World War II

World War II appears in the novel not as a sustained account of combat but as a fragment of professional memory: Doctor Gordon recalls serving at a women’s military station before he was sent overseas. The recollection briefly locates his past in wartime service, while its breezy emphasis on the women’s appearance sits uneasily beside Esther’s vulnerability in his care.

Wartime Service Recalled

During an appointment, Doctor Gordon asks Esther where she went to college. Her answer prompts a memory of the college during the war: he remembers a station for women in military service and says he was the doctor for its personnel before being sent overseas. He corrects himself as he tries to recall which service had been stationed there, then describes the women as attractive. The novel supplies no further account of his overseas service or of the war itself; the episode is a compact disclosure rather than a developed wartime narrative.

The Memory in the Examination Room

The timing gives the recollection its significance. Esther has been speaking to Doctor Gordon, while his pencil taps repeatedly at one point on the green blotter. Instead of offering the diagnosis she expects, he turns to a personal memory prompted by her college. His light, nostalgic tone makes the women he once treated sound like an attractive group in an anecdote, not patients whose circumstances he pauses to consider. The war surfaces through his professional history, but the scene remains centered on the imbalance between a doctor’s authority and Esther’s uncertainty about what he intends.

From Recollection to Treatment

After laughing, Doctor Gordon rises and walks around his desk toward Esther. She is unsure what he means to do and stands up too. The novel then proceeds to the treatment he administers: Esther is taken to a room with barred windows and lockable doors, fitted with metal plates strapped against her head, and made to bite a wire. She experiences the shock as a violent shaking and flashes of blue light. Later, when she tells Doctor Nolan what happened, Nolan says it was a mistake and was not supposed to be like that. These details do not establish that wartime service caused Doctor Gordon’s conduct; they instead set his brief account of past medical work against the treatment Esther undergoes in the present.

A Limited Historical Frame

The war is thus a small but pointed element of characterization and setting. Doctor Gordon’s remembered service gives him a professional past beyond the examination room, yet the recollection does not make him more legible to Esther or reassure her about the treatment ahead. Its casualness contrasts with the distressing, bodily specificity of her experience. By allowing World War II to enter through a doctor’s offhand reminiscence rather than a battle scene, the novel keeps historical reference subordinate to Esther’s immediate encounter with medical power.