The Discussion

[vicki]

Welcome to the VBC's February discussion of Testament of Youth by Vera Brittain and The Long Week-End by Robert Graves and Alan Hodge. Both books offer a window into a time and place often seen in LRK's fiction--England between the world wars. The former is a personal account of World War I and its aftermath, the latter is a social history of Great Britain between the wars.

What about this historical setting keeps drawing LRK back again and again? Do either or both of these books give you any ideas?

<edit>

For anyone having trouble finding the books or waiting on copies to come in the mail, here are some extended excerpts available through google books, to help you get started.

The Long Weekend (http://books.google.com/books?id=tWhvH-brDVQC&pg=PP1&dq=graves+long+week-end&sig=qxFuez-05LaoAB6Wg4lYxoWSAn0#PPA12,M1)
Testament of Youth (http://books.google.com/books?id=kkOWKOOvJW4C&printsec=frontcover&dq=%22testament+of+youth%22&sig=L_58dIOied5135TpNBT4zi_cf6o#PPP1,M1)

Thanks for the links, Bachi!!

[MaryL]

Ok-I'll start1 I'm about 1/3 of the way through "The Long Weeken" and a few things jump out at me--mostly how very like our own age the 20's were. Specifically: I see the rise of secularism, and a turning away from conventional religion to "alternative" beliefs in a previously fairly uniform society. AND the pacifism that the "Great War" spawned--parallels to Viet Nam here? Is it the distaste that a long, debilitating conflict brings? Does war somehow "cleanse" society of the "we've always done it this way" notions? After you've had all your emotional foundations pounded to rubble do you seek answers in places you wouldn't have imagined before? Not sure of the answers, but fascinated at the glimpses into a society not as different from ours as I had imagined my grandparents to be, too bad theyare all no longer around to talk to..

Also, let me say "Testament Of Youth" is one of my all time favorites--first chanced on it after the "Masterpiece Theater" adaptation in the -what 80's? and I've been looking forward to re-reading it this month--thanks Vicki!

[jtb1951]

I finished reading Testament Of Youth this afternoon, and I will just reiterate my feelings from an earlier post: wow!!! This is the first memoir that I have read from someone who spent (literally) their young adulthood during WWI, and the raw emotions, thoughts, dreams, aspirations, disappointments, heartaches, and survival that Vera brings to life in her memoir is truly enthralling and visceral. I learned a lot and enjoyed it even more!

What about this historical setting keeps drawing LRK back again and again? Do either or both of these books give you any ideas?

I guess one of the obvious answers is that this is a time of major social change that included the first real steps toward the empowerment of women as equal partners in the many aspects of life that were closed to them previously. Vera Brittain contributes her part to that metamorphosis, and clearly documents for us the physical pain, mental anguish, emotional roller coaster, intellectual integrity, and common sense she engendered in her singular contribution to that change. Based upon what we learn in Testament of Youth it is easy to see that Laurie (with her trademark instincts) chose just about the perfect setting for a character such as the Mary Russell that we know and love. As I mentioned else-thread I will now be on the lookout for Mark Bostridge's bio of Vera Brittain. Once again, wow!!!

John.

[vicki]

I finished reading Testament Of Youth this afternoon, and I will just reiterate my feelings from an earlier post: wow!!! This is the first memoir that I have read from someone who spent (literally) their young adulthood during WWI, and the raw emotions, thoughts, dreams, aspirations, disappointments, heartaches, and survival that Vera brings to life in her memoir is truly enthralling and visceral. I learned a lot and enjoyed it even more!



I just logged on to post the same "wow," John! I'm only 100 pages into ToY, but it's already a gobsmacker. I'm reading it at the same time as I'm reading TLWE, and it's turning out to be a fantastic forest/trees combination of historical lenses for examining the era. Our Fearless Leader made a great call in picking these two out for us to get some background on the setting of Touchstone before next month's discussion.

BTW, here is a great NY Times article (http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9B05EFDD1F38F933A05752C0A9659482 60) from 1983 about ToY and Brittains's war diaries, which had just gone back into print at the time. I'd really love to read those war diaries, too. All this has gotten me wanting to look at some of the poetry (http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/mod/1914warpoets.html) that came out of WWI, as well as Barbara Tuchman's The Guns of August (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Guns_of_August). And I'd love to thumb back through Pat Barker's Regeneration (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regeneration_(novel)) trilogy, too (in which a fictionalized Robert Graves appears). I seriously need a time-turner like Hermione had in HP3.

[AmyLizzie]

Poetry in world war one is something I'm passionate about, it really is stunnning stuff and so heart wrenching it makes you sob! A brilliant poet during this time is Wilfred Owen, I've posted one below because its so atmospheric:

What passing-bells for these who die as cattle?
Only the monstrous anger of the guns.
Only the stuttering rifles' rapid rattle
Can patter out their hasty orisons.
No mockeries for them from prayers or bells,
Nor any voice of mourning save the choirs, -
The shrill, demented choirs of wailing shells;
And bugles calling for them from sad shires.

What candles may be held to speed them all?
Not in the hands of boys, but in their eyes
Shall shine the holy glimmers of good-byes.
The pallor of girls' brows shall be their pall;
Their flowers the tenderness of silent minds,
And each slow dusk a drawing down of blinds

Wilfred Owen
first published in 1921

[AmyLizzie]

Posting another one that contains a passage that is read out at Rembrance services all over England on Nov 11th, its truly beautiful,

With proud thanksgiving, a mother for her children,
England mourns for her dead across the sea.
Flesh of her flesh they were, spirit of her spirit,
Fallen in the cause of the free.

Solemn the drums thrill; Death august and royal
Sings sorrow up into immortal spheres,
There is music in the midst of desolation
And a glory that shines upon our tears.

They went with songs to the battle, they were young,
Straight of limb, true of eye, steady and aglow.
They were staunch to the end against odds uncounted;
They fell with their faces to the foe.

They shall grow not old, as we that are left grow old:
Age shall not weary them, nor the years condemn.
At the going down of the sun and in the morning
We will remember them.

They mingle not with their laughing comrades again;
They sit no more at familiar tables of home;
They have no lot in our labour of the day-time;
They sleep beyond England's foam.

But where our desires are and our hopes profound,
Felt as a well-spring that is hidden from sight,
To the innermost heart of their own land they are known
As the stars are known to the Night;

As the stars that shall be bright when we are dust,
Moving in marches upon the heavenly plain;
As the stars that are starry in the time of our darkness,
To the end, to the end, they remain.

By Laurence Binyon 1914

[jtb1951]

Very stirring; thanks for sharing, Amy!!

John.

[The Grey Badger]

I checked my public library catalog online for both Testament of Youth and The Long Weekend and found nothing. They don't have either one. Sigh.:(

[KarenB]

If you send me your snail mail address, I'll send you Testament of Youth. Still reading The Long Weekend but if I ever finish you can borrow that as well.

Karen

[MaryL]

My library didn't have them either--ended up ordering through my nice independent bookstore--such wonderful folks! The Norton's Anthology edition of The Long WeekEnd lists Robert Graves as 1855-1985, which when I got to thinking about it wasn't right! Wikipedia shows his birth year as 1895, so he's more Russel's contemp than Watson's.
On a more sober note: One of the things that really bothered me about Vera Brittain's parent in ToY is their helplessness. The country's at war, their daughter is doing really important work, their son is off in the horrific trenches, and they can't cope with the lack of a servant to wait on them! Yes, the housework was harder, more physical then. I've seen "The 1900 House" where a modern family is thrust back into the past to cope. Yes I'm sitting in my nice gas heated house and didn't have to get the teenaged son to shovel coal into the furnace this AM. And my electric stove, fridge, DISHWASHER (NEW!), washing machine/dryer are all great--but I also work 10 hours every day and keep a house and family in line. So why can't they step up and do for themselves? Have we changed so much since then? Did WWI change society's expectations-TLWE doesn't seem to indicate that...

[kriddle]

I think for that time the middle and upper classes were expected to be helpless and useless. That is how you could tell you had money, you didn't have to have any sort of training in anything except in how to be a successful "ornament" to your husband. Look at how Ms. Brittain describes the married women in Buxton at the start of the war. Completely ineffective. The upper-class girls she goes to school with look down on her for her pursuit of knowledge. They think that it is her way of making up for her deficiency of being from the middle-class.

As Vera shows, not everyone was that way, but it took a special person and the right circumstances to break out of the enforced idiocy. The general person of the middle and upper-class never expected to have to actually do any of the gruelling work required to support the luxury they were used to. I'm sure part of their attitude was resentment at being forced to do work that was "beneath their station" (I don't think that in the US we deal with quite the same history of class predjudice). Another part of their difficulty in taking care of themselves was they just may not have known where or even how to start. Sort of like trying to cook a five star, ten-course meal in a kitchen that is completely unfamiliar to you. You may have an idea of what you have to do, but just trying to find the tools, let alone putting together the meal, can be overwhelming especially if you've never been taught how to cook.

I've only gotten through 130 pgs of ToY so I'm only inferring from what I've read so far. I'm sure I'll have to eat my words before too long (no pun intended). My library doesn't have TLWE so I can't compare attitudes between the two books. Does anyone find Ms. Brittain's excessive foreshadowing difficult to read? Does it make more sense as the book progresses? Maybe I'm just used to cliffhanger mysteries.

Hah! Call me slow, but I just did a quick search on Dorothy Sayers, the "shining star" in Oxford. Having just read else-thread about the controversy of Lord Peter appearing in Letter of Mary, I had a nice little sense of worlds colliding (or words colliding) when I saw that she was the creator of LPW.

[kriddle]

Not to muddy the water, but I think that Jacquelyn Winspear does a good job with the before and after attitudes surrounding WWI in her Maisy Dobbs series. It seems to echo Vera Brittain in that people's expectations for themselves, others, and what life has to offer undergoes a radical shift. The underpinnings of their society have changed.

Just had a thought...in The Game (Thank you Kathy, I remember the name now) there was talk of the Socialist takeover of the Government. My brain is relating this somehow to the societal change debated during the disscussion of The Handmaids Tale. Any thoughts?:)

[Kerry]

First, in case it helps, I got my ToY from my university's library -- if you're having trouble finding the books at a public library and have access to an academic one, it might help . . .

Second, THANK YOU, LAURIE, for recommending these books. I'm working on ToY right now and am just blown away by it. I'm only about 150 pages in, and I'm finding that my thoughts are constantly jumping between Vera and Mary Russell and back again. The Russell we meet in BEEK and follow through Locked Rooms seems nowhere near as devastated or molded by The War as VB was -- and I wonder why.

I also really loved the passage VB wrote about Roland, in which she said that she thought of him as neither boy nor man, but a person whose mind was in tune with hers, not playing the same song, but in harmony (only she said it more eloquently) . . . it seemed a great description of Russell's relationship with Holmes.

I'm very much looking forward to the rest of the book . . .

[The Grey Badger]

If you send me your snail mail address, I'll send you Testament of Youth. Still reading The Long Weekend but if I ever finish you can borrow that as well.

Karen

Patricia Mathews
418 Dartmouth Dr SE
Albuquerque, NM 87106

Will send you postage. Let me know how much. Or I can look at the package and reimburse you. Or send an SASE. Your call.

Thanks!!!!!!!!!!:D

[The Grey Badger]

Re: Upper-class and middle-class uselessness and helplessness in the United States, check out a little gem called "Mr. & Mrs. Bridge." Movie starring Paul Newman and Joanne Woodward. Then check out the books it was based on.

[kriddle]

I'll definitely check it out. How can you go wrong with Paul Newman? From the Amazon description of the books it sounds like a parallel theme of stagnation. In the Connell books, is it a personal stagnation as well as societal? In ToY it seems as if the societal encourages the personal (as VB experiences in the year after she finishes at boarding school).

[vicki]

I had trouble finding ToY also and am somewhat scandalized that our entire library system didn't have a single copy. :( And it's a pretty good system, too. I did get a copy through alibris.com.

Bachi sent me a heads-up about significant portions of this month's selections begin available through google books:

The Long Weekend (http://books.google.com/books?id=tWhvH-brDVQC&pg=PP1&dq=graves+long+week-end&sig=qxFuez-05LaoAB6Wg4lYxoWSAn0#PPA12,M1)
Testament of Youth (http://books.google.com/books?id=kkOWKOOvJW4C&printsec=frontcover&dq=%22testament+of+youth%22&sig=L_58dIOied5135TpNBT4zi_cf6o#PPP1,M1)

Thanks Bachi!! I hope that helps those of you who are having trouble finding the books. I'll add these links to the first post also and to the sidebar.

Amy, those are lovely poems. The Wilfred Owen one in particular gives me a feeling of being there. You might enjoy reading the Regeneration trilogy, where he appears in fictional form, asking Sassoon for comments on some of his drafted poetry.

It really was such a sad time and a tragic loss of life and youth. Between the huge losses of WWI and the Spanish flu pandemic, it's sort of amazing there were enough young people in Europe's next generation to fight another major war.

[annie]

I am glad that kriddle mentioned the Maisie Dobbs series. Jacqueline Winspear draws on her grandparents' memories. My grandparents and my great-grandmother talked a lot of those times between the wars, and of course, their experience was a very different one. I have always been amused by Vera Brittain's comments in Testament of Experience. She compares American & British (ie: upper class) methods of child rearing, and is shocked that American mothers care for their children themselves. She thinks that they may grow up to despise mothers who have done such menial tasks, and that parents should only spend short amounts of time with their children! She practised this when she sent her own child (now Shirley Williams) to America during WW2. Interestingly, Dame Shirley grew up tobe a socialist but not a pacifist.
I'd like to post some other books about that era, and hope that's OK:
Walter Greenwood's take on how a generation can be lost by political ineptitude:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Love_on_the_Dole

Richard Hoggart's book on growing up between the wars & popular culture:
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Uses-Literacy-Pelican-Richard-Hoggart/dp/0140204318/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1?ie=UTF8&s=gateway&qid=1202329328&sr=8-1

A fun look at the struggling provincial middle class, with wry comments on the "servant problem", but with insights about family life that still make me laugh:
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Diary-Provincial-Lady-E-M-Delafield/dp/0860685225/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1?ie=UTF8&s=gateway&qid=1202329477&sr=8-1

Finally, one of my mother's favourite books was South Riding by Winifred Holtby (VB's great friend) a novel about social change. I still have her copy which cost 1s/6d!

[tangential1]

I'm sure part of their attitude was resentment at being forced to do work that was "beneath their station" (I don't think that in the US we deal with quite the same history of class predjudice).

Didn't the US have a goodly amount of class prejudice? Perhaps just not quite the same. Maybe it was more regional in the US? The richer families with hired help were more in New England, right? The farther west you went, the more lower/middle class people you found?

Oddly enough, the subject of class differences came up in a discussion with a friend recently. My jaw completely dropped at her mention of having to read the directions on the back of the toilet bowl cleaner because she'd never cleaned a toilet before moving out for school. Her family has always had a maid that comes weekly to do all the cleaning. The weird part is that there is this level of disdain today for people who don't know how to take care of themselves. We scoff at all the boys that show up for college not knowing how to do their own laundry. It's an interesting thought that society has done something of a 180 in regards to expectations. I know there are still people who have maids and all that (I've seen them in the movies!), but I haven't met too many.

The problem was the collapse as society as they knew it. Why would someone want to go from making a decent wage in a factory to going back to being a second class citizen as a lady's maid.

Other countries didn't have that drastic change in their societal structure as Brittian did at that time.... so I expect they adapted to the aftermath of the war much quicker.

Didn't the US go through something similar with WWII? I'm thinking Rosie the Riveter and all that. But I suppose we were probably following in the footsteps of Brittain from the previous war.

[MaryL]

kriddle : I agree that the "Had I But Known" elements of ToY are somewhat tiresome-I've never been a fan of that sort of mystery either. I really the rest of the book though.

Is anyone else struck by the postwar behaviors described in TLWE? They seem very like America in the 60's--short skirts, loud, geometric prints, tubular chrome furniture, music much different than the previuos generations' style...drug use, change in accepted sexual behaviors, upswing in commercialism. My 76 year old father remarked that he's felt America to be about 40 years behind England in societal ways, and he's seeing alarming parallels with the "decline of the Empire" and current America. I'm not as convinced, but the similarities are starting to make me think. (Of course, it's flu season, and I'm always gloomy when tired.)

[kriddle]

Kerry, good observation. I noticed that there doesn’t seem to be a lot of emotional turmoil from Russell towards the war. It’s hardly mentioned at all except for little bits here and there regarding her rolling bandages and being a land girl. Perhaps the war was a defining ‘moment’ for so many of the youth of the day, turning boys and girls into men and women. For Russell, she lost her childhood the day her parents car went over the cliff. That and meeting Holmes were her defining moments, the war was a merely another tragedy to get through. Also, thanks for the book-locating advise. I might end up going that route.

I think Sheri is right about there being generations of war and the collapse of society was more the problem, but I think the difference is that WWI was a different kind of war. If I remember correctly it was the first “modern” war with poison gas and trench warfare, airplanes and tanks. The scope was so much bigger; mass killing on an assembly line. Didn’t Sting write a song alluding to it “Children’s Crusade”? I think the machinery of war (i.e. the factories, etc.) made the collapse of the social structure possible but the pressure of public opinion to do their part made them feel like they were pawns of the government machine, not the beloved sons and daughters of their country that they were brought up to believe they were. Like the country that threw the most bodies into the fray would be the winner.

[The Grey Badger]

Historical cycle theorists say World War I was not a Crisis War because the entire world order - politically and economically - was not changed until World War II. It was, however, in my mind, a Cultural Crisis War, and more than that, a Cultural Megacrisis War. Because - in my mind -

World War I was one of those pivotal events that marked the end of what I (along with Toynbee?) like to call a Megacycle. That is: if you look at everything from women's fashions (hoop skirts) to religion (presumed Christian, but what branch mattered supremely) to the geographical 'center of the world' (the Atlantic Ocean) to --- the list goes on and on ---- you'll find a lot of cultural continuity from the Tudor Era up to the runup to World War I. As if the Anglosphere at any rate, and probably all of Western Europe, had one common culture with many regional differences and an arc of development. An Elizabethan and a Victorian might have their differences, but they'd have a good many of the same assumptions and values and would recognize each other as being of "Modern Western Civilization" in the way a Medieval European or a Roman was not.

That culture died in the trenches of World War I. Whatever we're in now, call it Western Civilization 2.0, neither a Victorian nor an Elizabethan would recognize it, and indeed, would find it both alien and shocking to the point of incomprehensibility. We're as different from them as they were from the Middle Ages, as the Middle Ages was from the Roman Empire, and (more to the point?) as the Roman Empire was from the old Roman Republic.

Just my $0.02

[The Grey Badger]

Not convinced it was a 'different kind of war' except yes... they used gas and bigger guns. Wars were fought with 2 armys in lines looking at each other and hoping you were the last one standing. War, until WWII and after was always "right in your face" vicious. Now... there's no eye contact... you bomb someone from far away. The human factor is taken away... they are just "the enemy" and not human.

Yes, the US has some major changes after WWII but except small pockets they have never had the class structure, unless you are discussing the S using "black/slaves" (sorry for any lack of PC..) for labour ... and until the 50's/60's they finally got recognition and equal rights YET, that should have happened after the civil war. And the East coast rich that lost most of it in the Depression.

We're talking.. a complete change in government where the people had a say not just the "House of Lord's". Where the "lower classes" no longer wished to be maids and servants. Where the Monarchy became more of a figurehead than the ruler. Where women wanted the vote, where people wanted equal wages for equal work. A complete class system that was taken apart and put back together. I am truly amazed that the system simply bent and rebuilt and didn't shatter.

The only story I have ever found... granted I haven't looked... from a Canadian POV is Lucy Maud Montgomery's "Rilla of Ingelside". Which although a children's book, is a well written look at it's time.

The other series that might interest someone is Elswyth's Thane's Williamsburg books. They are 1940s/50's romances but start in the American Revolution and each book takes place successively war to war and ends at WWII. They too are well written about place and time. I also have one of her Non-Fic's "The Family Quarrel" which is the American Revolution. She has other Non fic and Fic books but I haven't read them yet.

Sheri

In Michael Flynn's "Country of the Blind," the heroine, a woman of African-American descent, is in a private advanced history class and the instructor is talking about feudalism. One of her classmates, a white boy, exclaims indignantly that America has NEVER had feudalism. The professor replies quite dryly "I'm sure Ms. Baeumont's ancestors would be gratified to hear that."

[MaryL]

Interesting observations--I grew up in Charlotte, NC in the 60's and 70's, as we slowly desegregated. You are right--the change in attitudes/expectations mirrors the change in post WWI Britain--guess I'm to close to it to have seen properly! Of course, we were from the North, so my family didn't have the same reference points as my neighbors...

Now to swing like a pendulum between the books again: In Locked Rooms Holmes muses that Russell "never was young". If VB's teenage diary entries are any indication, Russell certainly WASN'T! The -sorry, but it's the only word that fits-banal juvenile flights of prose are not something one would expect from our Mary Russell. Oddly enough, I read similiar drivel written by James Thurber at about the same age and in the same era--and he certatinly "got over it" too. Do you think it was fashionable? or expected from the young? Raptures over "poetical" thoughts, gushing over purple prose, sighing over morbid flights of fancy--I don't think my teens are into that now...

[Elizabeth]

I just came back to the BC after an unintentional break froom the internet to discover 2 of my favourite books were the must-reads this month! :)

For those who can't find Testament of Youth see if your library has Chronicle of Youth which are the published versions of Vera Brittain's diaries. Her novel The Dark Tide also gives an illuminating description of Russell's Oxford. And for those of you who have fallen for Ms Brittain, Lyn MacDonald wrote a book about the VADs entitled The Roses of No Man's Land which is heartbreaking.

I was (coincidentally) reading Virginia Woolf's diaries of the WW1 period during my internet hiatus, and for those of you who were wondering about the servant problem then, she has some (perhaps) unintentionally hilarious entries about her seemingly never-ending problems with her servants. She was never trained in any of the household duties, and shopping alone took more time then than it does now. And once food became scarce before rationing, nigh on impossible. For any woman who had never had to cook for herself before, making do with the little at hand must have been quite a challenge.

I've read the first Maisie Dobbs book and was honestly appalled that something that poorly written ever got published. Are the later ones any better? I enjoy reading about that period, but reading the first one was like nails on a chalkboard to me.

[kriddle]

Oddly enough, I read similiar drivel written by James Thurber at about the same age and in the same era--and he certatinly "got over it" too. Do you think it was fashionable? or expected from the young? Raptures over "poetical" thoughts, gushing over purple prose, sighing over morbid flights of fancy--I don't think my teens are into that now...


I've certainly found it hard going with this style of writing. I can visuallize Russell throwing the book across the room in frustration over it's florid writing. Feeling the way I do about this style and loving Maisie Dobbs amidst criticism of that writing, I can't help but wonder if it isn't just personal preference. I've been reading TLWE preview on google books (THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU for the link!) and I find that one quite enjoyable and lucid. I can't help but notice the difference in approach between the two; extraordinarily emotional vs. almost coldly clinical. As I'm still struggling toward Vera's nursing beginnings, I don't know if her tone changes for the during and after the war portion of the book so forgive me if I'm jumping the gun with my criticism (just putting ketchup on my words in case I have to eat them).

I love the idea of Western Civilzation 2.0! And thanks, everyone, for additional reading suggestions.

[tangential1]

I'm also finding ToY a little hard to follow. She puts sentences within sentences and I have to keep re-reading just about everything because I get lost on what she was talking about before throwing the commentary sentence in the middle. The re-reading is what's getting to me; it just makes the read so slow.

[MaryL]

I think the writing in ToY gets MUCH better as she reaches the end of adolescence, and begins to discuss the events of the war. From a medical perspective, this is the last war without antibiotics, and they did wonders with just intensive nursing care. The overall rate of death from now-preventable causes still stuns me. At least by then the medical profession had realized the value of antisepsis and cleanliness. Anyone else read Diana Gabaldon's books and the wry looks at 18th century practices?

[kriddle]

So any ideas for why Laurie keeps exploring the twenties? Here are some of my thoughts:

-Even given her independent spirit, I think Russell would have to work pretty hard to have the kind of freedoms almost taken for granted after WWI due to the societal reconstruction.

-Given the amount of time passed since then, maybe the turmoil can be more fully explored without rousing hot-blooded emotions.

-As Grey Badger said, it was the start of Western Civilization 2.0. Pretty facinating times to explore. Lots going on under the surface.

Anyone else have any thoughts?

[tangential1]

I think an equally interesting question is: why do we enjoy reading about the twenties? I'm sure the answers are linked;)

Personally, I'll have to think a while on an answer because I can't quite put a finger on why I love that time period so much. Perhaps it's because it is something of a transition time. A melding of the fanciness and propriety of Victorian and the freedoms of the more modern era?

[kriddle]

I think an equally interesting question is: why do we enjoy reading about the twenties? I'm sure the answers are linked;)

Personally, I'll have to think a while on an answer because I can't quite put a finger on why I love that time period so much. Perhaps it's because it is something of a transition time. A melding of the fanciness and propriety of Victorian and the freedoms of the more modern era?

Maybe it's a sickness. I think yours is a very valid question, as I've also been known to indulge in Kerry Greenwood's Phryne Fisher novels; set in the twenties in Australia. A time period remote enough to be romantic but modern enough to be familiar? After all, I'm not as interested in the 40's and 50's when my parents were born and grew up, even though they were pretty tumultuous decades. Too close to enjoy? Maybe my dd will have a facination with that era?

[Kerry]

Just catching up now on the discussion . . .

I thought I remembered Laurie addressing the question of her interest in the 20's on her blog; a quick search found the entry I remembered. It's in "Febrero Q&A"; the relevant section is:

. . . the Great War has been a rich source for fiction in Britain for decades. My own interest in the period came front-to-back, since the time of Holmes’ retirement couldn’t be moved back before August, 1914. (as given in Conan Doyle’s “His Last Bow”)—I talk a little about this in the web site’s Mary Russell’s World page, the England’s Teens and Twenties essay. But the question points out that I ought to have a separate page on the Great War itself, so next renovation of the site, I’ll add that.

As I began to research into the Great War and the years that followed, I found that it resonated with someone who had grown up during the Vietnam war: the sense that the war was eating a generation of young men, the enormous social changes that came under its influence, the apparent impossibility of a clean victory, the horrific effects technology had on the human body.

The Great War was the first war to be dominated not by swords and flying pieces of metal, but by technology, turned full bore against humans: Exploding artillery and machine guns, tanks and poison gas, bombs raining down on civilians and rising from a featureless sea. You look back at the photographs of the Front and you see not soldiers, but boys, and the heartbreak and tragedy and lump-in-the-throat heroism comes clearly into focus.

And the Twenties? An earlier version of the Sixties, up to and including short dresses on skinny girls.

I've found VB's book to become far more interesting as she progresses into her V.A.D. years. One thing that amazes me is how literary her letters and diaries are -- and not just hers, but those of her correspondents. Lots of long quotes from poems and other writings to express or counterpoint their own feelings and concerns. That seems a logical consequence of both her education and of being an educated person in an age without television and sound bites. It made me wonder what one could learn by comparing the letters written by the "ladies and gentlemen" with those of the "lower classes", and with the letters/e-mails men and women are sending to and from the Gulf today.

[kriddle]

Just catching up now on the discussion . . .

I thought I remembered Laurie addressing the question of her interest in the 20's on her blog; a quick search found the entry I remembered. It's in "Febrero Q&A"; the relevant section is:

. . . the Great War has been a rich source for fiction in Britain for decades. My own interest in the period came front-to-back, since the time of Holmes’ retirement couldn’t be moved back before August, 1914. (as given in Conan Doyle’s “His Last Bow”)—I talk a little about this in the web site’s Mary Russell’s World page, the England’s Teens and Twenties essay. But the question points out that I ought to have a separate page on the Great War itself, so next renovation of the site, I’ll add that.

As I began to research into the Great War and the years that followed, I found that it resonated with someone who had grown up during the Vietnam war: the sense that the war was eating a generation of young men, the enormous social changes that came under its influence, the apparent impossibility of a clean victory, the horrific effects technology had on the human body.

The Great War was the first war to be dominated not by swords and flying pieces of metal, but by technology, turned full bore against humans: Exploding artillery and machine guns, tanks and poison gas, bombs raining down on civilians and rising from a featureless sea. You look back at the photographs of the Front and you see not soldiers, but boys, and the heartbreak and tragedy and lump-in-the-throat heroism comes clearly into focus.

And the Twenties? An earlier version of the Sixties, up to and including short dresses on skinny girls.

I've found VB's book to become far more interesting as she progresses into her V.A.D. years. One thing that amazes me is how literary her letters and diaries are -- and not just hers, but those of her correspondents. Lots of long quotes from poems and other writings to express or counterpoint their own feelings and concerns. That seems a logical consequence of both her education and of being an educated person in an age without television and sound bites. It made me wonder what one could learn by comparing the letters written by the "ladies and gentlemen" with those of the "lower classes", and with the letters/e-mails men and women are sending to and from the Gulf today.

Thanks for digging up that blurb. I think that pretty much lays it out for us.

I had to put VB's bood aside for a little while, but I'll keep going in order to visit the VAD years. I've been wondering about how the lower classes fared psychologically in comparison with the upper classes. Does anyone know of anything written by someone of "lower class" from WWI? Given the circumstances, the odds are probably slim, but I thought I'd ask.

(I don't blame VB for writing the way she does, probably the reason it is so difficult for me to read is because I'm not even half so literary.)

[MaryL]

I agree-that's the appeal of revisiting the 20's. I also had to put down ToY for awhile when my family pointed out I was becoming irritable and depressed. Powerful wrinting that can still affect a reader 70+ years later! Anyway I've gone back to "Three Men in a Boat" and Connie Willis's "To Say Nothing of the Dog" for balance and still remain approximately period.
Here's a question-Can someone more familiar with the Oxford system of then please explain Responsions? Pass Mods? An Exihibition? I"ve an idea from context, but what ARE they really?

[Kerry]

Mary - I had those same questions myself. According to that great Font of All Knowledge, Wikkipedia, the answers are . . .
1) Responsions are entrance exams taken shortly after matriculation; VB did Responsions in Greek, right?

2) Pass Mods refers, as far as I can tell, to passing the first part of Oxford's "Classics" course of study (sort of like a major in our universities, I think). "Mods" includes Latin and Greek languages, Classical Literature, Greek & Roman History, Philosophy, Archaeology, and Linguistics. The Wikkipedia entry said that students were allowed to choose 8 "papers" from among those subjects; I guess that means they chose 8 specific subjects???

3) Exhibitions are merit-based financial aid.

One of these days I'll figure out the difference between a Reader, a Tutor, a Fellow, and a Don . . .;)

[tangential1]

Decidedly, Ms. Brittain's thoughts on the War as she was going off to Oxford really resonated with me. Her description of the War being a terrible inconvenience on her plans and all her hard work in getting to school. And most especially that disconnect between real life and world events; she articulated those thoughts so perfectly.

9/11 happened about a month before I was set to go off for undergrad and that segment of ToY describing her first year at school really left me thinking, "God, yeah. That's exactly what I was thinking." Kind of an odd feeling.

[The Grey Badger]

2008-02-13 14:31
Rovigo fetes Belle Epoque
Zandomeneghi, Boldini, De Nittis show highs and lows of era


(ANSA) - Rome, February 13 - A new exhibition has opened in Rovigo tracing the fortunes of women during Europe's Belle Epoque - the carefree period before the outbreak of the First World War thought of as one of Europe's happiest times.

Around 110 paintings by Italian artists from between 1880 and 1915 are on display at Palazzo Roverella capturing the flavour of cities transformed by the commercialization of electric light, improvements in public transport, advances in medicine and a booming world economy.

The show includes works by painters such as Giovanni Boldini, Federico Zandomeneghi and Giuseppe De Nittis who moved to Paris to be part of the main action as well as those who stayed behind to witness Italy's tamer version of the 'bei tempi'.

Paintings of elegant women at the theatre in impeccable outfits by De Nittis, gossiping over tea by Zandomeneghi or staring coquettishly from the intimate portraits of Boldini highlight the pleasure-seeking aspects of the period.

A shower of well-dressed women being escorted by men in monocles, top hats and canes in Aroldo Bonzagni's 'Mundanity' (1910) demonstrates Belle Epoque style, while visits to music halls, the night life in theatres and bars and seaside excursions are represented in works by the likes of Pompeo Mariani, Vittorio Corcos and Luigi Gioli.

High-society women are also depicted for the first time in public parks and gardens being openly courted, as in Oreste da Molin's 'Flirtation' (1901), where a man on a bicycle tries to chat up a woman looking out at him from under an elaborate hat.

But among the works are also paintings which suggest life was not all about trips to the theatre in fancy headgear and open-air dalliances.

Pictures such as Felice Casorati's disquieting 'The Young Women' (1912), which shows four women - one an emaciated nude - with the remains of an outdoor picnic strewn around their feet, and Giacomo Grosso's melancholic 'Portrait of a Woman in a Garden' (1903) cast a shadow of ambiguity over the era.

An even clearer reminder that deeper tensions rumbled under the surface of the optimistic, free-spending consumer society are the portraits of women who have succumbed to the vices and excesses of the time.

On display here is Vittorio Corcos's 'Morphine Addict' (1899), which shows a pale Parisian woman slumped in a chair looking out of the picture with lazy black pupils, her feet resting on a polar-bear-skin rug.

Serafino Macchiati's 'Two Women on a Sofa' (1905) shows a similar scene, with one woman in an extravagant blue dress collapsed face first into a cushion.

''It wasn't a Belle Epoque for everyone, and different social classes lived those decades with varying degrees of anxiety,'' said curator Dario Matteoni. ''The Belle Epoque created a golden legend to sweeten reality, but it was an economic and social reality dense with contradiction,'' he added.

Social discontent bubbled to the surface with the outbreak of the First World War in 1914, putting a definitive end to the happy-go-lucky era.

'La Belle Epoque. Arte in Italia 1880-1915' runs at Palazzo Roverella in Rovigo until 13 July.

Photo: Federico Zandomeneghi's 'Le the' (1890-1893)


http://www.ansa.it/site/notizie/awnplus/english/news/2008-02-13_113192077.html

[The Grey Badger]

All right. I've just started Testament of Youth, and I do so see what Laurie means. Vera Britten's childhood is spent in an intellectually and spiritually barren world, one where the intellect and the spirit are considered suspect. A world where deeds and appearances are supreme. Where the gender gap is not only large and rigid, but insipid - where (as one of her contemporaries, Dion Fortune said), the disconnect between sex and having babies had reached prehistoric proportions. Which is not the ideal situation for an idealist personality in any time or place, except as it makes her stronger.

I'm thinking "THIS is the wild, crazy, hard-drinking, jazz-playing, drug-taking Lost Generation? This is the Fifties on steroids!" Of course all that will happen after the War. But where is the artistic and spiritual (mostly what we now call New Age) awakening of those very decades when she was a child? Because we have read about it.

Dion Fortune said something very telling in a novel written in the 30s. One of her characters said that in England at the time, "The provinces are always a generation behind the cities, and the truly remote areas [backwoods to us Yanks. Pat] a generation behind the provinces."

So here we have the Edwardian equivalent of someone born in the Late Forties and thrown into Vietnam, only (as I said) on steroids. No wonder Laurie was so impressed.

The analogy even carries over to her retrospective opinion of the secondary education for girls at the time, given to producing awkward, earnest hockey-playing tomboys with no social graces. Compare Betty Freidan's view of female role models open to me and my contemporaries: the spinsterish lady professors; the woman doctor who cut her hair like a man ...

Yes. I do see.

[annie]

Of course, VB & RG are the upper (ish) classes. The role models you mention are middle (ish).

This period is alive to me because my grandparents and great-grandmother talked of it. They offered role models of the first working class generation to receive free universal education and the first women to vote.
They belonged to organisations like the Townswomen's Guild http://www.townswomen.org.uk/aboutUs.asp and Co-operative Women's Guild http://www.coopwomensguild.co.uk/. They campaigned for access to contraceptive services, better funding for maternity services, and helped run infant welfare clinics. They voted for the Labour Party - their role model was Ellen Wilkinson, http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/TUwilkinson.htm
( much more beautiful than th photo shows!) and the pinnacle of their achievement after WW2 was the NHS.

VB's great friend, Winifred Holtby, wrote a novel called South Riding drawing on some of this material - although again from an middle class perspective. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Winifred_Holtby.

I've not yet laid hands on a copy of Touchstone (not available in our library yet) - I'm hoping that I will before March.

[kriddle]

[QUOTE=The Grey Badger;5500]

'La Belle Epoque. Arte in Italia 1880-1915' runs at Palazzo Roverella in Rovigo until 13 July.

QUOTE]

Time for a VBC field trip?

Seriously, though, it is interesting to consider the rest of Europe during this time period. In our reading so far we've concentrated on the English POV with only odd comments made about the world at large; usually hinting at unease ever German politics. Seems much of Europe went through a similar change in acceptable behavior. Does anyone know if it was as drastic for them as for the English, or were they already 'looser' about their take on life ('Room with a View' comes to mind)?

[The Grey Badger]

Good question! One thing I noticed - if anyone wonders if or why the people running things at the hands-on level during World War II handled it as well as it could be handled - Brittain shows us why. "Why couldn't they simply do something that works and makes sense!" is her battle cry, and if you ask me, that of a lot of the Lost Generation. Who saw the failure of their elders in strategy (well known to all), tactics, logistics (oh, does she give us chapter and verse on that!), diplomacy (read about 1916. Then about the treaty of 1919, 'the peace which passeth ALL understanding!') - in short, the old Victorians were batting 0 for 4.

This seems to be true for the other side as well. Hitler was as mad as Tom of Bedlam, but his generals apparently had notebooks full of "How this should have been done" from their days in the trenches.

[tangential1]

I'm round about 1915 in my read of ToY and that's definitely the thing that's been bothering me most about VB's description of what's going on...the absolute ineptitude of all those in charge; the lack of organization; the frustrating male chauvinism. Why on Earth was everything so unnecessarily miserable?! What do you mean they rejected the help of experienced female doctors because they were female?!! WTF?!

[AmyLizzie]

I really like this discussion and was waiting for a point when I could jump in! I am particularly interested in the first world war and have done some work on it during my degree. I went to Austria before Christmas and took a trip into Germany, we went to a museum of German history and there was an exhibition on the two world wars, it was interesting to see the war from the 'enemy's' point of view. We forget that war involves ordinary people fighting for a cause they don't understand and that both sides suffer. I also visited a world war two underground hospital in Jersey in the Channel Islands, it was absolutley chilling to see the old hospital and the tunnels that the men and women of Jersey were forced to dig by the Germans. The Island itself was so changed by the occupation that the scars are still there today. It was such an emotional trip as the Islands were occupied during the war, a little too close to home! War and people's experiences of it are so interesting that I'm not suprised that Laurie chose this period to write about!

[kriddle]

AmyLizzy, you are so right about villifying the enemy to the point where we forget they are humans, too. Classic case of the winner writes the history books. I read a book about a year ago, set in WWII, from a childs POV that was just heartbreaking. The Book Thief by Markus Zusak. I highly recommend it. You realize that Germany was fighting a war against herself (ie many of her citizens) as well as against the Allied Powers. Now that I think of it (not to throw us back to a previous thread) it echoes back to The Handmaids Tale...reshaping of society while still fighting a war on the outside.

Who saw the failure of their elders in strategy (well known to all), tactics, logistics (oh, does she give us chapter and verse on that!), diplomacy (read about 1916. Then about the treaty of 1919, 'the peace which passeth ALL understanding!') - in short, the old Victorians were batting 0 for 4.

Not to be smart, but how is it that this is the country that built a worldwide empire? How was all that ability lost or buried? Was it because of the way technology had changed the way in which war was fought?

[The Grey Badger]

It has been pointed out elsewhere that the last people you want in charge of "why we fight" are the middle-aged or old Heroes because their heads are still in the last conflict. On the other hand, those who have endured total war in their own persons are the least likely to get us into a fight in the first place.

Now, Britain had not seen anything like total war since the Napoleonic Wars. They had a flurry of problems in India around - when? 1870 or thereabouts? - and that was it. So their idea of war was that of people who have never knows its horrors - i.e. something grand and heroic. But those who had fought at all - in India - had their heads in how things had been done in (let's say) 1870.

Does that make sense?

The French had known the Franco-Prussian War at about that time and weren't about to ride into battle singing heroic songs. At least those who had been there weren't. However, if you're invaded, you do what you have to.

[MaryL]

I have read that this was the last of the "old-style" wars--I think it was Thurber who commented that the ROTC on his campus was being taught the Civil War tactics, while the Army was learning trench warfare, on the hoof so to speak. Also, technology outstripped tactics/logistics in WWI. The warriors in charge didn't know how to fight against it, so they fought the way they knew. With predictable results. And they ignored the officers in the trenches as they were "too young" and "inexperienced"--ref: Mahmoud's son in [I]Justce Hall[I]. I'm of the opinion that most war is a failure of diplomacy and a waste, but this one was particularly wasteful. And a generation, the "best and brightess" of Britain paid the price of the failure of imagination.

[Meredith47]

Hello, all! we didn't get too much action here in Feb. On the one hand that's a little disappointing -- on the other hand I didn't have 447 posts to read! I'm with the good soul back in the early posts who first found ToY due to the Masterpiece Theatre version way back when. I think it was the first "whap on the head" impression I ever had of what WWI was really like. It's just as striking rereading it 20 odd years later, and you can't say that about every memoir. I think VB was pretty amazing in the obstacles she had to overcome and did. (Incidentally, I also had to surrender and order LWE and will have to read it during but March. but since I inhaled Touchstone in Jan, no problem!) I think the 20s/60s parallels are very strong indeed and perhaps why we find the 20s intriguing. They are a distant cousin, but clearly a relation. I find the recent romanticizing of the 60s interesting. I was a college grad in 69. All of the 60s/70s fashion/liberation/breaking the old ways/Huge sexual changes (only one pill but 20s had Margaret Sanger, yes?!) was something you enjoyed when it happened. But the War meant any young man you knew could die. I think that sometimes gets lost in the nostalgia. There was also a sense that everything might be coming apart at the seams with the assassinations one after the other; a good parallel to the 20s. I also have a response to the comments about (in effect) "why are things like wars often so stunningly badly organized?" I'd say there's a big chunk of bureaucratic politics in most organizations. When it really gets going, evidently the first investment is Not in doing the purpose of the organization. The investment is in maintaining the fiefdom and power of the bureaucrat. Result - Yikes! And thanks for the reading suggestions from admin and the posts above. 9 minutes of Feb left here: on to Touchstone! --Meredith

[vicki]

Hi, all--the Touchstone discussion (http://laurierking.com/vbulletin/showthread.php?p=5698#post5698) is up! But I hope we can also keep this discussion going as we move on to the next few discussion books, which are set in The Long Week-End.

I don't know about y'all, but I'm just barely starting to feel competent to even think about--much less discuss--this complicated time and setting. I just finished ToY and am in the middle of TLWE (supposedly a reread, but it's been so long, it might was well be an initial read). And like many of you, I am curious about how WWI came to be--or rather, was allowed to become--such a horrifying meat-grinder. So I've started reading Barbara Tuchman's brilliant WWI history, The Guns of August. It's supposedly a history, but it really reads like a novel--yay! I need to get into it a bit more before I get a handle on the information, but already the first chapters are consistent with the depiction of the huge social changes discussed in ToY and TLWE. Those changes, I'd agree, are similar in many ways to the changes of the 60s. I was particularly struck by the lack of respect and, at times, downright hostility that faced the veterans and VAD nurses who returned home after the war. That was very saddening--it made me want to go and rent Born on the Fourth of July.

[tangential1]

I also have a response to the comments about (in effect) "why are things like wars often so stunningly badly organized?" I'd say there's a big chunk of bureaucratic politics in most organizations. When it really gets going, evidently the first investment is Not in doing the purpose of the organization. The investment is in maintaining the fiefdom and power of the bureaucrat.


Hmm...are the wars really any more badly organized than the governments themselves? Or do wars rather act to magnify the problems/lack of organization that already exist(ed) in the government?

But I hope we can also keep this discussion going as we move on to the next few discussion books, which are set in The Long Week-End.

That's good to hear vicki! I'm not even quite through ToY yet, myself:rolleyes:

[jtb1951]

Hmm...are the wars really any more badly organized than the governments themselves? Or do wars rather act to magnify the problems/lack of organization that already exist(ed) in the government?

A great point, t1! The results of the flawed activities of agenda-driven power-smitten politicos is nowhere more immediately and devastatingly evident than in the decision to trade human lives as a cover for diplomatic weakness. Incompetent domestic policies can certainly affect a large amount of people for a long period of time, but an equally incompetent foreign policy tends to devalue life much more quickly and irreversibly. It's enough to make you crazy! [EOR - end of rant]

John

[tangential1]

I just read through a section in ToY that really resonated with me:

"Fortunately for Winifred and myself, it did not take us many months to drift in to the retrospective, amused detachment with which the average ex-student comes later to regard the results of Schools--so desperately tragic at the time, so completely forgotten within a year by everyone concerned." __Chapter X-12

Having just finished my degree about 18 months ago, I fully found myself nodding when I read this. I was trying to explain it to a friend who is still a junior (how the details, grades etc, of school don't really matter once your done, it's all about that piece of paper at the end, at least for the bachelors, and even then experience seems to be held higher than education anyway), but she did not seem to take my musings very well.

Can anyone else relate to this?