As part of the commemoration of the 100th anniversary of the outbreak of the First World War, the British Film Institute has released a new adaptation of Vera Brittain’s classic memoir, Testament of Youth. The film details Brittain’s early life, from her experiences as one of the first women admitted to Oxford University, to her engagement to her brother’s best friend Roland Leighton, to her war experience as a nurse in the First World War, and her grief at the death of her brother, her fiancé, and two of her closest friends in that war.
In the interest of full disclosure, I will come out and say it: I really don’t like Testament of Youth, especially compared to some of the other First World War memoirs listed below. This is primarily because, whenever anyone teaches or discusses this book, they focus on the men in Brittain’s life who died, and not Brittain herself. We never get to hear much about Vera Brittain’s own war experiences, or how she herself changed (apart from the loss of the men in her life). Essentially, this book is used to perpetuate the idea that women in the First World War (and in war, in general), are passive, which is a terrible fallacy.
This is not to say that Testament of Youth is not a good book, or a good learning tool. It is a stunningly beautiful piece of writing, and a heartrending story of loss. But Vera Brittain was so much more than the sum of the men she knew. An active suffragette and pacifist, she became so popular as a spokeswoman for the Peace Pledge Union that the German Army was under orders to arrest her immediately, should the invasion of England ever take place.
Fortunately, this adaptation of Testament of Youth does take on Brittain’s active role in the growing anti-war movement, and her own wartime experiences, using her letters and diaries to flesh out the sights and sounds of her hospital days far more than her memoir does. It’s a timely reminder that this war, especially, was a generational one, that affected men and women in equal, and often unspeakable, measure.
To learn more about women’s involvement in the First World War, check out some of these titles:
Not So Quiet…: Evadne Price was an Australian journalist and popular romance author who was requested to write a comedic parody All Quiet On The Western Front (seriously?). Infuriated at the disrespect of the publisher, Price yelled, “What you want is someone who will write the women’s story of the war!”. And, being a reasonable man in the end, her publisher agreed to commission that manuscript instead. Price borrowed a diary from a FANY (First Aid Yeoman Infantry–a division of women ambulance drivers and front-line medics, and considered among the most difficult jobs for anyone to hold during the war), and wrote Not So Quiet under the name Helen Zenna Smith. Most reviewers at the time considered the subject matter and tone too ‘unladylike’ for the general reading public, but it is precisely because the descriptions of war wounds, psychological injuries, shelling, and the filthy conditions of warfare are so graphic that this book is so powerful. Though Smithie does have a fiancé serving in the Army, he is mentioned only once or twice in the course of the story; instead, the focus is on the relationships between the nurses and the FANYs, and how the war specifically changed the women who served at the front.
The Blood of Our Sons: Men, Women, and the Renegotiation of British Citizenship During the Great War: Nicoletta Gullace’s book deals with a fascinating, and terribly under-studied part of history–the work of British suffragettes during the First World War, and their continued advocacy for the vote through war work and participation. She shows how suffragette’s lobbied for full citizenship not only by supporting the war, but by denigrating men who were not ‘doing their bit’, arguing that they were more entitled to vote than men who never fought in France. A wonderfully readable, insightful work, Gullace also looks at how the war itself was a gendered event that pitted men against men in the goal of saving women, making war a moral imperative, as well as a national endeavor.
No Man’s Land: Fiction From a World at War, 1914-1918: This terrific collection features a number of the authors whose work we don’t have individually. For instance, check out the selection from The Forbidden Zone by Mary Borden. Borden was a wealthy college graduate from Chicago, and married to a millionaire when the First World War broke out. When the Red Cross refused her application to work as a nurse (because she was married), Borden declared that she would fund a hospital all by herself, and demanded full control over the hiring and firing of all staff. She served in the hospital (which was stationed near the front lines in France, near the site of the Battle of the Somme) for the duration of the war, often working 18-20 hour days. The Forbidden Zone is a collection of her experiences, written during her scanty breaks, detailing the world of her hospital and the bizarre environment of life behind the lines, including women shopping at a street market with the sounds of gunfire in the background. Borden was a gifted and empathetic writer, and her work alone makes this collection a stellar one.
Her Privates We: This is my favorite memoir of the First World War, and while it tells the story of a soldier (and thus, isn’t necessarily and ‘alternative’ view of the First World War), it does so in a way that no other memoir manages to do. Frederic Manning was an Australian of Irish descent who was traumatized by his war experience. He continued to fight only out of love and respect for the men in his battalion, and each time he received a promotion for bravery or service, he promptly committed some transgression (drunkenness, staying out past curfew, etc.,) in order to get demoted again, and return to the men and to the trenches. His book is a memorial to those men, describing them all in their mundane and wonderful individuality, making this book unexpectedly funny, bizarre, touching, and utterly heartbreaking. Manning doesn’t sugar-coat anything, presenting soldiers as they were (and not as the public wished to believe they were). Thus, his book is full of obscenities and rude slang, and after the first printing, the book only appeared in an edited form, with all the ‘bad words’ judiciously removed. This anniversary printing offers readers the chance to see the startling honesty of his work in all its original power.