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As I read Three Guineas, I had a hard time deciding when Woolf was seriously advocating courses of action, and when she was merely trying to point out the ridiculousness of man's suggestion to women that she, who has been kept out of his society in every way possible, should now have the responsibility of saving him from himself. I cannot believe that Woolf was seriously advocating the burning down of schools or complete withdrawal of women for society. These solutions in themselves would seem as problematic as any other courses of action which Woolf poses and then systematically shoots down.

However, I couldn't help but think as a read through about the assumption made by a critic on the back of my copy that the book is "anti-war." While Woolf is writing to a man who has apparently requested her help in an anti-war movement, she never really seems to focus on whether or not that is the correct movement. Her text is far more feminist (a word which she seemingly would not be happy to have applied to her text because of its negative connotations) than anti-war. Her arguments are given to explaining why women are not yet capable of providing effort in the way the addressee of the letter wants them to be. Her argument could as easily have been directed towards any other cause which women are called upon to aid. While the anti-war movement is perhaps something which has been traditionally assumed to be closer to the heart of women, Woolf's solutions are not all non-violent. In her first essay, Woolf wants to burn down the school while the women dance and sing around it, an action which may be construed as barbaric as any manly war instinct.

In her third essay, Woolf asks the man to deal with the real world and real facts, not the dream world. However, Woolf also dreams of a time when the words "dictator" and "tyrant" may be burnt up just as the word "feminist" should be. How does Woolf believe this goal may be reached? She poses no alternate solution to war. While all can believe that war may be a horrible thing, her arguments all seem to support the idea that women is incapable of preventing war when she does not have the opportunity to be in a position of influence, but not necessarily that war is actually preventable.