Virginia Woolf On Education and the Public Sphere (A Note on Three Guineas)
Virginia Woolf was a member of the Bloomsbury group of artists, writers, and poets. Formal education was barred to her, but she rose against the limits society placed on her. She was educated, although she did not have a university degree. Her education was formed from the books she read in her father’s library. During this period, she describes herself as being between the devil and the deep sea (Three Guineas, p. 74).
She received a pastiche education, pulling knowledge from wherever she could. She did feel bitterness about being excluded from the university system; she writes in the Three Guineas about "University Education": "What is this mysterious process that takes about three years to accomplish, costs a round sum in hard cash, and turns the crude and raw human being into the finished product an educated man or woman?" (Ibid, p. 24).
But, are we speaking about an intellectual elitism here? Would Woolf consider herself a part of an elitist intelligentsia separated from the masses? How did Woolf imagine herself in the context of the intellectual elite and/or the public sphere? It is difficult to speak about the intellectual without also speaking about a class society. Intellectuals, as Gramsci puts it, come from the different social classes so as to articulate the identity of that particular class. This is different from Plato's idea of the Philosopher King, a concept he outlines in The Republic, his classic text on enlightened dictatorship. Ancient Greece was a democracy of free men, women excluded. The intellectual was a man who had the leisure time to spend writing and thinking. He was taught gymnastics in school, learned the art of war. The slaves worked, or went to war. The women stayed home and kept their chitons tight around their belts.
In A Room of One's Own Virginia Woolf contributed to the idea of the androgynous mind, the idea that the most creative artist creates from the locus of both "man" and "woman". Woolf resisted narrow definitions of class and gender; and she reached out to a large readership during her writing career, beyond the comfort of her Victorian upbring. She deliberately published her essays in magazines that many people read: Ladies' Home Journal, for example. Woolf gave lectures at schools on the importance of education. In the Three Guineas, she writes about the importance of education, in which she argues women must "judge[ing] for yourself, comparing the views," so as to distinguish between fact and fiction. Woolf didn't trust the status quo. And she offered sage advice about checking the validity of one’s sources. She wrote primarily to women, but she was concerned with all marginalized groups. Her novels feature bored housewives as well as tortured artists. She realized that the war effort (she wrote and was active in both World Wars) demanded able bodies, producers, and women were fixed to provide for the state as long as they were forbidden from an education; the women's college that asks her for a guinea, she argues, will only purchase matches and petrol that will burn the college to the ground! (Ibid., p. 36).
She saw that the world is divided into public and private spheres. In a comical way, she broke into this private sphere. As a young woman, she poked fun at government security by dressing up as an Ethiopian prince and boarding the HMS Dreadnought to the chagrin of the British Navy who fell for the hoax! Woolf realized that women were excluded from the private sphere and she wanted to bring the divide that separated them closer. Woolf published two book series called The Common Reader. In it she published essays, literary criticism and biographical sketches for anyone to read. In a way, this is her most accessible work for the public intellectual sphere. The Three Guineas, which we read in class, is her most polemical attack; but also, her most insistence insertion into the intellectual sphere, championing her cause as a pacifist.
Annotated Bibliography for Virginia Woolf and the Intellectual Sphere
Craig, Edward. Routledge Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Routledge. 1998. Could not find Woolf in this expansive encyclopedia except, save, for a tiny citation, as a footnote to an idea in the text.
Cuddy-Keane, Melba. Virginia Woolf, the Intellectual, and the Public Sphere. Cambridge. 2003. This books serves as the keenest interpretation of Woolf as an intellectual and also debunking the notion that she is an intellectual elitist.
Durant, Will. Greatest Minds and Ideas of All Time. Simon & Schuster. 2002. An essay Durant wrote fifty years ago published for the first time in 2002. In the book he gives a top ten list of the most influential people in history. There are no women included in this list; but note, that he indicates most “influential,” not greatest or most valuable or profound.
Gramsci, Antonio. In the Norton Anthology of Theory and Criticism, Norton, 2001. edited by Vincent Leitch. “The Formation of the Intellectuals” 1135-1143. Gramsci formulated the idea of two kinds of intellectuals: organic and traditional formed part of the presentation that dealt with an intellectual needed to articulate the ideas and desires of a particular class.
Hussey, Mark. Virginia Woolf A to Z : a comprehensive reference for students, teachers, and common readers to her life, work, and critical reception. Facts on File. 1995. This book is very handy for quick Woolf facts that one needs on the fly, especially for a presentation when you don’t know what people will ask you! Also, it helped in uncovering the structure of A Room of One’s Own and the Three Guineas because his outlines are superb.
Lineback, Richard, editor. The Philosopher's Index. Philosopher’s Education Center. 1968 - present. Used the 2003 and 2004, but a more exhaustive search should be done. In each volume I did find one citation apiece on Woolf. One article was written on Woolf and Bertrand Russell in 2003 and another on Woolf and Astronomy in 2003; also found an article about Woolf and her narrative style as a contribution to intellectual history.
Marx, Karl and Engels, Friedrich. Communist Manifesto. Washington Square Press. 1964. Crucial in underlying the ways an intellectual is defined by class. Marxist ideology is so ingrained in the way we speak about economics, society and even literature, it is impossible not to cite him when speaking about the intellectual sphere as a class.
Plato. The Republic, in the Works of Plato edited by Benjamin Jowett and Irwin Edman and others. Modern Library. 1956. It can be argued that the idea of the intellectual begins with Plato from his notion of the Philosopher King and also, how this idea has steeped the intellectual into problems of class and gender. Also, Woolf would appreciate a Greek source.
Wiener, Phillip. Dictionary of the History of Ideas. Scribner. 1975. Much more research could be done to find Woolf in the canon of intellectual history. But, this scant research shows that she is nowhere to be found.
Woolf, Virginia. The Common Reader: First Series. Harcourt Brace. 1925, 1953. This collection of essays by Woolf is her first in a two part series. She mentioned in a letter once that it gave her joy to find tea and jam stains on a copy she found in a public library.
---------------------., A Room of One’s Own. Harcourt Brace. In this book, Woolf contributes to intellectual history the idea of the androgynous mind, that a good artist speaks from the locus of both “man” and “woman”.
--------------------. The Second Common Reader. Harcourt Brace. 1932. Her second installment of essays for the general public. Suffice it to say, by publishing a second book of similar caliber to the first, she is definitely setting herself up as an intellectual pro-active in the public sphere.
---------------------, Three Guineas. Harcourt Brace. 1938, 1966. Her most articulate contribution to the history of idea because it articulates quite well, and cogently – in the manner of classical rhetoric, ideas about pacifism, women and war.