HIST 335-Regeneration Critical Review

Hillary Hawkins

Dr. Stephen

HIST 335-Regeneration Critical Review

February 22, 2013

The Restructuring of Gender Roles and Gendered Association in British Culture

as Portrayed in Regeneration

Dreams of corsets winding their way around a male form, holding and restraining him both within and to the contents of a nightmare. A male doctor being viewed as motherly in view of the care given to his ailing patients. The notion of talking, typically considered a feminine forte, as therapy; discussing one's feelings in order to discover a path to recovery as opposed to denying the words liberty to be voiced and replacing them with masculine actions. These are but a few examples of individuals grasping with the lasting echos of war that took their toll on mind and body; individual and society. “Regeneration” is defined as “the process of being formed, created, or constructed again.” While it is a concept applied to a variety of themes within the novel bearing the same title, this paper will examine how author Pat Barker looks at the reaction of how gender roles are perceived, enacted and recreated in a time where a society was attempting to cope with an entirely unexpected level of despair, disillusionment and disenfranchisement. Regeneration explores the themes of emasculation, stronger feminine identities and independence, and the restructuring of gender roles and identity in society as a direct result of wartime experience.Clearly illustrated examples of this are most obviously shown through the eyes of Dr. Rivers, and his interactions with his patients at Craiglockhart, and for the purposes of this paper, specifically the viewpoint and experiences of soldier Billy Prior.

In Victorian and early-Edwardian England, gender roles were clear, distinct and unchallenged. These roles would see a distinctive shift and blurring of the lines as the war efforts progressed, and again once the men began to return home from the front. Many men ventured off to war with an idealized notion of glory, duty and masculinity, and many more were transformed by its grim realities and the realization that noamount of manly prowess, noble virtue, or superior strength would shield them from the physical and mental horrors introduced on the battlefields on World War I.

In return, women's traditional roles would also see a noticeable shift from positions and designations of busy hands in the home but limited power and voice in areas of influence, to being a needed and valued source of strength and continuation in a period of uncertainty, grief and loss. Their will, capability and steely back-boned resolve, while always in existence, was revealed as a result of war; the emasculating effects on men that reduced them often to the capability of a helpless, lost and scared youth that resulted in little to no choice but to push on and try to hope for the best, while treating the worst. The “helpless” cloak that they had donned in previous eras to indicate femininity and dependence on a male's support was thrown off; discarded for purposes that better fit the reality of the time, as opposed to the constructed and fabricated illusions presented throughout the classes and genders in the years prior to war.

Looking at the transformation of the men of Regeneration, we see a shaken part of humanity and society, rocked by what they had endured and witnessed in a type of battle not expected, and rarely experienced. In response, these “shell-shocked” soldiers exhibited lasting effects so contrary to the norm of what had traditionally been experienced that the distinction from “masculine” to “feminine” seems almost anticipated. Treatment practices ranged from the gruesome to the illogical, but for the purposes of Regeneration, we see Dr. Rivers treating soldiers with a relatively new and unexpected method of “talk therapy”. Although discussing one's feelings would clearly be seen as a feminine trait and activity in this time period, it was a growing practice of the time, and is an effective means for Barker to reveal the inner thoughts and subsurface torments of these individual characters. Many of the men, such as Billy Prior, balk at the idea of such a feminine activity in the name of healing, particularly since such “masculine” methods of war, battle and killings were what brought them to treatment to begin with. Prior attempts to preserve this notion of masculine identity by refusing to take part in the talk therapy sessions, and instead clings to silence in a way to maintain his own perception of normality and sanity. He also relies on physical indication of male prowess and strength, although it is clear he is fighting a losing battle in the midst of churning emotions, fear and the undeniable need for comfort and connection. In the end of his struggle with suppression of facing his inner-torment, after hypnotherapy we see Prior submitting to his emotions and releasing them in the form of tears; physically showing a transformation from masculine displays of strength and control, to more feminine-perceived expressions of emotion and feeling. A sign of healing through transformation and expression, but to many members of society, also a sign of surrender. A sign of surrender of identified roles, which perhaps even indicates an initial fear and suspicion of madness.

Through Prior, we also see the shift in women's roles in society, and how they are viewed by by society as a result. On page 90, we see Prior describe character Sarah Lumb, and the gender she is representative of, as unexpected and transformed in their inaction of their new-formed expression of seemingly altered gendered roles. He states that he considers how the role of women appears to have transformed “during the war, to have expanded in all kinds of ways, whereas men over the same period had shrunk into a smaller and smaller space” (90). This could be considered one of the most telling lines and examples within the novel that indicate a clear shift of gender roles and distinctions within British society during and after the first World War. The women worked in factories, ran business, set prices, maintained families, and were the often the voice of strength, reason and hope for recovery. Not only were women of the time faced with their male counterparts returning home injured mentally and physically, but the tolls of war had left a huge widening in their population numbers compared to their male counterparts. This horrific result of combat and the loss of a huge segment of society would forever alter the mindset and structure of the generation, and future generations to come.

In the end, Barker's Regeneration looks at the sobering effects of war on a variety of fronts, but through the examination of gender roles and display, and demonstrating vividly through both character action and dialogue the alternating process of how they had been typically enacted shows to us, the reader, how this was a period of definite restructuring of what was considered acceptably in the sense of masculine and feminine, while ironically remaining somewhat unchanged. The doctor's caring ways are seen as “motherly” by the patients, the male expression of emotion is cathartic, yet initially feared, and the woman's increasing role of independence and source of strength is seen as an inevitable, unavoidable, and in some ways, undesirable, but finally accepted result of the negative effects of war. While it is without question that the effects of the war were horrific, sobering and filled with tragedy, it is undeniable that as a result society was completed restructured, reformed and regenerated: gender roles included.