Characters
Chris Baldry is an upper class gentlemen who chafes against the upper class expectations in which he is cast into. His amnesia filled return reveals someone who has a suppressed "romantic sensibility" according to critic Carl Rollyson. As Jenny comments in the book, he "was not like other city men", he had a "great faith in the improbable". Chris, throughout the novel is treated simply as the "soldier" and is often not given a full examination by Jenny as the narrator, thus making his character a flat individual stuck in his masculine function in society.
Kitty Baldry on the other hand, is neoclassical in her outlook. Instead of the romantic optimism which Chris exhibits throughout the novel, Kitty's life revolves around the "proper forms" of an upperclass performance. Obsessed with self-control, good breeding, manners and making life tidy and comfortable, Kitty creates a facade of happiness which she projects on Baldry Court.
Margaret is a character cast in strong contrast with Kitty. Appearing like a worn out lower class woman, whom the narrator Jenny initially feels hostile against, Margaret reveals herself as both thoughtful and aware, both critically revealing the illusions in Baldry Court to Jenny and supporting and expanding Dr. Anderson's analysis of Chris's psychological state.
Read more about this topic: The Return Of The Soldier
Famous quotes containing the word characters:
“We are like travellers using the cinders of a volcano to roast their eggs. Whilst we see that it always stands ready to clothe what we would say, we cannot avoid the question whether the characters are not significant of themselves.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“There are characters which are continually creating collisions and nodes for themselves in dramas which nobody is prepared to act with them. Their susceptibilities will clash against objects that remain innocently quiet.”
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“I have often noticed that after I had bestowed on the characters of my novels some treasured item of my past, it would pine away in the artificial world where I had so abruptly placed it.”
—Vladimir Nabokov (1899–1977)