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The Return of the Soldier (Penguin Twentieth-Century Classics) Paperback – June 1, 1998

by Rebecca West (Author), Samuel Hynes (Introduction)

4.0 857 ratings

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Writing her first novel during World War I, West examines the relationship between three women and a soldier suffering from shell-shock. This novel of an enclosed world invaded by public events also embodies in its characters the shifts in England's class structures at the beginning of the twentieth century.

For more than seventy years, Penguin has been the leading publisher of classic literature in the English-speaking world. With more than 1,700 titles, Penguin Classics represents a global bookshelf of the best works throughout history and across genres and disciplines. Readers trust the series to provide authoritative texts enhanced by introductions and notes by distinguished scholars and contemporary authors, as well as up-to-date translations by award-winning translators.

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Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

It would be a crime to give away even the barest outline of Rebecca West's apparently simple, always agonizing first novel. We shall say only that The Return of the Soldier concerns the title character and three very different women to whom he is linked in very different ways--by blood, by marriage, and by love. It is also an imaginative study (one drenched in realism) of intimacy and illusion, possession and a terrible, destructive snobbery. On one estate outside London, even as the Great War and familial loss are taking their toll, the inhabitants strive for a measured, outwardly exquisite existence. All must remain as it was while their Chris is at war: each person, each object in its proper place. "You probably know the beauty of that view," the narrator buttonholes us, looking out the nursery window: For when Chris rebuilt Baldry Court after his marriage, he handed it over to architects who had not so much the wild eye of the artist as the knowing wink of the manicurist, and between them they massaged the dear old place into matter for innumerable photos in the illustrated papers. But of late this universe unto itself cannot quite keep out an England altered by ambition and industry. Only a few miles away a "red suburban stain," Wealdstone, has somehow cropped up. And one day all is permanently altered--or, rather, revealed--when a Wealdstone resident comes bearing news of Captain Baldry. Mrs. William Gray is clearly not of Chris's wife Kitty and his cousin Jenny's class, as Kitty in particular makes her aware. "Again her gray eyes brimmed," Jenny observes. "People are rude to one, she visibly said, but surely not nice people like this." How is it, then, that this dreary, "dingy" woman knows Chris and knows that something has happened to him? And how is it that Jenny soon comes to see her as someone "whose personality was sounding through her squalor like a beautiful voice singing in a darkened room"?

In the remainder of this brief, perfect novel, a vanished (or repressed) past and its lost prospect of happiness comes to the fore. Rebecca West is best remembered for Black Lamb and Grey Falcon: A Journey Through Yugoslavia (1941), but she displays the same vision--and a similar degree of realism--in her charged 1916 novel. Many readers will passionately regret the book's last twist, even as they know it to be artistically as well as historically true. --Kerry Fried

Review

“Brilliant . . . [West was] an artist who wrote wonderful prose, who took chances with language and cadence, and who wrote poetically, even of prosaic subjects.”
—The New Republic

From the Back Cover

World War I, in the background of Rebecca West's first novel, was "the first war that women could imagine", writes Samuel Hynes in his eloquent introduction, "and so it was the first that a woman could write into a novel". Narrated by a woman who, like West, has never experienced war and yet for whom the war was very real, The Return of the Soldier (1918) takes place not on a battlefield, but in an isolated country house. It examines the relationships between three women and a soldier suffering from shell shock. This novel of an enclosed world invaded by public events also embodies in its characters the shifts in England's class structures at the beginning of the twentieth century, as well as the choice between the romantic past and the horrifying present, between love and reality.

About the Author

Rebecca West, novelist, biographer, journalist, and critic, was one of the century's most brilliant and forceful writers. Born Cicily Isabel Fairfield on December 21, 1892, she was educated at George Watson's Ladies College. She adopted the nom de plume Rebecca West from Ibsen's Romserholm in which she once appeared. At an early age she threw herself into the suffragette movement and in 1911 joined the staff of the Freewoman and in the following year became a political writer on the socialist newspaper the Clarion. Her love affair with the novelist H.G. Wells began in 1913 and lasted for ten, not always happy, years. Their son, Anthony West, her only child, was born in 1914. After the break with Wells she went to America where she lectured and formed what was to be a long association reviewing for the New York Herlad-Tribune. In 1930 she married Henry Maxwell Andrews, a banker, and they lived in Buckinhamshire until his death in 1968, after which Rebecca West moved to London.

Her first published book was a critical study of Henry James, her second a novel, The Return of the Soldier (1918), which was recently made into a successful film. She published eight novels including The Judge (1922), Harriet Hume (1929), and the largely autobiographical The Fountain Overflows (1957). Her last novel, The Birds Fall Down (1966), was adapted or BBC television in 1978. In the mid-thirties she made several trips to the Balkans in order to gather material for a travel book. But her interest in the subject deepened and she returned to the area many times to collect more material. The result was her masterpiece, Black Lamb and Grey Falcon, published in 1941 in two volumes. In her obituary The Times (London) remarked of this work that it "was immediately recognized as a magnum opus, as astonishing in its range, in its subtlety and power of its judgment, as it is brilliant in expression." As a result of the books' publication, she was invited during the war to superintend the BBC broadcasts to Yugoslavia. After the war she was present at the Nuremberg Trials and her account of these and of other trials which arose out of the relation of the individual to the state, were published in two books, The Meaning of Treason (1949) and A Train of Powder (1955).

Samuel Hynes is Woodrow Wilson Professor of Literature Emeritus at Princeton University and the author of several major works of literary criticism, including The Auden Generation, Edwardian Occasions, and The Edwardian Turn of Mind. Hynes's wartime experiences as a Marine Corps pilot were the basis for his highly praised memoir, Flights of Passage. The Soldiers' Tale, his book about soldiers' narratives of the two world wars and Vietnam, won a Robert F. Kennedy Award. He is also a fellow of the Royal Society of Literature.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

Chapter I

"Ah, don't begin to fuss!" wailed Kitty. "If a woman began to worry in these days because her husband hadn't written to her for a fortnight! Besides, if he'd been anywhere interesting, anywhere where the fighting was really hot, he'd have found some way of telling me instead of just leaving it as 'Somewhere in France.' He'll be all right."

We were sitting in the nursery. I had not meant to enter it again, now that the child was dead; but I had come suddenly on Kitty as she slipped the key into the lock, and I had lingered to look in at the high room, so full of whiteness and clear colors, so unendurably gay and familiar, which is kept in all respects as though there were still a child in the house. It was the first lavish day of spring, and the sunlight was pouring through the tall, arched windows and the flowered curtains so brightly that in the old days a fat fist would certainly have been raised to point out the new, translucent glories of the rosebud. Sunlight was lying in great pools on the blue cork floor and the soft rugs, patterned with strange beasts, and threw dancing beams, which should have been gravely watched for hours, on the white paint and the blue distempered walls. It fell on the rocking-horse, which had been Chris's idea of an appropriate present for his year-old son, and showed what a fine fellow he was and how tremendously dappled; it picked out Mary and her little lamb on the chintz ottoman. And along the mantelpiece, under the loved print of the snarling tiger, in attitudes that were at once angular and relaxed, as though they were ready for play at their master's pleasure, but found it hard to keep from drowsing in this warm weather, sat the Teddy Bear and the chimpanzee and the woolly white dog and the black cat with eyes that roll. Everything was there except Oliver. I turned away so that I might not spy on Kitty revisiting her dead. But she called after me:

"Come here, Jenny. I'm going to dry my hair." And when I looked again I saw that her golden hair was all about her shoulders and that she wore over her frock a little silken jacket trimmed with rosebuds. She looked so like a girl on a magazine cover that one expected to find a large "15 cents" somewhere attached to her person. She had taken Nanny's big basket-chair from its place by the highchair, and was pushing it over to the middle window. "I always come in here when Emery has washed my hair. It's the sunniest room in the house. I wish Chris wouldn't have it kept as a nursery when there's no chance-" She sat down, swept her hair over the back of the chair into the sunlight, and held out to me her tortoiseshell hair-brush. "Give it a brush now and then, like a good soul; but be careful. Tortoise snaps so!"

I took the brush and turned to the window, leaning my forehead against the glass and staring unobservantly at the view. You probably know the beauty of that view; for when Chris rebuilt Baldry Court after his marriage he handed it over to architects who had not so much the wild eye of the artist as the knowing wink of the manicurist, and between them they massaged the dear old place into matter for innumerable photographs in the illustrated papers. The house lies on the crest of Harrowweald, and from its windows the eye drops to miles of emerald pastureland lying wet and brilliant under a westward line of sleek hills, blue with distance and distant woods, while nearer it range the suave decorum of the lawn and the Lebanon cedar, the branches of which are like darkness made palpable, and the minatory gauntnesses of the topmost pines in the wood that breaks downward, its bare boughs a close texture of browns and purples, from the pond on the edge of the hill.

That day its beauty was an affront to me, because, like most Englishwomen of my time, I was wishing for the return of a soldier. Disregarding the national interest and everything else except the keen prehensile gesture of our hearts toward him, I wanted to snatch my Cousin Christopher from the wars and seal him in this green pleasantness his wife and I now looked upon. Of late I had had bad dreams about him. By nights I saw Chris running across the brown rottenness of No-Man's-Land, starting back here because he trod upon a hand, not even looking there because of the awfulness of an unburied head, and not till my dream was packed full of horror did I see him pitch forward on his knees as he reached safety, if it was that. For on the war-films I have seen men slip down as softly from the trench-parapet, and none but the grimmer philosophers could say that they had reached safety by their fall. And when I escaped into wakefulness it was only to lie stiff and think of stories I had heard in the boyish voice of the modern subaltern, which rings indomitable, yet has most of its gay notes flattened: "We were all of us in a barn one night, and a shell came along. My pal sang out, 'Help me, old man; I've got no legs!' and I had to answer, 'I can't, old man; I've got no hands!' " Well, such are the dreams of Englishwomen to-day. I could not complain, but I wished for the return of our soldier. So I said:

"I wish we could hear from Chris. It is a fortnight since he wrote."

And then it was that Kitty wailed, "Ah, don't begin to fuss!" and bent over her image in a hand-mirror as one might bend for refreshment over scented flowers.

I tried to build about me such a little globe of ease as always ensphered her, and thought of all that remained good in our lives though Chris was gone. I was sure that we were preserved from the reproach of luxury, because we had made a fine place for Chris, one little part of the world that was, so far as surfaces could make it so, good enough for his amazing goodness. Here we had nourished that surpassing amiability which was so habitual that one took it as one of his physical characteristics, and regarded any lapse into bad temper as a calamity as startling as the breaking of a leg; here we had made happiness inevitable for him. I could shut my eyes and think of innumerable proofs of how well we had succeeded, for there never was so visibly contented a man. And I recalled all that he did one morning just a year ago when he went to the front.

First he had sat in the morning-room and talked and stared out on the lawns that already had the desolation of an empty stage, although he had not yet gone; then broke off suddenly and went about the house, looking into many rooms. He went to the stables and looked at the horses and had the dogs brought out; he refrained from touching them or speaking to them, as though he felt himself already infected with the squalor of war and did not want to contaminate their bright physical well-being. Then he went to the edge of the wood and stood staring down into the clumps of dark-leaved rhododendrons and the yellow tangle of last year's bracken and the cold winter black of the trees. (From this very window I had spied on him.) Then he moved broodingly back to the house to be with his wife until the moment of his going, when Kitty and I stood on the steps to see him motor off to Waterloo. He kissed us both. As he bent over me I noticed once again how his hair was of two colors, brown and gold. Then he got into the car, put on his Tommy air, and said: "So long! I'll write you from Berlin!" and as he spoke his head dropped back, and he set a hard stare on the house. That meant, I knew, that he loved the life he had lived with us and desired to carry with him to the dreary place of death and dirt the complete memory of everything about his home, on which his mind could brush when things were at their worst, as a man might finger an amulet through his shirt. This house, this life with us, was the core of his heart.

"If he could come back!" I said. "He was so happy here!"

And Kitty answered:

"He could not have been happier."

It was important that he should have been happy, for, you see, he was not like other city men. When we had played together as children in that wood he had always shown great faith in the imminence of the improbable. He thought that the birch-tree would really stir and shrink and quicken into an enchanted princess, that he really was a red Indian, and that his disguise would suddenly fall from him at the right sundown, that at any moment a tiger might lift red fangs through the bracken, and he expected these things with a stronger motion of the imagination than the ordinary child's make-believe. And from a thousand intimations, from his occasional clear fixity of gaze on good things as though they were about to dissolve into better, from the passionate anticipation with which he went to new countries or met new people, I was aware that this faith had persisted into his adult life. He had exchanged his expectation of becoming a red Indian for the equally wistful aspiration of becoming completely reconciled to life. It was his hopeless hope that some time he would have an experience that would act on his life like alchemy, turning to gold all the dark metals of events, and from that revelation he would go on his way rich with an inextinguishable joy. There had been, of course, no chance of his ever getting it. Literally there wasn't room to swing a revelation in his crowded life. First of all, at his father's death he had been obliged to take over a business that was weighted by the needs of a mob of female relatives who were all useless either in the old way, with antimacassars, or in the new way, with gold-clubs; then Kitty had come along and picked up his conception of normal expenditure, and carelessly stretched it as a woman stretches a new glove on her hand.

Product details

Publisher ‏ : ‎ Penguin Classics; 35337th edition (June 1, 1998)
Language ‏ : ‎ English
Paperback ‏ : ‎ 112 pages
ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 014118065X
ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0141180656
Reading age ‏ : ‎ 18 years and up
Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 3.6 ounces
Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 7.78 x 5.14 x 0.3 inches

Best Sellers Rank: #564,151 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #2,065 in Historical British & Irish Literature
- #13,105 in Classic Literature & Fiction
- #26,974 in Literary Fiction (Books)

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Rebecca West

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Rebecca West (1892-1983) was a novelist, biographer, journalist, and critic. She published eight novels in addition to her masterpiece Black Lamb and Grey Falcon, for which she made several trips to the Balkans. Following World War II, she also published two books on the relation of the individual to the state, called The Meaning of Treason and A Train of Powder.

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Phred

One of the best novellas I have ever read.

Reviewed in the United States on December 16, 2012

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This review may contain some spoilers so I will begin with my bottom line.

This is a tightly written, many layered thought provoking small book. This is not light reading and is for the serious thinking reader. Dame West is given to simile and metaphor that may seem over done, but are brilliantly crafted to support the story line or its subtext.

Some weeks back I had reviewed Harriet Hume. Harriet Hume: A London Fantasy I found it wordy, florid and felt that I had missed something. This book, her first is better on all counts; including clarity of purpose.

Return of the Soldier has been written of as the first book of WWI written from a woman's perspective. Authentication of the claim of first is for others. This book is literally written from a woman's perspective.
The central character is Chris, the returning soldier. He received a head injury and is suffering from "retrospective amnesia". That is he cannot remember the last 15 years of his life. He has reverted to a simpler time before he had adult responsibilities, forgetting his wife and instead remembering his first great love. Being a member of the landed gentry he has nothing to but convalesce. Around him are the three women of his life. His childhood companion, Cousin Jenny; his beautiful, snobbish and stylish wife Kitty; and his first love, member of the working class, and long since married Margaret.

The story is told by or to the unmarried Jenny. Jenny shares the family estate with Kitty. At some point before he left to fight in WWI, Chris and Kitty had lost their 5-year old son to some disease and Jenny has been acting as Kitty's support in Chris's absence. Through her we see how the other characters react to each other and to her is told the back story of the long ago romance between Chris and Margaret. Kitty is mostly seen as some-what childlike, snobby and selfish; in the end it is her intense love of her injured husband that is most visible.

Of Chris we know that before his injury he had been an effective businessman, a responsible holder of the family's Baldrige Manor home and a loving husband.
As an injured amnesiac, he is in a kind of adolescence, if still aware that he has to act like an adult. His old love for Margaret is what keeps him together if rather passive.

Margaret is an older married working class woman. Her life has not been an easy one. Her face, figure and life style reflect a hard working life but her values are those of selfless sacrifice, loyalty and an essential goodness. Jenny wants to dislike her for her lack of upper class style and manners (Kitty never loses her snobbish view of Margaret and is further effected by her jealousy of her), but sees her as the Chris still does, the inner woman he loved in his youth. The love of Margaret and Chris is realized for us in the quote"
"Embraces do not matter; they merely indicate the will to love and may as well be followed by defeat as victory. But disregard means that now there needs to be no straining of the eyes, no stretching forth of the hands, no pressing of the lips, because theirs is such a union that they are no longer aware of the division of their flesh"

Of the several levels operational in this short book (my ecopy says 77 pages), I could identify at least two.

Initially this is the story of how every serving soldier returns from combat changed from who he was. Chris reverts to a more innocent existence. The general statement is that most if not all will be changed by the experience. At this level Dame West uses three different types of people who have to deal with this change. Loved ones (wife Kitty), family (Cousin Jenny) and everyone else (working class Margaret).
Having sent the soldier off to war, society has a duty to deal with their injuries and to support their recoveries. Family has to act as intermediaries within the house hold and with society. Loved ones have to find ways to adapt to or cope with the intimate reality of someone who is beloved and at the same time is a stranger.

By the end, this is a different but related story. What are the relative duties and responsibilities of the soldier, and buy extension any adult. Chris in his innocence can enjoy his immature love. It is a life fulfilling joyous love. It is a love of the inner person and is never to be changed by time. It is also a love free of duties, bills children or maturity. Chris's love of Kitty is that more adult love. Recognizing her means resuming the burden of their lost child, going back to war and again, by extension, accepting the struggles of an adult life.
Some have commented that ending is pat or contrived; in this light, perhaps not so much so.
Having previously complained about Dame West being too florid, this book is brilliantly tight. She has a great gift. One phrase used to describe Margaret's husband captures him completely in one phrase: " a man handling a spade without mastery".

This time I "get" Rebecca West. This is an admirable book. Short, dense with meaning. It is as meaningful to America in 2012 as it was to Post WWI England. It is not too much to call this great literature about the human condition.

6 people found this helpful

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Gary Severance

PTSD

Reviewed in the United States on January 5, 2011

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Rebecca West (nee Cicely Isabel Fairfield 1892-1983) began her distinguished career in the second decade of the 20th Century, a period of exciting international literary contributions. The publication of the British writer's first novel, The Return of the Soldier (1919), established her immediately as one of a group of very talented women authors. The short, modernist novel is filled with indications of West's brilliance and clear insight that make the reader sit up and take notice while reading the simple and direct narrative.

The story involves a shell-shocked soldier sent home from combat in the trenches of France during World War I. He is unfit to continue his mission because of retrograde amnesia that causes him to believe he is living in an earlier period of his life, long before his army service. Returning home to England, he tries to take up his life as it was before even though people who are important to him have aged 15 years. He feels as young as he did in those days and receives support during his delusion of youth by his current wife and his former lover.

The structure and psychological content of this novel remind me of Virginia Woolf's early work, The Voyage Out. I enjoyed the surprising, illuminating flashes of insight of the characters that made me realize the depth of talent shown right out of the literary gate of this young, 21 year old writer. It is a bit long on descriptions of flora even though the environment is important in the novel. The content of the story is relevant today due to the newer diagnosis of shell-shock, Post Traumatic Stress Disorder applied to soldiers in increasing numbers.

I pushed the buttons on my Kindle and went to the Kindle Store to buy her second novel, The Judge. I am looking forward to reading the complete work of Rebecca West (fiction and non-fiction), now considered a leading intellectual woman of the 20th Century.

4 people found this helpful

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Frank Donnelly

A Very Enjoyable And Interesting, Post Victorian Short Novel

Reviewed in the United States on September 7, 2017

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This is the debut novel of Rebecca West. It was composed during World War I and set in World War I. It is about a soldier returning home having suffered from "shell shock". As one can imagine his family suffers along with him.

The narrator is a female cousin who has very high regard for the soldier. The style is Early Post Victorian, and there is no crass language whatsoever. A modern American reader may find the style somewhat dated. Personally I very much like Victorian and Post Victorian literature and really enjoyed this novel.

I purchased both and audiobook and read along on Kindle. The audiobook was more descriptive than the Kindle. They were very similar but not identical and I much preferred the audiobook.

The narrator of my audiobook was Nadia May. Nadia May happens to be one of my favorite narrators and is my favorite narrator for George Eliot Novels. The reason I mention this is that this novel really reminds me of George Eliot, who is my favorite author. I cannot help but wonder if my perception is affected by Nadia May being the narrator.

The novel also reminds me of the early novels of Virginia Wolff. Specifically I am thinking of "The Voyage Out", "Night And Day", and "Jacob's Room". In that Rebecca West reminded me of both George Eliot and Virginia Wolff, I absolutely intend to study her further and read more of her works. Thank You...

12 people found this helpful

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Neasa MacErlean

The female World War One novel

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on May 12, 2014

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The main World War I novel by a woman, "The Return of the Soldier" is based on the home front of Harrow and Wealdstone in 1916 and shows the relationship between shell-shocked Chris and three women in his life. His broken memory wipes out the last 15 years, including his marriage, and sends him back to the love of his life, Margaret.
The book was written before the end of the war and transmits the uncertainty, frustration and desperation of those days. In settling how they will relate to each other, the four characters answer questions that loom even bigger than war, such as 'what is a man?', 'what is love?' and, bringing the two together, 'what is honour?'. Only 24 when she wrote the book, Rebecca West was still working out her style as she created this big canvas. The whole story is given yet another slant by the fact that the narrator, Chris's cousin, is a shocking snob - the kind of woman who lost out to social evolution after World War I, but not before she despised the working class Margaret for the clothes she wore and the roughness of her skin.

8 people found this helpful

Melrose Typer

A forgotten gem

Reviewed in Canada on June 30, 2012

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This book may be slim but it certainly packs a punch. Rebecca West selects each word carefully and the result is a study of a shell-shocked First World War soldier and what happens when he is sent home (England) to recuperate.
West wrote the book in 1918, while the war was still being fought and little was known about the psychological state of men on the battlefield.
I would recommend this title for anyone who is collecting/reading First World War fiction as we near the 100th anniversary of the Great War. West's writing style is very much of the period--don't let that put you off. The ending will have you thinking about the book for days after.

Joon Hwan Bae

A nice short novel

Reviewed in Canada on December 6, 2018

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It is a good read. This book is not predictable from my point of view. This book is a must read.

Giuseppe Grano

Ottimo acquisto!

Reviewed in Italy on April 4, 2018

Verified Purchase

Ottimo acquisto.. lo consiglio. Le recensioni degli altri clienti sono state utili. Tempi della spedizione rispettati! + + + +

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Mrs. J King

Living in another world.

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on December 18, 2012

Verified Purchase

Written in 1918, this is a very tender and rather poetic account of the return of Chris, a shell-shocked soldier from World War One to the world of weath and luxury created by his beautiful wife and doting cousin. However, his heart is still on Money Island, with Margaret, his first love. Should he be returned to the real world or be allowed to remain happily living in the past? The story is beautifully written though very much a product of its time both in style and content. The portraits of the three women emerge powerfully. Feminists would find find plenty to chew upon here and some of the attitudes to class and wealth would make even those of the palest pink politics gnash their teeth.

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