Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in Regeneration, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Masculinity, Expectations, and Psychological Health
War, Duty, and Loyalty
Male Relationships
Trauma and Mental Illness
Alienation vs. Belonging
Summary
Analysis
Sarah’s mother Ada visits her in Edinburgh, though it is not a happy reunion. Ada despises Sarah’s work in the factory, the fact that she lives in Edinburgh, and is suspicious of her relationship with Billy Prior. Having raised Sarah and her sister without a father—whether he is dead or merely absent, Sarah does not know—Ada’s only hope was to see her daughters marry wealthy men. If those men died and left them wealthy widows, all the better. Ada does not believe that men and women can truly love each other, they only say so to disguise the mutual exchange; sex for sustenance. As a hobby, she reads romance novels voraciously and laughs hysterically at them. Sarah tells her mother that next time Billy has leave, they’d like to come visit, but Ada cannot understand what an officer could want from her poor daughter in a relationship.
While Sarah embodies an expanded, liberated form of womanhood made possible by the war and society’s sudden lack of young men, Ada, as a foil to Sarah, represents the most cynical view of traditional womanhood—and the most narrow view of manhood as a result—in that a woman’s primary role is to marry a man for money, not for love, and to suffer whatever pain it entails. Ada’s habit of reading romance novels for their comedic value suggests that she is utterly cynical about any notions of romance or love, considering it a superfluous concept that only the biggest fools could fall for.
Themes
Graves visits Craiglockhart, joining Sassoon at the Conservative Club for dinner. They chat about golf and about Owen—Graves does not understand what Sassoon sees in him, since the lad is not into golf or hunting. Sassoon mentions that he’ll be examined by a medical board again, and that Rivers is trying to get him sent back to France. He refuses to withdraw his declaration, but he still wants to go back to combat. Although Graves thinks this is best, the two friends wind up in argument, since Sassoon doesn’t think that Graves takes the gravity and absurdity of the war and all the deaths seriously enough, that he “acquiesce[s]” to it.
Even Graves, who is a dear friend to Sassoon and implied to be gay, looks down on Owen for not having any masculine hobbies. This suggests that society’s expectations of what masculine men ought to be runs so deep that even Graves conforms to them, despite the fact that his own sexual orientation certainly does not meet society’s narrow expectations of men, and Sassoon obviously does not care.
Themes
Changing the subject, Graves tells Sassoon that one of his close friends was recently arrested for “soliciting.” Sassoon expresses sincere sympathies, but Graves goes on to say that since then his “affections have been running in more normal channels,” and that he wouldn’t want Sassoon to think he himself was a homosexual, or even inclined as such. To that end, Graves announces that he’s started writing to a girl. The friend, however, is being sent to Rivers “to be cured,” which deeply unsettles Sassoon.
“Soliciting” refers to soliciting men for sex, which was commonly the charge leveled against gay men when sodomy was still a criminal offense, which it was in 1917. Graves’s decision to reject his and Sassoon’s sexual orientation and start writing letters to a girl suggests that he wants to fit society’s norm for what men ought to be, perhaps for fear of being arrested and ostracized himself.
Themes
Starting her shift at the munitions factory, Sarah recounts her sour visit with Ada to her friends and the women gossip about soldiers and their supervisor. As Sarah works, she thinks about her mother’s hints to quit and go home to work with her, but Sarah is happy as she’s ever been here, and independent. Looking around, however, she realizes that Betty’s not there. Lizzie tells her that Betty realized she was pregnant and tried forcing a miscarriage on herself with a straightened wire-hanger. She missed, though, and punctured her bladder instead, and the doctor who treated her viciously shamed her for attempting to abort her pregnancy.
Sarah’s relative financial independence working in Edinburgh contrasts with Betty’s inability to have an abortion. By juxtaposing the Sarah’s sense of liberation with Betty’s lack of control over her body, the narrative suggests that, although the war has allowed women a greater degree of freedom and personal agency than they’ve known before, in many ways they are still repressed, including by society’s restriction of any form of abortion.
Themes
Get the entire Regeneration LitChart as a printable PDF.
The night before Sassoon’s board examination, Rivers visits him in his room. Sassoon is visibly upset and dispirited, and admits he misses Graves, even though they just nearly had a fight. He recounts his conversation with Graves and the way his denial of his own homosexuality implied that Sassoon was somehow “abominable” and “disgusting.” Sassoon raises the fact that Rivers is meant to “cure” Robert’s friend, and Rivers has no reply. Sassoon laments that he thought society was becoming more tolerant before the war, and Rivers agrees. He suggests that now there’s such emphasis on camaraderie between soldiers—a form of love—that many feel the only way such camaraderie doesn’t veer into a love they’re uncomfortable with is to persecute homosexuality and become even more intolerant.
This conversation between Rivers and Sassoon forms the thesis of the story’s thematic exploration of male relationships. Sassoon’s pain and frustration and Rivers’s argument highlights the hypocrisy of society’s view of male relationships and expressions of love between men, praising them in the form of camaraderie, since it suits society’s warring purposes, while persecuting men and male relationships if they dare to feel anything beyond a mutual love of war and violence. Ironically, the more society emphasizes camaraderie, the more intolerant it grows of homosexuality.
Themes
With tension growing, Rivers encourages Sassoon to keep his head down so someone doesn’t use his sexuality to discredit or slander him, though he knows it’s painful and conflicts with Sassoon’s principles. However, River’s points out that Sassoon—calling him Siegfried—is in a particularly vulnerable position, and he should stop “tilting at windmills” and learn to live “in the real world,” though it visibly upsets Sassoon.
Once again, Rivers expresses an intimate fondness and admiration for Sassoon by using his first name, while simultaneously sounding incredibly paternal in his blunt statement that Sassoon needs to grow up. Rivers suggests that “living in the real world” involves setting aside one’s idealism to operate within the rules that society has established.
Themes
