Three Guineas

The letter continues, noting that, if women are to support the system associated with the procession, then they will eventually transform from critics into supporters. In doing so, “we may change our position from being the victims of the patriarchal system […] to being the champions of the capitalist system” (64). There is some “glamour” (64) to the idea, Woolf admits, as a successful woman could provide all the funding the school needs and win many political victories, such as “equal pay for equal work” (64). But the question of war means that “it is necessary to haggle and to bargain over conditions” (65).

The inherent problems of the capitalist system may therefore be a reason to object to women’s involvement. Woolf highlights the extreme gulf between the rich and the poor, which would only continue if women simply bought into the existing system. If women are to join the procession, Woolf explains, they will have to “accept the same conditions” of involvement (66). As a warning, she cites “the lives of professional men” (66), highlighting what they have had to do in order to perpetuate this system. They work long hours, miss the richness of life, experience soul-destroying work, and sell themselves into “slavery” in exchange for more money to spend (67). Eventually, such people have “lost sight, and sound, and sense of proportion” (68).

Modern man, Woolf suggests, has made advances in science but has slowed to a halt in terms of literary advances. In addition, she quotes a man who claims that women’s values are “indisputably different from that of a man” (69) but that women waste their opportunity to “build a new and better world” (69) by conducting a “slavish imitation of men” (69). To believe women can build a new and better world with only £250 a year would be to suggest that women have “divine” (69) powers, Woolf charges: This is a “great compliment” (70), even if it is unhelpful.

Women are caught in a difficult position “between the devil and the deep sea” (70). The private world shuts women away from the avenues of power, while the public world forces women to acquiesce to the patriarchal system. But there may be another solution, Woolf suggests, found in the historical accounts of the dead. If women must earn money in the professions, even if they seem “highly undesirable” (70), Woolf asks, can women “enter the professions and yet remain civilized human beings; human beings, that is, who wish to prevent war?” (70).

This time, Woolf turns to historical biographies of women, particularly professional women to find an answer. But there is a gap in the library where these biographies should appear, as there were “no professional women […] to have their lives written of them,” until recently, aside from governesses (71). The accounts of those governesses reveal women who were desperate to learn more but were restricted by the patriarchal society, though “the nineteenth-century women were not without ambition” (71). One woman, Josephine Butler (who successfully ran numerous political campaigns), refused to have her biography written down, as did the women who helped her. A lack of egotism separates these Victorian women from their male counterparts.

More examples of women are found “between the lines” (72) of their husbands’ biographies. By combining these stories with “the other hints and fragments” (73) found elsewhere, Woolf believes she can find an answer. She touches on the idea of an “unpaid-for education” (73), the idea that women in this time had four teachers: poverty, chastity, derision, and “freedom from unreal loyalties” (73). An unpaid-for education prepared the women for unpaid-for professions.

Thus, Woolf suggests, the four teachers of women, when combined with “some wealth, some knowledge, and some service to real loyalties” (74), might allow women to enter the professions yet remain “civilized human beings” (74). Therefore, Woolf will donate her guinea to the society on the condition that they help “all properly qualified people, of whatever sex, class or color, to enter your profession; and further on condition that in the practice of your profession you refuse to be separated from poverty, chastity, derision and freedom from unreal loyalties” (74). She then defines these conditions further, using Sophocles’ characters from Antigone to illustrate her point.

Woolf finishes her letter by stating that the conditions attached to her guinea are (with the exception of the first) “comparatively easy to fulfill” (77). Following these conditions, Woolf says, the treasurer (and women in general) “can join the professions and yet remain uncontaminated by them” (77). Thus, they will be able to help prevent war.

Part 2 finishes with Woolf addressing, once again, her unnamed correspondent. She explains that the letter is essential, as “those daughters cannot possess an independent and disinterested influence with which to help you to prevent war” without following the conditions she has outlined (78).