When Testament of Youth, Vera Brittain’s memoir of the First World War, was published in 1933 it was an instant bestseller. Today, over eight decades after it first appeared, it remains a highly influential text, because, according to Brittain’s literary executor, Mark Bostridge, “it moves and it educates”. It expresses the realities of warfare as she witnessed them in her role as a VAD nurse, together with her personal tragedy of losing a fiancé, a brother and two close friends in the conflict.
Our aim in this course is to study Brittain’s feminist and pacifist perspectives on the First World War, and to consider them alongside South Riding (1936), the best-known novel of her close friend and collaborator, Winifred Holtby. Together, these two texts enable us to consider how women were affected by the war and its aftermath, as society faced sweeping changes in the inter-war years.
To get the most from this course you should read the two primary texts and expect to re-read them while you are here. In class we will undertake some ‘close reading’ which helps to understand the richness and complexity of the work as we consider it in its historical context. We will explore how feminist and pacifist principles inform Brittain’s and Holtby’s work and we will discuss what relevance the texts have for women today. Before you come you may find it helpful to do some additional reading (as listed below under ‘Supplementary Reading’), particularly the biographies by Marion Shaw and Paul Berry and Mark Bostridge, though this is not a set requirement.
