In the final chapter of West’s Return of the Soldier, we finally get the long awaited scene of
analysis by Dr. Anderson, the man who it is believed will be able to finally
cure Chris of his “illness”, or at least aid in helping them to understand it
more fully. I found it interesting that despite the buildup, West shows very
little of Chris being cured other than the discussion of him being outside with
the doctor and then the short scene at the end of the novel in which he is
coming back to the house and looks “every inch a soldier”, a line clearly
indicating that Chris is back to the man he once was, having not only recalled
the horrors of war that he experienced, but more importantly the unhappiness he
felt while living in the house (56).
And Margaret makes the comment to the doctor that
psychoanalysis and the treatment that the doctor provides will not truly cure
Chris of what ails him, as although it will cure his amnesia, it will only
return him to the state of unhappiness that the amnesia allowed him to escape
from, it will make him “ordinary” rather than happy. The pair seem to have an understanding
that bringing people back to “normality” is what is expected of society and of psychiatrists
rather than being something that is always what it best then for the patient or
the person afflicted and it is this that Margaret accepts finally when she does
take the items to Chris so that his memory could be brought back despite his
resistance.
Also find it interesting that there is a literal form of the repressed existing in the house, waiting to be returned to the memories of all living there will just a single turn of the key, so clearly Chris is not the only one grappling with these ideas.
Discussion Questions:
1. Do you agree with the decision made on the part of
Margaret to bring Chris’ memories back? Was she truly obligated to do so, sacrificing her and Chris's potential happiness for his "cure", or
should she rather have kept him as is as he was happy?
2. Ties into the first question in regards to the treatment,
do you think that West should have written more about the actual treatment of
Chris, or is this unimportant? Psychoanalysis is something West herself later
downplays as a part of the novel, however she does spend quite a bit of time
going over the tenets of psychoanalysis through Dr. Anderson.
3. Is returning as “every inch a soldier” truly a cure? Or
rather is there a cure at all that can be had, or at least one had so simply?
Although Kitty seems to believe so, I find that I am not quite so sure.
(Tara - I'm going to hop on to your post, since my questions are very much related to yours.)
ReplyDeleteThe final chapter of West's The Return of the Soldier calls into question the nature of character intentionality with the conversation between Kitty, Jenny, Margaret and Dr. Anderson concerning the cause of Chris's amnesia.
Until this point, with a few exceptions, we've experienced the narrative through the lens of Jenny's preconceived perceptions and biases. Often, even the other characters' words are paraphrased--and their actions manipulated--according to Jenny's standing opinions of them.
In select cases, however, Jenny is forced to reconsider her constructed world when she is confronted with contrary evidence, throwing her off-balance (as when, for example, Margaret's plain appearance becomes an expression of generosity, or when she finds Dr. Anderson's demeanor less than stately/"professional").
Considering this, I thought it would be interesting to explore Jenny's impression of the issue of Chris's amnesia, and what it could imply about the framework of the story (in terms of appearance/reality).
Does the fact that Jenny changes her opinions of the people around her make her more or less reliable as a narrator?
What do Dr. Anderson's insights about amnesia and conscious memory prompt us to reconsider about Chris? What do they reveal about the three women?
How might the topic of the conscious/unconscious mind relate to that of appearance/reality? Internal/external, private/social, individual/conventional tensions?
(For reference, I've copied Dr. Anderson's initial, fairly Freudian, explanation of cognitive duality/Chris's ailment below)
"Effort!" He jerked his round head about. "The mental life that can be controlled by effort isn't the mental life that matters. You've been stuffed up when you were young with talk about a thing called self-control, a sort of barmaid of the soul that says, 'Time's up, gentlemen,' and 'Here, you've had enough.' There's no such thing. There's a deep self in one, the essential self, that has its wishes. And if those wishes are suppressed by the superficial self,—the self that makes, as you say, efforts, and usually makes them with the sole idea of putting up a good show before the neighbors,—it takes its revenge. Into the house of conduct erected by the superficial self it sends an obsession, which doesn't, owing to a twist that the superficial self, which isn't candid, gives it, seem to bear any relation to the suppressed wish. A man who really wants to leave his wife develops a hatred for pickled cabbage which may find vent in performances that lead straight to the asylum. But that's all technical," he finished bluffly. "My business to understand it, not yours. The point is, Mr. Baldry's obsession is that he can't remember the latter years of his life. Well,"—his winking blue eyes drew us all into a community we hardly felt,—"what's the suppressed wish of which it's the manifestation?"
I've also thought of a couple of additional questions that would broaden the scope of our dialogue/place it in the wider context of our course:
ReplyDelete1.) The final chapter of Burdekin's Proud Man also deals with the subject of memory-suppression and its consequences*.
In both Proud Man and The Return of the Soldier, we see some resistance to the return to "sanity" by way of the forced recovery of memory. What conclusions can we draw from this about the "livability" of these worlds? What impact does the state of an individual's conscious mind have on worldly experience (or, put another way, which reality is "real")? Are we, as readers, expected to understand this reluctance to return to reality sympathetically? Is any part of either character "gained" by his escape through repression or "lost" (or "sacrificed") by his return?
We might also consider these last points as foundations for a discussion about the element of exchange present in these transitional scenes. Questions of transaction are certainly alluded to in the context of these stories (eg, Gilbert's acceptance of his past and eventual execution as payment for his crimes; eg, Jenny's admission that Chris's worth/social value would wane with age).
(*"Consequences", for discussion's sake, may refer both to the results of the initial repression of memory-ie, depression/psychotic episodes/amnesia- and the results of the conscious decision/external impetus toward recovering the original memory.)
2.) Last week, we considered the gendered characterizations of/traits used to describe Jenny and Chris. If the roles were reversed, and Jenny was the character struggling with amnesia as Chris observed, would our position with regard to the core questions of the plot change?
I detect a productive tension in the final chapter of West's novella. Tara's pointed to the presence of Freud -- particularly Freud as an almost regulatory partisan of "normality" (though the normative function of psychoanalysis itself is amusingly acknowledged by Dr. Anderson, whose final, spring-creaking collapse into a chair suggests a man who settles into prosaic reality -- what Freud called "common unhappiness" -- with wearily prompt resignation). And Lydia's reference to Jenny's shifting interpretation of Margaret made me realize that, contrary to apperance/reality conscious/unconscious dichotomies, Jenny's formulations -- particularly in this final chapter -- create a kaleidoscope of religious imagery. I wonder how the two comment on each other and interact.
ReplyDeleteTo follow just one strand, Margaret is figured as a "patron saint": an "intercessory being whose kindliness could be daunted only by some special and incredibly malicious decision of the Supreme Force." Though Jenny explicitly appeals to how things "must appear to a Catholic," her ascription of the possibility of malevolence to a clinically named "Supreme Force" complicates her analogy -- it's not possible to "read into" the story a one-to-one (that is, allegorical) correspondence between character and religious figure (Chris=Christ?): because Jenny, who is the source of those correspondences, is constantly mingling the idiosyncratic with the canonical: and the result is an ever-shifting private mythology that, while it borrows from existing systems, is yet an emphatically personal creation.
From patron saint, Margaret is "promoted" to the role of Mary, chief intercessor: or rather, to keep things complicated, to Mary as imagined by "painters who have kept close enough to the earth to see a heavenly vision" -- but the same woman who "by the passion of her motherhood" says "let there be life" (a command counter to the malvolent fiat of the "Father"?) must also say "let there be death": the child in the Virgin's arms is often painted in a pose that foreshadows the deposition, and the distracted melancholy of the young mother points toward the other "passion" of motherhood.
And I really wonder how this network of imagery can be brought into conversation with the Freudian issues Tara raises in her post! It seems there might be much to say.
In our last class, we had resolved to explore more into Chris' state of mind, and why he cannot stay there. It is seemingly harmless that Chris should reside in a happy, peaceful world, one which he experienced in his youth. Why ought he to be reminded of his actual past, along with the tragedies involved in it?
ReplyDeleteI have thought of a few possibilities, and I am open to any comments or suggestions from fellow bloggers. The main answer may lie in Chris' 'social stakes'.
(1) Chris would surely alienate and repel everyone around him, as they could not be able to relate in any real or meaningful way. If he is in total isolation when he becomes senile, the damage he would do to himself could be fatal.
(2) It may be very difficult, or even impossible, for Chris' family and friends to conceal from him the truth of who he truly is and what he has done. Maintaining such an illusion may prove too much for Margaret and others.
(3) Let us suppose that Margaret and others made the decision to leave Chris as he is. Even though Chris does not "age", in a sense, Margaret certainly will age, on the top of the fact that she must be devoted to her own husband, William Grey. Whichever state of mind Chris is in, he will lose Margaret anyway, as well as the sanctified time and place in the garden that Chris holds dear.
Hopefully these possibilities will add something to the conversation. I am curious to hear everyone's feedback.
-Brandon Gerlinger