Three Guineas (Annotated)
by Virginia Woolf
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Read in October, 2007
I've heard Virginia Woolf's Three Guineas (1938) called the unofficial companion to A Room of One's Own. In theearlier book, Woolf connects systematic sexism to economics and art. She contends that a sister of Shakespeare, equal in the Bard's talent, would never write a word. All people deserve a living wage and private space, or else their potential will never be reached. It's not an act of charity either; our very society depends upon it. What has been lost because creative geniuses who were ...more
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Read in December, 2006
recommends it for:
feminists, anybody interested in the human condition
Believe it or not, this is the first Woolf title I ever read and it was amazing. Woolf's arguments and style move with such grace and precision that you want to shout out YES! at times because she is so goddamn right, still.
Polemic, argumentative essay in three parts with a wonderful style, rhetoric, and analysis. Woolf responds to an anti-war organizations request for a guinea to support their cause. She writes back with an analysis of how women can help prevent war. She concludes that nei...more
Polemic, argumentative essay in three parts with a wonderful style, rhetoric, and analysis. Woolf responds to an anti-war organizations request for a guinea to support their cause. She writes back with an analysis of how women can help prevent war. She concludes that nei...more
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Read in January, 2004
Another stinger...go Virginia!
"Though we see the same world, we see it through different eyes."
"The value of education is among the greatest of all human values."
"Should we not help her to crush him in our own country before we ask her to help us to crush him abroad? And what right have we, Sir, to 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?" ...more
"Though we see the same world, we see it through different eyes."
"The value of education is among the greatest of all human values."
"Should we not help her to crush him in our own country before we ask her to help us to crush him abroad? And what right have we, Sir, to 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?" ...more
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public/private
"Though we see the same world, we see it through different eyes....Let us then by a way of very elementary beginning lay before you a photograph - a crudely colored photograph - of your world as it appears to us who see it from the threshold of the private house; through the shadow of the veil that St. Paul still lays upon our eyes; from the bridge which connects the private house with the world's public life. Your world then, the world of professional public life, seen fr...more
"Though we see the same world, we see it through different eyes....Let us then by a way of very elementary beginning lay before you a photograph - a crudely colored photograph - of your world as it appears to us who see it from the threshold of the private house; through the shadow of the veil that St. Paul still lays upon our eyes; from the bridge which connects the private house with the world's public life. Your world then, the world of professional public life, seen fr...more
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Read in July, 2007
page 103: "“We can still shake out eggs from newspapers; still smell a peculiar and unmistakable odour in the region of Whitehall and Westminister. And abroad the monster has come more openly to the surface. There is no mistaking him there. He has widened his scope. He is interfering now with your liberty; he is dictating how you shall live; he is making distinctions not merely between sexes, but between the races. You are feeling in your own persons what your mothers felt when they were ...more
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Read in May, 2008
recommended to finn by:
Melissa
virginia woolf's sarcasm is so delicious:
"the law of england sees to it that we do not inherit great possessions; the law of england denies us, and let us hope will long continue to deny us, the full stigma of nationality. then we can scarcely doubt that our brothers will provide us for many centuries to come, as they have done for many centuries past, with what is so essential for sanity, and so invaluable in preventing the great modern sins of vanity, egotism, and megalomania - that i...more
"the law of england sees to it that we do not inherit great possessions; the law of england denies us, and let us hope will long continue to deny us, the full stigma of nationality. then we can scarcely doubt that our brothers will provide us for many centuries to come, as they have done for many centuries past, with what is so essential for sanity, and so invaluable in preventing the great modern sins of vanity, egotism, and megalomania - that i...more
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may or may not refer to her as Vag Woolf. her arguments in this book are provocative (letters to organizations who have asked her for money), and i love thinking of a time when 'guinea' was a currency, but i prefer her essays. "Passing, glimpsing, everything seems accidentally but miraculously sprinkled with beauty, as if the tide of trade which deposits its burden so punctually and prosaically upon the shores of Oxford Streed had this night cast up nothing but treasure." how can you...more
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Read in November, 2007
I say I read it AND abandoned it because that is what I did. I read about halfway through...it was OK. It was hard to motivate myself to read an essay/letter/feminist rant/pacifist rant after reading her beautiful prose in her novels. It is also the end of the semester...I am not writing on this book, so I really didn't feel any investment in it. I am sure if I had continued or really gave it the read it deserved, I would have liked it. Maybe another time.
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Read in March, 2003
I read this book in college, and fell in love with it. I love her almost anthropological analysis of men, education, and war - the decorations of university students in robes compared to the medals and uniforms in the military, how ornamentation and pride play a role in the cause of war. Woolf's nonfiction writing has more of an appeal to me; in these works, she uses her observations and descriptive writing to convince an audience.
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Read in February, 2007
I haven't read any of Woolf's fiction. But her nonfiction is brilliant. This "essay" is a series of letters back-and-forth and explains why, by definition, a woman cannot support state-sponsored aggression. Woolf argues that before women can engage in reform and revolution, the paradigms of this world need to be reformed. This is a man's world, and until it is made for women, too, Woolf argues women canot be agents of change.
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Marina MacKay characterizes Three Guineas as a "pacifist polemic" to be read in contrast with Between the Acts.
(MacKay, Marina. "Putting the House in Order: Virginia Woolf and Blitz Modernism." Modern Language Quarterly. 66.2 (2005): 227-52.)
(MacKay, Marina. "Putting the House in Order: Virginia Woolf and Blitz Modernism." Modern Language Quarterly. 66.2 (2005): 227-52.)
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Read in October, 2007
Fantastic. Actually, it's been on my to-read list for years, and now I'm sad I waited so long. I just can't get enough of Wolf's biting social commentary and witty feminist views on world politics - and how eerily many of her concerns still linger today.
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recommends it for:
Everyone
Woolf is best known for complicated fiction, but she is an incredibly insightful political commentator. Though written prior to WWII, "Three Guineas" has observations on war, gender, and education that are still very applicable today.
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Read in November, 2000
Women Writers (COM 135 @ UCD) Ok I may be taking liberties with the reading list for this class, but I can't remember exactly what was on it and which class I read this book for.
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Read in January, 2005
Awesome feminist anti-war treatise. Some find it too angry, but hey, it's Virginia Woolf. I had to add it because it wasn't listed here, and that just isn't right.
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Read in March, 2003
i read this as the iraq war started. woolf wrote this at the onset of wwii. it was eerie and amazing. philosophical, theory, dense, but incredible.
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Read in April, 2006
I have never read a book that made me so angry...not in a bad way. She attacks the system with sarcasm and subtlety.
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Read in November, 2007
I prefer her novels but, as far as rants go, this is a good one.
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Feminist anti-war treatise which is still quite relevant today.
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An essential piece of proto-feminist writing.
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