Last week in class we discussed the distinction between public time and private time and the narrative value of the separation between the two. In addition to the space that is created between public and private time, readers of Rebecca West’s The Return of the Soldier also see an interesting dynamic between  past and present time. When Chris Baldry returns from war we as readers see that his “shell shock” causes him to revert back to his life 15 years ago-where he was presumably much happier. Chris becomes hopelessly fixated on the time he used to spend on Monkey Island in love with a woman named Margaret. So Chris’ mental injury from war does not cause him to become a different person as one may expect, but rather urges him to attempt to repeat his past life. The present time in the book seems to represent everything in Chris’ life that has gone wrong. This would mainly be characterized by his wife Kitty, her preoccupation with adherence to social norms, the absences of Margaret, and the death of his young son Oliver. West writes “All the inhabitants of this new tract of time were his enemies, all of its circumstances his prison bars” showing how Chris felt victimized by the fact that he was thrust back into a timeframe that he couldn’t understand (29). I feel like this example can add to our discussion of public and private time as we see that the war and the historical context of the story become highly secondary to the personal story of Chris and Margaret. Beyond mentioning that the war was the trigger that elicited Chris’ problems, West does not mention much more about any events that would be deemed as public time. We rather focus on two dimensions of private time: the present and 15 years ago.  As we also discussed last week, time seems to be gendered, especially as seen in this novel. Public time is what we could label “male time” where  the intimate moments of private time would earn the label “female time”. Applying these ideas to The Return of the Soldier makes me think about how Chris is emasculated by his injury as shown by his permanent presence in private time during the course of the narrative. If we think of the time distinctions as physical places Chris returns from public time and takes up a seemingly permanent residence in private time. I hope to further discuss these ideas in class and determine what authors such as Woolf and West are doing when they create these multilevel “times”. Are they saying that private time is more important?