Throughout our course materials thus far, a spark of interest hit me when reading Vera Brittain’s “Testament of Youth.” Vera uses a refreshing context to discuss wartime with relation to how war is felt at home and abroad. The connection that I’d like to decipher through includes the idea of independence for women during a time of war and whether or not modernity is present within that independence.
To bring in current affairs and happenings, women in the southern Sudan have recently created silent protest groups with regards to the ICC’s (International Criminal Court) threat of arrest warrants issued towards the Sudanese president. A reporter for the VOA (Voice of America) News commented on this situation on January 7th, 2009. The reporter, Peter Heinlein, reiterates that the women in Sudan are worried that conditions in Darfur will worsen if the Sudanese president is arrested by the ICC.
“A government health-care worker in western Darfur, Muna al-Sharif Tazora, said even people who blame President Bashir for the region’s troubles are worried the arrest warrants could result in a weakening of what little protection they receive from the still incomplete U.N. peacekeeping force known as UNAMID.”
“…any attempt to prosecute President Bashir will destroy the process for a negotiated settlement in Darfur. ‘The ICC, if it comes out with a warrant, it will create disconsensus and disturb the whole process, not only the women’s forum process,’ Mustafa said. ‘We are here looking to support women and take them to the negotiating table. There will be no negotiation table anymore. This is a process. We are telling you the truth.’”
http://www.voanews.com/english/2009-01-07-voa26.cfm
As is apparent, the women are trying to work from the home front in Darfur to showcase the reality of the situation. What is unknown abroad is that something like the ICC’s arrest of the Sudanese president would seem groundbreaking and triumphant, but, on the contrary, strikes fear into the hearts and minds of not only the Sudanese women, but the territory as a whole.
In addition, Vera Brittain uses the home front in her memoir as a way to integrate herself into the war’s brutality. She becomes a nurse as a way to feel closer to Roland and as a way to make herself integrate similarities between her life at home and the life Roland leads in the trenches.
“’I remember once at the beginning of the War…you described college as a secluded life of scholastic vegetation…it is, for me at least, too soft a job…I want physical endurance; I should welcome the most wearying kinds of bodily toil’” (Brittain, 140.)
The true desire and ideal for her joining the ranks as a nurse shows through in the passage when she discusses the opportunity with her friends. The underlying message seems to be that Brittain desires to bring the reality of the War to the home front so as to not be naïve to the events in motion.
“To my diary I gave my reason more explicitly: ‘He has to face far worse things than any sight or act I could come across; he can bear it—and so can I’” (Brittain, 154.)
Hi. I am a long time reader. I wanted to say that I like your blog and the layout.
Peter Quinn
I agree with you that “Testament of Youth” by Vera Brittain is a very refreshing read. I am not sure that I have ever read a war account from a female perspective before, especially not from World War I. The way she portrays her world, helps shape in my mind how it must have felt to live through a time like that. She felt so guilty about Roland’s situation that she embraced hard labor and helping them men, it was her tribute to Roland.
You then relate this female perspective to that of women in Sudan. These women are standing up to stop something (in this case the prosecution of President Bashir), that many people in Sudan feel will ultimately harm their nation, which would be hindering the solving of the nation’s problems. In “Testament of Youth” Vera also stepped up to do something for her country and for the men fighting in the war, by becoming a Red Cross nurse. She thought that her staying to study at college in such a time was the wrong thing to do and would be a waste of her time. She had a strong urge to get up and do what she could to help, just as the Sudanese women did by having their silent protests. Both cases illustrate effectively women’s efforts during times of war, which sometimes get overlooked.
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