Furthermore, barker uses Graves to illustrate how a physical injury can diminish the patients’ masculinity. When Graves and Sassoon go swimming, Sassoon comments on a scar on Graves’ upper thigh, implying that if it had been “an inch further up”, he ought to be fit to join a ladies’ choir. Graves appears to respond sensitively, exhibiting his sense of shame and embarrassment over being so closely related to the female gender.
Moreover, Burns is used to demonstrate the results of emasculation. He stands naked surrounded by a circle of dead animals in the countryside: “He cupped his genitals in his hands, not because he was ashamed, but because they looked incongruous, they didn’t seem to fit in with the rest of him.” Burns’ behaviour indicates that he no longer feels like a man, as he believes that his genitals, the one physical part of him that is perhaps the most obvious indication of his gender, are no longer appropriate or worthy to the rest of himself.
During a session with Rivers, Sassoon unintentionally divulges his sexuality and describes Carpenter’s book, ‘The Intermediate Sex’, as “a life-saver”, due to its positive attitude on homosexuality. He explains how he was reassured, after reading it, that he “wasn’t just a freak”. He believes that he should not be ashamed of his sexuality even though being upfront about it could “disqualify (him) from military service”. While Rivers concurs with Sassoon, he warns that although “there’s nothing more despicable than using a man’s private than using a man’s private life to discredit his views”, it is unfortunately “frequently done”. Sassoon is advised to be careful of what he says, and therefore is pressurised to conform to the behavioural ‘norms’ of society.
The novel communicates the common idea of the period, that “Men who broke down, or cried, or admitted to feeling fear, were sissies, weaklings, failures. Not men.” It is perceptible that the men are continuously fighting a battle to sustain their masculinity and to veil any signs of emotion during their time at Craiglockhart: “They’d been trained to identify emotional repression as the essence of manliness.” In other words, the fundamental nature of being a man is to hold back all emotion and failing to do so may be seen as being twice emasculated. Yet such efforts to preserve masculinity prove to be complicated, since Rivers’s job is to force his patients to do the exact opposite. Rivers often contemplates the characteristics - labelled as effeminate by society - needed for his caring profession. He believes that “tears were an acceptable and helpful part of grieving” and that “horror and fear were inevitable responses to the traumas of the war and were better acknowledged than repressed.” He recognises that in requesting his patients to exude their emotions and anguish, he compels them to go against their “whole tenor of their upbringing”. Although they try to reinforce their masculinity by fighting for their country, they must face society’s judgement that it is decidedly unmanly to suffer a breakdown – “Fear, tenderness – these emotions were so despised that they could be admitted into consciousness only at the cost of redefining what it meant to be a man.” As patients, not only have they surrendered themselves to Rivers’s control, but his method of therapy emerges as being particularly emasculating. Consequently, Rivers comes to wonder whether a complete emotional breakdown, resulting in a loss of masculinity, really benefits the soldiers: “to let themselves feel the pity and terror their war experience inevitably evoked, he was excavating the ground he stood on.”
Besides seeing emotional repression as equal to their manliness, the patients are induced to believe that physical contact for the purpose of comfort goes against their education as men. A primary example of this is demonstrated during Prior’s therapy session when he tells Rivers, "I don't think talking helps. It just churns things up and makes them seem more real." It is ostensibly due to Prior’s weakness, as a boy, against his father that he resists Rivers’s help. Mr Prior explains to Rivers, “You’ve got to toughen ‘em up”, further supporting evidence that Prior’s father endeavoured to manipulate his son into being as masculine as possible. Prior is not willing to express emotion to Rivers in a fully conscious state, yet he is willing to endure complete physical submission in order to discharge his true emotions. At the end of Prior’s hypnotherapy, he begins to cry, allowing Rivers to see him consciously expressing emotion, but then proceeds to seize “Rivers by the arms” and begins “butting him in the chest”. Rivers realizes that Prior's aggression is the “closest Prior could come to asking for physical contact.” Prior's response shows that he is struggling to hold onto his manliness, because he is not able to hug Rivers or allow himself to be held. Consequently, he feels that the only way to physically comfort himself, whilst withholding his masculinity, is to hurt Rivers. His treatment with hypnosis forces Prior to put aside the masculine gender role, in this case, being unemotional. This form of complete submission to emotions exhibits how men must alter their masculine gender role in order to heal in this novel.
In conclusion, concerns over effeminate behaviour are presented throughout ‘Regeneration’ and are commonly coupled with the idea of the masculine heroism of warfare and the repression of one’s emotions during the war. It is ostensible that the patients suffer something universal – they are caught in an intense dilemma between the need to recuperate from the traumas of war and the need to protect their sense of belonging and identity as members of British society. The boundaries between the two traditional genders appear to become increasingly indistinguishable as the patients lose the qualities, which are for them, are essential in their identity as men. Ultimately, Barker’s exploration of emasculation in her novel challenges the traditional notions of manliness.
