Critical Summary: Humm and Three Guineas

In her essay “Memory, Photography, and Modernism: The ‘dead bodies and ruined houses’ of Virginia Woolf’s Three Guineas,” Maggie Humm argues that Woolf utilizes the juxtaposition of the perceived masculinity of photographs published in newspapers of the Second World War and her own narrative point of view in her descriptions of images from the Spanish Civil War in order to expose the patriarchal means by which society portrays war.  Humm argues the photographs published along with Woolf’s essay are absent from Woolf’s commentary and therefore her personal point of view, meaning that the symbolism present within the photographs is able to penetrate the reader’s mind on its own accord.  The five photographs to which Humm and Woolf refer are of prominent male figures including what Humm describes as a general, judge, and university professors.  Therefore such photographs emphasize a patriarchal portrayal of the war, suggesting that men are playing the most important roles in its execution and that the war is providing for male needs.  In contrast Woolf describes through writing images of the Spanish Civil War, which Humm argues alters the point of view of these images to fit her own feminist one.  In addition, Humm writes about Woolf’s thoughts on the relationship between photography and memory, saying Woolf believes that photography is not as objective as one might be led to believe as they all present their own points of view through the inherent symbolism in photography.