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A review by wisha
Testament of Youth by Vera Brittain
5.0
To me provincialism stood, and stands, for the sum-total of all false values; it is the estimation of people for what they have, or pretend to have, and not for what they are. Artificial classifications, rigid lines of demarkation that bear no relation whatsoever to intrinsic merit, seem to belong to its very essence, while contempt for intelligence, suspicion and fear of independent thought, appear to be necessary passports to provincial popularity. Its mean, censorious spirit is typified for me by the local bank-manager's querulous little wife who took my mother, as a young married woman giving her first small dinner-party in Macclesfield, severely to task for having "mixed her sets."
In some of the larger provincial cities a rich and enterprising life does seem possible which is free from this carping pettiness... p.55
"It feels sad to be a woman!" I wrote in March 1913— the very month in which the "Cat and Mouse" Act was first introduced for the ingenious torment of the militants. "Men seem to have so much more choice as to what they are intended for."
The passage of time— or so, at least, I fondly believe— has changed my furious Buxton resentments into mellower and more balanced opinions, but probably no ambitious girl who has lived in a family which regards the subservience of women as part of the natural order of creation ever completely recovers from the bitterness of her early emotions. Perhaps it is just as well; women have still a long way to travel before their achievements are likely to be assessed without irrelevant sex considerations entering in to bias the judgment of the critic, and even their recent political successes are not yet so secure that those who profit by them can afford to dispense with the few acknowledged feminists who are still vigilant, and still walk warily along once forbidden paths. pg. 59
In some of the larger provincial cities a rich and enterprising life does seem possible which is free from this carping pettiness... p.55
"It feels sad to be a woman!" I wrote in March 1913— the very month in which the "Cat and Mouse" Act was first introduced for the ingenious torment of the militants. "Men seem to have so much more choice as to what they are intended for."
The passage of time— or so, at least, I fondly believe— has changed my furious Buxton resentments into mellower and more balanced opinions, but probably no ambitious girl who has lived in a family which regards the subservience of women as part of the natural order of creation ever completely recovers from the bitterness of her early emotions. Perhaps it is just as well; women have still a long way to travel before their achievements are likely to be assessed without irrelevant sex considerations entering in to bias the judgment of the critic, and even their recent political successes are not yet so secure that those who profit by them can afford to dispense with the few acknowledged feminists who are still vigilant, and still walk warily along once forbidden paths. pg. 59