Many similarities exist between the poem version and the prose story both titled Demon Lover. Both works seem to be warnings of some kind or another to married women. Also, both works contain elements of the supernatural in reference to the pasts of the two main characters. Each of them deals also with feelings still held about former lovers, in one case wanting to go back, and in the other not wanting to go back to the "other man". In both cases the women involved must deal with the mental struggle of deciding on or preventing their fates, the poem and the story end on bad notes, one with death and the other with something seemingly worse.
In the poem by Samuel Pepys, a married woman with two children is confronted with what she believes is her former love. She must decide between being moral and staying with her husband or going along with temptation and allowing herself to leave with her former lover and forget her family.
Painting of Samuel Pepys by John Hayls
English: A pub with literary pretensions in Mayfai...
English: Image is from H.B. Wheatley, ed, The Diar...In the story with the same name by Elizabeth Bowen, an older married woman is faced with basically the same difficulties. She must decide whether to stay and wait for her former lover to come for her at the "hour arranged" and be with him or, to flee from her old home as quickly as she can in order to avoid him.
The woman in the poem is tempted by the chance to be reunited with her other man, and is eventually punished for her decision. In the version of Demon Lover written in prose, the main character does not want to be with the man who is coming for her. One is led to believe that the woman in the poem made the wrong decision, and the woman in...