflecting on your +revisions and writing process. 1
Fantasy
Arguably, fantasy distorts reality. Telling of fantasy related creatures that roam the earth,
killing or harm people in all manner of ways is something that applies to folklore. The distortion
of reality comes about when people experiences fear. Then, the fear manifests into the minding
seeing what one fears most. The perception of most feared things from the words of most trusted
people in a community also increases the believability of the distorted reality. Lack of science to
explain most of the documented occurrences about fantasy creatures being seen in reality increases
the chances of distortion. When fantasy is applied to distort reality, skepticism is not used. “This
fascinating and outrageous volume-basically a compilation of ghost stories and theological
commentary upon them-asks such questions as “Can a man really dead appear in his own body?”
Calmet ranges from vampires in Moravia to ghosts in Peru. One moment he is cheerfully citing
the eyewitness accounts of learned Christians and the next skeptically analyzing the words of
peasant or pagan” (Sims pp. 25-26). Concerning this quote, when people fear, the result is turning
to religion for solutions. There is no skeptical analysis, and the only people who spoke of the
fantasy-related creatures were religious. Also, fantasy as a distortion of reality is used to explain
what is not understandable from a realistic perspective. Evaluating the Demon Lover (1941): The
Penguin Book of Modern Fantasy by Women and Dracula’s Guest: A Connoisseur’s Collection of
Victorian Vampire Stories makes the use of fantasy more ideal in distorting reality to promote fear
and offer an explanation of what is not understood by people.
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Notably, telling people that creatures are rising from the dead, especially for those
believing in realistic things, tends to create fear. Given that a select few tend to see the fantasy, the
ones who have not seen the said creatures live in fear, and such fear can be used to control them.
It leads them to turn to God. For instance, if the people are religious such as medieval times in
Eastern Europe, the people who do contrary to what religion dictates become excommunicated or
killed. “I have always been much struck with what was related to the vampires or ghosts of
Hungary, Moravia, and Poland; of the vroucolacas of Greece; and of the excommunicated, who
are said not to rot (Sims 27). In this case, fear may have been used to control people. The ones
responsible for dealing with vampires and ghosts are people who are commissioned by leaders and
churches. The use of fear becomes manipulation since those that went to different countries came
back to tell the story of what they saw. A personal account of a traveler would become the truth of
an entire community.
From the story Dracula’s Guest, it appears as if the passage is saying there are ghosts and
vampires that everyone should fear. The author is implying that they exist. “This corpse howled
like a madman and moved his feet and hands as if alive. And when they again pierced him through
with stakes, he uttered very loud cries, and a great quantity of bright vermilion blood flowed from
him” (Sims 30). However, at the same time, the author appears to be saying ghosts and vampires
are not real. It only requires proper analysis of the situation to separate the truth from lies. “I write
only for reasonable and unprejudiced minds, which examine things seriously and coolly; I speak
only for those who assent even to known truth but after mature reflection, who know how to doubt
of what is uncertain, to suspend their judgment on what is doubtful, and to deny what is manifestly
false” (Sims 27). The contradicting issue is whether vampires and ghosts exist or not. The
contradiction presents a possible message of the stories being told to instill fear in people. Hence,
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out of fear, more people started believing in seeing ghosts and vampires. It is due to the
contradiction that may prove the possibility of the stories being used to propagate fear.
Further, another contradiction that the author applies in the text is leaving out some details
when illustrating about ghosts and vampires. It makes his writing lack transparency. In concrete
terms, it makes his writing lack some credibility by not giving the right information. “The
emperor’s officer and the cure having diligently examined all these things, and the people who
were present feeling their indignation awakened anew, and being more fully persuaded that he was
the true cause of the death of their compatriots, ran directly for a sharp-pointed stake, which they
thrust into his breast, whence there issued a quantity of fresh and crimson blood, and also from the
nose and mouth; something also proceeded from that part of his body which decency does not
allow us to mention. After this, the peasants placed the body on a pile of wood and saw it reduced
to ashes” (Sims 35). Based on this quote, the author is transparent. He writes and offers the
information that allows the reader to discern the thin line between lies and the truth. However,
there are instances the writer leaves out some information feigning that it is not appropriate to tell
in details whether these mysterious creatures are vampires and ghosts or not.
Moreover, the same method of leaving details to the imagination of the reader creates an
instance where the readers wish to know the full details about the creators but lack what empowers
them with the knowledge to do so. The author may be applying the stylistic devices of creating
suspense that is shared by Elizabeth Bowen in the Demon Lover. “The driver braked to what was
almost a stop, turned round, and slid the glass panel back: the jolt of this flung Mrs. Drover forward
till her face was almost into the glass. Through the aperture driver and passenger, not six inches
between them remained for an eternity eye to eye, Mrs. Drover’s mouth hung open for some
seconds before· she could issue her first scream. After that, she continued to scream freely and to
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beat with her gloved hands on the glass all round as the taxi, accelerating without mercy, made off
with her into the hinterland of deserted streets” (Bowen 7). No one knows what the character saw
after entering the taxi. Such information directs the reader in what they should think. For instance,
based on the title, The Demon Lover, the reader is programmed to believe there is a demon, hence
not discerning for oneself what the creature is or could be. Both Bowen and Sims contradict their
writings by presenting the information for the reader to analyze the possible creature features that
authenticate them. Hence, the writers do not allow the readers to be skeptical about discerning the
information. In both books of The Demon Lover and Dracula’s Guest: A Connoisseur’s Collection
of Victorian Vampire Stories, Bowen and Sims offer details on the happenings in the books. Still,
in creating suspense, they contradict by leaving out information.
More importantly, in understanding the details of the texts, the reader is left at the mercy
of the writer to get some truth about the information. The stylistic devices applied by the writer,
instructed the reader’s mind to also believe in the presence of creatures such as Dracula and ghosts.
For example, “Dead Persons in Hungary Who Suck the Blood of the Living” (Sims 30). The use
of the heading that summarizes or describes the story focuses on indicating to the reader, the story
is about this; hence think this way, not the other way. A similar way applies to how Elizabeth (30),
describes the story by the name of “The Demon Lover.” However, in analyzing the texts, the
writers present questions that play double standards. “On the supernatural side of the letter’s
entrance, she was not permitting her mind to dwell. Who, in London, knew she meant to call at the
house today? However, this had been known. The· caretaker, had he come back, had had no cause
to expect her: he would have taken the letter in his pocket, to forward it, at his own time, through
the post. There was no other sign that the caretaker had been in – but, if not?” (Bowen 5). Bowen
writes about the supernatural side of the letter. Thus, the reader’s mind is instructed on what to
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think, which is to think supernaturally. The writer goes on to ask questions that the character in the
story thinks. The questions are crafted to empower the reader also to ask, who would be the
character in the story be thinking about at the time. Skepticism is applied but it is used sparingly
since the author using the title, trained the reader on what to think. The title presents what the
passage contains, but in reading the passage, the writer creates conflict by raising the right
questions that allow people to analyze reality and fantasy, only for the writer to follow what was
previously taught in the title. The use of this strategy plays along the lines of what impression is
created in the writer at first is what remains. Similarly, Sims uses the same tactic. “Let Us Now
Examine the Fact of the Revenans or Vampires of Moravia” (Sims 29). He offers the heading,
which already guides the reader in what to think. Besides using his writings to present skepticism,
he denies the reader the ability to think independently about the existence of ghosts and vampires.
A person cannot analyze if it is fantasy or reality.
All in all, differentiating between fantasy and reality is difficult in cases where the writer
uses fantasy to tell the reality. It makes the reader follow what is written. It increases higher
chances of the reader believing in the fantasy, such as vampires and ghosts, as per the instructions
of the writer. As per the guidance of the writer, rarely will the reader apply skeptical analysis in
differentiating the truth and lies. The timeframe written about by Sims and Bowen speaks of when
people were highly religious, and so, anything that is contrary to religious believers of the time
could be termed as evil despite not being true. It proves that only people who spoke and
investigated the fantasy-related creatures were religious. The use of fantasy distorts reality in
explaining what is real, what is not, where fear is the outcome, and skepticism is not used to analyze
the truth.
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Works Cited
Bowen, Elizabeth. The Demon Lover (1941): The Penguin Book of Modern Fantasy by Women.
Viking, 1995.
Sims, Michael. Dracula’s Guest: A Connoisseur’s Collection of Victorian Vampire Stories.
Walker, 2010.
THE PENGUIN BOOK OF
MODERN FANTASY
BY WOMEN
EDITED BY A. SUSAN WILLIAMS
AND RICHARD GLYN JONES
WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY JOANNA RUSS
VIKING
The Demon Lover
(1941)
ELIZABETH BOWEN
Towards the end of her day in London Mrs Drover went round to
her shut-up house to look for several things she wanted to take
-away. Some belonged to herself, some to her family, who were by
now used to their country life. It was late August; it had been a
steamy, showery day: at the moment the trees down the pavement
glittered in an escape of humid yellow afternoon sun. Against the
next batch of clouds, already piling up ink-dark, broken chimneys
and parapets stood out. In bee once familiar street, as in any
unused channel, an unfamiliar queerness had silted up; a cat wove
itself in and out of railings, but no human eye watched Mrs
Drover’s return. Shifting some parcels under her arm, she slowly
forced .round her latchkey in an unwilliog lock, then gave the
door, which had warped, a push with her knee. Dead air came out
to meet her as she went in.
The staircase window having been boarded up, no light came
down into the hall. But one door, she could just see, stood ajar, so
she went quickly through into the room and unshuttered the big
window in there. Now the prosaic woman, looking about her, was
.t:nore perplexed than she knew by everything that she saw, by
.traces of her long former habit· of life – the yellow smoke-stain up
the white marble mantelpiece, the ring left by a vase on the top of
the escritoire; the bruise in the wallpaper where, on the door being
·,thrown open widely, the china handle had always hit the wall. The
piano, having gone away to be stored, had left what looked like
�aw-marks on its part of the parquet. Though not much dust had
seeped in, each object wore a film of another kind; and the only
ventilation being the chimney, the whole drawing-room smelled
of the cold hearth. Mrs Drover put down her parcels on the
escritoire and left the room to proceed upstairs; the things she
:wanted were in a bedroom chest.
ELIZABETH BOWEN
The Demon Lover
She had been anxious to see how the house was – the part-time
caretaker she shared with some neighbours was away this week on
his holiday, known to be not yet back. At the best of times he did
not look in often, and she was never sure that she trusted him.
There were some cracks in the structure, left by the last bombing,
on which she was anxious to keep an eye. Not that one could do
anythingA shaft of refracted daylight now lay across the hall. She
stopped dead and stared at the hall table – on this lay a letter
addressed to her.
She thought first – then the caretaker must be back. All the
same, who, seeing the house shuttered, would have dropped a
letter in at the box? It was not a circular, it was not a bill_. And the
post office redirected, to the address in the country, everything for
her that came through the post. The caretaker (even if he were
back) did not know she was due in London today:…. her call here
had been planned to be a surprise – so his negligence in the _
manner of this letter, leaving it to wait in the dusk and the dust,
annoyed her. Annoyed, she picked up the letter, which bore no
stamp. But it cannot be important, or they would know … She
took the letter rapidly upstairs with her, without a stop to look at
the writing till she reached what had been her bedroom, where she
let in light. The room looked over the garden and other gardens:
the sun had gone in; as the clouds sharpened and lowered, the
trees and rank lawns seemed already to smoke with dark. Her
reluctance to look again at the letter came from the fact that she
felt intruded upon :_ and by someone contemptuous of her ways.
However, in the tenseness preceding the fall of rain she read it: it
was a few lines.
again – her lips, beneath the remains of lipstick, beginning to go
white. She felt so much the change. in her own face that she went
to rhe mirror, polished a clear patch in it and looked at once
urgently and stealthily in. She was confronted by a woman of
forty-foUI, with eyes starting out under a hat-brim that had been
rather carelessly pulled down. She had not put on any more
powder since she left the shop where she ate her solitary tea. The
pearls her husband had given her on their marriage hung loose
round her now rather thinner throat, slipping in the V of the pink
wool jumper her sister knitted last autumn as they sat round the
fire. Mrs Drover’s most oo.rmal expression was one of controlled
worry, but of assent. Since the birth of the thi.rd of he+ little boys,
attended by a quite serious illness, she had had an intermittent
muscular flicker to the left of her mouth, but in spire of this she
could always sustain a manner that was at once energetic and calm.
Turning from her own face as precipitacely as she had gone to
meet it, she went to the chest where the things were, unlocked it,
threw up the lid and knelt to search. But as rain began to come
crashing down she could not keep from looking over her shoulder
at the stripped bed on which the letter. lay. Behind the blanket of
rain the clock of the church thac still stood struck si.x – with
rapidly heightening apprehension she counted each of the slow
strokes. ‘The hour arranged … My God,’ she said, ‘what hour?
How should I …? After twenty-five years …’
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Dear Kathleen: You will not have forgotten that today is our anniversary,
and the day we said. The years have gone by at once slowly and fast.In
view of the fact that nothing has changed, I shall rely upon you to keep
your promise. I was sorry to see you leave London, but was satisfied
that you would be back in time. You may expect me, therefore, at the
hour arranged. Until then … K.
Mrs Drover looked for the date: it was today’s. She dropped the
letter on to the bed-springs, then picked it up to see the writing
The young girl talking to the soldier in the garden had not ever
completely seen his face. It was dar:k; they were saying goodbye
under a tree. Now and then – for it felt, from not seeing him at
this intense moment, as though she had never seen him at all – she
verified his presence for these few moments longer by putting out
a hand, which he each time pressed, without very much kindness,
and painfully, on to one of the breast buttons of his unJfo:rm. Thar
cut of the button on the palm of her hand was, principally, what
she was to carry away. This was so near the end of a leave from
France that she could only wish him already gone. It was August
1916. Being not kissed, being drawn away from and looked at
intimidated Kathleen till she imagined spectral glitters in the place
of his eyes. Turning away and looking back up the lawn she saw,
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ELIZABETH BOWEN
through branches of trees, the drawing-room window alight: she
caught a breath for the moment when she could go running back
there into the safe arms of her mother and sister, and cry: ‘What
shall I do, what shall I do? He has gone.’
Hearing her catch her breath, her fiance said, without feeling:
‘Cold?’
‘You’re going away such a long way.’
‘Not so far as you think.’
‘I don’t understand.’
‘You don’t have to,’ he said. ‘You will. You know what we
said.’
‘But that was – suppose you – I mean, suppose.’
‘I shall be with you,’ he said, ‘sooner or later. You won’t forget
that. You need do nothing but wait.’
Only a little more than a minute later she was free to run up the
silent lawn. Looking in through the window at her mother and
sister, who did not for the moment perceive her, she already felt
that unnatural promise drive down between her and the rest of all
human kind. No other way of having given herself could have
made her feel so apart, lost and foresworn. She could not have
plighted a more sinister troth.
Kathleen behaved well when, some months later, her fiance was
reported missing, presumed killed. Her family not only supported
her but were able to praise her courage without stint because they
could not regret, as a husband for her, the man they knew almost
nothing about. They hoped she would, in a year or two, console
herself – and had it been only a question of consolation things
might have gone much straighter ahead. But her trouble, behind
just a little grief, was a complete dislocation from everything. She
did not reject other lovers, for these failed to appear: for years she
failed to attract men – and with the approach of her thirties she
became natural enough to share her family’s anxiousness on this
score. She began to put herself out, to wonder; and at thirty-two
she was very greatly relieved to find herself being courted by
William Drover. She married him, and the two of them settled
down in this quiet, arboreal part of Kensington: in this house the
years piled up, her children were born and they all lived till they
were driven out by the bombs of the next war. Her movements as
The Demon Lover
Mrs Drover were circumscribed, and she dismissed any idea that
they were still watched.
As things were – dead or living the letter-wricer sent her only a
threat. Unable, for some minutes, to go on kneeling with her back
exposed co the empty room, :Mrs. Drover rose from the chest to sit
on an upright chair whose back was firmly against the wall. The
desuetude of her former bedroom, her married London home’s
whole air of being a cracked cup from which memory, with its
reassuring power, had either evaporated or leaked away, made a
…
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