What Shall We Do with Our Soldiers?

Abstract

Shell shock caused the crisis of masculine identity from several perspectives. Rebecca West‘s The Return of the Soldier and Sarah Waters‘s The Little Stranger are both rich in representing these forms of alienation. I will read the identity in crisis as a result of several factors (besides the traumatic experience of war, of course), including socio-cultural and family background. In addition to examining the causes of the alienated subjectivity, I will interpret the answers given to the(se) trauma(s), relying on Freudian and Lacanian discourses. Also, I will put the main characters‘ (hi)story into the contexts of memory and nostalgia studies, as well as studies of Englishness.