Reply to comment

One thing that struck me about Virginia Woolf's "Three Guineas" was her rather clever ability to turn many of the standard arguments about women and their role in society and show quite a different perspective. For example, when she replies to the man who is asking her for a guinea for the preservation of "culture and intellectual liberty" (pg 85), something he feels women can do better than men, she shows just how false that notion is. Women, even educated women of a higher class, lack the necessary power to carry out the things that would be needed in order to help preserve this "culture" and "intellectual liberty" this man has in mind (which he believes is the way to preventing war, another argument Woolf shows is not quite as sound as it may appear). One of the main themes of Woolf's argument is that how can women help preserve these rather abstract things of culture and liberty when they have barely experience either? When they have been shut out of the very places that breed such things, mainly universities? And how can women be asked of such a thing when other men are all the time making remarks to the effect that "women are not fit to teach male students," that women are inferior intellectually, etc.?

Woolf goes on to further show just how ridiculous this request is when she speaks of the sacrifices women would have to make in order to sign such a "manifesto" preserving culture and liberty, for they would have to give up the decidedly unintellectual writing they have hitherto engaged in for the sake of money. Put simply, to ask this of women is to ask of even more sacrifices of them who have already sacrificed so much (though not always by choice).

I would also like to briefly touch on Woolf's concept of an "Outsider Society" which basically already exists as women has always been the "outsider" in society. For me, it seemed Woolf was saying that as long as society is structured the way it is-with a very male-dominated hierarchy-there is no way women can ever become true "insiders," for even the women who should have power or influence, the educated daughters of a wealthy class, are treated as outsiders. As such, it makes no sense to work inside a system that has continually failed women and as Woolf puts it bluntly, treated them like "slave[s]," (pg 108) for in a way it only serves to support indirectly the very structure of that society. Women then, must work outside of this system, remaining "indifferent" in order to be recognized as real members of society.

Overall I found "Three Guineas" fascinating and it resonated with me on a personal level in many ways. However, I'm not sure how much I enjoyed the very class-conscious perspective Woolf was taking, which I understand is only logical since she herself is of this upper-class, but it makes me wonder where exactly lower-class and non-white females fit into this "outsider" society. Women of color are, by virtue of their race and their gender, "outsiders" in more than one respect so even the "outsider's" society Woolf speaks of may not be, ironically enough, inclusive for them.