Intercultural Communication

The Englishman lives to move and to

struggle, to conquer and to build, to visit all
seas, to diffuse the genius of his character
over all nations. Industry, Protestantism,
Liberty seem born of the Teutonic race –
that race to whom God has committed the
conservation as well as the spread of
Truth and on whom mainly depend the
civilization and progress of the world.
(E.P.Hood)
 THE ANGEL IN THE HOUSE
1854-1862

Man must be pleased; but him to please

Is woman's pleasure; down the gulf
Of his condoled necessities
She casts her best, she flings herself.
How often flings for nought, and yokes
Her heart to an icicle or whim,
Whose each impatient word provokes
Another, not from her, but him;
While she, too gentle even to force
His penitence by kind replies,
Waits by, expecting his remorse,
With pardon in her pitying eyes;
And if he once, by shame oppress'd,
A comfortable word confers,
She leans and weeps against his breast,
And seems to think the sin was hers;
Or any eye to see her charms,
At any time, she's still his wife,
Dearly devoted to his arms;
She loves with love that cannot tire;
And when, ah woe, she loves alone,
Through passionate duty love springs
higher,
As grass grows taller round a stone.
(Coventry Patmore)
 Virginia Woolf
‘Professions for Women’
1931

You who come of a younger and happier

generation may not have heard of her –
you may not know what I mean by the
Angel in the House. I will describe her as
shortly as I can.
She was intensely sympathetic. She was
immensely charming. She was utterly
unselfish. She excelled in the difficult arts
of family life. She sacrificed herself daily. If
there was chicken, she took the leg; if
there was a draught she sat in it – in short
she was so constituted that she never had
a mind or a wish of her own, but preferred
to sympathize always with the minds and
wishes of others.
Above all – I need not say it – she was pure.
Her purity was supposed to be her chief
beauty – her blushes, her great grace. In
those days – the last of Queen Victoria –
every house had its Angel.
And when I came to write I encountered her
with the very first words. The shadow of
her wings fell on my page; I heard the
rustling of her skirts in the room. Directly,
that is to say, I took my pen in my hand to
review that novel by a famous man, she
slipped behind me and whispered:
“My dear, you are a young woman. You are
writing about a book that has been written
by a man. Be sympathetic; be tender;
flatter; deceive; use all the arts and wiles
of your sex. Never let anybody guess that
you have a mind of your own. Above all,
be pure.”
I now record the one act for which I take
some credit to myself, though the credit
rightly belongs to some excellent
ancestors of mine who left me a certain
sum of money – shall we say five hundred
pounds a year? – so that it was not
necessary for me to depend on charm for
my living.
I turned upon her and caught her by the throat. I
did my best to kill her. My excuse, if I were to be
had up in a court of law, would be that I acted in
self-defence. Had I not killed her she would have
killed me. She would have plucked my heart out
of my writing. For, as I found, directly I put pen to
paper, you cannot review even a novel without
having a mind of your own, without expressing
what you think to the truth about human
relations, morality, sex.
And all these questions, according to the
Angel in the House, cannot be dealt with
freely and openly by women; they must
charm, they must conciliate, they must – to
put it bluntly – tell lies if they are to
succeed.
She died hard. Her fictitious nature was of great
assistance to her. It is harder to kill a phantom
than a reality. […] Though I flatter myself that I
killed her in the end, the struggle was severe; it
took much time that had better have been spent
upon learning Greek grammar, or in roaming the
world in search of adventures. But it was a real
experience; it was an experience that was bound
to befall all women writers at that time. Killing the
Angel in the House was part of the occupation of
a woman writer.
 Virginia Woolf, Three Guineas
in A Room of One’s Own/ Three Guineas (1938)

It is now that the first difficulty of communication

between us appears. Let us rapidly indicate the
reason. We both come of what, in this hybrid
age when, though birth is mixed, classes still
remain fixed, it is convenient to call the educated
class. But … those three dots mark a precipice,
a gulf so deeply cut between us that for three
years and more I have been sitting on my side of
it wondering whether it is any use to try to speak
across it. […] And the result is that though we
look at the same things, we see them differently.
(118-119)
What then […] is this ‘patriotism’? Let the Lord Chief Justice of England
interpret it for us:
“Englishmen are proud of England. For those who have been trained in
English schools and universities, and who have done the work of
their lives in England, there are few loves stronger than the love we
have for our country. When we consider other nations, when we
judge the merits of the policy of this country or of that, it is the
standard of our own country that we apply … Liberty has made her
abode in England. England is the home of democratic institutions …
It is 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.” (123)
That is a fair general statement of what patriotism
means to an educated man and what duties it
imposes upon him. But the educated man’s
sister – what does ‘patriotism’ mean to her? […]
Her interpretation of the word ‘patriotism’ may
well differ from his. […] It seems plain that we
cannot understand each other because of these
differences. It seems plain that we think
differently according as we are born differently.
(123-124)
And, if checking imagination with prosaic
good sense, you object that to depend
upon a profession is only another form of
slavery, you will admit from your own
experience that to depend upon a
profession is a less odious form of slavery
than to depend upon a father. (131)
The two classes still differ enormously. And to
prove this, we need not have recourse to the
dangerous and uncertain theories of
psychologists and biologists; we can appeal to
facts. Take the fact of education. Your class has
been educated at public schools and universities
for five or six hundred years, ours for sixty.
Take the fact of property. Your class
possesses in its own right and not through
marriage practically all the capital, all the
land, all the valuables, and all the
patronage in England. Our class
possesses in its own right and not through
marriage practically none of the capital,
none of the land, none of the valuables,
and none of the patronage in England.
That such differences make for very considerable
differences in mind and body, no psychologist or
biologist would deny. It would seem to follow
then as an indisputable fact that ‘we’ – meaning
by ‘we’ a whole made up of body, brain and
spirit, influenced by memory and tradition – must
still differ in some essential respects from ‘you’,
whose body, brain and spirit have been so
differently trained and are do differently
influenced by memory and tradition. Though we
see the same world, we see it through different
eyes. (132-133)
[…] your dress in its immense elaboration has obviously
another function. It not only covers nakedness, gratifies
vanity, and creates pleasure for the eye, but it serves to
advertise the social, professional, or intellectual standing
of the wearer. […] And still the tradition lingers among us
that to express worth of any kind, whether intellectual or
moral, by wearing pieces of metal, or ribbon, coloured
hoods or gowns, is a barbarity which deserves the
ridicule which we bestow upon the rites of savages. A
woman who advertised her motherhood by a tuft of
horsehair on the left shoulder would scarcely, you will
agree, be a venerable object. (137)
But these facts, as facts often do, prove double-
faced; for though they establish the value of
education, they also prove that education is by
no means a positive value; it is not good in all
circumstances, and good for all people; it is only
good for some people and for some purposes. It
is good if it produces a belief in the Church of
England; bad if it produces a belief in the Church
of Rome; it is good for one sex and for some
professions, but bad for another sex and for
another profession. (147)
Need we collect more facts from history and biography to
prove our statement that all attempt to influence the
young against the war through the education they
receive at the universities must be abandoned? For do
they not prove that education, the finest education in the
world, does not teach people to hate force, but to use it?
Do they not prove that education, far from teaching the
educated generosity and magnanimity, makes them on
the contrary so anxious to keep their possessions, that
‘grandeur and power’ of which the poet speaks, in their
own hands, that they will not use force but much subtler
methods than force when they are asked to share them?
And are not force and possessiveness very closely
connected with war? Of what use then is a university
education in influencing people to prevent war? (151)
At any rate I will only send you a guinea with which
to rebuild your college if you can satisfy me that
you will use it to produce that kind of society,
that kind of people that will help to prevent war.
‘Let us then discuss as quickly as we can the sort
of education that is needed. Now since history
and biography – the only evidence available to
an outsider – seem to prove that the old
education of the old colleges breeds neither a
particular respect for liberty nor a particular
hatred of war it is clear that you must rebuild
your college differently. […]
Let it be built on lines of its own. It must be built
not of carved stone and stained glass, but of
some cheap, easily combustible material which
does not hoard dust and perpetrate traditions.
Do not have chapels. Do not have museums and
libraries with chained books and first editions
under glass cases. Let the pictures and the
books be new and always changing. Let it be
decorated afresh by each generation with their
own hands cheaply. The work of the living is
cheap; often they will give it for the sake of being
allowed to do it.
Next, what should be taught in the new college, the poor
college? Not the arts of dominating other people; not the
arts of ruling, of killing, of acquiring land and capital. They
require too many overhead expenses; salaries and
uniforms and ceremonies. The poor college must teach
only the arts that can be taught cheaply and practised by
poor people; such as medicine, mathematics, music,
painting and literature. It should teach the arts of human
intercourse; the arts of understanding other people’s lives
and minds, and the little arts of talk, of dress, of cookery
that are allied with them. The aim of the new college, the
cheap college, should not be to segregate and specialize,
but to combine. It should explore the ways in which mind
and body can be made to co-operate; discover what new
combinations make good wholes in human life. (154-155)
“I am certain I voice the opinion of thousands of
young men when I say that if men were doing
the work that thousands of women are now
doing the men would be able to keep those
women in decent homes. Homes are the real
places of the women who are now compelling
men to be idle. It is time the Government
insisted upon employers giving work to more
men, thus enabling them to marry the women
they cannot now approach.” (Daily Telegraph,
January 22nd, 1936)
There, in those quotations, is the egg of the
very same worm that we know under other
names in other countries. There we have
in embryo the creature, Dictator as we call
him when he is Italian or German, who
believes that he has the right whether
given by God, Nature, sex or race is
immaterial, to dictate to other human
beings how they shall live; what they shall
do.
Let us quote again: ‘Homes are the real places of
the women who are now compelling men to be
idle. It is time the Government insisted upon
employers giving work to more men, thus
enabling them to marry the women they cannot
now approach.’ Place beside it another
quotation: ‘There are two worlds in the life of the
nation, the world of men and the world of
women. Nature has done well to entrust the man
with the care of his family and the nation. The
woman’s world is her family, her husband, her
children, and her home.’
 Adolf Hitler, Sunday Times,
13 September 1936

One is written in English, the other in German. But where is the

difference? Are they not both the voices of Dictators, whether they
speak English or German, and are we not all agreed that the
dictator when we meet him abroad is a very dangerous as well as a
very ugly animal? And he is here among us, raising his ugly head,
spitting his poison, small still, curled up like a caterpillar on a leaf,
but in the heart of England. Is it not from this egg, to quote Mr. Wells
again, that ‘the practical obliteration of [our] freedom by Fascists or
Nazis’ will spring? And is not the woman who has to breathe that
poison and to fight that insect, secretly and without arms, in her
office, fighting the Fascist or the Nazi as surely as those who fight
him with arms in the limelight of publicity? And must not that fight
wear down her strength and exhaust her spirit? Should we not help
her to crush him in our own country before we ask her to help us
crush him abroad? And what right have we, Sir, to trumpet our
ideals of freedom and justice to other countries when we can shake
out from our most respectable newspapers any day of the week
eggs like these? (175-176)
For to help women to earn their livings in the
profession is to help them possess the
weapon of independent opinion which is
still their most powerful weapon. (180-181)
For almost every biography we read of professional men in
the nineteenth century, to limit ourselves to that not
distant and fully documented age, is largely concerned
with war. They were great fighters, it seems, the
professional men in the age of Queen Victoria. There
was the battle of Westminster. There was the battle of
the universities. There was the battle of Whitehall. There
was the battle of Harley Street. There was the battle of
the Royal Academy. Some of these battles, as you can
testify, are still in progress. In fact the only profession
which does not seem to have fought a fierce battle
during the nineteenth century is the profession of
literature. (187-188)
You shall have it, to recapitulate, on
condition that you help all properly
qualified people, of whatever sex, class or
colour, to enter your profession; and
further on condition that in the practice of
your profession you refuse to be
separated from poverty, chastity, derision
and freedom from unreal loyalties. […]
By poverty is meant enough money to live
upon. That is, you must earn enough to be
independent of any other human being
and to buy the modicum of health, leisure,
knowledge and so on that is needed for
the full development of body and mind. But
no more. Not a penny more.
‘By chastity is meant that when you have
made enough to live on by your profession
you must refuse to sell your brain for the
sake of money. That is you must cease to
practise your profession, or practise it for
the sake of research and experiment; or, if
you are an artist, for the sake of the art: or
give the knowledge acquired
professionally to those who need it for
nothing. […]
‘By derision – a bad word, but once again
the English language is much in need of
new words – is meant that you must
refuse all methods of advertising merit,
and hold that ridicule, obscurity and
censure are preferable, for psychological
reasons, to fame and praise. Directly
badges, orders, or degrees are offered
you, fling them back in the giver’s face.
‘By freedom from unreal loyalties is meant
that you must rid yourself of pride of
nationality in the first place; also of
religious pride, college pride, school pride,
family pride, sex pride and those unreal
loyalties that spring from them. (205)
[…] For if you agree to these terms then you
can join the professions and yet remain
uncontaminated by them; you can rid them
of their possessiveness, their jealousy,
their pugnacity, their greed. You can use
them to have a mind of your own and a will
of your own. And you can use that mind
and will to abolish the inhumanity, the
beastliness, the horror, the folly of war.
(208)
Therefore if you want to know any fact about politics you
must read at least three different papers, compare at
least three different versions of the same fact, and come
in the end to your own conclusion. […] So then the
literature of fact and the literature of opinion, to make a
crude distinction, are not pure fact, or pure opinion, but
adulterated fact and adulterated opinion, that is fact and
opinion ‘adulterated by the admixture of baser
ingredients’ as the dictionary has it. In other words you
have to strip each statement of its money motive, of its
power motive, of its advertisement motive, of its publicity
motive, of its vanity motive, let alone other motives which,
as an educated man’s daughter, are familiar to you,
before you make up your mind which fact about politics to
believe, or even which opinion about art? (221-222)
All these facts will convince her reason […] that her sex and class has
very little to thank England for in the past; not much to thank
England for in the present; while the security of her person in the
future is highly dubious. But probably she will have imbibed, even
from the governess, some romantic notion that Englishmen, those
fathers and grandfathers whom she sees marching in the picture of
history, are ‘superior’ to the men of other countries. This she will
consider it her duty to check by comparing French historians with
English; German with French; the testimony of the ruled – the
Indians or the Irish, say – with the claims made by their rulers. Still
some ‘patriotic’ emotion, some ingrained belief in the intellectual
superiority of her own country over other countries may remain.
Then she will compare English painting with French painting;
English music with German music; English literature with Greek
literature, for translations abound. When all these comparisons have
been faithfully made by the use of reason, the outsider will find
herself in possession of very good reasons for her indifference.
(233-234)
‘For’, the outsider will say, ‘in fact, as a woman, I have no
country. As a woman I want no country. As a woman my
country is the whole world.’ […] Such then will be the
nature of her ‘indifference’ and from this indifference
certain actions must follow. She will bind herself to take
no share in patriotic demonstrations; to assent to no form
of national self-praise; to make no part of any claque of
audience that encourages war; to absent herself form
military displays, tournaments, prize-givings and all such
ceremonies as encourage the desire to impose ‘our’
civilization or ‘our’ domination upon other people. The
psychology of private life, moreover, warrants the belief
that this use of indifference by the daughters of educated
men would help materially to prevent war. (234-235)
Broadly speaking, the main distinction between us
who are outside society and you who are inside
society must be that whereas you will make use
of the means provided by your position –
leagues, conferences, campaigns, great names,
and all such public measures as your wealth and
political influence place within your reach – we,
remaining outside, will experiment not with
public means in public but with private means in
private. Those experiments will not be merely
critical but creative.
To take two obvious instances: - the outsiders will dispense
with pageantry not from any puritanical dislike of beauty. On
the contrary, it will be one of their aims to increase private
beauty; the beauty of spring, summer, autumn; the beauty of
flowers, silks, clothes; the beauty which brims not only every
field and wood but every barrow in Oxford Street; the
scattered beauty which needs only to be combined by artists
in order to become visible to all. But they will dispense with
the dictated, regimented, official pageantry, in which only
one sex takes an active part – those ceremonies, for
example, which depend upon the deaths of kings, or their
coronations to inspire them. Again, they will dispense with
personal distinctions – medals, ribbons, badges, hoods,
gowns – not from any dislike of personal adornment, but
because of the obvious effect of such distinctions to
constrict, to stereotype and to destroy. (239-240)
[…] in our age of innumerable labels, of
multi-coloured labels, we have become
suspicious of labels; they kill and constrict.
(266)
Such then is the conclusion to which our enquiry into the
nature of fear has brought us – the fear which forbids
freedom in the private house. That fear, small,
insignificant and private as it is, is connected with the
other fear, the public fear, which neither small nor
insignificant, the fear which has led you to ask us to help
you to prevent war. Otherwise we should not be looking
at the picture again. But it is not the same picture that
caused us at the beginning of this letter to feel the same
emotions – you called them ‘horror and disgust’; we call
them horror and disgust. For as the letter has gone on,
adding fact to fact, another picture has imposed itself
upon the foreground.
It is the figure of a man; some say, others deny, that he is
Man himself, the quintessence of virility, the perfect type
of which all the others are imperfect adumbrations. He is
a man certainly. His eyes are glazed; his eyes glare. His
body, which is braced in an unnatural position, is tightly
cased in a uniform. Upon the breast of that uniform are
sewn several medals and other mystic symbols. His
hand is upon a sword. He is called in German and Italian
Fűhrer or Duce; in our own language Tyrant or Dictator.
And behind him lie ruined houses and dead bodies –
men, women and children.
But we have not laid that picture before you in
order to excite once more the sterile emotion of
hate. On the contrary it is in order to release
other emotions such as the human figure, even
thus crudely in a coloured photograph, arouses
in us who are human beings. For it suggests a
connection and for us a very important
connection. It suggests that the public and the
private worlds are inseparably connected; that
the tyrannies and servilities of the one are the
tyrannies and servilities of the other.
But the human figure even in a photograph suggests other
and more complex emotions. It suggests that we cannot
dissociate ourselves from that figure but are ourselves
that figure. It suggests that we are not passive
spectators doomed to unresisting obedience but by our
thoughts and actions can ourselves change that figure. A
common interest unites us; it one world, one life. How
essential it is that we should realize that unity the dead
bodies, the ruined houses prove. For such will be our
ruin if you, in the immensity of your public abstractions
forget the private figure, or if we in the intensity of our
private emotions forget the public world.
Both houses will be ruined, the public and
the private, the material and the spiritual,
for they are inseparably connected. But
with your letter before us we have reason
to hope. For by asking our help you
recognize that connection; and by reading
your words we are reminded of other
connections that lie far deeper than the
facts on the surface.
Even here, even now, your letter tempts us
to shut our ears to these little facts, these
trivial details, to listen not to the bark of the
guns and the bray of the gramophones but
to the voices of the poets, answering each
other, assuring us of a unity that rubs our
divisions as if they were chalk marks only;
to discuss with you the capacity of the
human spirit to overflow boundaries and
make unity out of multiplicity. (270-271)