'Comradeship', however, was what is called homosocial behaviour and this is a recurrent thread in the book.Men were afraid that they would be labelled as homosexual and this is indicated by means of the jokes that characters tell or by references to Freud. The character Billy Prior is representative of this in that he is heterosexual in Regeneration but bi-sexual in The Eye in the Door and The Ghost Road. Prior uses sexual humour in order to try and gain the upper hand in his doctor/patient relationship with Rivers.

Many of the female characters will be familiar to Barker's readers as they are hard-working, straight-talking, determined Northern women who have led difficult lives. They have also, through working in the munitions factories, discovered the attractions of fiscal independence, even if the work itself was monotonous, unpleasant and sometimes dangerous.

Regeneration then is a blend of fact/fiction, science/literature. It is sometimes described as a historical novel although Barker herself dislikes the term. Rather it examines relationships and the roles that people play within the relationship. The use of historical figures does make the novel seem more 'real' and this helps the reader enjoy the narrative without having to ponder too deeply on the exact nature of the ties between 'real' and 'fictional' people and how this affects the plot and the reader's understanding of it.