Three Guineas by Virginia Woolf (2001, Hardcover, Large Print)

LARGE PRINT EDITION IN HARDBACK

Of all of Virginia Woolf's nonfiction books, this my favorite. In it, Woolf (1882-1941) becomes scathingly angry with three requests for donations. Each 1 seems like a project for empowering women that the then famous empowerer of women would be likely to take interest in & contribute to.

One request for a donation is to help finance a society for professional women's employment; another is for helping to finance a women's college building; another is to help prevent war (during WWII) in order to preserve intellectual culture & freedoms. I've read "Three Guineas" (for a Masters degree thesis) as a kind of suicide letter from Woolf to British institutions that wore blinders.

Two-thirds of the brief & oh so pointed text consists of 3 letters of (non)apology, stating in no uncertain terms, why Woolf can't possibly contribute a thing but her words to any of the projects. One-third of the text is called "notes and references," but is in fact evidence of the genius of Virginia Woolf: documentation, citations, literary criticism that are cutting as can be of major institutions like Oxford University.

Because, by this time in her life, Woolf had become an anti-war activist (then called a pacifist), she was more wound up in knots & very near the end of her life when Nazi's had invaded France (where she & her Jewish husband, Leonard, lived at that time).

This is the proverbial brick over the head text by Woolf, nearly screaming out at the world, "my gawd, don't you get it yet?" 'It' being that so called
'civilization' isn't civilized. It's very structure is supremacist oppression.

Obviously, this review is a thumbnail sketch of a very great text. I'll quote a passage from Woolf's 3rd 'letter' (chapter), responding to the request for money to "protect culture and intellectual liberty":

"First, then, let us consider how we can help you to prevent war by protecting culture and intellectual liberty, since you assure us that there is a connection between those rather abstract words and these very positive photographs--the photographs of dead bodies and ruined houses...Consider, Sir, in the light of the facts given above, what this request of yours means. It means that in the year 1938 the sons of educated men are asking the daughters to help them to protect culture and intellectual liberty. And why, you may ask, is that so surprising? Suppose the Duke of Devonshire, in his star and garter, stepped down into the kitchen and said to the maid who was peeling potatoes, with a smudge on her cheek: 'Stop peeling, Mary, and help me construe this rather difficult passage in Pindar', would not Mary be surprised and run screaming to Louisa the cook, 'Lawds, Louie, Master must be mad!' That, or something like it, is the cry that rises to our lips when the sons of educated men ask us, their sisters, to protect intellectual liberty and culture."

From the 'notes' section is Woolf's commentary related to this passage:
she quotes "The Times," 11.23.1937 stating that thoughtful people were desiring to live differently, "that before congratulating ourselves on moving fast we ought to have some idea of where we we're moving to....It also points, indirectly to the death of the Siren, that much ridiculed and often upper class lady who by keeping open house for the aristocracy, plutocracy, intellegentsia, ignorantsia, etc. tried to provide all classes with talking-ground."

Enjoy, this, Woolf at her pique!~