AN ABSTRACT OF THE DISSERTATION OF ASHLEY GREEN, for the Doctor of Philosophy degree in English, presented on November 5, 2012, at Southern Illinois University Carbondale. TITLE: TRAUMA INSCRIBED ON THE BODY IN PAT BARKER'S REGENERATION TRILOGY MAJOR PROFESSOR: Dr. Michael Molino In the nineties, British writer, Pat Barker, completed a sequence of novels entitled The Regeneration Trilogy in which she set to the task of understanding trauma in relation to our notions, or mis-notions rather, of WWI. In this trilogy, the author does not simply engage a discussion of the past through the integration of historical figures, personal recordings, and accurate accounts of society and the Western Front during 1917-1918; but through the complexity of her characters' personalities and lives a rather comprehensive evaluation of trauma and its effects on the subject emerges. In the initial book in her sequence, Regeneration, Barker is specifically interested in the ways in which the physical symptoms of war neurosis communicate the nature of an internal crisis, and how those very same manifestations enlighten our understanding of the obstacles of traumatic communication. Dr. Rivers's role as a therapist who endorses the "Talking Cure" establishes language as the key element to the process recovery, proposing, then, it is through a dialectical relationship that the wound[ed] can speak; language, for Barker, is the link reconnecting individuals to their trauma, subjects to their past and present selves, and, ultimately, the soul to its body. It is really through the process of integrating history and fiction that the author is able to evaluate the full breadth of Great Britain's traumatization during WWI. As Barker moves through her trilogy, her observations of trauma increase in scope as Dr. Rivers moves from Craiglockhart, Scotland, ultimately, to London working at the Empire Hospital with Dr. Henry Head. Initially, Dr. Rivers treats specifically shell-shocked soldiers but by The Eye in the Door, Rivers begins treating officers of a different branch, pilots of the Royal Flying Corps; and by the final book in the sequence, The Ghost Road, the doctor applies his clinical theories to both physically and emotionally damaged patients. In direct relation to Dr. Rivers's greater perspective, Barker also brings to light her observations of total traumatization by depicting her female characters as subverted elements of society and locales of crisis. In addition, Barker represents culture as one that also displays obvious clues of violence and traumatization. Ultimately, Barker does all this to make a comprehensive observation of trauma: the physical always reveals evidence of its experience. Through reading the material of -- and written on the body--we can only begin to understand fully the complex nature of trauma and the way in which it has entirely disrupted, yet composed our historical identities.

In 1991, British novelist Patricia Barker published Regeneration, the first of three novels that portrayed the exploits of both factual and fictional characters during the darkest days of WWI. Barker's Eye in the Door (1993), followed by The Ghost Road (1995) for which she won the Booker Prize for Fiction, completed the series that explored the effects of combat on the human psyche. What emerges as a dominant feature of Barker's war novels is her depiction of the ocular sense. Reminiscent of Orwellianism, Barker's texts contain a seemingly ubiquitous ocular presence. For example, neurasthenic patients are scrutinized by army psychiatrists, objectors and subversives are spied upon or imprisoned so that their activities may be observed, and combatants are faced with the challenge of reconciling the horrifying events they have witnessed in combat. This study investigates the role and importance of Pat Barker's depiction of eyes and visuality in her war trilogy. The overreaching goal of the thesis to examine Barker's aestheticized notion of ocularity. It is my aim to come some conclusions about how vision / ocularity signal the emergence of a few central themes in the texts such as power relationships, objectification, exposure and the transgression of boundaries. The social and linguistic theories of Michael Foucault, Roland Barthes, Georges Bataille, Martin Jay and others who have addressed the themes of perception and ocular symbolism will be introduced into my discussion with the aim of providing a theoretic foundation to many of my assertions. Chapters will begin with an interpretation of a piece of theoretical writing by one of these authors followed by an analysis of Barker's texts that incorporates the major tenets of that theory. These tenets will serve as a basis to my discussion and it is my hope that, through the creative application of theoretical writing, I will address a number of aspects of Barker's work, especially in relation to her ocular imagery, that that have thus far gone unexplored.