Three Guineas (annotated): The Virginia Woolf Library Annotated Edition

Annotated and introduced by feminist literary scholar Jane Marcus, this is an ideal edition for the college classroom and beyond.

In reflecting on her situation as the "daughter of an educated man" in 1930s England, Woolf challenges liberal orthodoxies and marshals vast research to make discomforting and still-challenging arguments about the relationship between gender and violence, and about the pieties of those who fail to see their complicity in war-making. This pacifist-feminist essay is a classic whose message resonates loudly in our contemporary global situation.

This annotated edition of Three Guineas offers students the resources to help them understand the text as well as the reasons and methods behind Woolf's writing.

In this searing anti-war essay, Virginia Woolf meticulously dissects:

• Patriarchy and War: An incisive analysis connecting the private tyranny of the household to the public violence of nations, asking how men’s professions and love of dominance contribute to conflict.
• Women's Education: Woolf examines "Arthur’s Education Fund" to reveal how the systematic under-education of women has financed the institutions that perpetuate a war-mongering culture.
• A Critique of the Professions: A powerful look at how the church, the universities, and the legal system enforce a possessive, competitive, and warlike spirit in the men who run them.
• The Outsider's Perspective: Woolf’s masterclass in argument, proposing that a woman’s historical exclusion from power provides a unique and necessary viewpoint for preventing war.