Daughters

Virginia Woolf in 1902, photo by George Charles Beresford. Wikipedia.

I was startled into this reconsideration by Virginia Woolf’s brief, pungent essay, “Three Guineas,” published in England in 1938 and arousing a storm of criticism there on the eve of World War II. Due to Leonard Woolf’s efforts after her death, “Three Guineas” was later re-issued in an almost unreadable small print edition by Harcourt, its message as subversive, and as important today, as it was in 1938.

Woolf’s premise is that war, no matter what the excuse, is immoral but inevitable, partly because daughters, left out of education while their brothers enjoyed the benefits of “Arthur’s Fund”—family money set aside for this purpose—play no role in politics.

Woolf would never claim that all daughters, or all women, are pacifists, but she does explain the particular charm of armed conflict for many men: the excitement of being involved in the exercise of “manliness.” Even today, we are aware of this root appeal.

She quotes, as one example, from an airman’s life: “We talked of the League of Nations and the prospect of peace and disarmament. On this subject he was not so much militaristic as martial… If permanent peace was ever achieved and armies and navies ceased to exist there would be no outlet for the manly qualities which fighting developed, and human physique and human character would deteriorate”—as least in its male version.”

In opposition Woolf quotes Wilfred Owen, the young British poet who was killed in World War One (The so-called “War to End all Wars”): “The unnaturalness of weapons… Inhumanity of war… Horrible beastliness of war… Foolishness of war…” He went on to say that Christianity is incompatible with patriotism—perhaps one reason our churches as deserted.

Woolf wonders whether, if women—or daughters in particular—were able to wield political power, it might make a difference. After all, most if not all of us are not much excited by exercises in manliness. And we know the grief of losing fathers, husbands, brothers, sons—and now sisters and daughters.

Many years had already passed in 1938 since women achieved the vote but it had made little difference, Woolf believes, on continual war. She then turns to the question of our influence, particularly as wives “who had influenced politics. The famous Duchess of Devonshire, Lady Palmerston, Lady Melbourne… Their famous houses and the parties that met in them play so large a part in the memoirs of the time that we can hardly deny that English politics, even perhaps English wars, would have been different had those houses and those parties never existed”—hosted by the wives.

This same form of influence by wives existed in Washington during the Johnson and Kennedy administrations when Congressional members, working five days a week, were still in the city on the weekend rather than fleeing home as they now do at the end of four-day sessions. The weekend parties given by the political hostesses of that time fostered friendships and cooperation between the two parties, making government a little more workable and a little more representative. Those events are long gone, replaced by weekday partisan gatherings that perhaps further inflame our differences—often also hosted by women.

Woolf adds that, in the memoirs of that time, “you will not find either at the head of the stairs receiving the guests or in the more private apartments of the house, any daughter of an educated man.” Although Woof is speaking of England in the 1930’s, her argument about the absence of “daughters” is relevant today. The women in political office today have won their power through their own exertions, as is right, but what about the women, educated and even possessing substantial wealth—the daughters?

Is there something about inheritance itself—inheritance not only of money but of education and social position—that disables us politically?

Advanced (so called) education now enrolls at least as many women as men—to the dismay of some of the old universities and of their entrenched male faculties—but these degrees do not open the door to political influence; in fact, still being treated as a “minority”—even when we are not—may be disabling.

And of course we have to include money. All of us know that political candidates of both parties are only interested in raising increasing amounts of money from wealthy women. It is important for them to seem to listen to our opinions but our only effect is dependent on the size of our contributions and even then it is most uncertain.

So we are left in a muddle and a quandary as our government, itching for another war to “bring us together”, stifling dissent as it certainly would and justifying the billions we are about to spend on vastly increasing our stockpile of nuclear weapons, seems even further removed from the influence of women—even those with important political positions. Our absence has never been more marked, or more consequential.

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