The Return of the Soldier

The Return of the Soldier is a work of fiction published in 1918 by the English novelist Rebecca West. Her debut novel, The Return of the Soldier, tells the story of Captain Chris Baldry, who struggles with post-traumatic stress disorder in the wake of returning home from trench warfare during World War I. In 1982, the book was made into a motion picture adaptation starring Alan Bates and Julie Christie.

The narrator of the novel is a woman named Jenny who lives outside London with her cousin Kitty Baldry, helping her manage the domestic affairs of the Baldry family estate. Across the English channel, World War I rages. But while Kitty does worry about the safety of her husband, Chris, who is fighting in France for the British Army, right now she is concerned with a tragedy closer to home: Kitty sits alone in a nursery she and Chris built for their son who passed away in infancy.

Kitty's devastating grief is interrupted by a visit from a middle-aged woman born to a lower class whose name is Margaret Grey. Much to Kitty and Jenny's surprise, Margaret says she's been informed that Captain Chris Baldry has been injured and is returning home. The two wonder why Margaret and not Kitty was the person the War Office chose to notify. Kitty coldly asks Margaret to leave, telling her that she must be either lying or delusional, as the War Office would never notify Margaret of Chris' imminent return over his own wife.



But some time later, Kitty learns from another cousin that Margaret's story is true. What's more, the cousin visited Chris when he was in the hospital and says that Chris couldn't stop talking about a woman named Margaret, with whom he had a brief summer relationship fifteen years earlier at the age of twenty. Kitty's confusion is compounded shortly thereafter when Chris finally arrives at the Baldry estate. Due to his injuries and his traumatic experiences during the war, Chris believes he is still twenty years old. He cannot reconcile this delusion with the fact that the world around him and all the people in it seem to have suddenly aged fifteen years overnight. At the moment, Kitty is too upset to really engage with Chris about it, and so Jenny steps in, asking him to describe his most recent memories and what he feels right now. Chris responds with a story about the summer fling he had with Margaret fifteen years ago on Monkey Island, an island in the River Thames. Margaret was the local inn-keeper's daughter, Chris says. At the end of the summer, something happened to make Chris jealous and the two left one another on bad terms.

Desperate to help Chris regain his memories, Jenny locates Margaret in the town of Wealdstone, in the hope that she can make Chris understand that fifteen years have passed. Jenny is initially repelled by Margaret's dilapidated living conditions and her drab home where she cares for her husband. Margaret agrees to visit Chris, who greets her arrival with excitement. Margaret finally convinces him that fifteen years have passed, but his memory is still lost and he still pines for Margaret.

Believing that Margaret's visits are helping--if only because they make Chris happy--Jenny continues to invite Margaret for visits, and over time the two develop a shared admiration for one another. Kitty, on the other hand, is made utterly miserable by everything that's happened since Chris' return. Unwilling to accept that Margaret's friendship with Chris is a good thing, Kitty invites a psychoanalyst named Dr. Gilbert Anderson to the house in the hopes that he can cure Chris. After interviewing Chris and the three women, Dr. Anderson determines his course of treatment: Margaret must confront Chris about the death of his and Kitty's two-year-old son, Oliver. According to Dr. Anderson's logic, Chris would never be able to deny the existence and memory of his lost son.



Jenny believes this might work, but that's the problem: she almost envies Chris' ability to live in a happier moment from the past, before becoming separated from Margaret, before losing Oliver, and before experiencing the horrors of war. In the end, however, she decides that Chris will never have a dignified life unless he can confront the truth.

Jenny and Kitty wait outside while Margaret confronts Chris about Oliver. They can't hear anything, but Jenny can tell just by looking at Chris through an open window that the mannerisms and gait of the Chris they know has returned. Kitty exclaims in happiness, "He's cured!" But Jenny just stands in silence, unable to express the tragic reality of what's just happened.

The Return of the Soldier is a novel of staggering loss and one of the earliest attempts by a novelist to reckon with the enormous, long-lasting psychological effects on the soldiers who survived the Great War.