 |
| Testament of Youth - Vera Brittain (1933) |
A main theme throughout the novel is grief, but that theme is threaded among that of love, employment, family, and friendship, so that the reader get's a distinct sense of the way that the war tainted every aspect of life. Testament of Youth is considered classic feminist literature as Brittain is unapologetic about her ambitions and writes freely about her enjoyment of studying at Oxford in the company of intelligent, like-minded women. However, before the end of her first year, her fiance was killed on the front line, and with him went her enjoyment for life. Finding that her education felt meaningless in light of this event, but wanting to keep her mind and body busy, she became a VAD. Having lost all of the men closest to her, either directly or indirectly (as with her father who committed suicide after his son's death), Testament of Youth is the seminal eulogy for a lost generation.
Themes and Relevant Quotes:
Home Front / Front Line Divide
|
Class
|
Attitudes to Death
|
Youth
|
"Wild rumours circulated from mouth to mouth..."
"England had become accustomed to the war." "not being a man and able to go to the front, I wanted to the next best thing." "that terrible barrier of knowledge by which War cut off the men who possessed it from the women who, in spite of the love that they gave and received, remained in ignorance." |
"...the public school tradition, which stood for
militaristic heroism unimpaired by the dampening exercise of reason."
|
"It was one of those shimmering autumn days when every leaf
and flower seems to scintillate with light, and I found it 'very hard to believe that not far away men were being
slayed ruthlessly, and their poor dissatisfied were being slayed ruthlessly,
and their poor disfigured bodies heaped together and crowded in ghastly
indiscrimination into quickly provided common graves as though they were
nameless vermin'."
"It is impossible... to find any satisfaction in the thought of 25,000 slaughtered Germans." "... he could think of nothing better than to be found dead in a trench at dawn." "Rowland is dead and I am not keeping faith with him; it is mean and cruel, even for a second, to feel glad to be alive." |
"The War, we decided, came hardest of all upon us who were
young."
"Even War must end some time, and perhaps if we are alive in three or four years time we may recover the hidden childhood again." "the Somme had profoundly changed him and added ten years to his age." |
Critical Responses
- "I think what is different about Testament of Youth, what has made it last, is that it does two things simultaneously, it moves and it educates." - Vera Brittain's biographer and literary executor, Mark Bostridge.
- "...a book which stands alone among books written by women about the war" - Sunday Times review (1933)
- "[Brittain] was brave, and her strong feelings would always express themselves in action. And she was honest… as blazingly honest as anyone can be" - The Guardian article by Diana Athill (2009)
- "Brittain was indeed one of the only writers of her time able to chronicle the female experience of war with such visceral force... As a woman, Brittain was arguably the first to blend emotional resonance with intellectual clarity." - The Guardian: Vera Brittain's Classic, 80 Years On - Elizabeth Day (2013)
- "Even now, Baroness Williams [daughter of Brittain] receives letters from people who have read Testament of Youth and who want to share with her how much it meant to them. Eighty years on, it remains one of the most moving books ever written about the damage of war and its continuing personal cost." - The Guardian: Vera Brittain's Classic, 80 Years On - Elizabeth Day (2013)
