Three Guineas - Themes

Themes

Woolf wrote the essay to answer three questions, each from a different society:

• From an anti-war society: "How should war be prevented?"
• From a women's college building fund: "Why does the government not support education for women?" (Actually, the fund was a metaphor for family private funds to send the "boys of the family" to college and not the women.)
• From a society promoting employment of professional women: "Why are women not allowed to engage in professional work?"

The book is composed of Woolf's responses to a series of letters. The question and answer format creates a sense of dialogue and debate on the politically charged issues the essay tackles, rather than just presenting simple polemical diatribes on each topic. The principle of dialogue is one that informs much of Woolf's work, and is also seen in her novels when she gives voice to different classes and marginalized groups in society through a diversity of characterizations. For example, the sky-writing scene in Mrs. Dalloway includes characters with a variety of class-influenced dialects. The "guineas" of the book's title are themselves a badge of social class, the money amount of 21 shillings (1.05 pounds sterling) for which no coin existed, but the common denomination for solely upper-class transactions (e.g., purchase of pictures or race-horses, lawyers' or medical specialists' fees, and so on.)

The epistolary format also gives the reader the sense of eavesdropping on a private conversation. We listen in on Woolf's suggestions to a barrister on how to prevent war, to a women's league on how to support females in the professions, and to a women's college on how to encourage female scholarship. It is interesting to note that all three sources have written to Woolf asking for financial donations. What she donates, though, is her advice and philosophy.

Woolf was eager to tie the issues of war and feminism together in what she saw as a crucial point in history. She and her husband Leonard had visited both Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy in the early part of the decade. The ideology of fascism was an affront to Woolf's conviction in pacifism as well as feminism: Nazi philosophy, for example, supported the removal of women from public life.