…it matters not just because women win. It matters because it means we have a seat at the table. And everybody in this room knows the basic rule, if you don’t have a seat at the table, you are probably on the menu.—Senator Elizabeth WarrenThis is my seventh Woolf. I own ten more. It is not often that I unconsciously commit myself so thoroughly to a single author, for when I was young and did not have recourse to Goodreads for purposes of planning out further successful reads, I followed each and every success to the end of their composers' bibliography, and that never, ever, ended well. Now here I sit, seven out of seventeen for read and soon to be reviewed of not seventeen, not even seven, but one. One single author. Her qualities I aspire to, her flaws are my own, and as much as I praise empathy and its Amnesty International heights of power, as much as I parse out my reading amongst the multifarious accordingly, the canon is a lie; representation, as a white daughter of educated men, is not. So profound was her unconscious loathing for the education of the private house with its cruelty, its poverty, its hypocrisy, its immorality, its inanity that she would undertake any task however menial, exercise any fascination however fatal that enabled her to escape.I said A Room of One's Own is a good entry to feminism. The danger, then, of its popularity and persistent blocking out of this other works' attributes is its all too often status as both start and finish, beginning and end. That is the act of learning not speech, nor a quote, not even the alphabet, but a single letter by which one reads. If one wants to be even more explicit, scrub out "letter" and replace it with "character", for the former brings to mind the English 26 of two significant digits while the latter speaks of the 5000+ entried language of Chinese, a culture-crossing comparison that speaks not only to our fear of multitudes of thousands but our fear of other and, in short, does well to describe the mentality with which we all should approach Woolf's 'A Room of One's Own'. Feminism is not a light switch; it is a lifetime. To the Lighthouse, anyone? We shall find there not only the reason why the pay of the professional woman is still so small, but something more dangerous, something which, if it spreads, may poison both sexes equally. There, in those quotations, is the egg of the very same worm that we know under other names in other countries. There we have in embryo the creature, Dictator as we call him when he is Italian or German, who believes he has the right, given by God, Nature, sex or race is immaterial, to dictate to other human beings how they shall live; what they shall do.When I think of feminism, I think of destroying the patriarchy, and when I think of the patriarchy, I think of all. If The Second Sex was a room, Ain’t I a Woman: Black Women and Feminism a window, Three Guineas is a barometer, for a storm comes upon us through myriad physical and chemical means, and it will not spare us its wrath due to the fact of our ignorance of its methods. We are all bound by the patriarchy, but do not take that as a reason to forgo feminism for humanism. There is a history behind me of those who were of my gender, those who due to the fact of our shared gender were isolated with impunity, forced into labor with impunity, raped with impunity and murdered with impunity. To forgo feminism for humanism is to obliterate the resistance birthed by that history with impunity. To forgo feminism for humanism is to imply that the millenia of centuries do not matter, we have not really come very far at all with our ability to not only survive but propagate, to not only propagate but to control, to not only control but to enhance, to not only enhance to progress, due to the fact that this movement is for the sake of women and women, as we all know, are the half of the population of humanity that is composed of objects. To put it plainly, I for the simple fact of being a woman have a lot more to lose a lot more easily, and if you refuse to take that into respectful account, what good is your status as a human being for? And we find, between the lines of their husbands’ biographies, so many women practicing—but what are we to call the profession that consists in bringing nine or ten children into the world, the profession which consists in running a house, nursing an invalid, visiting the poor and the sick, tending here an old father, there an old mother?—there is no name and no pay for that profession; but we find so many mothers, sisters and daughters of educated men practicing it in the nineteenth century that we must lump them and their lives together behind their husbands’ and brothers’, and leave them to deliver their message to those who have the time to extract it and the imagination with which to decipher it.Evolution is the survival of the fittest, fittest not in whatever implications of athleticism and superiority have accrued over the years but in the matter of a round block made of wood triumphing over a square block made of diamond because it is able to fit in the round hole. It is no surprise, then, that a patriarchal way of doing things, man as subject and woman as object, has percolated into every vein of social significance and common sense. It is no surprise, then, that we are compromised from the day of birth till the day we drop, so if you think this is a matter of competition or holier-than-thou, kill two birds with one stone and forget it. Not only is that the patriarchal manner of evaluation, survival of the fittest translating to utter erasure of the assumed to be useless but only, of course, after squeezing out every bit of use possible from that long forgotten name, identity, and self. Speech, thought, the way things are and the ways we fear are all geared towards those clubs men, those fashions of the military, those boys who will ever be boys, so it shouldn't surprise us how resistance is not a matter of putting your money behind your mouth but questioning why the mouth is worth so much less than the money. If such is the real nature of our influence, and we all recognize the description and have noted the effects, it is either beyond our reach, for many of us are plain, poor and old; or beneath our contempt, for many of us would prefer to call ourselves prostitutes simply and to take our stand openly under the lamps of Piccadilly Circus rather than use it.If there are no female philosophers, we shall have to question the definitions of "philosopher" and "philosophy", for if that oh so worthy title cannot be in any way applied to a work such as this, then its worth is very little indeed. What matters is the wide range of that worth applied to the heritage, the fact, the crowd of academia and purveyors of its gates and why is it none of them will come across a work such as this, a fierce 188 pages touching upon the relations between war and freedom and feminine momentum everywhere in between, admittedly suffering from Eurocentric solipsism but that has never stopped the men. This book comes upon a difference in income, a difference in education, a picture of dead bodies, and instead of quick-fix magicking the culprit up in the form of "the economy", "today's generation", "Internet" in the mainland and "terrorism" without, we have facts, we have logic, we have a quick and keen and systematic deconstruction of everything we take for granted in just the patriarchal mix of ethos and pathos and logos we all in the Ancient Greece-informed side of things aspire to, broken down and built up and into a completely new beast of paradigm and ideology that is the only trundler down the path not dictated by the yellow brick roads of the patriarchy, and still we withhold the "philosophy". Is the tag "feminism" supposed to make up for that lack? Considering the placement of its works in the "Sexuality" and "Women's Studies" areas, leaving the "Philosophy" shelves free to take on its bags of dicks, and the respective attracted audiences, I think not. You shall swear that you will do all in your power to insist that any woman who enters any 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.Perhaps the word "philosophy" cannot contain it, for while survival of the fittest has been outfitted by the patriarchy accordingly, intersectionalism has not. There is a great deal in this work penned to completion 76 years ago that is all too familiar, and it is that great deal that trumps any talk of "incorrect application" and "breaks the rules" and roots the ideal of feminism firmly in the matter of the individual. Here, Woolf does not speak of a solution, nor does she summarize her main tenants into the great favorite of banking education of easily swallowed and easily vomited, but factors in the passage of time and its endless trials and errors on every scope of human effort into her composition. An weighty task that implies an insurmountable problem, but for all the pain and death and genocidal levels of infighting the human race has undergone, it still persists. Figure out the reason why we don't all just lay down and die, factor in the facts and statistics of gynephobia around the globe, keep at it long enough and find, eventually, a handful of means and a measure of hope to last you on your way. The outsiders then would bind themselves not only to earn their own livings, but to earn them so expertly that their refusal to earn them would be a matter of concern to the work master. They would bind themselves to obtain full knowledge of professional practices, and to reveal any instance of tyranny or abuse in their professions…Broadly speaking, the main distinction between us who are outside society and you who are inside society must be that whereas you will make use of the means provided by your position—leagues, conferences, campaigns, great names, and all such public measures as your wealth and political influence place within your reach—we, remaining outside, will experiment not with public but with private means in private.I called this book a barometer. For a more accurate metaphor, forgo Prometheus and carry the fire on your own. “Then, to, there was my belief that now and then women should do for themselves what men have already done—and occasionally what men have not done—thereby establishing themselves as persons, and perhaps encouraging other women towards greater independence of thought and action…When they fail their failure must be a challenge to others.”-Ameila Earhart
This is not, at least in my understanding, typical Woolf. Argumentatively speaking, it definitely strikes one as a companion to A Room of One's Own (though in her diaries, VW mentioned that she thought 3Gs to be a great deal better argued than Room), but stylistically, it's different from any other Woolf I've read. Usually you're able to pick up easily on Woolf's satire, her gentle mocking tone; here, the parody is so subtle that at times you find yourself re-reading a sentence to make sure she doesn't actually HATE WOMEN (tm). But alas, I don't believe she does.The premise of it is this: a man writes a letter to VW asking her how the daughters of educated men, having won the vote and the right to enter the professions, might help to prevent war. The book is split into three chapters--one for each of the guineas Woolf will dole out in the effort to prevent war. As in A Room of One's Own, Woolf often speaks to the lacunae of history--the women who were unable to pursue 'paid-for' education, yet who aided their brothers' going to school; women who could only support themselves through marriage and so were subsumed beneath the economic and political positions of their husbands; & co. Woolf questions how, after only 60 years of opportunity, an educated man can possibly ask women to make up for centuries of silence and step confidently into a position that enables them to provide economic and political support to preventing the oncoming war. Woolf seems in some ways to have done everything first (or if not first, maybe just did them best). Prior to the feminist and post-structuralist debates from the 70s on concerning biological essentialism, VW makes pointed allusions to the 'difference' between men and women, but suggests (provocatively, I think) that we "see from behind different eyes" because we have been compelled to develop that particular visual disparity for so damn long. Even the potential 'psychological difference' between the sexes, a question rising in the post-Freudian era, Woolf suggests, could easily be an effect rather than a cause of gendered culture. Moreover, her beautiful defense of resistance against cultural prostitution and intellectual slavery (problematic as these metaphors may be) strikes me as both simple and incredibly intricate and inspiring at once. There are of course problems. Besides the snobbish metaphors of prostitution and slavery, Woolf also *loves* using servants and housemaids and such as little ideological scapegoats. There's Crosby, the butler, becoming the conduit for a shift in conversation; there's the shriek of the housemaid that must be 'translated' into intellectual speech. And though VW makes certain to clarify that her common subjects are the "daughters of educated men," her inability to conceive of women who have no choice but to work seems to me at times a grave oversight. (Evidently, others agree--Alison Light's recent book 'Mrs. Woolf and the Servants' picks up on these inconsistencies in Woolf's oeuvre--which is probably why it seemed so glaring to me as I read this and re-read Between the Acts.) In any case, it's definitely definitely worth your while. If it's dated at moments, at others, it remains profoundly urgent--I think notably in this historical moment of reactionary U.S. conservatism, particular to the ideal of the nuclear family. See also Woolf's incredibly persuasive linkage between the patriarchal household and the tyranny of the dictatorships rising to power in Germany and Italy at the time Woolf was writing--sleeping with the enemy, indeed. Great text.
What do You think about Three Guineas (2006)?
Three essays responding to requests for three charitable donations from various progressive causes. She outlines the conditions with which she makes the donation in each case. How the benefactors should and how they should not use the money. She challenges many liberal sacred cows along the way, and argues that the three requests are interrelated. Every single paragraph is amazing. Don't skip the footnotes which make up almost a third the length of the book. She tucks away several important arguments there, including one in which she takes St Paul completely apart at length, footnoted off of a mere passing mention of the apostle in the main text. A few well-written tips of her hat to the importance of public libraries as well. Not to be missed.A hard look at how fascism and its impulses relate to the Victorian morality of her day, and years before Hitler's menace was fully understood.A scathing critique of the Church of England and patriarchal religions in general.This book has been on my shelf unread since Ted Vaggalis assigned it to me my freshman year of college. Pity I didn't read it sooner.I think I may be the first person in the history of the world to read this book while seated in an NFL stadium, one eye on the football game.
—Seth
This is a great feminist rant about the disgusting nature of male interference in women's education and how women could prevent war. She also takes a few deft stabs at fascism and patriotism, in searing Woolf style. It makes me sad that so much of this is still relevant. I even kept forgetting that this was written in the 20th Century and not in the 18th or 19th... a lot has changed, but there's still ingrained remnants of this attitude remaining in society.I liked A Room of One's Own more, as this became a bit too repetitive at times, but it is well worth the read.
—Belinda G
Three essays in developing three responses to three letters. The first, concerning the education of women, I found a bit stuffy. The second, concerning the employment of educated women, I found very exciting: filled with biting satire, generous compassion, fierce intelligence, and gentle patience. The third, concerning (the overarching question of the book) how women can help prevent war, I enjoyed, but it wasn't as exciting as the second. I appreciated a lot of Woolf's analysis of women's situation then (well substantiated with endnotes), and this is an important testimony, as well as too often being sadly relevant, and I especially appreciated her efforts to also break down boundaries of class, race, and belief (if only in an English context). A recurring complaint I had was that Woolf tends to depoliticise war, making it often seem as if it occurs merely because of the violent temperament of men as individuals (but then, this is a common mistake).
—David
