One of the essential qualities of the Modernist text is a focus on psychological exploration.
In “The Return of the Soldier” this quality appears not only through the narrator’s thoughts and keen observational skills, that grant her the ability to extract the innermost thoughts of Kitty, Margaret, and Chris, but through Chris’ mental illness. Chris’ amnesia adds a complex layer to psychological exploration. Amnesia exists as both an external factor in the “interior of the mind” ideology because of the clinical classifying of one’s mental state and an internal factor which is the manifestation of the illness in the mind. “ With the external factor comes the medical prerogative of curing one of mental illness. The “Return of the Soldier” addresses the relationship between mental illness and “normalcy” and if mental illness can be but a form of “normalcy.” Jenny, the narrator and Margaret both lament Chris’ possible confrontation with reality if he see’s his dead son’s possessions. They have to reconcile the happiness he has acquired with the harsh truth about Chris’ age. This struggle of normalcy and mental illness also plays out in “The House of Mirth.” By the end of “The House of Mirth” we realize that depression and melancholia are the roots of Lily’s perpetual mental agony. Yet in these mental states I would argue, though uncomfortably, that Lily is at one of the most stable parts of her life. Lily and Chris’ mental illness’ give them an escape from their realities (in Lily’s case her desired reality) that bring them closer to the self that they rings most true to them.