The Heat of the Day revolves around the relationship between Stella Rodney and her lover Robert Kelway, with the interfering presence of Harrison in the tense years following the Blitz in London.

Nettie displays a surprisingly sound presence of mind, revealing that she has feigned mental illness to live life on her own terms.

Her patriotism is shaped by the fact that her brothers died serving in World War I. Stella has clear class prejudices, being herself descended from (now un-landed) gentry.

Robert's fascist sympathies are due to a combination of his wounding at Dunkirk and his growing up under the rule of his authoritarian mother and the example of his emasculated father.

He is a quiet man, and his "emotional idiocy"[4] leads him to making uncomfortable and brash statements through the veiled double-speak of spies and counterspies.

Flirtatious, flighty, and credulous, Louie is constantly seeking human contact as a means to form her own identity.

Connie: Louie's best friend and an avid and suspicious reader of newspapers Ernestine Kelway: Robert's loquacious and busy widowed sister Mrs. Kelway ("Muttikins"): Robert's authoritarian mother Cousin Nettie: Cousin Francis's widow, who pretends to be mad so that she can live in exile at the madhouse Wisteria Lodge rather than return to her late husband's house Colonel Pole: one of Stella's estranged ex-in-laws, a mourner at Cousin Francis's funeral.

However, Louie is also making herself look better by claiming that Thomas Victor's father is her husband, whereas Stella is accepting the blame for adultery that she didn't commit in her lie to her son.

Maud Ellmann argues that this means neither one is a proper "character" by the standards of realism, a deliberate move on Bowen's part.

They have very similar sounding names—at Cousin Francis's funeral, Colonel Pole accidentally calls Roderick Robert.

Roderick eagerly accepts his destiny to be a landowner at Mount Morris, and Stella is relieved that her son has such a script laid out for him rather than being free to be nothing.

Cousin Nettie tries and fails to be a proper wife to Francis, and only is able to settle down and establish her own domestic space by feigning madness and leaving her married house for good.

[10] Once he learns he will inherit Mount Morris, Roderick appears often planning, discussing or simply musing over his own future at the house.

Consequently, we may find several passages in which a number of characters (Stella, Harrison, Louie and Roderick among others) express their reluctance to waste their time or are heard discussing that concept.

Stella's exploration of Robert's identity, one of the narrative pillars of the plot, remains open until immediately before his death, where he finally unveils his political views and philosophy of life.

The characters that do leave the city to go either to Mount Morris, in Ireland, or to Holme Dene, in the Home Counties, think of their country in rather gloomy terms.

On the surface, London during the Blitz is not particularly characterised by strong displays of nationalism; instead, life the present is celebrated by the imminence of the possibility of being killed during the bombings.

Specifically, one of the main tensions in the book lies in the degree of knowledge that each of the male characters may or may not have about the other, using Stella as intermediary: "'If you mean Robert,’ she flashed out, "he doesn’t know you'.

"[16] As expected, propaganda plays an essential role in the book, as well as the disclosure of the concealed identities of the spies and intelligence agents.

On her part, Stella is also concerned by her progressive detachment from her son Roderick and begins wondering if she in fact knows him as she thinks she does.

Roderick is determined throughout the narration to unbury the real story of Victor's adultery, Cousin Francis' actual reason for visiting Britain and Nettie's motivation to check herself in at Wisteria Lodge.

"White information and propaganda",[19] two different forms of telling, are discussed as to the way they are produced and consumed by Louie and Connie.

I let it ride, and more⎯it came to be my story, and I stuck to it'.”[23] One of the strongest arguments Robert uses to justify his act of treachery is a critique of public and official discourses: "Don’t you understand all that nation-related language is dead currency?”[15] Stella does not settle down in a specific flat, but moves from one to another, which symbolises the fleetingness of her life.

Holme Dene, Robert's family house in the Home Counties, gives off an aura of mystery and deceit: "though antique in appearance, [it] was not actually old.

"[27] Finally, in the environment of the "man-eating house"[8] Robert's masculinity is fetishised due to the fact that he is the only son and male family member left alive (except for his young nephew).

"[32] There are, however, some isolated passages that deal with the bombings of London: "Never had any season been more felt… Out of mists of morning charred by the smoke from ruins each day rose to a height of unmisty glitter; between the last of sunset and first note of the siren the darkening glassy tenseness of evening was drawn fine.

"[33] The importance of time and its measure is foregrounded by the presence of clocks in the novel, especially in the actions where Stella is involved: "It was some minutes since she had heard eight strike.

"[36] Also, time in the isolated Holme Dene seems to work in a unique way: "the grandfather clock, on the other hand, must have stood there always⎯time had clogged its ticking.

"[26] By making Stella look through windows and into mirrors, the author highlights the importance of perceiving the environment, most importantly during scenes involving plotting and espionage: "Over the photographs, hung a mirror⎯into which, on hearing Harrison’s footstep actually on the stairs, she looked; not at herself but with the idea of studying, at just one more remove from reality, the door of this room opening behind her.

"[2] Her looking through windows dramatises the isolation and partial safety in which the citizens lived through the Blitz at their homes, and it also symbolises the tensions between her self-image and how she may be regarded from the outside.