Here are my notes on Part One of "Three Guineas".
Structure and overview (summarized from Wikipedia):
The essay is structured as a letter in response to a man who had written to Woolf asking her to join his anti-war efforts. Woolf was a pacifist. Woolf thinks it’s “remarkable” that a man is asking a woman her opinion on war, but she has so far not written back because, given her difference in education, experience, and access to public life, she thinks that he, as an educated man, will have a very hard time understanding her.
The work shows Woolf’s ambivalence between leaving the home to help the anti-war efforts and her reluctance to become a part of the public world of men and all that it entails.
As she writes her reply, she also addresses two other letters that she’s received; one is a request for a donation for a women’s college, and one asks for a donation for an organization that helps women “enter the professions.” Woolf uses these letters to criticize the institutions of education and the professions in England at the time, comparing the attitudes entrenched in them to those of Fascism.
She wants to make sure that girls attending school don’t end up corrupted, and talks about a new system of education that values emotional intelligence and skills for living well.
She concludes that war is bad, but that women and men will approach their efforts to prevent it in very different ways.
One
According to Woolf, the letter asking her opinion on preventing war has been laying unanswered for three years. She’d hoped that, in that time, someone would figure out how to prevent war, but alas.
She has thought of answers, but they’d all involve lengthy explanations that would be susceptible to misunderstandings. Even when she’d explained, there would still be things that he couldn’t understand and that she couldn’t explain. But because it’s so unusual that a man asks a woman her opinion on something like this, she’s going to do her best to reply.
She creates a description of the gentleman who wrote the letter (addresses it to him directly, using “you”); thinning, graying hair, lawyer, prosperous. He’s a good person, not apathetic. Well-educated.
She points out that they are both from “the educated class,” having the same accents, manners, experience, conversational skills. They both have jobs. (She likes to point out her use of ellipses). BUT (going to start pointing out differences). Talks of “the daughters of educated men”. (What about mothers?). She talks of “Arthur’s Education Fund,” apparently an account that educated families would put money into.
Points out that formal education wasn’t the only way boys were educated; they played games, talked with friends, traveled, received an allowance that let them study.
Sisters contributed to the fund with their own education and luxuries (“travel, society, solitude, a lodging apart from the family house”). This difference changes the way that men and women see things, through the filter of the experiences and opportunities that were afforded to boys. (To me personally, Woolf’s apparent ignorance of her classism is starting to get a little awkward).
She points out that her own lack of formal education will change the way she’s able to relate to the question of how to prevent war. She doesn’t know about politics, or “international relations of economics,” and therefore doesn’t “understand the causes which lead to war.”
She believes that if you look at war as “the result of impersonal forces,” it will be impossible for her uneducated mind to understand, but if you look at it “as the result of human nature,” that explains why he asked her, a woman, for advice. She seems to believe that “understanding … human beings and their motives” is a kind of education that women have. She calls it “psychology” but admits that the actual word is more scientific than she’s using it. She believes that the “profession” or “art of choosing the human being” one will spend the rest of one’s life with has given women an experience in psychology.
Claims that men are more likely to fight than women. Points out that women haven’t killed people, don’t hunt. So how can she understand his problem or answer his question?
“The answer based upon our experience and our psychology – why fight? – is not an answer of any value.”
(Interesting – the idea that a woman doesn’t really get the motivation to fight, and therefore her best answer to how to prevent fighting won’t really be useful).
She can turn to books or newspapers to try to understand – they let her move beyond “the minute span of actual experience” that is still really limited for women. So first she’ll look at a biography of a soldier. He claims to be happy in his life, “for he had found his true calling.”
Another biography, this one of an airman: he held the opinion that if there was no war, “there would be no outlet for the manly qualities which fighting developed,” and humanity would deteriorate physically and mentally.
So, men fight because it’s a job, it’s a “source of happiness and excitement,” and it’s “an outlet.”
But, she doesn’t want to generalize these opinions to all men, so she turns to another biography, of Wilfred Owen, “a poet who was killed in the European war”. He believed that Jesus promoted passivity over violence, disgrace over violence, death over killing. Talks about war as unnatural, inhumane, unsupportable, beastly, foolish.
So, men have different opinions among themselves about war. But, according to the newspaper today, a majority of men “are today in favour of war.” Agree that spending a lot of money on weaponry is necessary. “it is better to kill than to be killed.” She uses the idea of patriotism as a prevailing idea that causes the apparent unanimity today.
Ok, so what is patriotism? According to another book: Being proud of your country, loving your country. Using England as a standard by which to judge other countries. Liberty.
Ok, that’s fine when talking about men, but what does patriotism mean to women? Does she feel the same way? “her position in the home of freedom has been different from her brother’s”. This difference has taken a mental and physical toll. So, it might be hard for a woman “to understand his definition of patriotism and the duties it imposes.” So, if Woolf’s response to the gentleman’s letter requires her to understand the motivations of going to war, it will be useless. She wants to find an objective perspective of morality (right and wrong), so she will turn to the clergy. However, within the clergy, some believe that dishonor was worse than war, but some believed that war was at odds with the teachings of Jesus. So there’s really no certainty to be found, and the more people we ask for their opinions, the more confused she becomes and the harder it is to come up with a solution.
Ok, so let’s look at photographs. Pictures of dead bodies so mutilated you can’t tell if they’re male or female, human or animal. Dead children in a bombed house. The photos “are not an argument; they are simply a crude statement of fact addressed to the eye.” So even with different educations, we react in “horror and disgust.” These pictures lead to the gut reaction that “war must be stopped,” no matter who you are.
Let’s change the subject and address the actions you (the gentleman) suggested. Write to the newspaper, join a society, and/or donate to a society. Sounds easy – writing your name, listening to someone preach to the choir, writing a check – “cheap way of quieting what may conveniently be called one’s conscience.” However, you’d still feel the same emotion you felt upon looking at the photographs of dead children. You have to do something more active. But what can we do? Join an army to defend peace, join the Stock Exchange to exert economic pressure – neither of those is open to women. We can’t join the Church to preach peace. Sure we could write letters to the “Press,” but the “Press” is run by men. Even in public areas where we are now allowed, our “position is… precarious and our authority of the slightest.” If male lawyers went on strike in order to make demands, it would have an effect on England. If women lawyers did, not so much. In fact, if working-class women in munitions plants went on strike, it would affect the war. But if we “daughters of educated men” did, it wouldn’t affect anything. We have the least influence. “We have no weapon with which to enforce our will.”
BUT – we can influence educated men. Ok – how have we influenced politics in the past? We’ve got biographies of men, but how would we tell what was the result of influence by women? She lists women who were politically influential through the dinners they had and the people who met at their houses. BUT, you never see mention of the daughters of the houses. You see their brothers and husbands.
Daughters of educated men helped “the franchise”. But, Woolf concludes “that influence has to be combined with wealth in order to be effective as a political weapon” and that these women’s influence is weak, slow, and painful. This “one great political achievement” of women was expensive.
Now, Woolf concludes, that “the influential are the daughters of noblemen, not the daughters of educated men.”
Cites a guy who claimed that women’s influence should always be indirect, and that “the wise woman always let him think he was running the show when he was not.” He claims that women actually had more power before they could vote, because they could influence the men in their lives (implies that she could influence more than one).
If that’s the real influence of women, we’re screwed – “many of us are plain, poor and old” (implying that you have to be young and hot to influence men), or some are too proud, considering using this kind of influence as worse than prostitution.
Ok, so if that’s all true, then we just have to sign letters, join societies, and write checks. “Inevitable, though depressing, conclusion of our inquiry into the nature of influence.”
Mentions the right to vote and “the right to earn one’s living” as equally important.
Describes the way that earning your own money and being able to spend it as you please can open up the world to a girl’s imagination. Work is less objectionable slavery than dependence on a father. Earning money freed them from having to use the above kind of influence (implied to be sexual). The influence she has as an earner and spender “is an influence from which the charm element has been removed”. “She need no longer use her charm to procure money from her father or brother.” So now, since her family can no longer “punish her financially she can express her own opinions.” “She can criticize.”
Ok, so “how can she use this new weapon to help you to prevent war?”
Continues to point out differences between men and women in education, property ownership. “Though we see the same world, we see it through different eyes.” But maybe the value of the help offered by women lies in its difference. So let’s look at how a man’s world appears to a woman.
At first, “the world of professional, of public life, seen from this angle… is enormously impressive.” Marvels at “the splendour of your public attire”. But it seems weird to women that men dress the same in summer and winter, and that every part of their garment “seems to have some symbolic meaning.” Stripes, buttons, rosettes, and their colors, positions, and number seem to all have meaning. She also marvels at the ceremony and ritual of men’s public life.
For a woman, clothing only “creates beauty for the eye, and … attracts the admiration of your sex.” Dress (at least up until women could work) was enormously important to a woman. But for men, it “serves to advertise the social, professional, or intellectual standing of the wearer.” These kind of advertisements are seen as “unbecoming and immodest” for women. She seems to allude to academic dress, but also says that “A woman who advertised her motherhood by a tuft of horsehair on the left shoulder” would be looked down upon.
Ok, so how do our differences help the issue? What is “the connection between dress and war”? She mentions soldiers’ uniforms. Implies that the splendor of their uniforms when they’re not fighting is to, “through their vanity… induce young men to become soldiers.”
Ok, so women can’t wear those clothes, but we “can express the opinion that the wearer is not to us a pleasing or an impressive spectacle.” He is, instead, “barbarous.” Suggests that the fact that men use their clothing to “emphasize their superiority” in class or education, they “rouse competition and jealousy,” which both encourage “a disposition towards war.”
She seems to imply that if women refuse to wear clothing that advertises their class or education, that will contribute to war prevention.
She brings up the idea that a woman’s influence is very much on the surface of things. She wants to look “in the direction of education itself.”
She mentions a letter “asking for money with which to rebuild a women’s college.” As a donor, we have the right to dictate how our donation is spent. She talks about using the money to teach about war prevention. But what does that mean? How does education factor into that?
What IS a “university education”? It has “supreme value” (the biographies confirm that). English rulers have all had a university education. People spend enormous sums of money on it. And, reading biographies of the poor “proves that they will make any effort, any sacrifice to procure an education at one of the great universities.”
It’s SO valuable, that the sisters of the educated men wanted to be educated.
Apparently the church used to think that a woman’s desire to be educated “was against the will of God.” Also, since a woman couldn’t get a job, she must have desired education for its own good.
Talks about Mary Astell, who wanted to found a college for women. Princess Anne was ready to fund it, but the Church intervened. Believed that educating women would support the Roman Catholic church, not the English church (not sure I understand that logic).
These “facts” prove that education is good for men, bad for women; good if it makes you believe in the Church of England, bad if it’s Catholicism. (I think she’s being facetious here).
Ok, so we’ve looked at biography, let’s look at history. Since about 1870 there have been women’s college at Oxford and Cambridge. She implies that, because of certain facts, we have to give up on our idea of influencing the young against war through education. Here’s where she starts talking about these “facts”.
A house opened in Cambridge to house female students. Not a nice house. Small. But more and more girls wanted education. In order to build a new house they needed money. (In this next part, she seems to get very facetious). They borrowed the money. But wait, you say – surely someone gave them the money! The other colleges were rich and had made lots of money from women who donated. This is a great opportunity for them to repay the debt! The colleges “must have given it gladly in memory of their noble benefactresses”.
Some men volunteered to lecture but others refused. Eventually a girl passed an exam, and the school went to the college to ask if these girls “might advertise the fact as those gentlemen themselves did by putting letters after their names.” It was voted down.
Ok, so it looks like influencing against war through education isn’t going to work.
She says that it “does not teach people to hate force, but to use it.” It makes men possessive of the “grandeur and power.”
Eventually women could put B.A. after their names. But at Cambridge in 1937, women’s colleges can’t be “members of the university.” Scholarships for women pale in comparison with scholarships for men.
So how do we answer the woman asking for money to rebuild her women’s college? There’s no reason to think that a university education will educate you against war. If we send a girl to college, aren’t we teaching her “how she can fight” to get the same opportunities as men? And if she’s not a member of the university, how can she affect the education of the men? Woolf won’t bother even asking the treasurer how she’s going to use the money to prevent war, because she’s probably very busy and overburdened.
Woolf will attempt to write a letter outlining the terms under which she’ll donate the money to rebuild the women’s school:
How can you be so foolish as to ask for this money? Do you know what we’re spending on the army and navy with this threat of war? What has your college done to inspire “great manufacturers to endow it?” Have you invented anything that will help the war? Are your students capitalists? Are you a University member? So how can you ask for money?
Woolf says that the college must ask “what is the aim of education… what kind of human being [should it] seek to produce”?
Ok – so, since history and biography show that the old system doesn’t help people become anti-war, “you must rebuild your college differently.” Found it “on poverty and youth,” make it “experimental… adventurous.” Build it cheaply. Don’t make it a museum to the old, but let each generation redecorate cheaply. Don’t teach how to dominate – that requires too much overhead – “teach only the arts that can be taught cheaply and practiced by poor people; … medicine, mathematics, music, painting, and literature”. (It seems weird to put medicine with the rest of them – math too). Teach how to understand people. The aim “should be not to segregate… but to combine”. Look at how the mind and body can cooperate. Teachers should be “good livers as well as… good thinkers.” “People who love learning for itself would gladly come there. Musicians, painters, writers, would teach there, because they would learn”. They’d learn b/c they’d be working with people who weren’t thinking of degrees or profits, but of art itself.
End of letter.
Imagines that the woman who wrote the letter thinks it’s useless to think about a different college when the point of college seems to be to get a job. (Ooh, we totally talked about this in seminar yesterday). So her college has to be built on the lines as the others.
Woolf decides that no money should be used to build a college in the old way, so it should be burned down with “old hypocrisies”. Let women be done with “education” (in quotation marks).
But, if we can’t train women to earn their livings, and we’ve decided that it’s through their earnings and spending that they can have the most influence, well, then, this doesn’t work. So let’s just send her the guinea with no conditions.
So yeah. Guess we can’t ask women’s colleges to “use their influence through education to prevent war”. Our influence will have to be less direct. If we teach, “we can examine… the aim of such teaching.” We can scorn the trappings of institutionalized education. We can refuse honors. But, in order to prevent war we have to donate to women’s colleges. They have to be educated so they can earn their livings and exert their influence.
Back to biography. This one is of a woman dependent on her father.
She would go out, but had to be accompanied. Would meet educated men. Then marriage. Because marriage was the occupation, she could learn piano but not join an orchestra; sketch but not “study from the nude”; read one book but not another. “Solitude was denied her… that she might preserve her body intact for her husband”.
Ok, but why did that education make her in favor of war? Well, she had to support the system that supplied her the clothes and parties that allowed her to get married.
Interesting – Woolf suggests that women supported WWI because it let her get out of the house as a factory worker, driver, medic, etc.
So, we have to support the women’s college because it “is the only alternative to the education of the private house.”
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