Virginia Woolf and the new threat of war: from narrative silence to the voice of the sybil

Abstract

World War I alerted many writers to the probable replica of another bloodshed in coming decades. the rise of fascism, the rearmament and the weak entente between the Western nations during the 1930s confirmed this fear and obliterated Virginia Woolf’s narrative silence. She eventually articulated her voice as a sybil to prevent or confirm the advent of the impeding war. Whereas this escalating violence embraced patriotic ideals or totalitarian ambitions, the exclusion of women from public spheres nullified their conciliatory efforts to avoid another carnage. «three Guineas» formulates the utopian tandem between pacifism and feminism as the ideal antidote against the institutional alliance between militarism and patriarchy that jeopardized the world’s peace. However, the pessimism within this essay suggests that the sociopolitical dystopia in those historical times hindered the successful administration of such a remedy to humankind, and foreshadowed the panic of English people with the Nazi air raids during World War II.