In The Return of the Soldier, West cultivates a lyrical yet economical and often crisp style. She employs a lush vocabulary and long, dense sentences to evoke the luxury of Baldry Court its surrounding grounds as well, as Kitty and Jenny's clothing and possessions. For example, in an initial description of her pride in the house's beauty, Jenny compares her mind to
[...] a purring cat, rubbing itself against all the brittle beautiful things that we had either recovered from antiquity or dug from the obscure pits of modern craftsmanship, basking in the colour that glowed from all our solemnly chosen fabrics with such pure intensity that it seemed to shed warmth like sunshine.
The many clauses in this rambling passage mirror the extravagance of the house while the sensual simile linking Jenny's mind to "a purring cat" emphasizes the physical and emotional satisfaction she gains from owning beautiful things. These stylistic choices convey the importance that Kitty and Jenny place on external beauty, as well as their fidelity to a mode of genteel rural life that was already going out of style and would be fundamentally disrupted by WWI.
Elsewhere, especially in moments that are emotionally difficult to Jenny, West provides sparse details and sometimes even withholds information. In the novel's opening pages, Jenny states almost offhandedly that Kitty and Chris's son has recently died, remarking on this tragedy only to explain her reluctance to enter his former bedroom:
We were sitting in the nursery. I had not meant to enter it again after the child’s death [...]
These clipped, spare sentences form a notable contrast to Jenny's evocative descriptions of Baldry Court, showing that articulating or even acknowledging her emotions is extremely difficult for her. Likewise, Jenny relates some of the novel's most important events briefly or from a great distance. For example, she watches Chris and Margaret's first and final meetings from a window, unable to hear what they're saying and inferring what's happening based on physical gestures alone. These stylistic choices are essential to conveying the dynamics within a family whose members prefer to repress or ignore their deepest emotions rather than hurting each other or defying social conventions.
Jenny's tart social observations form another notable stylistic feature of the novel. Describing Chris's behavior towards a hypothetical female acquaintance, Jenny says:
Chris would come in and stand over her [...] and show her that detached attention, such as an unmusical man pays to good music, which men of anchored affections give to attractive women.
This astute remark, which reminds the reader of Jenny's formidable skill as a narrator, conveys both Chris's gentlemanly attitudes and the implicit condescension baked into the social norms that defined polite interaction between men and women. As the novel progresses, these social observations grow more biting and sarcastic in nature, showing Jenny's growing disillusionment with the mores of upper-class life that make Chris and Margaret's romance impossible to sustain. Ultimately, the doubt Jenny expresses about her way of life through these observations undercut the glowingly positive descriptions of her material environment.
