Foreword
A striking fact about Pat Barker's characters is that they reach significant insights about their social and psychological circumstances and yet are usually drawn back into the frameworks that control and oppress them. This is true of the soldiers, who insist on returning to war in Barker's Regeneration trilogy. In her first three novels, female characters understand how gender roles entrap them, and the women help perpetuate these restrictions on other women. In her characterizations, Barker shows readers the consequences social traumas have on individuals as they struggle to remember, to connect, and to continue living, even if their traumas hamper their full participation in life and love. She explores and implicitly links historical and social traumas, from war to rape, from poverty to oppression. Historical events, such as war, can traumatically change both individual and social identities. Situating Barker's works in historical time, however, does not prevent her works from also providing a basis for understanding traumas in the present, and wishing to prevent traumas in the future.