Editing Regeneration (novel) (section)

===Women and the domestic===
{{see also|British women's literature of World War I}}
Some critics have written extensively on the place of women within the novel, even though it focuses on men.<ref name="Provost23-25" /> In part this is because Barker's previous novels focus on working-class women's history.<ref name="Provost23-25" /> In her companion to the novel, Karin Westman sees the novel as a response by Barker to critics stereotyping her as only being interested in writing about women.<ref name="Westman15">Westman 15.</ref> However, Baker has repeatedly talked about how this novel as connected with her earlier interests in feminism.<ref name="Westman15" /> Barker describes the novel as providing a voice for the home front, stating, that "In a lot of books about war by men the women are totally silenced. The men go off and fight and the women stay at home and cry; basically, this is the typical feature. And the women in the trilogy are always deeply significant, and whatever they say in whatever language they say it in, it is always meant to be listened to very carefully."<ref name="Reusch english" /> In particular, Barker is interested in the contradictions placed on women's expectations during war period, and its history;<ref name="Reusch english" /> for example, she points out that the women in the munitions factories are expected to produce weapons to kill thousands, but a woman who attempts to abort her unborn child is criticised.<ref name="Reusch english" />

The female perspectives within the novel is rare in war fiction and provides a larger sense of the domestic repercussions. Critic Ronald Paul notes that ''Regeneration'' and its sequels are some of the first novels since Rebecca's West's ''[[The Return of the Soldier]]'' or Virginia Woolf's ''[[Mrs. Dalloway]]'' that deal with the repercussions of the war and whose author was not a male soldier.<ref name="Paul147" /> Paul describes such novels, which deal explicitly with domestic effects of shell shock, as part of Barker's self-described "very much female view of war".<ref name="Paul147">Paul, 147.</ref>