ELIZABETH's Bowen's biographer, Victoria Glendinning, says while Bowen's work commands a special place in the United States, in Britain she still lags well behind Virginia and in Ireland some ambiguity towards her writing continues.
Speaking in Cork at the weekend at a UCC symposium on the writer, Ms Glendinning; said part of the ambiguity in Ireland could stem from the fact that she was of the "Big House" tradition.
We were now distant from that era, however, and attitudes had changed. No longer did we wish to pull down the big house. If the only literature accessible to us concerned ourselves, or people of our own tradition, then we would be limited "to a tiny box". Literature, she added, was for showing us other things.
Bowen, she added, was comprised of two elements. She was very much the tough, tweedy, Anglo Irish lady who could afford "to go crazy" in her perceptions, but she was also deeply ambivalent and uncertain, not knowing what the adult world would throw up. She said she was a writer before she was a woman.
Ultimately, she added, Elizabeth Bowen's place in Irish literature would be assured because quality would out.
Elizabeth Bowen, Ms Glendinning said, would have been a painter had she had an aptitude for it. Colour were very important to her, as was temperature. "You always know whether it is hot or cold. Her work is like watching a film. She had a view that innocence was damaging and very dangerous, that uncertain people don't keep the rules because they don't know the rules.
"She wrote about the passions and terrors of people in what was regarded as the civilised life. Even in the great houses, people had their dreads, terrors and fears. She spoke and wrote about the cracks in the surface of life - the terrifying things that happen when the lid comes off."
Writing the biography so soon after the author's death, Ms Glendinning went on, had allowed her access to family members and people for whom her memory was still vivid. Having won her fight to be given access to the Bowen papers, she added, she had got to "the raw meat".