Three guineas available and
three requests for money: it is in 1938 when Virginia Woolf, a British author,
who was already a success, published a short essay that was to make history.
While Europe is on the brink of the abyss, a
male pacifist association which opposes the impending war, an association which
is engaged in the higher education of women as well as helping them to enter
the world of work asks her for help. Wanting to use her money as an instrument
for change, Woolf decides that she will give the first guinea to the institute
of education, this however is on the condition that, the education taught is
not a copy of the male form, but is instead used to construct a different
culture of learning, teaching "not the art of domination", but
instead "the art of understanding life and the minds of others”. The
second guinea will be given to the association which helps women to enter into
professions, provided, however, that commitments be made that, with the entry
of women into the workplace those professions be transformed. The third guinea
is for the male pacifist association as it pursues a common objective to that
of women, even if they choose different methods and means of achieving it.
Three guineas from a woman to give back value to women. (@ GiuliGaleotti)