ABSTRACT
Like Lawrence, Woolf is keenly aware of the ideological implications embedded in the cultural association of home and nation. In Three Guineas, for example, Woolf shows how militaristic patriotism and injustices towards those marginalized on the basis of gender, class, or nationality, are buttressed by a nationalist fiction of England as “the home of Liberty.” Thus, her famous interrogation of male patriotism from a feminist perspective stems from her critical response to the contemporary rhetoric of home and nation. Wondering, “What then … [of] ‘patriotism’ which leads you to go to war?” Woolf quotes Lord Hewart, the Lord Chief Justice of England:
Englishmen are proud of England…. Liberty has made her abode in England. England is the home of democratic institutions…. It is true that in our midst there are many enemies of liberty—some of them, perhaps, in rather unexpected quarters. But we are standing firm. It has been said that an Englishman’s Home is his Castle. The home of Liberty is in England. And it is a castle indeed—a castle that will be defended to the last…. Yes, we are greatly blessed, we Englishmen. (9)
“But,” Woolf asks,the educated man’s sister—what does “patriotism” mean to her? Has she the same reasons for being proud of England, for loving England, for defending England?…. History and biography when questioned would seem to show that her position in the home of freedom has been different from her brother’s. (9)
In Woolf’s works, we see that her awareness of a different position in the home often enables her to have a critical perspective about the home and its mirror image of the nation. Critically exposing the impulse to marginalize, stigmatize, or expel those less privileged in the Victorian ideal of home and nation, Woolf envisions a less exclusionary home and nation through her subversive imagination that “overflow[s] boundaries” (Three Guineas 218).