The Bishop of Hell and Other Stories by Marjorie Bowen

“Elsie’s Lonely Afternoon” is like an Edith Nesbit children’s story gone horribly wrong. They were definitely the weakest stories in the collection.Īfter that, it improves. This fatalism poisoned a couple more of the early stories, too. At this point, my primary reaction was that he deserved what he got…. The protagonist was afflicted with a really irritating fatalism: despite being told to get out of the situation, which he could have easily done, he stayed, in spite of his almost paralyzing foreboding, because he felt “impelled” to. Only “The Fair Hair of Ambrosine” disappointed me by being almost completely predictable, and not all that fun. This isn’t always a bad thing, and a story like that can give pleasure in the journey, even when you know the destination. With the first four (of twelve) stories, I could predict the ending by a third to halfway through, at least in general outlines. There are abused wives, possessive husbands, obsessed lovers…. “Rakehelly” (what a great adjective) wastrels marry aging gold-diggers, each believing the other is wealthy - this happens at least a couple of times, and it never leads to marital bliss. There are a lot of unhappy marriages floating through the book (Broster’s parents separated when she was a child, at a time when this was a scandalous thing). Though written in the early part of the 20th century, almost all the stories are set sometime in the late 17th to mid 18th century - like Broster, Bowen was a historical novelist. I can’t believe I read that! What a trip…. I’d look up from the book, and think, Wow, I can’t believe she wrote that.

This isn’t usually my thing, but many of the tales left me oddly exhilarated on finishing them. In fact, Bowen’s stories remind me of 1960s-70s gothic horror in many ways. If Broster’s tales are the short story equivalent of the Twilight Zone or Alfred Hitchcock Presents, Bowen’s are more like that old 1960s soap opera Dark Shadows - in sensibility, if not exactly in subject matter.

I’d call them over-the-top, but having read actual early gothic literature, I’d have to say that Bowen’s stories are restrained, compared to the real thing. They are very much in the spirit of late 18th and early 19th century gothic fiction. The tales in The Bishop of Hell and Other Stories are sensational, pulpy, almost lurid, and occasionally melodramatic. Walled-in women, “ruined” women, poisoning, strangulation, stabbing, crimes of passion and revenge, even a strange fish monster. This is the second of two reviews of Wordsworth collections by women horror writers I’d never read before.

The Bishop of Hell and Other Stories by Marjorie Bowen