From the Bookshelf of Catching up on Classics (and lots more!)…

The Return of the Soldier

Rebecca West

Start date: September 1, 2017

Finish date: September 30, 2017

Discussion: Short Story/Novella Collection

Why we're reading this: September 2018 Short Story Rread
[close] September 2018 Short Story Rread

Find A Copy At

Libraries

Group Discussions About This Book

Showing 2 of 118 topics — 7,488 comments total

Short Story/Novella Collection

This topic has been closed to new comments.

* Short Story Classics
By Bob , Short Story Classics · 1 post · 703 views

last updated Sep 01, 2015 05:35AM

Lois the Witch - August 2025
By Bob , Short Story Classics · 29 posts · 72 views

last updated Sep 01, 2025 03:10PM

showing 10 of 48 topics view all »

What Members Thought

Nov 03, 2020 Brenda rated it it was amazing

Shelves: middlebrowish, on-my-shelf

A very emotional book, and through it all I kept asking myself...What would I do in a certain situation? All of which are not easy questions to answer.

I’ve just reread this and changed my rating from 4 to 5. I think this is a fabulous book. Every time I read it I get something else out of it. There’s so much going on in such a short work. I also love her description style, it’s so brilliant. It’s chock full, but for me it doesn’t overwhelm it just adds depth.

This is a book fraught with emotions ...more

25 likes · Like · see review

Jul 26, 2020 Kelly_Hunsaker_reads ... rated it it was ok

Shelves: 1001-books, classics, read-in-2020

I wanted to love this book, and it is the kind of book that I should love. But after reading Brittain's Testament of Youth and Remarque's All Quiet on the Western Front, this one falls flat. The ending was terrible. The exploration of PTSD (shell shock) was too superficial. And I didn't really care about any of the characters. ...more

3 likes · Like · see review

Sep 27, 2014 Peggy rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: international, british, war, history

In 1918, Chris Baldry is serving in France while his cousin Jenny and wife Kitty wait for his return. The women learn that Chris is sick from shell shock. When he returns home he doesn't remember his wife at all. Instead, he seeks out his lover from fifteen years earlier, Margaret, an ordinary woman from the mid or lower classes, who wears "cheap stays" and has the "wholesome endearing heaviness of the draught-ox or the big trusted dog."

Jenny narrates. She's a keen observer of her cousin, being In 1918, Chris Baldry is serving in France while his cousin Jenny and wife Kitty wait for his return. The women learn that Chris is sick from shell shock. When he returns home he doesn't remember his wife at all. Instead, he seeks out his lover from fifteen years earlier, Margaret, an ordinary woman from the mid or lower classes, who wears "cheap stays" and has the "wholesome endearing heaviness of the draught-ox or the big trusted dog."

Jenny narrates. She's a keen observer of her cousin, being devoted to him and loving him in an unrequited way. We don't know why Jenny lives with Chris and Kitty, besides that he is conscientious of his responsibilities to living relatives. After Chris returns home, Kitty almost disappears from the novel. She is class-conscious, devoted to her personal beauty and that of her home: shallow. She doesn't understand, but she withdraws rather than try to figure out Chris's interest in Margaret.

Though Jenny is jealous of Margaret, she observes the couple and discovers that Margaret gives Chris some measure of peace and protection, enough to heal him. Margaret's poverty and dinginess "was part of her generosity" because it left "not one intimation of the beauty of suave flesh to distract him from the message of her soul."

Kitty continues to seek the advice of doctors on how to cure Chris. It's not until the novel nears its end that Jenny realizes that when Chris loses his amnesia he will be sent right back to the trenches.

This novel is built around dichotomous 20th century views of women as either respectable, beautiful, and cold like Kitty or loving, generous, and noble of soul like Margaret. This makes Jenny the most interesting character: neither wife nor mistress, Jenny, the dependent spinster, has the most to lose and she knows it. There are women who do great things, "whose independent spirits can ride fearlessly and with interest outside the home park of their personal relationship," but she is not one of them. She would love to be like Margaret, able to gather "the soul of the man into her soul" and keep it "warm in love and peace." Margaret shows Jenny another value system and she is attracted to it.

When I think of what will become of the four characters, I think that Jenny will change the most. After the war, when British women finally win the right to vote and there begins a general emancipation of women's roles--Jenny may find a way to escape her stifling dependency and become something other than a hanger-on. The Return of the Soldier was Rebecca West's first novel. I'll have to read her later books to find out how her characters evolve. I hope--and expect--them to take risks and explore the places that formerly caged them in. ...more

2 likes · Like · see review

Nov 07, 2010 Laura rated it liked it

Shelves: novellas, 1001-books-you-must-read-before-you, read-2011, e-books, hf-world-war-i, british-literature

Available at: http://digital.library.upenn.edu/wome...

This is not an easy reading but the writer's style is quite interesting. ...more

2 likes · Like · see review

Aug 28, 2018 Rachel rated it really liked it

Shelves: not-so-contemporary-fiction, short-fiction

In a vague retracing of the story of Eden, a wealthy, middle-aged soldier experiences a severe case of amnesia following his time in the trenches. His injury completely erases the past 15 years of his life, returning him to the time of his idyllic first love which transcended the boundaries of class. Only when his wife orchestrates a painful reckoning does he recover, leaving the reader to ponder the meaning of love, the cruelty of the class system, the hollowness of a patriarchy that has been g ...more

Like · see review