Three Guineas

The third and final part of Three Guineas continues Woolf’s correspondence with the unnamed letter sender. Here, she takes on the man’s three suggestions for preventing war: that there should be a manifesto to “protect cultural and intellectual liberty” (79); that people should join a society devoted to peace; and that people should donate money to anti-war societies that need funds.

Woolf considers the idea of protecting cultural and intellectual liberty to be “rather abstract” (79) and surprising. A man asking women to do this, she suggests, is like a duke asking a maid to “construe this rather difficult passage in Pindar” (79). Women, she says, have spent centuries contributing to the cause of culture and intellectual liberty, having contributed to patriarchal institutions such as Oxford and Cambridge. Furthermore, why should women perpetuate the existence of these institutions when they are denied entry on equal terms? But still, Woolf argues, “any kitchen maid would attempt to construe a passage in Pindar if told that her life depended on it, so the daughters of educated men […] must consider what they can do to protect culture and intellectual liberty if by so doing they can help you to prevent war” (81).

Rather than helping to preserve the current state of cultural and intellectual liberty, Woolf suggests instead that women should protect their own cultural and intellectual liberty.