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Revisiting Three Guineas was more than a little unsettling for me. I adore Virginia Woolf's prose. I love the stream of conscious thoughts in her characters' heads largely because they feel so accurate to me. If I were in say, Mrs. Dalloway or Mrs Ramsay's position, I imagine I would think much of the same things. I find it amazing (and immensely enjoyable) that Woolf can portray the nonverbal aspects of thoughts via crisp images and variable grammar.

However, it is precisely this affinity of thought that frightens me in Woolf's nonfiction. I agree with much of what she criticizes (illogic, abuse, ignorance, hyperviolence, etc.) about patriarchal society, but do not reach the same conclusions (perpetuating, even validating, the gender/class status quo via an outsider's society). It seems that much of the limits of her arguments stem not from a lack of wit but from a narrowness in scope. One could make the argument that the first causes the second, that a sharp mind, by its very nature, pierces even the thickest cultural fog to find the widest breadth of evidence with which to fashion arguments.

And therein lies my fear. My childhood was and family background is very different than Woolf's. But, my status as a white American woman soon to have all the privileges a Bryn Mawr degree affords, places me in a similar socio-economic position as Woolf, class-oblivious advocate for an outsider's society. Has, as Woolf's own words imply, my time at Bryn Mawr blinded me to and permanently alienated me from experiences outside of my own? I am terrified of thinking some ideal universal due to my own ignorance. Woolf, then, reminds me that even the arguments of such a brilliant a mind as hers will almost certainly have errors subject to historical revision. Is all I can hope for, in thought, to strive for accuracy, but expect imperfection?


Flora