The Dream World
Much of the short fiction of E. F. Benson exists in the shadowy unreal world existing between the consciousness of being awake and subconscious beyond reach during the dream state. So many of Benson’s character are driven to their showdown with the supernatural via the conduit of transmission that takes place during dreams, nightmares, premonitions and half-understood psychic awareness that it is safe to declare his stories a veritable encyclopedia dream imagery without the translation of which much of his fiction would collapse.
Holidays and Vacations
Images of exotic locales are abundant in these stories as so many require the narrator—often accompanied by a male companion—to leave the comfort and safety and his own to come face to face with the macabre. From snowy mountains to villas overlooking shimmering seas, part of the imagery that connects one story in a collection to another is that of the narrator being forced to confront a structure away from his comfort zone. It is almost if the author is suggesting that the only people with supernatural goings-on inside their own home are inextricably linked to that manifestation. People with good, clear consciences simply do not have such weirdness in their house. Of course, another way of viewing this particular recurring motif is that only people who are loafing away from the daily grind are subject to a peculiarly temporary existence in that realm between sleeping and being awake.
Foreboding Oppression Leads to Revelation
Occurring with such frequency that it threatens to turn into a simple formula is the staging of a story in which the narrator first becomes aware of a supernatural presence—usually through dreams and nightmares. Slowly this dream world intrudes upon the waking with unmistakable yet ambiguous evidence of something really existing. Eventually, the ambiguity is blasted through by the full undeniable revelation and on more than a few occasions this revelation is made concrete through a grotesque and monstrous entity. The repetition of this approach avoids devolving into formula through the sheer strength of the imagery which oppressive sense of dread engineers.
Slugs
Certainly, the most notable imagery associated with the short stories of E. F. Benson are his hideous elemental creatures. In addition to the infamous titular characters in his horrific story “The Caterpillars” Benson’s tales are populated by a variety of slimy, slug-like creatures that usually produce a foul odor and tend to possess adaptive vampire-like abilities to drain the human body of some vital essence.
