Historical and Literary Context

Question 1

Outline Pat Barker’s life and works

Answer 1

• born in N Yorkshire in 1943 and raised by her mother; she never knew her father and believed until just before her mother’s death in 2000 that he had been an RAF pilot in WW2
• her early novels that were written in her 20s focus on the harsh lives of working-class women working in the North
• studied International History at LSE and Durham University
• teacher of history and politics until 1982
• Regeneration marked a turning point

Question 2

What inspired Barker to write Regeneration?

Answer 2

• Her childhood curiosity in her grandfather’s experiences in the trenches and the bayonet wound he suffered there, both of which he never spoke of which evoked for Barker a compelling “kind of silence… that invites imaginative exploration”
• Barker directly attributes the inspiration for the novel to her husband, a neurologist familiar with the work and writing of WHR Rivers
• She wanted to write about WW1 but not a pseudo-combatant novel

Question 3

Outline the features of Barker’s style

Answer 3

• direct, blunt and often uncomfortable to read
• explores controversial, often taboo topics
• Barker believes that we can only understand physical and mental distress if we are close to it, which is reflected in her blunt, sometimes, graphic descriptions
• the simplicity of her style can also be attributed to Barker’s belief that she is an ordinary person, writing for ordinary people about a subject that touched the lives of so many people
• the language she chooses is easily understandable and not exclusionary as a result