Quote:
Originally Posted by Bookpossum
I'm probably being too soft-hearted and sympathetic, but I find it hard to judge Vera Brittain. It seems to me that the grief of those senseless deaths one after the other, the ongoing stresses of the nursing she did, and then the expectation of her parents that she should stop what she was doing and go and look after them, would be too much for most people to bear.
She probably was a bit hard to take, but I think she was suffering from post traumatic stress for several years after the war. The attitude of her Somerville classmates reminded me a bit of people who say that someone who suffers great injury or loss should "just get over it", without any real conception of how hard that is.
I know the book made me feel once again that my life has been incredibly lucky and placid compared to the horrors that she and so many others have lived through. I suppose I feel that because I haven't been tested, I don't know how well I could stand up to repeated blows like those she endured.
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I had the feeling of reading about a somewhat unlikeable person who nevertheless endured some extraordinary circumstances, partly through fate and partly through her own choice. It is hard for me to judge her - different time, terrible stresses - but some quirks of her personality and opinion are hard to ignore.
I do feel for her losses, mainly the love of her life and her only sibling both dying during the war, and I feel for her loss at the sense that she and those of her generation that survived lost many of the best years of their lives. But I also weigh that against the fact that she came from a well-off family, grew up in ease pre-war and had the means (which many women at the time didn't) to go not only to university but to Oxford, and was able to resume all that. So her life in this book is a yin-yang of privilege and hardship.
I really respect her for her determination to make her own way pre-war, and I believe that the first part was probably my favourite. I don't know what to say about her determination to endure nursing, with its at times sadistic bosses, dull monotony and terrible conditions, for so long.
This thread has been so interesting to read through and thanks issy for a great month!