Virginia Woolf: Three Guineas - Research Paper Example

Virginia Woolf: Three Guineas Introduction Only lately has women stood up vigorously for their rights. For a long period of time, women have been discriminated against either directly or in subtle ways. This discrimination included almost all aspects of life such as educational opportunities, economic rights, the right to own properties, inheritance, employment and even in religion. Despite the fight for equality by some women in prior centuries, the feminine gender is still largely at a big disadvantage in most areas of life even today. One of the prominent and first feminists was Virginia Woolf in the early part of the twentieth century in inter-war England. A writer, novelist and a feminist way ahead of her time when it was not yet fashionable to fight for gender equality, her most famous works included A Room of One's Own and Three Guineas. Her body of works have been cited in numerous other works by other writers and she is perhaps one of the most quoted female writers of all time. There is no escaping Woolf even today where academicians and writers alike compete to analyze her works. On the subject of gender, Woolf is very often cited by feminists in their work and one of these new areas which had attracted special scholarly research interest is the role of women as victims in war and the ways in which women could be utilized to prevent wars in the first place. In her view, wars are mostly the creations of male-dominated institutions but women and children end up as the usual victims because they are a disadvantaged group unable to properly defend themselves. Her book Three Guineas was written while Europe was drifting towards war again and there was a certain urgency in which it was penned by an appeal to use the emergent economic and professional power of women to prevent war from happening again (Staveley 296). Discussion This paper looks at a specific military conflict that had seen women more as victims than anything else. This is the war in Darfur, Sudan between mostly Arab-Africans and in the other side the native Africans of Sudan who claimed they were discriminated by the national government. The war is largely a civil war between various ethnicities and although at times it has been termed as a genocide, the genocidal intent is largely lacking among warring factions. It was only later in the conflict when former US Sec. of State Powell described it a genocide due to the Arab militias backed by the government (known as Janjaweed) specifically targeted groups of civilians based on ethnicity. Darfur was originally just a simple quarrel among the Islamists themselves (more of a local tribal conflict) without hints of genocide (Prunier 81). A tactic used by the government of Sudan is a subtle form of genocide through attrition such as dehydration, starvation, unattended injuries and poisoning of water wells (Totten 464). The real reason why the war started in the first place was a fight for water resources in parch dry Africa. This guerrilla war started in 2003 but has since then claimed thousands lives either as direct casualties or as the result of hunger, starvation and disease due to forced displacement of civilians. A large majority of these non-combatants are defenseless women and children. Estimates put the total number of dead so far at 300,000 and number of internal refugees at around 3 million. It turned into a genocide when the conflict became a war among Arab Muslims in Sudan against native black Africans in the Darfur (also fellow Muslims). There are several on-going conflicts in Africa today such as in the DRC (Democratic Republic of Congo) which is largely a war among different ethnic tribes and also in Eritrea against Ethiopia (war of independence). UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon acknowledges that violence against women is practically present in all countries but in situations where war conditions are prevailing make those women particularly vulnerable to various sexual crimes like rape. For example, an estimated 8,000 women were raped last year in the DRC that prompted the United Nations to convene a conference by the Commission on the Status of Women (CSW) to tackle specifically women's rights and other gender-related issues during armed conflicts (WILPF, 18 Feb. 2010). The favored weapons of war included famine and mass rapes; women have a big stake in preventing wars because they ended up mostly as the victims and pawns in a war decided and fought largely by men without their consent. What is largely obscured in the rush to make peace settlements after a war had broken out is the role women could possibly have played in its prevention in the first place. This slow realization is however gaining greater attention from most world authorities such as United Nations. The first step towards achieving this stable peace is to empower women groups and let them take a leading role at the peace talks table. Women practically form one half of local populations anywhere but they are excluded from confidence-building and peace-making talk among combatants. It is now being recognized women play a crucial role in war avoidance as they are a major peace constituency and should be given more political power with regards to vital decision-making processes prior to the proclamation of wars. Their local knowledge and innate kinship with other people can help to dispel the conditions for war from taking place. In this regard, the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC, 03 Jan. 2007) has classified all groups of people in armed conflicts into categories of vulnerable groups like the women and kids who belong to this special group that requires specific protection and special treatment. Vulnerability is defined as due to certain physical characteristics or the presence of cultural, economic, social and political factors that can make a certain group of people being a specific target during armed conflicts by their opponents. The ICRC considers the vulnerable groups as consisting principally of women, children and elderly people. They are mentioned in particular as women subjected to various forms of discrimination during peace conditions and become more vulnerable all of a sudden when armed conflict erupts due to exclusion. Except in the rare instances when women are members of combatants, women are also not consulted very often during war deliberations and in peace talks to make peace enduring. Woolf had a strong thesis regarding the connection between a patriarchal society and fascism. She concluded there was a correlation between men's educational attainment and professional aspirations to that of fomenting or inciting wars to satisfy masculine drives. Most of the men who had acquired higher learning can talk easily of politics and people in the same manner of war and peace or barbarism and civilization in equal measure (Woolf & Shiach 154). The war in Darfur exhibits these characteristics of a largely patriarchal African society and sexism also worsens women conditions in the refugee camps. Woolf argued that women had been traditionally barred from seeking higher education and most of the economic opportunities shielded away from them. However, she considered these aspects to be positives when considered in the light of peacemaking efforts. By being excluded from their historical and cultural identity, this isolation allows women to take a more sanguine view of most issues that could lead to war and help to prevent wars from happening by their pacifist nature. They are not directly involved in most issues and therefore take a very detached and cool-headed view when these same issues could easily inflame passions in men. This separation can them help develop a good alternative by challenging the reasons for war. Although peace movements have been around for several centuries, beginning in mid-nineteenth century Europe that has persisted in the protest movements of today, there was a general lack of attention of specifically using women as instruments of peace. Woolf had also co-authored with Sigmund Freud (whose works she had helped to publish) about maternalistic feminism that is geared towards nurturing as part of the natural maternal instinct that fosters peace, accommodation and compromise (Gilman, Woolf & Freud 1566). She had explored the idea of women as peace advocates that could have prevented the wars during her lifetime. Women have a greater stake in the prevention of wars than men because some eighty percent of all war refugees are either women or children who then are subjected to rape and other types of sexual violence as a tool for psychological warfare to inflict fear on the enemy. The female gender is now recognized as a crucial piece to the puzzle of long-lasting peace by making them equal partners in the prevention of war. Women have a special creativity lacking in men that allow them to take a more holistic viewpoint such as consensus building, empathy and conflict resolution ideas. This novel aspect of using women as tools for peace was shown in the experience of Burundi where they made the majority of acceptable proposals during the peace process (Afrol News, 26 Oct. 2009) such as providing mechanisms for punishment. There is more reason to include women in peace summits because most international humanitarian organizations today recognize that women are most affected by armed conflicts. They provide the sustenance for their families with when most of men are out to war. As chief providers, they also cope with the problem of feeding young family members in addition to being thrown out of their homes and familiar places where they usually derive sustenance or livelihoods for income. In the Three Guineas, Woolf had been variously perceived as being strident in her feminism by arguing for stronger controls in war prevention by including many women in processes at the highest levels of decision making by giving them political power. Many academics view this stridency of Woolf as part of her political anger at being excluded from these high-level discussions and probably not getting the education she most probably wanted or rightfully deserved. They think these angry political messages were her own feelings of resentment (Hsieh 20) coupled with bouts of depression and the occasional mental breakdown. Nothing could be farther from the truth as her writings were consistent in a fair manner despite her various illnesses that ultimately led to her suicide. Three Guineas is an excellent political treatise of the vicious cycles of aggression and violence done by men. Conclusion While Sigmund Freud was largely pessimistic and fatalistic about the prospects for a lasting peace, Virginia Woolf outlined an entirely different view where women can play a big role for peacemaking efforts. This was because with the realities of her time where political power is wielded by men, there will be no end to chains of wars resulting from cycle of action and reaction as earlier pointed out. World bodies and non-governmental organizations now advocate that women take an active role in ensuring peace endures and wars are prevented by taking pro-active actions that will help to diffuse tensions and misunderstandings. The Sudanese government has a chance to do this through the Transitional Darfur Regional Authority (TDRA) when a referendum on the autonomy and future of the region will be held no later than next year. Despite UNSC No.1706 (UN Security Council Res. No. 1706) in putting UN peace-keepers in the region, fighting continued among several factions due to dissension in its ranks. The UN could have used its mandate back then to put more women into the negotiating table to resolve issues, primarily allocation of water resources. In the context of modern armed conflicts where women are caught in the crossfire, it is a disturbing development the fight for gender equality has resulted in women becoming the soldiers they once abhorred. Examples of this trend are women serving in the Israeli Army (WILPF, 16 Feb. 2010) or women used as suicide bombers in Palestine or the more recent bombings in Moscow, Russia that utilized young idealistic widows (AP, 02 Apr. 2010). The original intent of Woolf's Three Guineas was to somehow parody how men in high posts of political power end up deciding which wars to prosecute or not. The war in Darfur has not yet reached a point where women were used as soldiers but they have been victimized as human shields also. Darfur is largely an arid plateau composed of sandy soils, sandstone hills and the basement rocks underneath. Certainly a simple issue like water can be resolved by women. Works Cited Afrol News. Women Principal War Victims in Great Lakes. 26 Oct. 2010. Web. 20 Apr. 2010. Associated Press. Moscow Subway Bomber was Militant's Widow. 92 Apr. 2010. Web. 20 Apr. 2010. Gilman, Charlotte Perkins, Virginia Woolf and Sigmund Freud. “From Essentialism to Constructivism? The Gender of Peace and War.” Partial Answers: Journal of Literature and the History of Ideas 2.1 (January 2004): 1565-3668. Print. Hsieh, Lili. “The Other Side of the Picture: The Politics of Affect in Virginia Woolf's Three Guineas.” Journal of Narrative Theory 36.1 (Winter 2006): 20-52. Print. International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC). Women in War: A Particularly Vulnerable Group? 03 Jan. 2007. Web. 20 Apr. 2010. Prunier, Gérard. Darfur: The Ambiguous Genocide. Ithaca, New York, USA: Cornell University Press, 2005. Print. Staveley, Alice. “Marketing Virginia Woolf: Women, War and Public Relations in Three Guineas.” Book History 12.0 (2009): 295-339. Print. Totten, Samuel. “The Darfur Genocide.” A Century of Genocide: Critical Essays and Eyewitness Accounts. Eds. Samuel Totten and William S. Parsons. New York, NY, USA: Taylor and Francis, 2008. 464-503. Print. Women's International League for Peace and Freedom (WILPF). Women at War: Life as a Female Combat Soldier in the Israeli Army. 16 Feb. 2010. Web. 20 Apr. 2010. Women's International League for Peace and Freedom (WILPF). UN to Focus on Global Epidemic of Gender. 18 Feb. 2010. Web. 20 Apr. 2010. Woolf, Virginia and Morag Shiach. A Room of One's Own and Three Guineas. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 1998. Print. Read More