Complicated Negativity Maisie Dobbs is a private investigator trying to solve everyone’s problem from the effects of the devastating WWI. The war brings so many troubles in the book, whether they are physical, mental, or emotional it still affects the characters. One did not have to actually be in the war to undergo the circumstances of it. The novel Maisie Dobbs is set in England before, during, and after the war. Maisie Dobbs goes through different stages of her life from the start of the war to the end. In the novel Maisie Dobbs by Jacqueline Winspear there is something impacting each character negatively, but the one thing that is affecting everyone the most is the war.
To begin shell shock has been diagnosed in many soldiers repeatedly. …show more content…
Faces became disfigured from gunfire or shrapnel. Shrapnel are fragments of a bomb or shell. The face was the part of the body that was more horrific because one has to look a soldier in the eyes to talk to him. The author says, “She was about to reply when she saw the long, livid scar running from his forehead across his nose and down to his jaw” (Winspear 225). The detail of how bad these wounds were is frightening to imagine. Having to look a soldier in the eye with gruesome scars around their face is difficult to do without making a facial expression. In the article “Faces of War” it says “it was grimly accepted that facial disfigurement was the most traumatic of the multitude of horrific damages the war inflicted” (Alexander 1). Facial disfigurement was very big after WWI because so many men were victims of it. The wounds were so bad that some of the soldiers wore masks to cover their scars. In the book Vincent Weathershaw was a victim of shrapnel and had very gruesome wounds. Vincent is a soldier that survived in the war, but started to get complicated towards the end. Winspear suggests, “Vincent wore a linen mask and only removed it when I assured him that I would not flinch” (Winspear 56). Being hit by the shrapnel left a scar to his face as it did to others. Linen masks were worn by soldiers who did not want their scars revealed in public frightening people away. It was hard for people close to these soldiers to even remember their faces because of the terrible scars. Family or friends to these soldiers were hurt emotionally from seeing their loved ones damaged from the