'Testament of Youth' and 'Perhaps' by Vera Brittain

It seems pretty obvious that 'Testament of Youth' is an important text for this unit, not least because it is by a woman (as our teacher always stresses) but because it is in the diary form. However, I have been unable to grab hold of a copy and only read a short extract in class. The only points I have been able to take from it is that she is pro-war turned staunch pacifist due to the death of 4 key people in her life, with the quote "carried away by the wartime emotion and deceived by the shining figure of patriotism".

It's obvious what the text is about, but I am struggling to find anything else I could say about it in the exam. What would others say?

Also, I just found 'Perhaps' and considered it to be a very useful poem, for two reasons. One, it uses naturalistic imagery ("someday the sun will shine again"), which is typical of many female writers and can be compared to be Susan Hill's 'Strange Meeting' (in a moment of idiocy yet tranquility and rare happiness Barton sticks his head above the trench and looks into the sun). Two, it uses a simplistic ABAB rhyme scheme which represents the simplistic and common sense point that she misses all the men in her life that she has lost.

Food for thought.

Reply 1

Jenni_Kitten

Lol you do know that ToY is over 650 pages long?! You could always buy it secondhand off Amazon, but I'm not sure whether it's worth reading it at this stage.

I'm not going to write about her unless I'm really stuck because I strongly dislike her, lol. However, I would bring in the fact that she trained to be a nurse and went abroad much to the disgust of her parents; it wasn't considered proper for a woman of her class to do such a thing - linking to increased women's rights, roles etc. I'm trying to remember what else because I read it nearly a year ago, I think it's mainly your thing about her typically changing her attitude towards the war, and I think there's a really good passage when her brother dies (for quotes), but I can't think of anything else lol. It's mainly about her education, the death of her lover etc. and there's also a LOT of completely irrelevant stuff, especially at the beginning...

It might be worth looking more at her letters and poems, I seem to remember one of her letters coming in a past paper, it was an incredibly long text though.

If I get inspired I'll post again :smile:

Reply 2

Fiona87

Jenni_Kitten

It might be worth looking more at her letters and poems, I seem to remember one of her letters coming in a past paper, it was an incredibly long text though.

2002 Paper (doing it now)! I guess because it was a few years ago, it could come up again. It was from "Letters from a Lost Generation", not ToY, though, so who knows...

Edit: I typed this and thought "what was the point of me mentioning that?" so I've come up with something more useful. You might be able to quote from the old exam paper, or look up the examiner's report for what they considered to be important aspects of this text.