'The Return of the Soldier ' Summary

The Return of the Soldier is the debut novel of English novelist Rebecca West, first published in 1918. The novel recounts the return of the shell shocked Captain Chris Baldry from the trenches of the First World War from the perspective of his cousin Jenny. The novel grapples with the soldier's return from World War I with mental trauma and its effects on the family, as well as the light it sheds on their fraught relationships.

Though initially reviewed by critics, literary scholars treating West's work tended to focus on her later novels and dismissed The Return of the Soldier until the end of the twentieth century and beginning of the twenty first. The novel was adapted into a film of the same name in 1982, and later into a stage musical of the same name in 2014 by Charles Miller.

The novel begins as the narrator, Jenny, describes her cousin by marriage, Kitty Baldry, pining in the abandoned nursery where her dead first son would have been raised. Occupied with the domestic management of the Baldry estate just outside London, the two are almost completely removed from the horrors of war. The only exception is that Kitty's husband, Chris Baldry, is a British soldier fighting in France. While Kitty laments in the nursery, Margaret Grey arrives at the estate bringing news to the two women. When Jenny and Kitty meet her, they are surprised to find a drab middle-aged woman. And even more to their shock, Margaret tells them that the War Office notified her of Chris's injury and return home, not Kitty and Jenny. Kitty dismisses Margaret from the estate trying to deny that she could have been the recipient of such information.

Soon after, another of Jenny's cousins notifies the two women that he in fact has visited Chris and that he is obsessing over Margaret, whom he had had a summer fling with 15 years before. Soon after, Chris returns shell-shocked to the estate believing he is still 20, but finding himself in a strange world which had aged 15 years beyond his memory. Trying to understand what is real for Chris, Jenny asks Chris to explain what he feels to be true. Chris tells her the story of a romantic summer on Monkey Island, where Chris at the age of 20 fell in love with Margaret, the inn-keeper's daughter. The summer ends with a rash departure by Chris in a fit of jealousy.

After Chris tells this story, Jenny travels to nearby Wealdstone to bring Margaret back to help Chris understand the difference between his remembered past and reality. She arrives at Margaret's dilapidated terraced house to find her dishevelled and taking care of her husband. Jenny convinces Margaret to return with her to the estate to help Chris. Upon Margaret's return, Chris recognises her and becomes excited. Before returning to her home, Margaret explains that 15 years have passed since their Monkey Island summer and that Chris is now married to Kitty. Chris acknowledges this passage of time intellectually but cannot retrieve his memories and still pines for Margaret.