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.
Themes
War
Woolf states explicitly that the “question—How in your opinion are we to prevent war?” (3) has inspired her to write her letter, even though three years have passed since she received it. Given the historical moment in which she wrote the essay, it is understandable that Woolf felt the need to address the topic. Almost two decades on from the end of the First World War, the nascent fascist governments in Germany and Italy indicated that conflict was seemingly inevitable. With the Second World War beginning not long after the publication of this essay, Woolf was justified in her prediction.
Her analysis of war is different from that of her contemporaries, however. The unnamed correspondent writes to Woolf because he views her as a noted pacifist. There is some truth to this, as Woolf had written about the horrors of war in previous works. However, his fundamentally flawed interpretation of Woolf’s work leads her to write Three Guineas. The correspondent’s mistake is that he views war in isolation, as a horrible plague in need of a cure. But Woolf, as she explains throughout the essay, sees war as a symptom of a disease, rather than the disease itself. In her view, war is a product of the inherently broken patriarchal society. Without curing the ails of society, preventing war is impossible.
This interpretation of war is central to the essay. Woolf expresses the theme of war, not through the depiction of the horrors of combat as in other war novels, but in the way in which society feeds into and exacerbates the need for war. Woolf is a pacifist who does wish to prevent war, but society’s inability to view war for what it really is riles her. For her, war is clearly an expression of the patriarchy. As such, the subject of war evokes a discussion of women’s inequality—not of battles, combat, conflict, or any other tropes typically associated with war literature.
Nevertheless, Woolf does portray a battle—the conflict between men and women in society (and the perpetuation of the patriarchy)—which she frames as just another strand of humanity’s on-going insistence on making war. This societal violence against women is a form of war, one that society readily ignores. And the aim of Three Guineas is to bring awareness to this battle among an early-20th-century audience.
Patriarchy
The patriarchy was a familiar subject for Virginia Woolf. Many of her texts have been described as feminist, though some are more explicitly so than others. Much like Woolf’s earlier essay A Room of One’s Own, the theme of the patriarchy is central in Three Guineas. In both works, Woolf carefully details the discrimination against women in the British society of her time, particularly in an economic sense. In Three Guineas, however, she provides her most scathing criticism of “the tyranny of the patriarchal state” (94), drawing comparisons to the rising tide of fascism that was sweeping Europe in the 1930s. Patriarchal society, Woolf supposes, will inevitably lead to the war-mongering violence of the fascists. When asked how to prevent war, she views the question as absurd; if one is to prevent war, the first task is to dismantle patriarchy. Otherwise, war will remain inevitable.
Woolf provides many examples of the ways in which the patriarchy affects the lives of women. She names men who forbid their daughters from receiving an education, who have delivered foolish statements about the capability of women in the professions, and who display a constant fear that the steady march toward equality will rob them of their privileges and advantages. In each of these examples, she details the inherent societal violence that limits women’s opportunities to wield influence.
To demonstrate patriarchy in action, Woolf repeatedly quotes the figure of £250, the maximum annual wage available to most women. She describes this figure as “quite an achievement even for a highly qualified woman with years of experience” (43). Then, Woolf lists the wages available to men, which rise as high as hundreds of thousands of pounds. It is “quite an achievement” for women to earn a fraction of what men earn, even though they are equally qualified.
Woolf also deconstructs the myth of the meritocracy, stating that “it by no means follows that a clever man gets to the top or that a stupid man stays at the bottom” (47). Rather, a system of nepotism, favoritism, and sexism elevates men into the positions that earn them vast sums. Women are not permitted to take advantage of any of these factors, even though they are commonly accepted as being “highly qualified […] with years of experience” (43).
Without the ability to earn equal money, Woolf explains, women lose the ability to earn equal influence in politics, too. They cannot donate to political causes or colleges to the same degree; thus, they cannot make the provisions or requests that come with such donations. Because men earn more money, they can shape society as they see fit and as such preserve the patriarchy. There is no “rational process” (47) but rather an economic display of strength that consecrates the existing power structures and ensures that women will not have the same power to influence politics and society.
This inter-connected, holistic patriarchy is on display throughout the essay. Again and again, Woolf provides examples of men who seek to control their daughters, wives, and sisters. This fear is described as an “infantile fixation” (117), a term she borrows from psychology to describe the ways in which the patriarchal society fears the influence of women and does everything it can to diminish their power.
The destruction of the patriarchy becomes a key theme in the essay, due in part to society’s unwillingness to acknowledge its role in war. Though Three Guineas begins as an exploration of how to prevent war, Woolf surmises that this is impossible while the patriarchal system is in place. Until it is removed, she tells the unnamed correspondent, society will creep inevitability toward conflict.
Class
If the patriarchy is war by other means, then class is a secondary concern in Three Guineas. Though Woolf rarely mentions class explicitly in the text, she does draw class-based distinctions among women. She places a clear emphasis on the middle classes, particularly those involved in the “professions.” Not quite part of the aristocracy or the upper classes, these people are the lawyers, bankers, clerics, and other cogs in the bureaucratic machine of Britain. They are well paid and typically possess a university education, though this does not necessarily make them intelligent. For Woolf, these are the “educated men” (21) and it is possible to read this as a synonym for ‘middle class’. Woolf also frequently points to the “daughters of educated men” (4) and the “sisters of educated men” (25), by which she means people of the same social class, but who exist at the intersection between the patriarchal and economic privileges.
By veiling traditional class-based discourse behind a layer of abstraction—referring to middle-class men as educated men and middle-class women as the daughters of educated men—Woolf seems to be distancing herself from a class-based analysis. She shies away from anything resembling Marxism in this respect, preferring to focus on the roles these men and women play in patriarchal society, as well as how this affects the theme of war. Class, as a theme, is almost notable by its absence; it is clearly present in the book, but Woolf hides the theme with her choice of words.
Perhaps this is due to Woolf’s focus on the middle class. Throughout the book, she details the educational and professional opportunities and funding available to women. This is a traditional marker of class; those in the “professions” or with university educations would be typically considered middle class. In doing so, Woolf seems to ignore the plight of working-class women in relation to the prevention of war. When she discusses the work women do during war time, such as bandaging soldiers and working in munitions factories, she considers this a propagation of the patriarchy. Only through middle-class routes such as education and involvement in the professions, she seems to suggest, will women liberate themselves from the patriarchal society.
This absence of working-class perspectives in the book is notable, though the focus on the middle class is perhaps more suitable to Three Guineas, considering the argument Woolf puts forward. In her opinion, the way to prevent war is through increasing women’s access to education and professional careers—not by directly addressing the material conditions of women through higher wages or better living conditions. Woolf chooses not to argue the latter, though better financial means would certainly follow from the former. Woolf rarely addresses the living and working conditions of lower class women, focusing on the plight of the “daughters of educated men” (4) rather than on all daughters.
As such, the theme of class is a difficult one to define when reading Three Guineas. Woolf clearly acknowledges that class is a factor in both the prevention of war and the destruction of the patriarchy. But she does not couch her analysis and recommendations in traditionally class-based language. Nor does she employ the discourse of class warfare. Yet it does exist within the text. Unlike war and the patriarchy—themes that are explicitly present in the book—class is firmly but less obviously present.
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