The Essence of Freedom in Three Guineas. Sat. 8 June 2024

Virginia Woolf Season IV: Woolf and Freedom. Live online.

Lecture 10. The Essence of Freedom in Three Guineas (1938) with Claire Davison

 ‘Private judgement is still free in private’, announces the speaking persona of Three Guineas, ‘and that freedom is the essence of freedom’ (p. 98). Conceived in the mid to late 1930s, when, whether by brute force or insidious propaganda, Fascist regimes were gaining power, Three Guineas expresses some of Woolf’s most strident, explicit reflexions on private and public freedom.

Her often utopian or militant responses to the forces of tyranny which endanger peace and freedom, startled and even shocked her contemporaries, and indeed continue to perplex or provoke to this day. The dictatorships she condemns to the proverbial bonfire prove to be the very strongholds of Britain; it’s in ‘the home of freedom’ (p. 12) that she digs out entrenched violence that proves ‘our boasted freedom’ (p. 142) to be a farce.

Focusing mainly on the second chapter of Three Guineas, this lecture looks at how Woolf methodically dismantles the Enlightenment values of Liberty, Equality and Fraternity, proposing in their place a fascinating, nearly monastic code of ‘poverty, chastity, derision and freedom from unreal loyalties’ (p. 95).

We will explore the different betrayals or travesties of freedom that Woolf unearths in the private home, and wondering why, in a context of war and Fascism, private judgement should be singled out as ‘the essence of freedom’. We’ll then link these to her use of voice, song and dance as alternative expressions of ‘peace and freedom for the whole world’ (p. 129).

Live online lecture and seminar with Professor Claire Davison, editor of the forthcoming Cambridge University Press edition of Three Guineas.

Set reading

Virginia Woolf, Three Guineas (1938). If possible get this edition: New York: Harcourt, 2006, annotated and introduced by Jane Marcus. But other good editions will do e.g. Oxford World Classics.

Saturday 8 June 2024

18.00-20.00 British Summer Time
19.00-21.00 Central European Summer Time

Price
£32.00 Full price
£27.00 Students, CAMcard holders
£27.00 Members of the VWSGB

All prices include VAT at 20%.