{"id":3341,"date":"2015-07-20T14:56:58","date_gmt":"2015-07-20T21:56:58","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.cynthiasamuels.com\/blog\/?p=3341"},"modified":"2016-06-19T12:57:15","modified_gmt":"2016-06-19T19:57:15","slug":"wwi-women-and-jon-snow-testament-of-youth","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/cynthiasamuels.com\/blog\/2015\/07\/20\/wwi-women-and-jon-snow-testament-of-youth\/","title":{"rendered":"WWI, Women and Jon Snow: Testament of Youth"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/Rb9GHJ-vZHc\" width=\"640\" height=\"360\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen=\"allowfullscreen\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>The bravest women of their (and just about any other)\u00a0time, they left\u00a0their protective parents and a world of white gloves and chaperoned afternoon teas, where they were barely\u00a0permitted to touch the hand of a male\u00a0companion, for the French battlefields of World War One and the hellish field hospitals there, washing\u00a0naked, wounded men,\u00a0treating their wounds, the stumps of their amputated limbs, their lost sight, their mustard gas-poisoned lungs and their shell shock. \u00a0Mocked as privileged snobs out for a thrill, they struggled\u00a0to prove their strength and capacity over and over again, and they did.<\/p>\n<figure id=\"attachment_3348\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-3348\" style=\"width: 620px\" class=\"wp-caption alignleft\"><a href=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/cynthiasamuels.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/07\/vera-brittain-008.jpg?ssl=1\"><img data-recalc-dims=\"1\" loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"wp-image-3348 size-full\" src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/cynthiasamuels.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/07\/vera-brittain-008.jpg?resize=620%2C372&#038;ssl=1\" alt=\"vera-brittain-008\" width=\"620\" height=\"372\" srcset=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/cynthiasamuels.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/07\/vera-brittain-008.jpg?w=620&amp;ssl=1 620w, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/cynthiasamuels.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/07\/vera-brittain-008.jpg?resize=300%2C180&amp;ssl=1 300w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 620px) 100vw, 620px\" \/><\/a><figcaption id=\"caption-attachment-3348\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Vera Brittain as a Voluntary Aid Detachment nurse, 1915. Photograph: the\u00a0VB Estate\/McMaster University Library, Hamilton, Canada VIA The Guardian<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>Among them was Vera Brittain, who&#8217;d fought to be one of the earliest\u00a0women at Oxford, her father permitting her to enroll and risk &#8220;becoming a blue stocking&#8221; only because her beloved younger brother Edward refused to go if she could not. <em>\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www.imdb.com\/title\/tt1441953\/?ref_=nv_sr_1\" target=\"_blank\">Testament of Youth\u00a0<\/a><\/em>, the story of her struggles\u00a0to attend Oxford, her brief presence there\u00a0and her life-shattering experiences\u00a0as a wartime nurse,\u00a0is a classic, still in print and still beloved.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/cynthiasamuels.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/07\/Kit-Harrington-and-Alicia-Vikander-Testament-of-Youth-534165.jpg?ssl=1\"><img data-recalc-dims=\"1\" loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignleft wp-image-3357 size-medium\" src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/cynthiasamuels.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/07\/Kit-Harrington-and-Alicia-Vikander-Testament-of-Youth-534165.jpg?resize=300%2C178&#038;ssl=1\" alt=\"Kit-Harrington-and-Alicia-Vikander-Testament-of-Youth-534165\" width=\"300\" height=\"178\" srcset=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/cynthiasamuels.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/07\/Kit-Harrington-and-Alicia-Vikander-Testament-of-Youth-534165.jpg?resize=300%2C178&amp;ssl=1 300w, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/cynthiasamuels.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/07\/Kit-Harrington-and-Alicia-Vikander-Testament-of-Youth-534165.jpg?w=590&amp;ssl=1 590w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px\" \/><\/a>Now it&#8217;s a film, and the stature of the cast, including our own <a href=\"http:\/\/www.imdb.com\/character\/ch0155777\/?ref_=nm_flmg_act_2\">Jon Snow<\/a>,\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www.imdb.com\/name\/nm3229685\/\" target=\"_blank\">Kit Harington<\/a>, as her fianc\u00e9 Roland Leighton, <em>The Wire<\/em>&#8216;s Dominic West as her father, Emily Lloyd as her mother and Miranda Richardson as her mentor\u00a0 suggest that British headliners wanted to be part of her\u00a0remarkable, very British \u00a0story, even in a small, if gorgeous, art film like this one.<\/p>\n<p>I first met Vera in the 1979 PBS <em>Testament of Youth<\/em> series, moved from there to her trilogy:<em> Testament of Youth, Testament of Friendship <\/em>and<em> Testament of Experience<\/em> and found a sister. \u00a0A young activist in the 60&#8217;s, I understood\u00a0\u00a0her need to contribute, to be\u00a0part of the crisis alongside those she loved, and\u00a0as a woman fighting to\u00a0function in a\u00a0mostly-male profession, her battles as a woman were mine too.<\/p>\n<p style=\"line-height: 23.35pt; margin: 0in 0in 21.0pt 0in;\">So,\u00a0if you share the political\u00a0memories, ideal and goals of so many of us, \u00a0<i>Testament of Youth\u00a0<\/i>needs to be part of you, too. \u00a0Go see it.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The bravest women of their (and just about any other)\u00a0time, they left\u00a0their protective parents and a world of white gloves and chaperoned afternoon teas, where they were barely\u00a0permitted to touch the hand of a male\u00a0companion, for the French battlefields of World War One and the hellish field hospitals there, washing\u00a0naked, wounded men,\u00a0treating their wounds, the &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/cynthiasamuels.com\/blog\/2015\/07\/20\/wwi-women-and-jon-snow-testament-of-youth\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">WWI, Women and Jon Snow: Testament of Youth<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[2877,5,6,28,9,29],"tags":[3408,3884,3403,3402,3407,3410,3401,3404,3409,3412,3406,3400,3399,3411,3299,3146,3405],"class_list":["post-3341","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-microblogmonday-2","category-books","category-culture","category-film","category-politics","category-women","tag-alicia-vikander","tag-culture-book","tag-dominic-west","tag-emily-lloyd","tag-field-hospitals","tag-jon-snow","tag-kit-harrngton","tag-memoir","tag-miranda-richardson","tag-mustard-gas","tag-nurses","tag-testament-of-youth","tag-vera-brittain","tag-western-front","tag-world-war-i","tag-wwi","tag-wwi-nurses"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4gBq8-RT","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cynthiasamuels.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3341","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/cynthiasamuels.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/cynthiasamuels.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cynthiasamuels.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cynthiasamuels.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3341"}],"version-history":[{"count":18,"href":"https:\/\/cynthiasamuels.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3341\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3366,"href":"https:\/\/cynthiasamuels.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3341\/revisions\/3366"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cynthiasamuels.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3341"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cynthiasamuels.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3341"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cynthiasamuels.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3341"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}