Many British soldiers left to serve their country on the Western Front, while woman maintained the home front and witnessed the negative effects of the war. Prior to this time, women were considered inferior and subservient to men. Before the war, “most well-bred girls tried their hands at water colors or music – it was rather expected of them” (Pg. 185). The government looked to women to persuade men to join

“The Colonel was the finest chess player I’ve ever met, and I have no mean skills at the game myself. He was born with a talent for strategy that few of us are given, and he made the choice, that war meant playing with men’s lives, not with prettily carved pieces on a game board” (Pg. 109).

In conclusion, Charles Todd, an American writer of A Test of Wills gives us a telescopic view of wartime England in a particular focus on rural city of Warwickshire. This was a time characterized by a search for wartime heroes, women’s emerging independence, influenza epidemic and the return of “shell-shock” soldiers from the battlefields of the war. The themes occupied in the novel form the basis of the everyday experiences of these characters and coincidentally, these themes were the realities of the English wartime generation.

Some topics in this essay:
Daniel Hickam, MacLeod MacLeod, Catherine Tarrant, Scotland Yard, Colonel Harris’, Sally Davenant, Western Front, World War, South Africa, Queen England, catherine tarrant, ian rutledge, pg 61, negative effects war, post cards, scotland yard, negative effects, world war, experiences faced, suffering “shell-shock”, pg 6,