How Barker Establishes the Theme of Emasculation in Part 1 of ‘Regeneration’. Jazmine Bennett 12th Grade

Masculinity, especially in the context of the early twentieth-century, can be defined through the ability to dominate and control. Throughout Part 1, Barker draws our attention to the way in which the war itself has become responsible for a situation in which thousands of men are broken, traumatised and in crisis. She does this through the characters W.H.R. Rivers, an exhausted war doctor, and his ‘shell-shocked’ patients. Among these are Burns, who cannot keep his food down after a disgusting experience, Anderson, a physician terrified by the sight of blood, and the mute amnesiac Prior. It is through Rivers’ treatment of these patients that Barker conveys the emasculating effect of life on the front line.

It is mostly from Dr Rivers’ point of view that Barker presents ideas about emasculation in Part 1 of Regeneration. Barker places Rivers, who was a real man with the rank of Captain in the Royal Army Medical Corps (RAMC), as the central character of ‘Regeneration’. This plays an important unifying function within the novel. For the most part, Rivers is the figure around whom all the other characters revolve. The treatment of his patients leads to his ultimate realisation at the end of Chapter 5 that ‘In advising them to...