기이한 집: 『병사의 귀환』과 『마음의 죽음』에 나타난 전쟁과 헤리티지의 반영

The Uncanny House: The Reflection of War and Heritage in The Return of the Soldier and The Death of the Heart

Heritage is a form in which culture as a creative way of life is embodied and inherited throughout history. Heritage we inherited from our previous generations means more than just finding and preserving, because heritage builds our identity and creates the value for life. In the case of Elizabeth Bowen who has experienced a history of war and conflict as Anglo-Irish woman, the heritage was a more complex and delicate issue. Bowen was neither British nor Irish, and wandered between the two countries to find shelters for orphan. Neil Corcoran s emphasis of the living ghosts in Bowen s novel implies that Bowen s novel was an expression of such an unstable and incomplete way of living in a war-torn era. It is also the same for Rebecca West that she uses this discontinuity of heritage as a symbol of a fragmented modern world. In The Death of the Heart the tradition of conventional living collapsed after the war, and now the cruelty brought by the common daily pretentious behavior is accused through the innocent girl s eyes. The fact that the bucolic and noble life collapses by the influence of war is more noticeable in Rebecca West‘s The Return of the Soldier due to the main character Chris amnesia. Just as Portia is taken care of by Maid Matchet, Margaret, a woman of the lower class, is now a protector of Chris soul on behalf of his wealthy wife, For the post-war vacancy of the authority, Bowen and West emphasizes the empathy and benevolence of lower-class women who have wisely accumulated much experience of discrimination and suffering.