|
You are absolutely right, of course. There's no argument against this.
I can see the other side, too, in regard to her classmates. Some of them no doubt had lost fathers or brothers or other well-loved people, and some would have had their young and not-so-young men come back maimed for life, physically or mentally or both. And it would have been irritating to have Vera acting as if her experience was deeper or more authentic, because she had been old enough to serve close to the front and experience the carnage first-hand. And the irony is that of course it was, because that experience was untranslatable and unimaginable to those who didn't know it first-hand. But young women who also had experienced devastating losses I think could naturally have felt patronized and their own griefs marginalized by Vera's all-encompassing woe, to which I agree she was entitled.
I agree I'm being too hard on Vera, just as Vera probably did her classmates an injustice or unconsciously misrepresented them, by viewing them all as young and silly and callous.
|