Abstract

The Second World War saw a radicalisation of gendered and social identities. In many ways, Elizabeth Bowen’s novel, The Heat of the Day renders the rising tensions of the period and reflects stereotypical visions of women as conveyed by male characters. But what may, at first, seem to be a conventional wartime spy novel in fact turns out to be a decentred version of the genre: by placing female characters at the centre of the plot, the traditional characteristics of the spy story become, in turn, feminised. The thematic and formal transformations are accentuated by laying the London plot side by side with the peace-land of a conservative Anglo-Irish world.