Never too Late to Read Classics discussion

For June we are looking at a much shorter volume, Three Guineas by Virginia Woolf. Three Guineas is essentially a very long essay by Woolf in which she responds to letters requesting financial gifts. This book is generally under 400 pages.

From GR: The author received three separate requests for a gift of one guinea-one for a women’s college building fund, one for a society promoting the employment of professional women, and one to help prevent war and “protect culture, and intellectual liberty.” This book is a threefold answer to these requests-and a statement of feminine purpose.

Digital version:

https://archive.org/details/dli.ernet...

Samantha I did download a copy. I would like to delve into this one. Not sure I can get through it all but a start will be good for me.

Anyone else considering this one?

I am starting this one tonight.
It seems interesting that she was asked for money. I would have never thought that. Makes you wonder how modern day Authors might be asked with these type of request.

I am hesitating. I may join in at some point .

I found a free download. That is what I am reading.

I like to read this. Maybe a little later the year.

Part One
So the letter starts out from a gentleman from three years ago. Her taking the time to respond is blamed on her education differing so much on the education between men and women so profoundly accepted or not differently than man.
She goes in great detail of how society makes that happen.

Being about 12% in, I am getting a tad tired/
The question to her is:
What can women say to promote peace.
The context would seem to be the build up to WW II
She has based this part of her answer on the likelihood that women and men to not have a common language in part or whole due to the lack of advanced education among women.

It is very easy to grant all of her generalities, no matter how over long she presses them> Over all British men were by huge majority more like to have the chance and the reality of advanced education. This was a fact . That said much of what she presents , over and over as fact is not all there is to it.
The 1919 wall against women in the major schools is almost exactly as she presents, as are the related numbers about the cost of this investment, and its real burden on women.

That said women in Great Briton had been welcomed at various schools going back to the mid 1800's. Not a huge correction but merely the thin edge of pieces of her case. Had she written them better, her case would be impervious.

Consider: It is correct to say that the vast majority of Police officers never fire their weapons during thier LE careers. It is setting yourself up for being totally discredited to say than none ever do.

Going forward. I expect to be in agreement with much of the authors' feminist argument. I just hope she can be a tad less repetitious and a tad more careful about her assertions.

I do hope she has useful things to say about the numbers of women, who with the power to make or not make war, chose to make war.

Part Two:
Woolf has a letter from the treasurer of a women's society.
Women are caught in a tough position. They are blocked from power. She hopes that women may be able to enter the professions.
She agrees to pledge her guinea so that women can join "the professions" and remain "uncontaminated." This will aid in the prevention of war.

Part Three:
Is like a review of what she has gone over.

The proposal that people should join anti-war societies?
Men and women experience societies in different ways.
Women who join such societies give up a part of their identity.

She also argues that the state should pay wages to mothers and wives. This would allow women to have a freedom that would benefit everyone.

Equality is impossible unless this fear is analyzed and overcome.

The last donation is a conundrum for her.

In the end.....

https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...

I started and read the first 10 pages of Part One. I figure this part is focused on women's education. There are a lot of quotations. I feel I have to go really slowly.

Piyangie " I feel I have to go really slowly."

I have that same thought when it comes to Virginia Woolf anyways.

I am over 1/4 in. The plan is to withhold further comment until some posters are at least that far along.

Anyone else thinking about reading this one?

It is a different way to look at the subject and how she answered it finally.

I finished Part One. I'm a fan of Virginia but I'm really struggling with this one. It somehow doesn't interest me much.

So She is going to eventually get to an answer?
Amazing

Piyangie I understand your thoughts on this one.

There is much here that needing saying and more than some that still needs saying.
For example around the 40% mark
"Equal pay for equal work"

But she make some terrible silly , repeated complaints.
I am reading, not for the first or second time how VW cannot understand why it might be lowering for a woman to take paid work.

What she had to have known is that in England, during the 1700 and 1800's among the upper classes for a man or woman to take a paying job was to lower themselves and stain the family with the scandalous rumor that they were no longer upper class.

Even Jan Austin has fun with the fact that among eligible girls , the arrival of a an unmarried man was trivial, unless he had money, and not just money, but money "in the funds" or in land. Meaning old money, meaning money Not from having to work.

I too struggle with this book. My sympathies are with Miss Wolfe, but..., and she does love her ellipses, individual statements are at best equivocal. One hesitates to call them out as she is far more often right.

Finished.Glad to be done with it.

There are large parts that were true and shamed England for that historic truth
There are sizable parts that are still true, and even if somewhat alleviated and still shame England.

And there are parts that should never have been included. And I suppose speak to her deliberate willingness to indulge in propaganda.

Irreverent/trivial side note;
she twice mentions that the British government had made the statement that they would not be drafting women should war break out. By the end of WWII England had established a draft for women, in large part because women were not volunteering or otherwise assisting in any of several forms of war related work.

My Review
https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...

I finished Part Two. This will be a three-star read for me. I'm increasingly finding it difficult to engage with her argument.

This might be me but her argument is difficult to get my mind wrapped around it. She seems really stuck on daughters of educated men. She seems resentful. Some of her thoughts I found to be a bit unrealistic in what she was asking for her coin. Did she really answer the gentleman's question?

It's almost like she did not want to donate those three coins!!

I have alway thought of Woolf as a really different author.

Lesle wrote: "This might be me but her argument is difficult to get my mind wrapped around it. She seems really stuck on daughters of educated men. She seems resentful. Some of her thoughts I found to be a bit unrealistic in what she was asking for her coin..."

Did you read my mind, Lesle? 😀 This is exactly I feel about this essay and Virginia's writing. I've read a considerable number of her works, and this is nothing like any of that.

Piyangie I totally agree. I was hoping for something insightful. Something different I guess.

Actually Im pretty sure I gave her 3 stars just because it is her HA!!

Lesle wrote: "Actually Im pretty sure I gave her 3 stars just because it is her HA!!"

It's the same with me, Lesle. I'd have certainly given less if it was not Virginia.

I finished the essay. This is my review.
https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...