Three Guineas

Woolf uses the salaries of male and female employees of the Church of England to illustrate the Commission’s ruling that “the general mind of the Church is still in accord with the continuous tradition of a male priesthood” (114), thereby excluding women from the profession. It is a decision not backed by psychological evidence, and Woolf quotes a testimony saying as much, provided by a psychologist the Commission called in to justify its decision. The Commission is an example of a “profession in its purest state” (116), by which she means it exhibits a fear of women and a belief in their inferiority that excludes them from professions. The decision explains “why it is that educated people when they are of different sexes do not speak openly upon certain subjects” (116) and indicates why an Outsiders’ Society would be necessary and necessarily secretive.

This fear manifests in other professions, too. The issue of women’s equality makes men nervous, and this reaction must be analyzed to be overcome. Woolf focuses on the phrase “infantile fixation” (119), which the psychologist describes as a primary motivating factor for men’s fear of admitting women to the professions. Woolf lists cases of infantile fixation throughout medical history, many referring to fathers who resent any attempt by their daughters to marry or become independent. A daughter “must not on any account be allowed to make money because if she makes money she will be independent of her father and free to marry any man she chooses” (121).

Infantile fixation, Woolf explains, is “protected by society” (123), as society agrees with the men who want to control the women in their lives. Cultural and economic forces corral women who turn against men, cutting off their access to the professions and labeling them as “unnatural” (123). History provides familiar examples of infantile fixation in “whatever biography we open” (124).

Next, Woolf moves on to the example of Leigh Smith, who was “completely immune […] from infantile fixation” (124): He educated his daughters and then gave them an unconditional allowance later in life. He did this hidden from society, for the most part, and thus “remains obscure” (124). Because of her father’s treatment, Barbara Smith founded schools and did a great public good.

Infantile fixation eventually met the force of feminism. No description can fully express the emotion of women’s opposition to infantile fixation because the “force had behind it many different emotions, and many that were contradictory” (125). No single word, Woolf reasons, can express “the force which in the nineteenth century opposed itself to the force of the fathers” (126).

If that were the end of the story, Woolf says, then it would be possible to address the correspondent’s letter. But it is “not the end; it was the beginning” (126). The issue of infantile fixation is almost as strong as ever, with increasingly powerful forces— such as nature itself— blamed for the necessary oppression of women, as “nature, the priests said, in her infinite wisdom, had laid down the unalterable law that man is the creator” (127-128). In Woolf’s England, “the clamor, the uproar that infantile fixation is making even here is such that we can hardly hear ourselves speak” (128).

The fear that causes infantile fixation, Woolf argues, is the same fear that prompted the correspondent to write to her asking how to prevent war. She returns to the photographs from early in the book and imagines a new figure there, the abstract idea of Man, representing fascism, war, and violence. By ignoring this figure—and everything he represents—the correspondent (and the public) risks destroying everything. Woolf tells the correspondent: “with the sound of the guns in your ears you have not asked us to dream” of how to solve the issues facing women, but only how to prevent war, without realizing that the two are inextricably linked (130).

Both Woolf and the correspondent view war as evil, but they do so from different perspectives. She suggests that “we can best help you to prevent war not by repeating your words and following your methods but by finding new words and creating new methods” (131); women should not join the respondent’s society, but should form their own (which would have a similar aim). She will return the form unsigned, for the reasons she has outlined. But to show that their “aims are the same” (131), she includes a guinea—given without conditions—to be donated to the cause, while donating the remaining two of her three guineas to the other treasurers who she has imagined asking for money in a similar manner. Thus, she gives all three, in essence, to the same cause.

Woolf finishes the letter by apologizing for its length, for the smallness of her contribution, and for “writing at all” (131). The blame for this, she suggests, “rests upon you, for this letter would never have been written had you not asked for an answer to your own” (131).