Regeneration: Masculinity

What Langdon doesn’t belive exists - Rivers

• “Langdon doesn’t believe in shell-shock.” - Rivers (pg 6)

Dear director of Medical Services - Rivers

• “Can you imagine what our dear Director of Medical Services is going to say, when he finds out we’re sheltering ‘conchies’ as well as cowards, shirkers, scrimshankers and degenerates?” - Rivers (pg 7)

Theres a way back - Graves

• “Yes, but there’s a way back. People can accept a breakdown. There’s no way back from being a conchie.” - Graves (30)

locked up in a loony bin - Anderson

• “I suppose it is possible someone might find being locked up in a loony bin a fairly emasculating experience?” - Anderson (pg 39)

Not with me - Anderson

• “Public health might be a possibility.

It doesn’t have much . . . dash about it, does it?

Is that a consideration?

Anderson hesitated. Not with me.” - Anderson and Rivers (pg 42

Tenor of their upbringing - Rivers

•  “He was setting himself against the whole tenor of their upbringing. They’d been trained to identify emotional repression as the essence of manliness. Men who broke down, or cried, or admitted to feelings of fear, were sissies, weaklings, failures. Not men.” - Rivers (pg 65-66)

Bullet up the arse - Mr Prior

• “Hm. He’d get a damn sight more sympathy from me if he had a bullet up his arse.” - Mr Prior (pg 78)

Mad vs Pacifism - Sassoon

• “Better mad than a pacifist.” - Sassoon (pg 111)

Labouring classes’ illness

• “It’s almost as if for the . . . the labouring classes' illness has to be physical. They can’t take their condition seriously unless there’s a physical symptom.” - Rivers (pg 131)

Prior Headbutting

“Prior seized Rivers by the arms, and began butting him in the chest, hard enough to hurt. This was not an attack, Rivers realized, though it felt like one. It was the closest Prior could come to asking for physical contact.” - Rivers (pg 142)

brought up hard - Prior

• “I don’t think of myself as the kind of person who breaks down. And yet time and time again I’m brought up hard against the fact that I did.” - Prior (pg 143)

Kind of person that breaks down - Rivers

• “I don’t know that there is ‘a kind of person who breaks down.’ I imagine most of us could if the pressure were bad enough. I know I could.” - Rivers (pg 143)

Feminine passivity - Rivers

• “The war that had promised so much in the way of ‘manly’ activity had actually delivered ‘feminine’ passivity, and on a scale that their mothers and sisters had scarcely known. No wonder they broke down.” - Rivers (pg 146)

I know what you want me to say - Willard

• Willard gave a short hissing laugh. I know what you want me to say. I can’t walk because I don’t want to go back. He glared at Rivers. Well, I won’t say it. It would be tantamount to an admission of cowardice.” - Willard (pg 151-152)

Degenerates - Yaelland

• “Men who broke down were degenerates whose weakness would have caused them to break down, eventually, even in civilian life.” - Yealland (pg 156)

White feathers - Burns

“In London, Burns said, on his first trip out in civilian clothes, he’d been handed two white feathers.” - Burns (pg 233)

Same disorders women suffered from in peacetime - Rivers

• “Any explanation of war neurosis must account for the fact that this apparently intensely masculine life of war and danger and hardship produced in men the same disorders that women suffered from in peace.” - Rivers (pg 298)

Rivers recieved the expected answer

• “Rivers asked questions about the relapse rate, the suicide rate, and received the expected reply. Nobody knew.” - Rivers (pg 300)

Sympathetic audience - Yaelland

• “Good. The last thing these patients need is a sympathetic audience.” - Yaelland (pg 305)

You must speak - Yaelland

“You must speak, but I shall not listen to anything you have to say.” - Yaelland (pg 309)