Patronizing misogyny
Instead of starting in medias res, we are giving by Brittain one small example of what her childhood was like when she lived in the home of her father who had archaic, misogynistic opinions about women that were clearly projects of his own insecurities. Brittain took the wrathful anger of her injustice with her to college, and after enduring the horrors of her fate in WWI, we see a Vera Brittain who isn't arguing about feminist issues from an unexperienced perspective—she has literally PTSD from combat, at a time when not many people knew much about the lingering effects of trauma.
Mental health and trauma
For Brittain, mental health and trauma are connected, because regardless of how ready she felt to encounter the dead and dying victims of warfare, no one on either side had ever seen military machinery like WWI introduced, so in any case, she was permanently scarred by the absolute horror of those scenes, which she reports, and she explains how she came to understand her state of permanent panic and paranoia, but she reports that she found a husband who was sympathetic with her suffering and her opinions.
Love and enfranchisement
Love isn't easy, and for many people it is a kind of agony, like for Brittain who loved her brother but lost him in warfare, alongside many of her friends. She expresses a deep longing for respect from her father, but without it, she understands what love might have looked like for her. When she meets G, she anticipates the difficult emotional issues coming, and she warns him—she has had a unique life experience, and she needs him to know that she cannot subject herself to the slavery of traditional marriage roles; she will have her career. By enfranchising her point of view in their marriage, G loves her.
