Vera Brittain – Testament of Youth

Speaking of heroines, here is an interesting one. Righteous, driven, burning, brave, facing incredible loss and sorrow – and yet, oddly unlikeable.

Vera Brittain’s tragedy is to be born at exactly the wrong moment at the wrong time. She grows up in a provincial, empty, snobby town – and though incredibly naive, she believes that she can be something better, and swings all her forthright energy into studying for Oxford. However, before she can get properly stuck in to her new life, war is declared. All the boys she knows tally-ho off to war, what-what. And then the entire world as they know it is completely and utterly disrupted and destroyed.

One after another, her brother, her fiance, their friends die, as certainly and inevitably as the striking of a clock. Her academic life seems increasingly irrelevant; so Vera becomes a nurse, and instead of a profound life of the mind, finds a much more brutal education in the messiness of the body. And in a final insult, she returns to Oxford after the war to find herself cut off from the more flitty shallow minded girls who just want to leave the war behind them.

It’s incredible how moving it still is, almost a hundred years later, to think of the agonising slaughter of this entire generation. What was most striking for me, as a modern reader, is the gulf between the innocence of the pre-war generation and the speed at which all their illusions were completely destroyed. No wonder the anguish and bitterness at this betrayal comes across so strongly. Vera is furious and despairing in equal measure. And though in the 1930′s this narrative about the sheer waste and futility and destruction of the ‘golden generation’ was still just being written, today, it has become the standard story about the First World War – and that’s more than just partly down to the power of Testament of Youth.

It seems churlish to say the least to make any criticism of this book. Who am I to nit-pick over an experience which is so far out of the realms of my comfortable and privileged existence – an existence which owes more than a little bit to Vera and people like her? But. As I said in my review of the biography, it’s easy to empathise Vera, to admire her, to feel deep pity for her. But there is something that gets in the way. Her sense of superiority. Her self-imposed martydom. Also, there are things about the writing which spoil the book for me. The young men are one dimensional golden boys instead of flesh and blood people. The post-war section with all the League of Nations reminds me too much of my tedious year nine history class.

So for me, there were moments of poignancy – and I can see why it’s a classic. But it wasn’t quite the wholly incredible read I was expecting.