Commemoration and the Great War: 'The Return of the Soldier', 'The Unknown Soldier' and 'Mrs. Dalloway'

Criticism on Great War memorialisation typically argues one of two things: that monuments were erected as authentic expressions of grief or that monuments were erected for political purposes. This study attempts to reconcile these diverging views by exploring the effects of Great War propaganda and memorialisation on individual consciousness. This study is particularly concerned with the genesis of the nation—or imagined community—and how traditions, monuments, and cultural symbols construct Englishness during and after the Great War. Ideology transforms individuals into national subjects. The trauma of twentieth-century warfare—millions of men were killed and millions more were physically and psychologically maimed—challenged the ideologies that construct the nation and control the individual. The three novels included in this study represent characters whose war experiences call into question the ideology of the nation; because of the war, these characters become alienated from the English community. In Rebecca West's The Return of the Soldier (1918), Chris Baldry returns home with shell-shock induced amnesia and refuses to perform his masculine roles as husband and soldier. In Vernon Bartlett's The Unknown Soldier (1930), a soldier believes the nation does not exist and that patriotism imposes illusory divisions among men. In Virginia Woolf's Mrs. Dalloway (1925), post-war memorialisation constructs a community of mourners. For Woolf, individuals must separate themselves from the ideology of the community, which glorifies the war dead, in order to engage in authentic grief work. These texts highlight the ways people responded to the trauma of the Great War and the ways the nation assimilated or rejected particular narratives.