Question about a character
Sorry if this is a stupid question but I was distracted while watching. Was Edward (her brother) gay? I got that impression when she said she didn't read his letters.
shareJust read on wikipedia that the real Edward was gay.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_Brittain
In June 1918, army censors had read a letter from Brittain that indicated that he had had homosexual relations with men in his company. His commanding officer, Lt. Col. Charles Hudson, was notified that Brittain would be court-martialled when he came out of the line. Hudson was told not to warn Brittain, but he warned him obliquely anyway. His commanding officer believed that Brittain put himself in harm's way in order to avoid a court-martial and prison sentence. Hudson evaded Vera Brittain's questions when she visited him in hospital in 1918, but told her his suspicions after Testament of Youth was published in 1933. She was initially reluctant to believe that her brother had deliberately exposed himself to danger, but she eventually came around to his colonel's interpretation of events and fictionalised them in her novel Honourable Estate.
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Thank you! I was wondering the same thing and was about to post on the board too. Good thing I clicked on this link first!
shareScholars on Great War literature I was exposed to in Cambridge decades ago were of the default position that, yes, her brother did not have an interest in women (which Vera actually says in Testament of Youth, without being pointed about it--which in 1933 nobody would have been in print).
He and his friends were known at school to be of the sensitive, artistic types, and not to have women in their lives and such. Back then, especially with homosexuality being illegal and punishable with prison, nobody would have been talking about it openly.
And Vera's Roland was also in this circle of friends of Edward's at school. So it's likely he was also not really interested in women in the primal sense, but probably found Vera's intelligence and energy attractive as a young man and had a kind of serious intellectual connection with her. Sadly, he didn't live long enough for it to be clear.
These were folks who studied and lived by Byron, Shelley and The Romantics and the Pre-Raphaelites, who were flourishing during their upbringing.
But from what I've heard from professors at Cambridge who made a study of that era and its literature, including having access to original letters and other documents, Edward Brittain and his school friends were an open secret as anybody would have had, then at a boarding school.
There is a wonderful book of poems called "Lads- Love Poetry of the Trenches" edited by Martin Taylor. It's not only poetry between men who are actually lovers (or who want to be), but it's also poetry between men who love each other in the non-romantic sense, as men brought together through war.
One poem that always brings me to tears is one by a young man who's in the trenches with a man he loves and he talks about how they can't express it like lovers would be able to otherwise, and live side by side, day after day, knowing how quickly one might be killed---and won't be able to mourn in public around the other men but will have to hide all their feelings. It's so sad!
Another shattering collection of poetry is "Scars Upon My Heart" selected by Catherine Reilly, with women's poetry and verse of the First World War.
Both volumes are hard to take in large doses, because the poems are so emotional to read.
But if you have an interest in the literature of the time, beyond Brittain, then these are excellent books to read.
They are both available in little paperbacks, and easy to carry around....
Your reference to Lads: Love Poetry in the Trenches reminded me of Shakespeare's Sonnets, which if I recall correctly has been debated by more than a few scholars as embedded with references to homosexual and/or homo-erotic love.
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