51 pages • 1 hour read
Virginia WoolfThree Guineas
Nonfiction | Essay / Speech | Adult | Published in 1938A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Key Figures
Virginia Woolf
Virginia Woolf is both the author of Three Guineas and a figure within the text itself. By the time she wrote Three Guineas, Virginia Woolf was already a famous figure in the worlds of literature and politics. Her ground-breaking novels, such as Mrs. Dalloway and To the Lighthouse, helped to push the boundaries of how literature was created and enjoyed. Furthermore, her work with the publishing firm the Hogarth Press and with the Bloomsbury Group made her one of the leading lights of the modernist movement. This fame is central to Three Guineas, as it is the precept for the unnamed correspondent’s addressing his letter to Virginia Woolf.
As such, there is a tension between the public figure of Virginia Woolf (the one the correspondent believes he is addressing) and the private figure (the one who replies to his letter). The correspondent writes to Virginia Woolf in the belief that she will be sympathetic to his cause of ending war. As a noted pacifist, Woolf would surely help him to bring an end to global conflict. However, a fatal misunderstanding informs much of the text: The respondent is unable to comprehend the difference between the public version of Virginia Woolf and the one who replies to him.
This failure to understand the perspective of a woman (and, by association, all women) is one of the key themes of the text. Woolf suggests that it is impossible to prevent war without first addressing society’s patriarchal bias, and this inherent failure to grasp the female perspective is represented by the difference between the public and private Virginia Woolf figures. Woolf succeeds in creating two literary characters out of herself: the misconception and the author. The former becomes a representation of the patriarchal misunderstanding of war, while the latter becomes the diagnostic tool who suggests how to repair society.
In turning herself into a character within the text, someone to whom misguided anti-war campaigners would write, Woolf succeeds in establishing the doomed dichotomy that exists in the British society of the period. The correspondent projects his own political views onto the public figure of Virginia Woolf, and the authorial, private Virginia Woolf must explain to him why he is wrong. She does this through a conventionally private medium (a letter) but then publishes it in a public space (making it available for everyone to read). The essay is a gradual merging of the public and private, forming into one cohesive Virginia Woolf character who explains her perspectives and views to the audience.
As such, the two interpretations of Virginia Woolf eventually become one single character and, in merging the two, the author succeeds in revealing the central theme of her argument: public society must reconcile with the private lives of women and learn to understand and include their viewpoints if society is ever to prevent war.
Unnamed Correspondent
Along with the two Virginia Woolf characters, the unnamed correspondent becomes a central figure in the essay. Though Woolf spends a large amount of time addressing other people in Three Guineas, the entire essay is structurally a dialogue between her and the unnamed letter writer. Even though his voice is only present in either direct quotes from an original letter or hypothetical responses imagined by Woolf, the correspondent comes to represent one side of the argument. He becomes the starting point and the finishing point; the end of the essay circles back to the beginning, with Woolf both apologizing for the lateness of her response and blaming the correspondent for compelling her to write it in the first place.
The correspondent remains unnamed throughout the text, though Woolf describes him in some detail. Hints, such as “a little grey on the temples” (3), suggest a middle-aged man with few distinguishing features. The “sketch of the person to whom the letter is addressed” (3) could apply to a vast swath of the men featured in the procession of professions, or middle-class society as a whole. This is important, as it helps Woolf address society more broadly.
The unnamed correspondent comes to represent the patriarchy. He is a stand-in, allowing readers to see themselves in him and feel as though Woolf is addressing them. Thus, the unnamed correspondent is little more than a personification of society, which is the real addressee of Three Guineas.
This, too, is why it is important that the respondent remain nameless. The specific deconstructions of the respondent’s arguments are not necessarily directed at one individual, nor are they a criticism of him as a person. By leaving the character nameless, Woolf is able to make her political point on a grander scale; the mode of debate shifts from a conversation between two people to a critique of the society itself.
The Treasurers
Woolf conjures up a series of correspondents who also function as characters in the essay. The treasurers of the college and of the society are similar: They are never named, they have both written asking for money, and Woolf uses both as a reference point when addressing the central themes of her essay. In that sense, they are hardly characters at all. Nevertheless, they do exist within the text, and Woolf gives them narrative space to make their arguments.
Because of the nature of the format, the treasurers function differently from the unnamed correspondent. While the correspondent is (theoretically, at least) receiving a response to his letter, the treasurers receive only hypothetical replies placed into a response to another person, someone they do not know.
Perhaps because of this, the tone of the responses they receive is markedly different. The letter Woolf writes to the unnamed correspondent is scathing in nature, while the hypothetical letters to the treasurers are filled with more imagery, humor, and less direct criticism. In her responses to both treasurers, Woolf advocates violent protests against the institutions they run, telling one to “take this guinea and with it burn the college to the ground” (34). Woolf revels in the destructive imagery in both cases, delighting in the smoldering institution she believes is an impairment to women’s rights. But these calls to violence are walked back; Woolf changes her mind, telling the women not to burn down their institutions, but to use their funds to rebuild the institutions along new, reformed lines.
The unnamed correspondent does not receive nearly as much of an acquiescence, perhaps because these imagined letters are not intended for the treasurers, but for him. As such, Woolf has a vested interest in revealing more depth in the female characters she portrays. Her aim in the essay is to illustrate the various female perspectives that are unavailable to her male correspondent. By varying her hypothetical response to the treasurers, she is revealing a wider range of emotions and perspectives than he might have expected.
The call to burn down institutions is important, as it reveals to the correspondent that this may be a very reveal possibility—that women may become so disillusioned with society that they burn everything to the ground. Woolf wants to show the male world this fury and anger, so she imposes it within a discussion between two women, almost as though it were a matter of course. Accordingly, Woolf uses the two female treasurers to reveal the underlying rage against the patriarchal society, and her advice to these characters reflects the danger and the dissatisfaction felt by many women.
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By Virginia Woolf
