Three Guineas

By Virginia Woolf

Book Overview

"Though we see the same world, we see it through different eyes."

Setting out to answer the question "How are we to prevent war?" Virginia Woolf argues that the inequalities between women and men must first be addressed. Framing her arguments in the form of a letter, Woolf wittily ponders to whom--among the many who have requested it--she will donate a guinea. As she works out her reasons for which causes she will support, Woolf articulates a vision of peace and political culture as radical now as it was when first published on the eve of the Second World War. A founding text of cultural theory, Three Guineas can also help us understand the twenty-first-century realities of endless war justified by "unreal loyalties."

"Witty, scornful, deeply serious...If you are a woman, or anti-war, or both, read it."--The New Yorker

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0156901773
• ISBN13: 9780156901772
• Release Date: May 1963
• Publisher: Mariner Books Classics
• Length: 192 Pages
• Weight: 0.45 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.5" x 5.3" x 8.0"

Customer Reviews

Women against war

I gave this book 5 stars, not because I really liked it, but because it's interesting. Three Guineas is VW second book that is an argument and not fiction (the first is a room of one's own). It's about how women can help prevent war, and it says a lot of stuff, one of the things being to link male vanity to aggression. It's controversial, and a lot less pleasant than a room of one's own. It's weird in retrospect, too, because her argument stands in another time - before the second world war - and we've all changed since the holocaust etc. It says a lot about feminism, too, and women entering the professions and getting an education. Like I say, it's more aggressive than ARoOO, and this makes her less likeable. Whether or not you like it, though, or agree with what she says, it's an argument that should be out there. It's something that should be said.