Literary Testament of Youth by Vera Brittain

[Bookworm_Girl]

12 things you didn't know about women during the war from the Imperial War Museums.
http://www.iwm.org.uk/history/12-thi...irst-world-war

[fantasyfan]

A section I found deeply moving and beautifully written was the section in which Vera describes her psychological meltdown following the death of Roland.

I think, too, that her lover also had something of the devastating disillusion of the patriotic nobility of War that we see in Sassoon and Owen. I somehow doubt that the poetry of Rupert Brook would hold the same splendour for him or Vera that it did early in the conflict.

[issybird]

Originally Posted by fantasyfan

A section I found deeply moving and beautifully written was the section in which Vera describes her psychological meltdown following the death of Roland.

I think, too, that her lover also had something of the devastating disillusion of the patriotic nobility of War that we see in Sassoon and Owen. I somehow doubt that the poetry of Rupert Brook would hold the same splendour for him or Vera that it did early in the conflict.

In the context of Rupert Brooke, I always think of Kipling, who encapsulated this change in attitude in himself. The jingoist poet who wrote pamphlets for the War Propaganda Bureau and wangled a commission for his 16-year old son who had been rejected because of poor eyesight and would die at Loos, Kipling would write in 1918 the famous couplet:

If any question why we died.
Tell them, because our fathers lied.

And in 1924:

I could not dig; I dare not rob;
Therefore I lied to please the mob.
Now all my lies are proved untrue
And I must face the men I slew.
What tale shall serve me here among
Mine young and defrauded young.

To bring this back around to Brittain, at least somewhat, I was struck by a passage I didn't highlight at the time, about how her generation would no longer fall for the lies and that every nation was equally guilty. In 1933, the Oxford Union famously passed the notion, that this House will in no circumstances fight for its King and Country. Of course most of them would, but there was a fatal delay at least in part because worn out nations looked cynically at all attempts to rally arms.

[issybird]

I'm reading The Generation of 1914 by Robert Wohl, about concepts of generation in various European countries pre- and post-war. Given how several of us here found Vera unlikable, I thought this comment interesting:

Testament of Youth was too self-indulgent, too self-pitying, and too lacking in self-irony to be good literature.

I think it's an important and affecting book (as does Wohl) but I think he put his finger on something. To the extent this was an expression of her personality, it makes it easier to see why her Somerville classmates were tired of her woe and why we didn't entirely warm to her.

[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.

[issybird]

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.

[Bookpossum]

Yes, that's true - she doesn't really consider what losses other people had had. Given the scale of the carnage, she was surely not the only person in the College to have suffered at least one bereavement.

[sun surfer]

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.

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!

[paola]

Cambridge Univeristy today has put Siegfrid Sassoon's diaries online - there are available here:
http://cudl.lib.cam.ac.uk/collections/sassoon

[fantasyfan]

Originally Posted by paola

Cambridge Univeristy today has put Siegfrid Sassoon's diaries online - there are available here:
http://cudl.lib.cam.ac.uk/collections/sassoon

Excellent resource! thanks!

[fantasyfan]

Originally Posted by sun surfer

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!

That is a good summary of my feelings about her too. And I, too, am grateful to Issybird!

[Bookpossum]

Originally Posted by paola

Cambridge Univeristy today has put Siegfrid Sassoon's diaries online - there are available here:
http://cudl.lib.cam.ac.uk/collections/sassoon

from me too!

[issybird]

Originally Posted by sun surfer

This thread has been so interesting to read through and thanks issy for a great month!

Originally Posted by fantasyfan

That is a good summary of my feelings about her too. And I, too, am grateful to Issybird!

Shucks, guys! I've really enjoyed this discussion about a book that's been very important to me. Testament in conjunction with Paul Fussell's seminal The Great War and Modern Memory kicked off a life-long interest in the literature of the Great War.

Two items that might be of note:

I don't know how many of you might be aware of a BBC television presentation of Testament in 1979. I haven't seen this in decades, but I remember it as being quite good. DVDs are available for region 2.

When I was checking on DVD availability, I came across some news that first pleased and then rather disgruntled me. I had remembered some talk about a film but last I knew the idea had been shelved. But obviously it got pulled off the shelf at some point, because a film of Testament is scheduled to be released next year. I found a news item with a trailer which I haven't watched yet, as the look of the actors seems entirely wrong to me.

The television show, otoh, seems to have got it right as shown in this pic:

[paola]

Originally Posted by issybird

I found a news item with a trailer which I haven't watched yet, as the look of the actors seems entirely wrong to me.

I generally find BBC period productions quite good, but here I completely agree with you!

On the 1979 series: they are on youtube, hopefully not geo restricted, here is the link:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UB_jhylzaXk

(but each episode is chopped up in several chunks). Thanks issybird!

[Bookpossum]

Thanks very much for this paola. For some reason I never saw the series - it probably showed here when I was in the midst of part-time study and ignoring television. I just watched the first episode (in six short parts!) and agree that it was very well done. Now I just need a bit of time to watch the rest of it.