Three Guineas

Virginia Woolf is both the author of Three Guineas and a figure within the text itself. By the time she wrote Three Guineas, Virginia Woolf was already a famous figure in the worlds of literature and politics. Her ground-breaking novels, such as Mrs. Dalloway and To the Lighthouse, helped to push the boundaries of how literature was created and enjoyed. Furthermore, her work with the publishing firm the Hogarth Press and with the Bloomsbury Group made her one of the leading lights of the modernist movement. This fame is central to Three Guineas, as it is the precept for the unnamed correspondent’s addressing his letter to Virginia Woolf.

As such, there is a tension between the public figure of Virginia Woolf (the one the correspondent believes he is addressing) and the private figure (the one who replies to his letter). The correspondent writes to Virginia Woolf in the belief that she will be sympathetic to his cause of ending war. As a noted pacifist, Woolf would surely help him to bring an end to global conflict. However, a fatal misunderstanding informs much of the text: The respondent is unable to comprehend the difference between the public version of Virginia Woolf and the one who replies to him.