Literary Testament of Youth by Vera Brittain

[desertblues]

I do think that Vera's emotional development was stunted by her going to nurse in the war and the, for women, rather repressive atmosphere she grew up in. She didn't have the time at first and later not the inclination (suffering from after effects from the war) to date and get to experiment with the boys. Also the fact that her character is not that I would call lovable didn't help.
As for her husband George; she could get away with her attitude and that says something about the man as well...ahem....

[fantasyfan]

I'm enjoying this autobiography very much. I would agree that Vera is not the most loveable character in the world. She admits that she has inherited her father's explosive, aggressive personality. How this will affect her later on, I have still to discover though I'm getting some intriguing ideas from the other posts!

For those interested in the way the book was received on publication, the following review appeared in The American Journal of Nursing, November, 1933.

TESTAMENT OF YOUTH. By Vera
Brittain. 661 pages. The Macmillan
Co., New York. 1933.
Price, $2.50.

THE pages of Testament of Youth
are packed with drama, the psychological
drama of the effect of "history's
cruelest catastrophe" on a whole
generation.
The author was a V. A. D., serving
in British hospitals in London, Malta,
and France for the greater part of the
war. Out of the depths of this experience,
and of those of a little group of
young men, she, "a surviving victim,"
has created a great book. Her attitude
toward and her discussions of
nursing are based on the same sensitive
feeling for the deeper values of life that
make the book remarkable. Admiring
an occasional individual matron or
sister, she none the less describes nursing
as "a singularly backward profession."
Nurse readers may argue
that she has not given effective evidence
on this point.
Her powers of observation in the
field of actual nursing are indicated in
the following note from her diary when
transferredt o herf irst medicals ervice:

"These acute medical cases were a disturbing
contrast to the sane, courageous surgicals.
Wounded men kept their personalities even
after a serious operation, whereas those of
the sick became so quickly impaired; the
tiny, virulent microbe that attacked the
body seemed to dominate the spirit as well."

The influence of this great book
should be felt in the movement to end
war, although she has written

"It is, I think, this glamour, this magic,
this incomparable keying up of the spirit in
a time of mortal conflict, which constitute
the pacifist's real problem-a problem still
incompletely imagined, and still quite unsolved."

[Bookworm_Girl]

I was thinking about what other jobs women did during the war besides nursing and ambulance driving and decided to google female pilots. Here is an interesting blogpost that I found to share.
http://www.maisiedobbs.com/2012/01/t...ir-flying.html

I also was curious about women who fought in the front lines, such as under disguise as a man. I found this article on the different contributions of several courageous women.
http://www.buzzle.com/articles/women...d-war-one.html

[issybird]

Thank you, fascinating! One other role that absorbed a lot ofwomen near the front was as canteen workers. The Salvation Army, YMCA and YWCA all were signifiicant presences (the YWCA to provide services for other women workers, not the soldiers).

But women's war work had a much wider scope than the men's. Especially after the insitution of the draft in 1916, the men's role was essentially military, with the exception of those in reserved occupations who generally were doing their pre-war job. For the women, war work was virtually anything that got them out of the house or service.

Class was significant component. Again, in contrast to the men, where the lower classes were other ranks and the upper classes officers, with the women, the upper classes were those who served abroad, while the lower classes worked as land girls, in munitions factories, and at pretty much any job that freed a man for service at the front.

As with the other ranks, though, there are much fewer first person accounts of the canary girls, for example. As hard and grim and tragic as service on the front was for women, there was a romance, a thrill to it, that Vera discusses. Not so much for a factory worker, although it was equally liberating for those who performed it.

[fantasyfan]

Thanks for that interesting material Bookworm Girl!

OFF TOPIC

Among the names in the first blogpost, one that stood out for me (owing to my interest in silent films) was that of Harriet Quimby. She was associated with some silent Biograph films directed by D. W. Griffith. She was the writer for five shorts and appeared in one other {"Lines of White On a Sullen Sea").

She also appeared in a short documentary after her untimely death "The Late Harriet Quimby's Flight Across the English Channel" (1912}.

There is quite a good mini-biography of her on IMBD where her where her "great impact on the roles of women in aviation" is acknowledged.

Harriet was the first woman to successfully make the flight across the English Channel--which she did April 16th,1912. Unfortunately, this achievement was hardly noticed in the papers of the time, as the day previous a certain "unsinkable" passenger liner had collided with an iceberg in the North Atlantic.

[Bookpossum]

Thanks fantasyfan and Bookworm_Girl for the extra information. I'll certainly look at those sites when I get back home in a couple of days.

[paola]

thank you for all these great links and for the review! I thought I should mention that, besides the existing material, with the 100th anniversary of the breakup of WWI the BBC is producing a lot of additional programmes (including daily reads of newsreels on the same days 100 years ago - these will keep going for the "duration of the war"), including a documentary by Katie Adie, a senior BBC war correspondent (one of her books was among those in issybird's list) - the trascripts are available here for all non UK residents:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/guides/z9bf9j6

A "Woman's hour" (BBC 4 radio programme) on what the war did for women is available as a podcast here (no geo restrictions):
http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b03thdbh

[ccowie]

It's been a few weeks and a few books since completing Testament of Youth and I've just read through some of the posts and thought about the book a bit more. I often find that my general thoughts are different after a little time has passed. For instance, last month I thought I enjoyed Under Western Eyes, but as time passed I came to realize that there really wasn't much at all that I liked about it.

But, as time passes I realize just how much I did get from Testament of Youth. I'm not a war buff and have read a few, but not many histories or bios from either world war. I really enjoyed Britain's writing. Although it seems from other posts that she was not honest regarding her age etc., I was generally impressed with the honesty with which she conveyed her thoughts and emotions.

I found it strange that so many indicated that they didn't like her much. I actually did like her. I didn't find her emotionally stunted and I liked the way she made decisions. To me she demonstrated a greater awareness of the oppressive time and space she lived in as a woman than many others of her day and found a means of expressing it; commendable.

[Bookworm_Girl]

Originally Posted by issybird

As with the other ranks, though, there are much fewer first person accounts of the canary girls, for example. As hard and grim and tragic as service on the front was for women, there was a romance, a thrill to it, that Vera discusses. Not so much for a factory worker, although it was equally liberating for those who performed it.

I didn't realize that munitions workers were referred to as canary girls because of the poisonous effects of working with the hazardous materials for which today we would have numerous safety precautions. Tragic that women died from these jobs for these reasons and yet during those times the women saw it as honorable that they too could die in service to King & Country like the men. Some even gave birth to yellow babies. Here is an article I found that interviewed a canary baby and has lots of info and photos on these women.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/arti...abies-WW1.html

[BelleZora]

Thanks for the links, Paola and Bookworm_Girl. I just finished Testament of Youth yesterday and am still mulling it over, but have just some quick thoughts touching upon previous posts.

I have immense respect for Vera's willingness to nurse the wounded and dying men, whether English or German, so terribly damaged by circumstances beyond their control. Vera was a feminist who not only pushed for more independence for women, but also shouldered the burdens and responsibilities of her beliefs.

In the first part of the book some of her statements are so 'entitled' as to be annoying, but she changes between the pre-war and after-war parts of the book. Probably some sense of class entitlement remained with her all her life, but she came to better understand problems of those less fortunate than herself.

I determined that I would not feel sorry for George since he did not marry such an interesting and challenging woman accidentally. Yet some passages she wrote, knowing they would be read by her husband, made me sad not only for Roland and Vera, but also for George.

At the beginning of 1915 I was more deeply and ardently in love than I have ever been or am ever likely to be, yet at that time Roland and I had hardly been alone together, and never at all without the constant possibility of observation and interruption. [Brittain, Vera. Testament Of Youth (Kindle Locations 2044-2045)].

I wondered if some sad variety of survivor guilt made George more accepting of this apparent disregard for his feelings. Did Vera resent (however unconsciously) George for surviving when Roland, Edward, and her other friends did not? I thought George was wonderful and love him a bit myself.

I was amused by her enthusiasm for the arrival of the Americans contrasted with the next time Americans make an appearance.

Americans arrive:

‘Look! Look! Here are the Americans!’

I pressed forward with the others to watch the United States physically entering the War, so god-like, so magnificent, so splendidly unimpaired in comparison with the tired, nerve-racked men of the British Army. So these were our deliverers at last, marching up the road to Camiers in the spring sunshine! There seemed to be hundreds of them, and in the fearless swagger of their proud strength they looked a formidable bulwark against the peril looming from Amiens. [Brittain, Vera. Testament Of Youth: An Autobiographical Study Of The Years 1900-1925 (Kindle Locations 7088-7092)].

Vera's later entrapment in a rail car with an American tourist:

Our neighbours in the carriage - also, I regret to say, Americans, but the pure accident of their not being English was probably designed by Providence to preserve our self-respect - conceived an immediate antipathy to us, for there had been a rush for seats and they objected to our occupation of the corners preempted by our rescuer. But they detested the Italian railway officials even more. ‘Animals!’ chattered one of the elderly ladies to her crushed-looking companion-secretary. ‘Nothing but animals! No order on the station! No porters, no station -master, nobody who could even speak English!’ No doubt, I remarked sotto voce to Winifred, she would have been equally scandalised had a Florentine countess arrived at one of her own junction towns - Buffalo or Columbus or Kansas City - and complained bitterly that no one spoke Italian! [Brittain, Vera. Testament Of Youth (Kindle Locations 8769-8776).]

My amusement stemmed from my own experience working with international travelers in U.S. national parks. Most tourists are delightfully open to new experiences, but there are a minority who, if they never left home, would be happier people and so would those they deign to visit.

The tragedy of the war and Vera Brittain's story are overwhelming. No doubt I'll be processing it and reading more for a long time to come.

[Bookworm_Girl]

I found this great compilation of images of women at work during the war. Click on the image for a link to the Imperial War Museum website for more description. I did buy the Kate Adie book and will get to it sometime later this year.

http://www.pixnet.co.uk/Oldham-hrg/W...ages/menu.html

[fantasyfan]

As the book progressed, I found myself liking Vera Brittain more and more--both the exterior author who has experienced more of life and the enthusiastic and idealistic girl. One very moving passage show a sudden loving humility in the young Vera. It takes place as she parts with Roland on the train:

"To my amazement, taut and tearless as I was, I saw him hastily mop his eyes with his handkerchief, and in that moment, when it was too late to respond or to show that I understood, I realised how much more he cared for me than I had supposed or he had eve shown. I felt, too, so bitterly sorry for him because he had to fight against his tears while I had no wish to cry at all, and the intolerable longing to comfort him when there was no more time in which todo it made me furious with the frantic pain of impotent desire."

There is a such a feel of the discovery of truth in this deeply introspective passage.

[fantasyfan]

Deleted--I put in a double post. Sorry

[Bookpossum]

Many thanks for the various links, Paola and Bookworm_Girl. Now all I need is the time to read/listen!

[desertblues]

Originally Posted by Bookpossum

Many thanks for the various links, Paola and Bookworm_Girl. Now all I need is the time to read/listen!

Yes, it's wonderful to have these links. Thanks! ( and now time......)