Masculinity In Regeneration

Regeneration by Pat Barker is a historic novel set during the First World War narrating the lives of patients at the Craiglockhart War Hospital, where they are treated by the psychiatrist Dr. Rivers for mental issues due to the war. Just as wounded patients have paid the price of war, patients suffering from what is today called Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder are just as wounded, only mentally, and not physically. Pat Barker suggests that, with the arrival of World War 1, the concept of masculinity was challenged by the men showing signs of war traumatism, and that conflict is shown throughout Regeneration by the reactions from the military, the patients themselves as well as their family.
From the start, it is understood that not everyone
Billy Prior’s father’s annoyance towards his son’s place at Craiglockhart is evident as he meets Dr. Rivers: “He’d get a damn sight more sympathy from me if he had a bullet up his arse” (57). The man’s lack of compassion for his son and his rough attitude with Prior when he was younger (56) shows once more the masculine concept that men have to be cold-hearted and emotionless in order to be a “real man”. Mr. Prior makes sure to stress how he is not proud of his son (57), perhaps due to his choices in life, but also evidently because of his son’s current hospitalization. Burns’ parents, though not mentioned with great detail, do not seem to be very interested in their son, as Burns reveals: “’They’re both very busy in London.’ They turned and walked on. ‘It’s best we don’t see too much of each other at the moment. I am not a sight for sore eyes’” (171). Burns’ statement shows his own awkwardness towards his illness, which he has trouble talking about (169), and furthermore consolidates the belief that men should go through difficult times alone, without any comfort from their own family. Burns’ parents left him to deal with it himself, even though family members are usually there for each other in proving times. As it is the case with Burns, patients often have trouble opening up about their experiences in order to be mentally
They’d been trained to identify emotional repression as the essence of manliness. (48)
His thoughts describe exactly what most of his patients are going through, like Burns and Prior. The treatment of what these men are going through is contradicted by the current social standards. Rivers thus has to undo these mental barriers on top of helping the patients get through their trauma.
Pat Barker illustrates, through her novel, the difficulty of giving treatments to war trauma patients due to the narrow-minded view of what a soldier, and furthermore what a man, should be. Masculinity was so important in the eyes of the military and in the general society that it even affected the ill patients and their family’s view of mental issues. Even as of now, mental issues are treated as minor by many people, and the concept of men as stronger and more resilient than women, and thus able to get through anything without help, is still very much engrained in