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Vera Brittain

Vera Brittain Books

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The Dark Tide

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“When I was a girl . . . I imagined that life was individual, one's own affair; that the events happening in the world outside were important enough in their own way, but were personally quite irrelevant. Now, like the rest of my generation, I have had to learn again and again the terrible truth . . . that no life is really private, or isolated, or self-sufficient. People's lives were entirely their own, perhaps--and more justifiably--when the world seemed enormous, and all its comings and goings were slow and deliberate. But this is so no longer, and never will be again, since man's inventions have eliminated so much of distance and time; for better, for worse, we are now each of us part of the surge and swell of great economic and political movements, and whatever we do, as individuals or as nations, deeply affects everyone else.”

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Book:Testament of Youth
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“Men as a rule do everything at women's expense, from their first day to the last. They come into the world at our expense, and at our expense they're able to do whatever work they please uninterrupted. We keep their homes pleasant fro them and provide them with all creature comforts, We satisfy both their loves and their lusts, and at our expense again they have the children they desire. When they's ill we nurse them; they recover at our expense; and when they die, we lay them out and see that they leave the world respectably. If ever we can get anything out of them, or use them in any way that make things the least bit more even, it's not only our right to do it, it's a duty we owe to ourselves." [...]"really Virginia, to hear you talk one would think you'd suffered a dreadful injury at the hands of some man or other- and yet you're always telling me that all your best friends were men until the war came". "So they were," said Virginia. "but all my friends were absolute exceptions to the general run of men".”

MenFriendshipFeminismMen And WomenWorld War OneVera BrittainSocial ConventionsThe Dark Time
Book:The Dark Tide
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“Judging from my experience as a graduate of one university and the wife of a professor attached to another, it does seem to me that academic life in any country tends to make both men and women narrow, censorious and self-important. My husband I believe to be among the excep- tions, but one or two of his young donnish contemporaries have been responsible for some of the worst exhibitions of bad manners that I have ever encountered. Apparently most dons grow out of this contemptuous brusqueness as the years go by ; elderly professors, though often disapproving, are almost always punctilious. On the whole I have found American dons politer than English, and those from provincial universities more courteous than the Oxford and Cambridge variety.”

MannersProfessorsAcademicsSelf Importance
Book:Testament of Youth
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“Perhaps ... To R.A.L. Perhaps some day the sun will shine again, And I shall see that still the skies are blue, And feel one more I do not live in vain, Although bereft of you. Perhaps the golden meadows at my feet, Will make the sunny hours of spring seem gay, And I shall find the white May-blossoms sweet, Though You have passed away. Perhaps the summer woods will shimmer bright, And crimson roses once again be fair, And autumn harvest fields a rich delight, Although You are not there. But though kind Time may many joys renew, There is one greatest joy I shall not know Again, because my heart for loss of You Was broken, long ago.”

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Book:Testament of Youth
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“Daphne tried to convey to him that the likelihood of degrees for women at Oxford was a matter for satisfaction, perhaps, but hardly for excitement or ratification. Women's accomplishments in the University had long been equal, if not superior, to men's; degrees were not a privilege, they were simply what women deserved - their due, their right. She became very animated as she argued on this topic.”

WomenFeminismWorld War OneThe Dark TideVera BrittainWomen S EducationWomen S Freedom
Book:The Dark Tide
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“Four impressionable years spent in a number of very different hospitals convinced me once for all that nursing, if it is to be done efficiently, requires, more than any other occupation, abundant leisure in colorful surroundings, sufficient money to spend on amusements, agreeable food to re-establish the energy expended, and the removal of anxiety about illness and old age; yet of all skilled professions, it is still the least vitalised by these advantages, still the most oppressed by unnecessary worries, cruelties, hardships and regulations.”

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Book:Testament of Youth
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“Tired as I was of conflict, I felt that I must not shrink from the fight, nor abandon in cowardice the attempt to prove, as no theories could ever satisfactorily prove without examples, that marriage and motherhood need never tame the mind, nor swamp and undermine ability and training, nor trammel and domesticise political perception and social judgement. Today, as never before, it was urgent for individual women to show that life was enriched, mentally and spiritually as well as physically and socially, by marriage and children; that these experiences rendered the woman who accepted them the more and not the less able to take the world's pulse, to estimate its tendencies, to play some definite, hard-headed, hard-working part in furthering the constructive ends of a political civilisation”

MarriageFeminismMotherhoodWorking WomenPolitical Activism
Book:Testament of Youth
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“For a woman as for a man, marriage might enormously help or devastatingly hinder the growth of her power to contribute something impersonally valuable to the community in which she lived, but it was not that power, and could not be regarded as an end in itself. Nor, even, were children ends in themselves; it was useless to go on producing human beings merely in order that they, in their sequence, might produce others, and never turn from this business of continuous procreation to the accomplishment of some definite and lasting piece of work.”

MenHumansChildrenEndsHelpingMightOrderTurnsGrowthCommunityHuman BeingsPiecesProduceGoes OnValuableUselessAccomplishmentLastingDefiniteSequenceBeing MeHinderProcreation
Book:Testament of Youth: An Autobiographical Study Of The Years 1900-1925
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“I don't think victory over death... is anything so superficial as a person fulfilling their normal span of life. It can be twofold; a victory over death by the man who faces it for himself without fear, and a victory by those who, loving him, know that death is but a little thing compared with the fact that he lived and was the kind of person he was.”

ThinkingKnowsMenKindLittlesPersonsFactsFacesHe ManVictoryNormalLittle ThingsFulfillingSuperficialLoving Him
Book:Selected letters of Winifred Holtby and Vera Brittain, 1920-1935
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“Nevertheless, hateful as saying 'No' always is to an imaginative person, and certain as the offence may be that it will cause to individuals whose own work does not require isolated effort, the writer who is engaged on a book must learn to say it. He must say it consistently to all interrupters; to the numerous callers and correspondents who want him to speak, open bazaars, see them for 'only' ten minutes, attend literary parties, put people up, or read, correct and find publishers for semi-literate manuscripts by his personal friends.”

PeopleWantMayPersonsDoeBookCertainIndividualSpeakCausesPartyEffortMinutesTenEngagedIsolatedConsistentlyNeverthelessPublishersImaginativeHatefulSaying NoManuscriptsWant HimOffenceInterruptionsBazaars
Author:Vera Brittain
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“The tragedy of journalism lies in its impermanence; the very topicality which gives it brilliance condemns it to an early death. Too often it is a process of flinging bright balloons in the path of the hurricane, a casting of priceless petals upon the rushing surface of a stream.”

GivingLyingProcessPathTragedySurfaceJournalismStreamsCastingHurricanesBrilliancePricelessRushingImpermanenceBalloonsPetalsEarly Death
Book:Testament of Friendship: The Story of Winifred Holtby
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“Definite gifts render their possessors capable of overcoming any obstacle this side of death; they create an impetus of far more genuine value than external advantages in some other career where the impulse to make use of them remains weak or non-existent. The work that one enjoys is the greatest source of happiness and vitality in life.”

UseValuesPassionEnjoySidesWorkCareersSourceCapableAdvantageWeakOvercomingRemainsObstaclesGenuineImpulseDefiniteVitalityImpetusSource Of Happiness
Book:On becoming a writer
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“I wish those people who write so glibly about this being a holy war and the orators who talk so much about going on, no matter how long the war lasts and what it may mean, could see a case of musterd gas - the poor things burnt and blistered all over with great musterd coloured suppurating blisters, with blind eyes, all sticky and stuck together, and always fighting for breath, with voices a mere whisper, saying their throats are closing and they know they will choke.”

PeopleKnowsWritingMayMeanLongWarMatterEyeTogetherLastsFightingWishVoicePoorCasesHolyBreathsBlindMereStuckGasThroatClosingChokeGreat WarOratorsStickyHoly WarBlind EyesBlistersAlways FightingMustard Gas
Author:Vera Brittain
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