The ‘Angel in the house’ and the ‘Hero’: women and wars in The years and Three guineas by Virginia Woolf
Abstract
Among the several themes addressed by Virginia Woolf throughout her literary and essayistic production, we can situate war as a major concern of her aesthetic-literary project. There were several occasions (such as the lecture ‘Professions for women’ from 1931) when it was possible to trace one of Woolf’s arguments for her attack on patriarchy: how war is thought ‘by’ and ‘for’ men. This arrangement is crucial for assimilating the conception of The years, a 1937 novel that explored the changes in the lives of women from the late 19th century to the early 1930’s and which treatment of the war ‘motif’ had among its guidelines the questioning of the ‘life of great men’ as exalted by History. The objective was to reveal the pillars of the construction of all these narratives of heroism: women having to bow their heads and kneel for centuries, serving as mirrors that reflected gigantically the figures of those men. In light of this, we propose a reading which focus comprises the characters of Eleanor and Rose Pargiter in The years, aiming to highlight the close link, especially in political-ideological terms, between female servility (and its corollaries) and male warlike articulation. For this trajectory, the author herself provides us with theoretical-methodological support with works such as Three guineas and other essays, in which this problematic was more explicitly addressed. As we've delved into her personal life as well, we cannot overlook her own concept of life-writing, referring to approaches drawing from biographical sources. Of the many bonds and domains involved in this reading endeavor, which cannot separate ethics from aesthetics, we must highlight: the domestic and civic ramifications of patriarchal society, and the relationship between male hegemony and the unfeasibility of peace.
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