The Heat of the Day

Stella Rodney: Stella is the novel's protagonist, an attractive, sophisticated, and independent woman. She is middle-aged, but is also "young-looking—most because of the impression she gave of still being on happy sensuous terms with life."[2] She works for a government agency called XYD, and the sensitive nature of her job leads her to be guarded. She is not inquisitive because she does not want to answer questions herself. Her patriotism is shaped by the fact that her brothers died serving in World War I. Stella has clear class prejudices, being herself descended from (now un-landed) gentry.

Robert Kelway: Robert is an attractive man in his late thirties who remains in London during the war after being wounded at the Battle of Dunkirk. Robert limps from this wound, but only when he feels "like a wounded man."[3] His identity is in constant flux throughout the course of the novel as Stella's investigation of his potential espionage unfolds. Robert's fascist sympathies are due to a combination of his wounding at Dunkirk and his growing up under the rule of his authoritarian mother and the example of his emasculated father.

Harrison: Harrison is a counterspy for England. His eyes are described as being uneven so that he gives the uncanny impression of looking at people with both separate eyes at once, or of looking at them twice. He is a quiet man, and his "emotional idiocy”[4] leads him to making uncomfortable and brash statements through the veiled double-speak of spies and counterspies. He sees "no behavior as being apart from motive, and any motive as worth examining twice."[5] At the end of the novel, he reveals that his first name is Robert.

Roderick Rodney: Roderick is Stella's son. He is a young soldier but is still in England, training, over the course of most of the novel. Roderick becomes a soldier because that is what young men in his time do, rather than out of any particular patriotic fervor. Stella worries that he is too emotionally distant, and indeed he makes no effort to maintain an emotional relationship with any besides his mother with the exception of his friend Fred, a fellow soldier (who we never actually see in the novel), for whom Roderick demonstrates an almost hero-worshipping devotion.

Louie Lewis: Louie is a twenty-seven-year-old working-class woman looking for a model on which to base her life. She is alone in London: her husband, Tom, is away at war and her parents were killed by a bomb in her hometown of Seale-on-Sea. Flirtatious, flighty, and credulous, Louie is constantly seeking human contact as a means to form her own identity.

Connie: Louie's best friend and an avid and suspicious reader of newspapers

Ernestine Kelway: Robert's loquacious and busy widowed sister

Mrs. Kelway ("Muttikins"): Robert's authoritarian mother

Cousin Nettie: Cousin Francis's widow, who pretends to be mad so that she can live in exile at the madhouse Wisteria Lodge rather than return to her late husband's house

Colonel Pole: one of Stella's estranged ex-in-laws, a mourner at Cousin Francis's funeral.

Cousin Francis: dead Irishman who bequeathed his ancestral home to Roderick

Fred: Roderick's best friend and fellow soldier

Tom: Louie's husband, off at war through most of the book, dies by the end

Victor: Roderick's father, wounded in World War 1, and then dies, having allegedly left Stella for his nurse

Stella and Louie are displaced women in London. Louie is from Seale-on-Sea and only came to London to be with her husband who is now away at war. Stella rents her flats and all her furniture, she has no place to call hers, no permanent home, and not even any things (all her furniture etc. is in storage somewhere.)

Both are willing to have sex outside their monogamous relationships for monogamy's sake. Louie carries on her adulterous affairs because she feels closer to her husband with any man than she does with no man. Stella ultimately offers herself sexually to Harrison to try and protect the man she actually loves, Robert.

Both are mothers who lie to their sons about the sons’ fathers. In both cases, the mother is making the father look better than he is. However, Louie is also making herself look better by claiming that Thomas Victor's father is her husband, whereas Stella is accepting the blame for adultery that she didn’t commit in her lie to her son. Whether or not this makes her look worse is a matter of perspective—yes, she looks guilty, but she rejects the role of a victimised wife (which she really is).

Both are attracted to Stella, and their simultaneous vying for her person (sexually and psychologically) is central to the plot.

Both are involved in espionage, Robert being a nazi spy and Harrison being a counterspy for England. Furthermore, both are betraying their home country—Robert by spying for Germany, Harrison by trying to buy Stella's sexual favours with his influence as a counterspy.

Harrison has an uneven gaze with his off-balance eyes; Robert has an uneven gait because of his limp.

Both are named Robert.

Neither one has a proper home that we know about, and where they go when they are not with Stella is a mystery. Maud Ellmann argues that this means neither one is a proper "character" by the standards of realism, a deliberate move on Bowen's part.[6]

Both are men that Stella loves, one as a son and the other as a lover.

They have very similar sounding names—at Cousin Francis's funeral, Colonel Pole accidentally calls Roderick Robert.

Roderick looks "more like himself" [7] in Robert's dressing gown.

Robert believes in fascism because he thinks people can’t handle freedom. Roderick eagerly accepts his destiny to be a landowner at Mount Morris, and Stella is relieved that her son has such a script laid out for him rather than being free to be nothing.

Both come from houses that affect them negatively: Cousin Nettie from Mount Morris, where generations of Anglo-Irish women went mad or nearly mad, and Robert from Holme Dene, a "man eating house."[8]

Both live duplicitous lives, Robert as a German spy in London and Cousin Nettie as a sane woman who feigns insanity.

Both are trying to establish gender identities by rejecting certain gender roles. Robert is not honouring his fatherland and running a household, but he tells Stella that being a spy in secret makes him a man again, meaning that he is a man, but only in secret. Cousin Nettie tries and fails to be a proper wife to Francis, and only is able to settle down and establish her own domestic space by feigning madness and leaving her married house for good.

Time is essential in the novel and its presence is manifested in a variety of ways. As the general temporal location of events, the present is determined by the eruption of the war in the lives of the characters and is understood, in that context, as a rupture between the past and the future: "vacuum as to future was offset by vacuum as to past." [9]

Time also appears foregrounded in an existential sense, particularly in relation to Stella and Roderick. Stella is constantly conflicted by "the fatal connection between the past and the future having broken before her time. It had been Stella, her generation, who had broken the link".[10] Once he learns he will inherit Mount Morris, Roderick appears often planning, discussing or simply musing over his own future at the house. Finally, the novel closes with a projection into the future after Louie's son is born and the war is over: "the projected English future and the rejected Irish future [are] both figured as pacific in the repeated figure of the three swans."[11]

Finally, time is foregrounded in the materialisation of daily life events. Characters are usually pressed for time in the streets and, particularly for those involved in espionage and plotting activities, every minute is essential. Consequently, we may find several passages in which a number of characters (Stella, Harrison, Louie and Roderick among others) express their reluctance to waste their time or are heard discussing that concept. One should also note that time is meticulously measured during Stella's meetings with Harrison.

The novel "works towards an affirmation of the undecidability of identity," which is explored from several angles.[12] Evidently, every character that plays a role as a spy in the novel presents at least a two-sided identity. Additionally, Stella and Louie are painstakingly concerned with their self-image and constantly wonder how others perceive them: the novel "is governed by an almost Berkeleyan metaphysics, in which you are what you are perceived to be."[13] On his part, Roderick changes and becomes more mature and responsible after inheriting Mount Morris. Stella's exploration of Robert's identity, one of the narrative pillars of the plot, remains open until immediately before his death, where he finally unveils his political views and philosophy of life.

Stella's anxiety about her own freedom determines much of her actions and thoughts; coaxed by Harrison to expose Robert, she is trapped in a plot that encroaches upon her freedom whether she decides to give him away or not. Besides, Robert's fascist views on freedom negate the possibility of individual freedom: “‘Who could want to be free when they can be strong? Freedom, what a slaves’ yammer!... We must have law⎯if necessary let it break us’.”[14]

The idea of Britain becomes prominent (usually in connection with the war) mostly when seen from outside the countryside. The characters that do leave the city to go either to Mount Morris, in Ireland, or to Holme Dene, in the Midlands, think of their country in rather gloomy terms. Except for reports provided by the narration, the consequences of the war upon the country are seen chiefly mainly from the outside too. On the surface, London during the Blitz is not particularly characterised by strong displays of nationalism; instead, life the present is celebrated by the imminence of the possibility of being killed during the bombings. However, the actions of the two main male characters seem to be motivated by their relationship with the nation. While Harrison tries to put an end to Robert's act of treason to the country, the latter charges against [nationalism] and national pride as a reason to fight the war: “‘what do you mean? Country?⎯there are no more countries left; nothing but names.”[15]

The novel poses general questions such as whether or not one can know somebody completely and whether two people can know a third person in exactly the same way, as illustrated by the triangle Stella-Robert-Harrison. Specifically, one of the main tensions in the book lies in the degree of knowledge that each of the male characters may or may not have about the other, using Stella as intermediary: "‘If you mean Robert,’ she flashed out, "he doesn’t know you’."[16] As expected, propaganda plays an essential role in the book, as well as the disclosure of the concealed identities of the spies and intelligence agents. On her part, Stella is also concerned by her progressive detachment from her son Roderick and begins wondering if she in fact knows him as she thinks she does.

Roderick is determined throughout the narration to unbury the real story of Victor’s adultery, Cousin Francis’ actual reason for visiting to Britain and Nettie's motivation to check herself in at Wisteria Lodge.

In The Heat of the Day "everyone seems trapped in someone's else's story."[17] Relationships of any type become dependent on language, on what is talked about and how: "The ‘story’ which Harrison tells Stella about Robert, and then the stories which this novel tells us about what both Stella and Harrison do with that story have their direct public consequences."[18] Indirect language and code are often used, as is to be expected in a novel involving [espionage]. "White information and propaganda,”[19] two different forms of telling, are discussed as to the way they are produced and consumed by Louie and Connie. Additionally, the war in London gains a fictitious dimension, seen "as story-telling"[20] and as if "out of a thriller.”[21]

Stella becomes especially sensitive towards the way certain events are narrated, such as her divorce. "Bowen makes it very clear that it is not the author of the Heat of the Day who is constructing these two pasts, but Stella herself.”[22] She also emphasises that story-telling is the mechanism we have to perceive and remember the past: “‘Whoever’s the story had been, I let it be mine. I let it ride, and more⎯it came to be my story, and I stuck to it’.”[23] One of the strongest arguments Robert uses to justify his act of treachery is a critique of public and official discourses: “Don’t you understand all that nation-related language is dead currency?”[15]

Stella does not settle down in a specific flat, but moves from one to another, which symbolises the fleetingness of her life. Descriptions of her flats often seem be a reflection of her attitude at given moments: before receiving a crucial visit from Harrison, "she had left the street door unlatched and the door of her flat, at the head of the stairs, ajar."[24] Like a good mysterious spy, "Harrison himself has no address."[25]

Houses are described, in contrast to Stella's London flats, as removed and self-contained locations that provide perspective to events happening in London. Holme Dene, Robert's family house in the Midlands, gives off an aura of mystery and deceit: "though antique in appearance, [it] was not actually old. The oak beams, to be perfectly honest, were imitations."[26] Moreover, it is dominated by a rigid hierarchy headed by Robert's mother: it was "Mrs. Kelway’s house."[27] Finally, in the environment of the "man-eating house"[8] Robert's masculinity is fetishised due to the fact that he is the only son and male family member left alive (except for his young nephew). "Contrasted to Holme Dene is the traditional sanctity and loveliness of Mount Morris" [28] Roderick inherits Mount Morris, a country house in Ireland from which Stella is told about an important advance of the British army: "‘Montgomery is through!... It’s the war turning’."[29]

London. The action in the novel is located in London for the most part, which is contrasted by some of the characters’ visits to the countryside. Material destruction or detailed descriptions of the urban landscape are generally absent. Nonetheless, Louie, like many other characters, is stuck in the city due to the current events: "She now… never left London, having been left with no place to go." [30]

Even though events occur mainly during World War II, the violence of war is usually absent from the narration: "two years after the Blitz, Londoners, no longer traumatised by nightly raids, were growing acclimatised to ruin."[31] Rather than a period of material destruction, war functions instead as a circumstance that alters normality in people's lives. Stella confesses to Robert: "‘we are friends of circumstance⎯war, this isolation, this atmosphere in which everything goes on and nothing’s said."[32] There are, however, some isolated passages that deal with the bombings of London: "Never had any season been more felt… Out of mists of morning charred by the smoke from ruins each day rose to a height of unmisty glitter; between the last of sunset and first note of the siren the darkening glassy tenseness of evening was drawn fine."[33]

The importance of time and its measure is foregrounded by the presence of clocks in the novel, especially in the actions where Stella is involved: "It was some minutes since she had heard eight strike."[24] Time is also seen as measured by natural processes: "nothing spoke but the clock... the petals detached themselves from a rose in the bowl."[34] There is a particular emphasis on time during the meetings between spies-lovers: "even her wrist watch seemed to belie time,"[35] "their two wristwatches… never perfectly synchronising."[36] Also, time in the isolated Holme Dene seems to work in a unique way: "the grandfather clock, on the other hand, must have stood there always⎯time had clogged its ticking."[37]

In Stella's flats, photographs emphasise the importance of the past and the problematic of representation. We are told that there "were two photographs, not framed yet⎯the younger of the two men was Roderick, Stella’s twenty-year-old son."[2] Photographs of Robert in Holme Dene seem to contribute to the construction of Robert's identity: "sixty or seventy photographs, upward from snapshots to crowded groups, had been passepartouted or framed… All of the photographs featured Robert."[26]

By making Stella look through windows and into mirrors, the author highlights the importance of perceiving the environment, most importantly during scenes involving plotting and espionage: "Over the photographs, hung a mirror⎯into which, on hearing Harrison’s footstep actually on the stairs, she looked; not at herself but with the idea of studying, at just one more remove from reality, the door of this room opening behind her."[2] Her looking through windows dramatises the isolation and partial safety in which the citizens lived through the Blitz at their homes, and it also symbolises the tensions between her self-image and how she may be regarded from the outside.

Mirrors also underscore Stella's concerns about her own appearance and her identity as perceived by others: "She carried the lamp to meet one of its own reflections in a mirror, and, lifting it, studied the romantic face that was still hers."[38]

Newspapers are the main vehicle for information and propaganda dissemination. Additionally, the novel problematises the way they may determine people's perception of the war: "Bowen’s point is that these two ways of reacting to newspapers are fundamentally similar: one brashly independent-minded, the other fragilely seeking for a sense of self, but both caught up in the war as story." [20] In particular, Louie is seen to be profoundly affected by the discourse of newspapers: she "now felt badly about any part of herself which in any way did not fit into the papers’ picture... [she] came to love newspapers physically."[39]