Elena’s Reviews > Testament of Youth > Status Update
Elena
is on page 166 of 688
"I['m]...thankful for the knowledge of masculine functioning which the care of [soldiers] gave me, and for my early release from the sex inhibitions that...thanks to the Victorian tradition...dictated that a young woman should know nothing of men but their faces and their clothes until marriage pitchforks her into an incompletely visualized and highly disconcerting intimacy-beset many of my female contemporaries..."
— Jul 03, 2026 10:12AM
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Elena’s Previous Updates
Elena
is on page 318 of 688
I have got used to facing the long empty years ahead of me if I survive the War, but I have always before me the realization of how empty they are and will be, since he will never be there again.
— 6 hours, 10 min ago
Elena
is on page 318 of 688
It's absurd to say time makes one forget; I miss him as much as ever I did. One recovers from the shock, just as one gradually would get used to managing with one's left hand if one had lost one's right, but one never gets over the loss, for one is never the same after it.
— 6 hours, 10 min ago
Elena
is on page 257 of 688
. . . at all costs I must preserve my self-respect – preserve the self which he loved and I have lost . . . I only wish I could see a little light in all the depths and blackness – only wish I knew what my obvious duty was. Perhaps it is not impossible to regain one's self respect.
— Jul 04, 2026 02:44PM
Elena
is on page 198 of 688
"Who is there who has known and seen who can say that Victory is worth the death of even one of these?"
Had a really been a time, I wondered, when I believed that it was?
— Jul 04, 2026 12:24PM
Had a really been a time, I wondered, when I believed that it was?
Elena
is on page 198 of 688
"... and in among the chaos of twisted iron and splintered timber and shapeless earth are the fleshless, blackened bones of simple men who poured out their red, sweet wine of youth unknowing, for nothing more tangible than Honour or their Country's Glory or another's Lust of Power."
— Jul 04, 2026 12:22PM
Elena
is on page 194 of 688
"The shortage of doctors," I commented, "must be a tremendous problem–yet when the women doctors they are crying out for now began their training, every possible obstacle was put in their way."
I did not then know that when the group of medical women . . . had offered their services to the War Office in 1914, they have been told that all that was required of women was to go home and keep quiet.
— Jul 04, 2026 12:11PM
I did not then know that when the group of medical women . . . had offered their services to the War Office in 1914, they have been told that all that was required of women was to go home and keep quiet.
Elena
is on page 193 of 688
I feel as if someone had uprooted my heart to see how it was growing.
— Jul 03, 2026 10:33PM
