Ok – so what else can we do to help prevent war? “We must turn to the professions”. It will be more effective to convince them than to convince teachers or to hang out in universities.
At first she says that simply showing these professional men his letter will convince them, but then she says that while they will agree that war is horrible, there will be hesitations. So she will put another letter next to it. It also asks for money – this time, to support an organization that helps “daughters of educated men” get jobs in the professions. Woolf says we can’t send her money “until we have considered the questions which [her letter] raises.”
“Why is she asking for money?” “Why is she so poor… that she must beg for cast-off clothing for a bazaar?” If she really is that poor, we can negotiate terms by which we will donate. Here’s the letter Woolf will write:
You’re asking for rent money, but how are you so poor? Women have been able to work for almost 20 years now. So how are you pleading for money? Either something is really wrong, or you’re lying about how poor you are. You’re opening yourself to criticisms “from educated men”. These men deny that you’re poor, and “accuse you of apathy and indifference”. A “Mr. Joad” says young women are “politically apathetic” and “socially indifferent”. He thinks that women in England, like women in America, should start an anti-war society. He says that women must have the money to start this society, since so much money was donated to help women win the vote. He says that women today should be prepared to sacrifice as much today for peace as their foremothers did for the vote. (Woolf points out that the criticism and insults that Joad asks women to weather are the same as the criticism and insults they already suffer “from their brothers and then for their brothers”). He says that if women can’t effectively work to stop war, they should go back into the home. Woolf points out that Joad himself said that war was “incurable,” so how are women, “even with a vote,” supposed to cure it? She then ironically says that according to Joad, women are rich and idle, so how are they asking for money?
They’re so lethargic they won’t even fight to protect the vote, according to HG Wells, who criticizes women for not resisting “the practical obliteration of their freedom by Fascists or Nazis.”
(So it seems that men of the time placed a lot of responsibility for peace on women’s shoulders?)
So (Woolf continues), how can you ask for money in the face of those failures?
She comes back to the present, addressing the gentleman once again. She lists two facts; the W.S.P.U. had £42,000 and that “to earn £250 a year is quite an achievement even for a highly qualified woman with years of experience.” Wow - £42,000 is a lot less than any of the mainstream political parties, so it’s awesome that “one of the greatest political changes of our times” had such a small budget. Ok, so the lady’s telling the truth that she’s poor. “How much peace will £42,000 a year buy at the present moment when we are spending £300,000,000 annually upon arms?”
The second fact is even more depressing. Let’s look at Whitaker’s almanac, where he’s published the salaries of government workers. Woolf lists some professions that women can now work in, and points out that public money that provides the salaries is provided by men and women, and that income tax is 5 shillings a pound. She lists employees under Education and their salaries, most at 4 figures. So she determines that the statement about £250 being an achievement must be a lie.
Wait – all of those high-earning people were men. Three reasons: 1. The entrance exam for the higher positions is geared towards Oxbridge graduates. 2. Many more daughters stay home to take care of elderly parents than do sons. 3. Since women have less of a history taking exams, they probably aren’t as good at it yet.
Ok, fine, but why aren’t there any women making four figures? Well, maybe all of the women are deficient, untrustworthy, lacking in ability. Maybe it’s better to keep them in the lower positions so they can’t get in the way. Well, the Prime Minister says that no secret government info has ever been leaked by a woman (even though it has been by a man). Oh. So they aren’t “loose-lipped and fond of gossip”? He also said that the women working in Civil Service had been completely satisfactory to anyone who worked with them. Pays tribute to “the industry, capacity, ability and loyalty” of women. So it’s the word of the prime minister (Baldwin) against Whitaker. Let’s put them on trial. You, gentleman, are a lawyer. I have seen that world, though not experienced it. Let’s pool our knowledge and try their case.
In the professions, smart men don’t necessarily get to the top, and stupid men don’t always stay at the bottom. The process is not rational. Hints at nepotism. You can’t predict success by one’s abilities. This process “queers” the professions. Ok, fine. Maybe women are a distraction in the workplace. She was not educated at Oxford, and “is not a son or nephew.” Ok, let’s look at newspapers for more information.
1. Woman has too much liberty, which probably came with the war. They did a good job but “were praised and petted out of all proportion”.
2. There are too many women doing work that men could do, and too many men unemployed. “There is a large demand for woman labour in the domestic arts.”
3. If women gave jobs back to men, the men could buy nice houses for the women. The government has to give jobs back to men, “thus enabling them to marry the women they cannot now approach.”
So women are great in the home but not in Whitehall. Because of this, she’s stuck in “the lower spheres where the salaries are small.” And let’s not even talk about married women in the workplace. Implies that there aren’t any.
Ok, so both were telling the truth; women deserve to be paid as much as men, but are not.
Blames “atmosphere”. It’s a powerful and impalpable enemy of women. She compares one of the above quotes to something by Hitler, then expands this comparison to imply that England is moving in a fascist direction. So shouldn’t we help women fight this at home before we try to fight it abroad? How can we “trumpet our ideals of freedom and justice to other countries when we can shake out from our most respectable newspapers any day of the week eggs like these?”
She anticipates that the gentleman will say we need to understand those opinions before we can condemn them. These men want to be husbands and fathers and support their families. So the world is divided into the public and the private. In the public, the “sons of educated men” have jobs and are paid. In the private, women have jobs but are not paid. Is her work worthless? Without it, the State would collapse, but she is not paid.
She anticipates that a wife’s income is half her husband’s salary. That’s why men are paid more – because they support their wives. So… a bachelor is paid the same as a single woman? Hm, no. And there’s no law saying a man must split his salary with his wife. So this £250 is totally out of the question since a woman has a “spiritual right, to half her husband’s salary.” Wait, then how did the W.S.P.U only have £42,000? Why does the women’s college have to ask for money? The association for rent money or things to sell at a bazaar? Don’t women “have as much money to spend upon such causes” as men do? If this is true, we have to assume that women don’t care about education and voting. That’s a horrible charge to bring against women.
Let’s pause before we charge her. What does she spend her money on? Hm… it looks like she spends it on hunting, cricket, football, clubs. But she doesn’t share in these. “wine which she does not drink … cigars which she does not smoke”. Wow, she is really altruistic. Or… she just gets pocket money.
So we see that men make tons of donations, but women’s institutions or poor. There must be something that “deflects the wife’s spiritual share of the common income… towards those causes which her husband approves”.
So: 1. Women are paid little “from the public funds for their public services.”
2. “They are paid nothing at all from the public funds for their private services.”
3. Their share of their husband’s salary is nominal, not actual.
“It seems that the person to whom the salary is actually paid is the person who has the actual right to decide how that salary shall be spent.”
Hm. We had decided to appeal to women who earned their living to help prevent the war, but this doesn’t look good. If marriage is their profession they don’t get paid. The £250 thing is sadly probably true. So “daughters of educated men” don’t really have much influence “from their money-earning power.” But they alone can help us so we have to appeal to them.
Ok, so we have a motivation to help the organization that helps women find jobs, because that will help them get the “weapon of independent opinion.” But we still want to lay down terms under which we will donate.
So are we “wise to encourage people to enter the professions if we wish to prevent war”? If we encourage women to work, aren’t we encouraging the war-mongering qualities? Won’t it just perpetuate this war thing? So we have to make this woman promise that the professions will only be practiced in a way that they will prevent war. So here’s another letter to her:
Ok. You’re telling the truth. We will only send you money if you “can assure us that [women] will practice those professions in such a way as to prevent war.” I know that’s vague; let me clarify.
Let’s look at the men. A solemn procession. Bishop, judge, admiral, doctor. But now women are part of the procession (at the end of it). It makes a difference that we’re now part of it, and one day maybe we’ll have the authority of judges and generals. So do we want to join this procession or not. If so, under what terms? And “where is it leading us”? These are important questions that must be answered. I know we’re all busy, but we HAVE to think about it; when we’re stirring the pot, on a bus, at a funeral. Let’s look to books for answers. Biographies. But most of the recent biographies are about war.
This battle where youth has to “spend its strength… soliciting favours… inflicts wounds upon the human spirit”. The combatants are men vs. their sisters and daughters.
Sophia Jex-Blake. Her dad was a doctor. They were wealthy. She got £40 a year allowance. She decided to earn money and got a tutoring job. He says it’s beneath her. She said, you work, why shouldn’t I? My brother works. He said, but your brother has to support his family, and he has a high position “which can only be filled by a first-class man of character”. You have everything you need. She wrote in her diary that she gave up.
Next. Women applied to the Royal College of Surgeons. “Gate was closed in their… faces”. The authorities invoked God, Nature, Law, Property to deny women access. “waste of strength… temper… time, and… money”. Same daughters ask for the same privileges, are met with the same refusals.
Concludes that “the professions have a certain undeniable effect upon the professors.” People become possessive, combative, and jealous. If we enter the professions won’t we end up the same way? And aren’t those the qualities that lead to war? So if you want this guinea, you have to promise that any woman who enters a profession “shall in no way hinder any other human being, whether man or woman, white or black, provided that he or she is qualified to enter that profession, from entering it; but shall do all in her power to help them.”
More conditions. Once we’re part of this procession, we’ll have the potential to earn as much as the clergy. Suppose there were as many rich women now as there are rich men. There could be a women’s political party, daily newspaper, “pensions for spinsters,” equal pay, painkillers for childbirth, “bring down the maternal death-rate”.
But how desirable is money? Rich man, kingdom of heaven. But it’s a different world and you’d rather be rich than poor in England today. The poor don’t contribute to the country’s intellectual or spiritual wealth. But extreme wealth is also undesirable.
So where’s the happy medium. I’m asking you, madam, to consider these things.
Ok, so if you want to get these jobs, you’re going to have to “accept the same conditions that [men] accept.” 40-hour work week so you won’t know your kids. “little time for friendship, travel or art.”. Your duties might be arduous. “you will have to… profess the same loyalties that professional men” do.
Ok, fine. Why wouldn’t we?
Let’s go back to the books. Lawyers take work home with them. Politicians don’t get to enjoy nature. Clergy have crushing work. Implies that these jobs have crushed their souls. Doctor is away from his family on Sundays and Christmas. Professional writer. Another politician.
So what does this prove? Well, nothing. They’re all opinions that let us “question the value of professional life”. People who have successful jobs lose an interest in art, music, conversation, humanity.
Quotes:
We’ve made scientific discoveries but not enjoyed the fruits of them.
“Men are gathering knowledge and power” but not increasing in virtue or wisdom. The nature of man is the same as it was thousands of years ago. Under horrible stress he will do terrible things.
Quotes:
Men and women’s values are different. By imitating men, women are wasting their “opportunity to build a new and better world.”
So, men have not really improved the world; the call upon women to build a new one shows that even men are dissatisfied with the way things are. It also “imposes a great responsibility and implies a great compliment”. They must think her divine. Goethe: talks about symbols and women fulfilling things.
So we’re stuck between a rock and a hard place. “Behind us lies the patriarchal system; the private house, with its nullity, its immorality, its hypocrisy, its servility. Before us lies the public world, the professional system, with its possessiveness, its jealousy, its pugnacity, its greed.” Shouldn’t we give up and kill ourselves?
Annnnnd BACK to the biographies!
Ok. We have to earn money. But the professions are undesirable. “How can we enter the professions and yet remain civilized human beings” who want to prevent war?
Let’s look at the lives of professional women in the 1800s. But there are none. The only way a single girl could work was as a governess, but “she was often unfit by nature and education.”
So there are no biographies as such. But there are some journals. One governess wants to learn Latin, physics, astronomy, botany, math, etc. but is stuck in her world. Anne Clough – principal of a college. She trained by doing housework to pay debts, reading loaned books, and declaring that if she were a man, she “would work for my country.”
So women in the 1800s did have ambition. Josephine Butler, let campaign against Contagious Diseases Act, child trafficking. Refused to be biographied; “purity of motives.” Gertrude Bell. Had a position in the East that was almost a diplomat. Chaste of body and mind.
Mary Kingsley’s statement about her “paid-for education” implies that there was an “unpaid-for education”. So what is the nature of this “unpaid-for education”? Their teachers “were poverty, chastity, derision… freedom from unreal loyalties”.
So, this education prepared them “for the unpaid-for professions”. But this education must have had some virtues, because there were many civilized, if uneducated, women.
We can’t judge education just by its ability to get us jobs, honor, or money. It would be silly to throw away unpaid-for education or the knowledge we got from it.
If you combine “poverty, chastity, derision and freedom from unreal loyalties… with some wealth, some knowledge, and some service to real loyalties… you can enter the professions” without becoming a war-monger.
So those are the conditions. You have to “help all properly qualified people, of whatever sex, class or colour, to enter your profession” and stick with those four teachers. Define the terms? Ok, poverty = enough to live on and be independent and healthy, but no more. Chastity = “refuse to sell your brain for the sake of money.” Derision = don’t advertise your merits; you’d rather ridicule than fame. Freedom from unreal loyalties = get rid of pride of religion, nationality, college, school, family, sex, etc.
Use your gut to figure out how much money or knowledge is enough. If you don’t trust it – it’s “too personal and fallible” – go to public galleries and libraries, turn on the radio and listen to music.
Look at the character of Creon in Antigone to see “the effect of power and wealth upon the soul”. He shows tyranny. To tell the difference between real and unreal loyalties, look at Antigone.
She points out that society as it is will pretty much guarantee women poverty, chastity and derision – also, since the Church and colleges restrict us, freedom from unreal loyalties as well.
Anyway, we’re used to working with little or no pay and for little or no honor.
So, these conditions will be easy to fulfil. So here is your guinea. In the future, daughters in poor houses will be happy in peace, and their mothers in their graves will be happy.
So, gentleman, that was the letter. Those are the conditions. I had to answer her letter and the letter from the women’s college and send them money before I could answer your letter, “because unless they are helped… those daughters cannot possess an independent and disinterested influence with which to help you to prevent war.”
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