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Truth and Value in Rebecca West’s The Return of the Soldier
- Philosophy and Literature
- Johns Hopkins University Press
- Volume 38, Number 2, October 2014
- pp. 368-379
- 10.1353/phl.2014.0056
- Article
- Additional Information
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Rebecca West’s The Return of the Soldier offers an imaginative and philosophically intriguing twist on the familiar trope of the irreconcilable tension between a man’s love for a woman and his duties to his wife and family. In West’s hands this theme becomes a mere framing device for a deeper conflict, one in which the need for happiness is set against the prerogatives of truth, the whim of fantasy against the realm of public facts. In this paper I discuss these themes in the light of recent philosophical discussions of the nature and value of truth.