Regeneration Critical Quotes

Monteith- 'abstractions'

Barker 'begins to translate large abstractions about patriotism and pacifism, courage and fear, into encounters between individual characters'

Monteith- 'faceless millions of dead'

'Barker recognises that... it is more difficult to mourn faceless millions of dead than a single person whom one comes to 'know''

Monteith- 'Gulf War'

'The Trilogy... comments indirectly on contemporary conflict and the need to address society's expectations of combatants'

Monteith- military psychiatry

'debate on the methodology and ethics' of military psychiatry

Monteith- 'hysteria'

'Since "hysteria" derives etymologically from the Greek word for womb, it inhibits men for whom masculine endeavour an agency are the key to recovery, and for whom patriotic responsibility is synonymous with heroism'.

Monteith- 'men's symptoms'

Rivers views the men's symptoms as 'a kind of self-censorship'

'Mutism could displace the anger officers felt towards their superiors... provide a cover for their powerlessness to protest'

Showalter- Sassoon

Sassoon's 'return to France... defeat- defeat by therapy and by the framing of his anti-war protest as neurosis''

Monteith- 'zone of obligation'

'The Front becomes a zone of obligation for Sassoon and Owen and for Prior; it involves them in a tortured relationship with war based on responsibility for their men'.

Monteith- 'the war'

'The war is pervasive and invasive'.

Westman- 'women... male territory'

'When women trespass on male territory, they are expected to be more masculine and feminine to succeed'

Monteith- 'Sarah's mother'

'Sarah's mother remains persistent in her warnings that Sarah learn to use her sexuality to her advantage in order to make a good marriage; she is clearly sceptical that any change in gender politics could be permanent'

Monteith- men and women

'Insidious rift between men's and women's experiences of war stretches between them like a measureless wasteland'

Monteith- Prior

'Prior is a conduit between the classes'

'hybrid character and an interlocutor for the men'

Monteith- 'meaning of WW1'

Barker ensures 'that the reader never loses sight of the fact that meaning of the First World War persists and changes for each generation'

Monteith- 'transitional figure'

Rivers is a 'transitional figure: his life and work encompass both pre and post war ideology as he moves from Victorian to modern times'

Monteith- 'messianic'

'Rivers is an invention as much as a reclamation'

'Barker's Rivers is... something of a messianic figure'

Monteith- Rivers, 'split'

'Rivers, like his men, is vulnerable, split'.

'part of the war machine'

Monteith- 'visceral excitement'

'Barker is the first writer of fiction to pursue in depth the visceral excitement of war... exposing war as an aphrodisiac'

Monteith- 'visually effective'

'Trilogy is often very visually effective. Barker succeeds in creating powerful anti- war images of waste and chaos in the trenches'

Brannigan- 'war as an index'

'uses the story of the war as an index of contemporary social and sexual debates'

Brannigan- 'Victorian'

The war is a 'horrific vortex in which the Victorian sense of civilisation is thrown into crisis'