Testament of Youth by Vera Brittain

First published: 1933

Type of work: Autobiography

Time of work: 1900-1925

Locale: England

Principal Personages:

• Roland A. Leighton, Brittain’s fiancé, who was killed in action
• Edward H. Brittain, the author’s younger brother
• Winifred Holtby, the author’s friend
• Viscountess Rhondda, founder in 1921 of the feminist Six Point Group
• George Gordon Catlin, Brittain’s husband

Form and Content

Testament of Youth is the story of the loss of an entire generation’s youth and innocence to the shattering tragedy of World War I (1914-1918). Though often remembered as one of a very few World War I memoirs written by women, Testament of Youth contains only one section devoted to Vera Brittain’s wartime experiences as an Army nurse and two equally long sections dealing with her childhood and her experiences as a writer, lecturer, and activist in the postwar years. Woven into the narrative of wartime tragedy and peacetime frustration are consistent threads of puzzlement and irony over the political, social, and sexual double standards that relegated women to ancillary roles in all areas of life. Born into a middle-class British family near the end of Queen Victoria’s reign (1837-1901), Vera Brittain, like many women of her generation, chafed against the restrictions imposed on women by the strict morality of the late Victorian and early Edwardian eras. In Brittain’s day, any girl might be—as Brittain herself was at the age of eleven by her mother and aunt—severely chastised merely for chatting with boys her own age, and the education of women consisted chiefly of preparation for marriage. Throughout her narrative, Brittain attacks the various legal and social constraints that kept women from becoming equal partners with men in politics, social life, and even in such personal institutions as marriage and parenthood.

Part 1 of Testament of Youth chronicles Brittain’s sheltered childhood and her growing awareness of feminism, an awareness that was powerfully influenced by her study of two books by the South African feminist Olive Schreiner (1855-1920), The Story of an African Farm (1883) and Woman and Labor (1911), as well as by the writings of Mary Wollstonecraft (1759-1797), the English author of A Vindication of the Rights of Woman (1792), the first great feminist manifesto. Brittain won a scholarship to Oxford University’s Somerville College, where in 1914 she began her study of English, then considered the “woman’s subject” at Oxford. While at Oxford, Brittain continued her developing romance with Roland A. Leighton, a brilliant and sensitive young man she had met through her brother, Edward. Soon after the war began in August of 1914, Edward and Roland both joined the army, and Brittain followed in 1915, lying about her age in order to be accepted for training as a nurse. This section closes with Brittain’s posting to the First London General Hospital, which in 1915 was beginning to receive casualties from the front in France, and with the death of Roland.

Part 2 details Brittain’s experiences as a VAD (member of a Voluntary Aid Detachment) stationed in London, Malta, and France. In all three locations, she endured deplorable living conditions, worked long hours, and struggled to harden herself against the suffering of the wounded. Like many people in England, France, and Germany, Brittain suffered the loss of those closest to her, and with them the loss of her sense of purpose.

In part 3, Brittain recalls her postwar efforts to advance the causes of world peace and equal rights for women while beginning to establish a career as a writer. Brittain worked for the establishment of the League of Nations, an organization conceived by President Woodrow Wilson in 1918 to promote international cooperation. Brittain also joined the Viscountess Rhondda’s Six Point Group, a women’s organization that sought to improve the lot of women by establishing widows’ pensions, equal parenting rights, improved legal protection for rape victims and unmarried mothers, equal compensation for women teachers, and equal opportunity for women in civil service positions.

Context

A best-seller by the standards of the 1930’s, Testament of Youth sold 120,000 copies in its first six years and generated 1,300 letters to its author, who suddenly found herself famous. As part of a rising tide of popular feminist literature, Brittain’s story helped her generation to establish a new definition of women and their roles, a definition that included not only marriage and motherhood but also careers and, above all, self-determination.

Vera Brittain wrote twenty-nine books and countless essays and poems during a writing career that spanned half a century. Other autobiographical works include Testament of Friendship (1940), the story of her close relationship with Winifred Holtby, and Testament of Experience (1957), a memoir of the years between 1925 and 1950, including her uncomfortable experiences as an avowed pacifist during World War II. She wrote several collections of poetry, including Verses of a V. A. D. (1918), and her novels include Dark Tide (1923) and Account Rendered (1945). A notable work of history is Lady into Woman: A History of Women from Victoria to Elizabeth II (1953).

Bibliography

Higonnet, Margaret Randolph, et al., eds. Behind the Lines:Gender and the Two World Wars. New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1987. These essays reassess women’s wartime roles in the light of the twentieth century’s development of total war. Lynne Layton’s essay “Vera Brittain’s Testament(s)” suggests that before the war, Brittain subscribed to an essentially masculine pro-war view, but that because women define themselves in part through relationships, her personal losses during the conflict caused her to move toward an essentially feminine identification.

Kennard, Jean E. Vera Brittain and Winifred Holtby: A Working Partnership. Hanover, N.H.: University Press of New England, 1989. While arguing for the literary value of the writings of Brittain and Holtby, this insightful book examines women’s relationships as part of the process of self-definition. Kennard suggests that during a fifteen-year friendship, Brittain and Holtby served as second selves, each helping to define and to empower the other.

Leonardi, Susan J. Dangerous by Degrees: Women at Oxford and the Somerville College Novelists. New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press, 1989. A study of six women writers, this work discusses the novels of Vera Brittain as variations of the traditional romance, although many of Brittain’s heroines are examples of the university-educated or “Oxbridge” woman. Ultimately, Leonardi insists, Brittain’s feminist themes are overshadowed by the genre of the romance.

Mitchell, Dale. Women on the Warpath: The Story of the Women of the First World War. London: Jonathan Cape, 1966. This book argues that the patriotic achievements of women not only played a vital role in winning the war but also spearheaded the drive for equality in England.

Spender, Dale, ed. Feminist Theorists: Three Generations of Women’s Intellectual Traditions. London: Women’s Press, 1983. Spender offers this collection of essays as a refutation of men’s right to “ownership” of the realm of theory. Muriel Mellown’s essay “Vera Brittain: Feminist in a New Age” argues for Brittain’s position as a feminist and an independent thinker who refused to be pigeonholed or swayed from her beliefs by either conservatives or radicals.

Strachey, Ray. The Cause: A Short History of the Women’s Movement in Great Britain. 1928. Reprint. Port Washington, N.Y.: Kennikat Press, 1969. First published in 1928, this dated but sympathetic work provides important background reading for understanding Vera Brittain’s feminism in the context of the struggle for women’s rights in Britain.