The Return of the Soldier and Re-Appropriated Memories

Rebecca West’s The Return of the Soldier has often been read as an application of Freudian theory, but biographical and textual evidence suggest that this text is a critique of the conventions of non-Freudian medical case histories, specifically those dealing with memory and amnesia. West’s novel indicates that case histories appropriate patients’ memories as the property of the reporting physician. Her novel reconceptualizes the case history in order to protect the dignity and the privacy of the patient, even to the detriment of narrative and scientific resolution. By concealing the cure—the key element of both narrative and case history—West reappropriates memory on behalf of the patient and establishes her place as a literary modernist.