The Inequality of William Shakespeare and the Fictional Sister Judith
Jessie Armstrong
11/21/2013
English 101
“The Inequality of William Shakespeare and the Fictional Sister Judith”
In Virginia Woolf’s “Shakespeare’s Sister,” she tells a story about how women were treated and the opportunities they didn’t have as an intelligent writer, as compared to those of the men during the Elizabethan era (Shakespeare’s era). She wonders why there were no women writers during this time. All authors were men and their portrayals of women were usually as a person importance. While in reality they were the complete opposite. Lacking historical evidence, she makes up Judith, an imaginary twin sister of Shakespeare, who is just as talented as her famous brother, but because she is a woman does not have the same opportunities to learn and write as he did. She questions what kind of life would this imaginary sister have lived compared to her brother. Woolf was amazed at how women were treated. Women had a difficult time pursuing their creative talents; they were expected to tend to the household’s chores and children, nothing else. They historically had few legal rights, and could be treated as property by fathers and husbands. Not only were women rarely allowed to pursue careers or any type of creative endeavor, as Woolf points out, they weren’t thought to be gifted enough or bright enough to do so. Even the women viewed themselves as being inferior to men when it came to their intellectual and creative pursuits. She believes a person’s state of mind must be clear of all negative things in order for it to be creative. If a woman did write, she’d be a nervous wreck and her writing wouldn’t be as good because it would be written with anger and bitterness.
Woolf talks about the portrayals of women written throughout history. “If woman had no existence save in the fiction written by men, one would imagine her a person of the utmost importance…heroic and mean; splendid and sordid; infinitely beautiful and hideous in the extreme (pg. 694).” When,
11/21/2013
English 101
“The Inequality of William Shakespeare and the Fictional Sister Judith”
In Virginia Woolf’s “Shakespeare’s Sister,” she tells a story about how women were treated and the opportunities they didn’t have as an intelligent writer, as compared to those of the men during the Elizabethan era (Shakespeare’s era). She wonders why there were no women writers during this time. All authors were men and their portrayals of women were usually as a person importance. While in reality they were the complete opposite. Lacking historical evidence, she makes up Judith, an imaginary twin sister of Shakespeare, who is just as talented as her famous brother, but because she is a woman does not have the same opportunities to learn and write as he did. She questions what kind of life would this imaginary sister have lived compared to her brother. Woolf was amazed at how women were treated. Women had a difficult time pursuing their creative talents; they were expected to tend to the household’s chores and children, nothing else. They historically had few legal rights, and could be treated as property by fathers and husbands. Not only were women rarely allowed to pursue careers or any type of creative endeavor, as Woolf points out, they weren’t thought to be gifted enough or bright enough to do so. Even the women viewed themselves as being inferior to men when it came to their intellectual and creative pursuits. She believes a person’s state of mind must be clear of all negative things in order for it to be creative. If a woman did write, she’d be a nervous wreck and her writing wouldn’t be as good because it would be written with anger and bitterness.
Woolf talks about the portrayals of women written throughout history. “If woman had no existence save in the fiction written by men, one would imagine her a person of the utmost importance…heroic and mean; splendid and sordid; infinitely beautiful and hideous in the extreme (pg. 694).” When,