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A review by hay_jude
A Room of One's Own and Three Guineas by Virginia Woolf
challenging
informative
reflective
medium-paced
4.0
Of the two long essays in this book 'A Room of One's Own' is much the better known and the better piece in my opinion as the arguments are more cogent and persuasive and invested with a degree of wit and humour that perhaps isn't so prevalent in the latter. In part this is of course to the context of when each was written. In 'A Room of One's Own' Woolff is writing following the achievement of women's suffrage but is setting out the many ways in which the struggle for some kind of equality for women in numerous aspects of their lives, still has a long way to go. Her distillation of the obstacles to progress - limited educational opportunities, a lack of financial independence and of a space in time and place in which to write - is effective and the evidence with which she backs up her arguments is obviously very well researched and really interesting to read. I also like the fact that, although her main focus is on women as writers she also comments on other aspects of women's creativity such as music and painting which seems now to have been addressed only fairly recently - which shows how ahead of her time she was.
'Three Guineas', written in the lead up to the Second World War is also interesting but her firm anti-war stance is possibly harder to justify in the face of Hitler's aggression, although perhaps it can be argued that this was before the very worst elements and policies of the Nazi regime were clear. In the linking of feminist concerns to pacifist ones, it seems to be more difficult for Woolff to maintain a consistent line and her apparent ambivalence on some issues such as the difference in men's and women's attitudes to militarism and nationalism, weakens her arguments and in some cases gives the impression of her shoe horning evidence to fit. Even so, she makes some telling points, for example about how fascist regimes sought to control women and subjugate them to men.
'Three Guineas', written in the lead up to the Second World War is also interesting but her firm anti-war stance is possibly harder to justify in the face of Hitler's aggression, although perhaps it can be argued that this was before the very worst elements and policies of the Nazi regime were clear. In the linking of feminist concerns to pacifist ones, it seems to be more difficult for Woolff to maintain a consistent line and her apparent ambivalence on some issues such as the difference in men's and women's attitudes to militarism and nationalism, weakens her arguments and in some cases gives the impression of her shoe horning evidence to fit. Even so, she makes some telling points, for example about how fascist regimes sought to control women and subjugate them to men.