The postwar era was a transformative time for the world. World War I ended in November 1918, and many troops returned home in 1919. Many returning veterans and conservative social forces expected that life would return to traditional prewar patterns. Social changes caused by the war, however, were not easily overturned, and many people, including women, were reluctant to relinquish the roles and freedoms that they had been afforded during the state of emergency. These tensions created a great deal of social unrest and anxiety, providing the historical background for the novel and mirroring the tensions in the narrative.

World War I saw a “scale of violence unknown in any previous war” (“How Modern Weapons Changed Combat in the First World War.” Imperial War Museums). Modern weaponry and close-combat warfare caused terrible injuries, and amputation was often the only treatment against fatal infection. The scale and nature of the war caused an unprecedented number of amputees: an estimated total of more than “41,000 young male amputees in the United Kingdom alone” (Dixon Smith, Sarah, et al. “I Did Not Expect the Doctor to Treat a Ghost.” Pain Reports, vol.