This view of Woolf’s is actually the core of why I value A Room of One’s Own: Three Guineas. As Woolf seems to say, politics – or power – is ultimately a small matter, and art must rise above such temporal and unimportant concerns. These elements very much support for me Woolf’s stress on the necessity of some kind of creative androgyny in art, because only a visceral blending of the masculine and feminine will not give unwarranted and inappropriate emphasis on political concerns. Beyond these, Kruger and Picasso are, in a word, “loud.” Kruger’s politics shout from his work, proclaiming a masculine authority to do so, while Picasso’s maleness is aggressively sexual, which is of itself political. Rembrandt’s politicization is subtle, and usually in a religious form, while Goya is more militant in his treatments of warfare. Viewing the work of Kruger and Picasso especially confirms this kind of one-sided, masculine approach. I am drawn to Woolf’s argument because even male visual artists reflect her concerns, if “politics” is correctly viewed as a means of exerting influence and control in the world. Only the mind and soul that is non-political, which translates to not completely masculine and therefore political, can achieve art: “The androgynous mind is resonant and porous that it transmits emotion without impediment that it is naturally creative, incandescent and undivided” (Woolf 128). Consequently, she concludes: “It is fatal for a woman to lay the least stress on any grievance to plead even with justice any cause” (Woolf 136). Because men can make differences, even artistic men are compelled to do so in their art, so the art is tainted by the masculine drive to influence society.

By this, she suggests that a wholly “male” persona is limited by the directions men typically, and perhaps must, take.

For instance, she affirms: “It is fatal for anyone who writes to think of their sex” (Woolf 136).

This reveals how linked politics, art, and gender are in her mind. Men have power, women have none that is recognized as such, so Woolf seems highly suspicious of any masculine art at all. In her world, as is still the case with our own, men accomplish things in the outer world, while the woman’s life is more internal.

More exactly, Woolf is centered very much on qualities of maleness and femaleness, which she naturally relates to forms of productivity. If Virginia Woolf has serious issues with politics influencing art in a negative way, these are issues within her larger, artistic and political, ideology. Relation of Global Warming and Extreme Weather Condition Power Point Presentation With Speaker Notes

A room of one's own and three guineas