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A review by paola_mobileread
Testament of Youth by Vera Brittain
4.0
I always thought of Testament of Youth as a war book, but this book is in fact much more than that - yes, the central part of the book (which consists of three parts) does recount Vera Brittain's first hand experience of the Western Front, where she served as a Voluntary Aid Detachment (VAD) nurse, but this is also in fact the watershed between the society that was before, and the society to come after.
Surely Vera Brittain wasn't the only girl brought up in a wealthy upper middle class by Victorian parents whose wishes to see their daughters married well clashed with an inquisitive young mind's desire to do something other than fulfill their supporting role of mothers and wives in a male dominated society. But hers was the first generation of young women who could fill the vacuum created by the mass conscription of males to seize opportunities never before available.
The first two parts of the book are heartwrenching, her description of the war and of its consequences, of the shattering of the dreams and the lives, of the hopes, the portrat of the realization of the futility of it all are described incisively and beautifully. But besides the emotions stirred by this book, to me it is unashamedly feminist - though an uncommon sort of feminism, as class seeps through it. For instance a not yet 22 years old Vera returning home after seeing her fiance going off to the front complains that
I have to agree with Mark Bostridge who in the introduction to the Penguin Classic edition writes
But I disagree with the scolding tone implied in this judgment: it must have been a Herculean task to go so much against the tide in those days. She was on a mission, with her future husband also recognising and accepting that her work was more important to her than marriage. We don't see much of "G.", but that little we see is rather impressive, and one can't discount the importance of his support (and, I suspect, that of several maids!) in helping her carry out her project.
Surely Vera Brittain wasn't the only girl brought up in a wealthy upper middle class by Victorian parents whose wishes to see their daughters married well clashed with an inquisitive young mind's desire to do something other than fulfill their supporting role of mothers and wives in a male dominated society. But hers was the first generation of young women who could fill the vacuum created by the mass conscription of males to seize opportunities never before available.
The first two parts of the book are heartwrenching, her description of the war and of its consequences, of the shattering of the dreams and the lives, of the hopes, the portrat of the realization of the futility of it all are described incisively and beautifully. But besides the emotions stirred by this book, to me it is unashamedly feminist - though an uncommon sort of feminism, as class seeps through it. For instance a not yet 22 years old Vera returning home after seeing her fiance going off to the front complains that
Though the three maids had been unoccupied all evening, not one of them offered to help me unpack or to get me a cup of tea, and I was far too much absorbed in my misery to ask them for anything. It is 1915, but considering the book was written much later and this is not an excerpt from her diary at the time, it does sound an off note.
I have to agree with Mark Bostridge who in the introduction to the Penguin Classic edition writes
though she proposes a form of egalitarian marriage and other radical reforms, and despite the fact that she envisages herself as a modern woman, she remains at heart a product of her Victorian bourgeois background, and though to a lesser degree to his consideration that
much of the confidence and assurance of her autobiographical voice emanates from her passionate identification with her young male contemporaries and her experience of living vicariously through them.
But I disagree with the scolding tone implied in this judgment: it must have been a Herculean task to go so much against the tide in those days. She was on a mission, with her future husband also recognising and accepting that her work was more important to her than marriage. We don't see much of "G.", but that little we see is rather impressive, and one can't discount the importance of his support (and, I suspect, that of several maids!) in helping her carry out her project.