Week 1B--Moving On: Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?

Every time I read Three Guineas I find something new.  The style is so seemingly personal, so hesitating, verbose, repetitive that it is easy to ignore it.  Virginia Woolf wrote as many as 8 versions even of a book review.  We should not be fooled.  She surely was looking for the perfect style and voice to say what she intended.  I understand her to say that women can do all the things men do without the same effects if they commit to poverty, chastity, derision, and freedom from unreal loyalties.  We all know women who have done these things, even in part, and the results are certainly suggestive.  Studies have shown that there is less corruption, both in the private and the public sectors, where women are in charge.  I have watched the recent political campaigns here in Guatemala.  A native of Antigua, a woman with a degree in architecture and degrees in urbanism from Europe has united 6 political parties behind her and has conducted a different sort of campaign, not competing with the male candidates' gifts to the public nor their elaborate entertainments.  There will be a run-off, but she appears to have won already.  Will she be able to stop the blatant graft and actually do something for the communities in the township?  We will see.  At least there will be a few extra millions to work with because they haven't gone into her own bank account. 

     From all evidence there has been war since we gave our loyalties to male gods.  As women acquire power, many men resort to their only real superiority, physical force.  I should think it natural that we see the same thing on a national or international level.

     Bryn Mawr vs. the poor, combustible college?  Well, she certainly is expensive.  But there is no doubt that she puts the women in "important"  places where women have not previously been.  I do love her and give her half of my very poor income.  She took or is taking every one of us on the roster seriously and has thus made us recognizable in the whole world, even in Guatemala 

I originally wrote the following post in response to a discussion of "fact," held in Ann Dalke's Stories of Evolution & Evolution of Stories class.  Even so, I feel it applies to Virginia Woolf's observations concerning the bloodthirsty nature of all professional life and training:

"It is my opinion that living in a Capitalist society has perpetuated the idea that certain professionals "own" their field...mainly, scientists "own" science because, well, that's just what they're good at. This belief, held by a majority of the educated population (though they may not necessarily phrase it as such) has allowed professionals to speak to their audience (educators, the professional community, etc.) in much the same way as a priest preaching Christianity.

Basically, If you know your science, you own that science, because, let's face it, after a certain point, you realize you know more than someone else and that knowledge is "yours" to exploit.

Now, while this is happening, others become concious of the fact that they don't know as much about a topic as another and, as a result, find themself looking to that person with the upmost of trust. There are two reasons for this. The first is that they don't obtain the knowledge necessary to contradict them. The second requires a visual: A scientist has spent years absorbing "facts" and is constantly moving up the knowledge ladder. If a scientist standing on the 10th rung of this ladder offers someone standing on the floor a bit of information, they benefit that person as they offer them the means to work their way up the ladder. The person on the floor does not want to believe they are filling their head with less-wrong information, and so they justify the absorbtion of new knowledge by calling it fact."

 It is my opinion that knowledge has slowly transformed into the natural resource everybody wants. More valuable than oil, and hypothetically attainable by every individual, people have begun to fight not only for it, but over it. People persist with this mentality: "If i've spent my time studying, I better damn well know more than you."  Thus, I must agree with Virginia Woolf: "professions make people...possessive, jealous...and highly combative."

As I read Three Guineas, I had a hard time deciding when Woolf was seriously advocating courses of action, and when she was merely trying to point out the ridiculousness of man's suggestion to women that she, who has been kept out of his society in every way possible, should now have the responsibility of saving him from himself. I cannot believe that Woolf was seriously advocating the burning down of schools or complete withdrawal of women for society. These solutions in themselves would seem as problematic as any other courses of action which Woolf poses and then systematically shoots down.

However, I couldn't help but think as a read through about the assumption made by a critic on the back of my copy that the book is "anti-war." While Woolf is writing to a man who has apparently requested her help in an anti-war movement, she never really seems to focus on whether or not that is the correct movement. Her text is far more feminist (a word which she seemingly would not be happy to have applied to her text because of its negative connotations) than anti-war. Her arguments are given to explaining why women are not yet capable of providing effort in the way the addressee of the letter wants them to be. Her argument could as easily have been directed towards any other cause which women are called upon to aid. While the anti-war movement is perhaps something which has been traditionally assumed to be closer to the heart of women, Woolf's solutions are not all non-violent. In her first essay, Woolf wants to burn down the school while the women dance and sing around it, an action which may be construed as barbaric as any manly war instinct.

In her third essay, Woolf asks the man to deal with the real world and real facts, not the dream world. However, Woolf also dreams of a time when the words "dictator" and "tyrant" may be burnt up just as the word "feminist" should be. How does Woolf believe this goal may be reached? She poses no alternate solution to war. While all can believe that war may be a horrible thing, her arguments all seem to support the idea that women is incapable of preventing war when she does not have the opportunity to be in a position of influence, but not necessarily that war is actually preventable.