Testament Of Youth Film Analysis

Many war movies try to capture the essence of war from a soldier’s point of view, but in the movie Testament of Youth, we get to experience it from an outer perspective. The story takes place in 1914, right before the beginning of the first World War. We meet our main characters: Vera, the main protagonist, her brother Edward, and their friend Geoffrey. They are enjoying the summer before their last term. The boys are both studying to become cadets and to, eventually, join the military. When the war commences, they are searching for recruits. They expected the war to be very short, little did they know what they were getting themselves in to. We find in this movie ideas proper to the ideological ways of thinking of the 1900s and its link to …show more content…
The majority of women in the movie do one of these three things, they either: go to school, stay home, or volunteer during the war. We have a character like Vera, for example, who goes against everything an “women” should be (she is independent, she wants to pursue her writing career, she doesn’t want to get married, etc.) but still decides to leave her Oxford dream behind and join the military as a volunteer nurse. They definitely value her during the war, especially when help is needed. On the other hand, we find Vera’s mother as the stay-at-home wife who goes delusional. During this time frame, young women were still guided by their fathers or male guardian and required chaperon supervision at all times, meaning the whole patriarchal society was very well embedded in the movie. In one of the opening scenes, we find Vera and her brother coming home to find a piano in their living area. She confronts her father saying how she didn’t want a piano in the first place to which he replies “I’m concern you’re turning yourself into a Blue Stocking, that’s no way to get a husband” were she clearly states that she doesn’t even want a husband. This whole scene shows that even though his daughter didn’t want a certain thing, he still got it because he wanted her to have it. Women still have very minimal say in what they can and can’t do. In the movie, women are presented as both participants and outsiders when faced to war. Certain women went out and helped their countries fight, without actually being out on the battlefield, whilst others simply stayed at home waiting for their loved ones to return. The main way women got to participate in the war was by volunteering to become nurses, which is exactly what Vera did. They were very honorable women, those who decided to leave everything behind and put their own lives at risk to help others. She was also a