ИСТИНА

The paper deals with the process of growing up understood as loss of innocence in the novels by the Anglo-Irish writer Elizabeth Bowen (1899 – 1973). The fact of becoming mature and giving up childhood dreams and illusions is often quite a painful experience for Bowen’s young characters. The loss of innocence is a wide abstract notion which includes in different cases other various forms of loss such as loss of identity, people, beliefs, values, places, etc. The presentation covers the following novels by Elizabeth Bowen: The Hotel (1927), The Last September (1929), The House in Paris (1935), The Death of the Heart (1938). The characters under consideration are children, teenagers or young people who suddenly face the realities of the adult world and have to react. The question is whether this loss as it is portrayed by the writer is negative or positive. On the one hand, it may be seen as a shaking and tragic experience causing “the death of the heart” (as one of Bowen’s novels is called) and transforming a young and beautiful soul into a corrupted and evil one. On the other hand, one can see it as a natural process of becoming older and wiser.