Theme Of Shakespeare's Sister By Virginia Woolf

The next expressive woman known during the renaissance era was Virginia Woolf. Virginia Woolf was raised in a very educated home with a great privilege to be a freethinking woman. She began writing her own novel very young, and had written many more popular modernist titles such as “To The Lighthouse” and “Mrs. Dalloway.” Woolf had many opportunities available to her that many women of her day were not; she studied many different languages and went to college for four years. Virginia Woolf believed that women had little or no say in their future; she wanted to use her education and social connections to make a voice in the world where women unfortunately had none.

Shakespeare uses language to explore the controversial gender roles. His use of two distinctively opposing female

Using the example of Judith, Shakespeare’s imaginary sister, Woolf depicts this character as how society discriminated against women. Judith, a woman, was just as talented as her brother, William Shakespeare, though had to write in secret. A man’s talent was highly recognized in

As Woolf closed, she said, “do not look for Judith Shakespeare in Sir Sidney Lee’s Life of a Poet.” She died young and never was able to write a word; however, Woolf believes “Judith Shakespeare” lives on in today’s society. She believes Judith is a representation of women alive and not alive who were not able to speak or write their minds. She created Judith to show that even when great writers die, even if they never physically wrote words on paper, they still live

Shakespeare's works have persistently influenced humanity for the past four hundred years. Quotations from his plays are used in many other works of literature and some common phrases have even become integrated into the English language. Most high schoolers have been unsuccessful in avoidance of him and college students are rarely afforded the luxury of choice when it comes to studying the bard. Many aspects of Shakespeare's works have been researched but one of the most popular topics since the 1960s has been the portrayal of women in Shakespeare's tragedies, comedies, histories and sonnets.

Mary Shelley, author of Frankenstein, lived in a time period of great inequality between men and women where women were restricted in their roles and rights. During Justine’s trial, Shelley not only strives to argue against male dominance in society but also to elucidate irony in the subjection of women through overemphasis on male power over women. Shelley uses abstract diction to show Justine’s presumed guilt and inability to defend herself against her accusers because of her class and gender and also makes a combined emotional and ethical appeal that pokes at women’s gullibility. She also juxtaposes Justine’s innocence and Victor’s guilt in order to accentuate how Victor, a man, negatively influenced the outcome of Justine’s trial. By creating

Woolf starts of by mentioning “Society concerned with the employment of women” (1). Woolf uses anaphora in the beginning of her speech. Using the phrase “it is true” (1) to emphasize that she is a women that is employed. In the time period Woolf wrote this speech was during the 1930’s, which is mostly associated with the Women’s Suffrage movement. This meant that women back were expected by society to fit into a specific role. Woolf’s self-employment as a writer did not fit into the role of women of the 1930’s. Woolf makes an understatement mentioning that “It is true I am a woman” (1). This understatement was made in order for the reader to comprehend the significance of Woolf being a female during the era of the 1930’s. Woolf not only includes herself to be a recognized female writer but enumerates names of recognized writers such as Fanny Burney to Jane Austen. Stating that these exclusive writes are responsible for “cutting the rode” (1) for the future female authors. To make her point valid, Woolf implements imagery of how her “scratching of a pen” (1) does not negatively impact the “family peace” nor the “family purse” (1). In addition with the specific phrase “the cheapness of writing paper is, of course, the reason women have succeeded as writers before they succeeded in other professions” (1). This specific phrase adds a sense of irony of how something considered cheap can prosper with a work of a woman.

Woolf begins her speech by immediately acknowledging the reasons she was invited to speak for the Society. Through the use of anaphora, she is able to contest that she does, indeed, meet the criteria, as it is true she is an employed woman. However, Woolf shrouds a bit of doubt on her credibility with the addition of the rhetorical question, “but what professional experiences have I had?” (1). Nevertheless, she quickly recovers by stating that though she was a woman pursuing a career in literature, a profession in which “there are fewer experiences for women than any other” (1), she was able to make a name for herself like those who had paved the road before her. Woolf admits that her experience was not as rough as the women who preceded her because they “ma[de] the path smooth, and regulat[ed] [her] steps”. As a result, she had “very few material obstacles in her way” (1). Woolf incorporates the subtle use of a metonym when she states, “no demand was made upon the family purse” (1), in order to establish that her family suffered no economic strife through her writing.

In Virginia Woolf’s short essay, Shakespeare’s Sister (1928), she explores the misogynistic world’s effect on women artists from the Renaissance to the nineteenth century. Depicted through an imaginary sister of Shakespeare, and her own experiences, Woolf explains how “in the nineteenth century a woman was not encouraged to be an artist.” Instead, women were deemed of no value beyond the home or child bearing (Jacobus 702). Such gender issues have emerged in every facet of our society, primarily concentrating on gender equality in areas like education, status, awareness, and availing of socio-economic opportunities. In today’s context, with an overall look at history, in comparison to men, women remain relatively more constrained by

Woolf supports this claim by focusing on the anonymous writer named “Anon” (anonymous), that we as readers have seen so many times in literature. Could this “Anon” have been a woman, this “Anon” that has written so many poems and ballads? From Woolf’s point of view, “whatever she had written would have been twisted and deformed, issuing from a strained and morbid imagination” (54). She does not reach a conclusion as to the lack of women writers before the 18th century, she can only make assumptions on the time period and enlighten her audience to make sure that women are able to express their creativity without any constraints issued by society.

Often the descriptions, favoring the night to the day, are subtle but quantitatively apparent. The title of the book itself, is supposed to be summary of Katherine and Mary’s foil to each other, as they differ like “Night and Day.” But, Woolf’s fascination with the night sky contributes more to her favor of one character over the other. The book ends with Katherine’s engagement and overall ignorant bliss, but Mary remains a sole axis of freedom, as she denies Ralph Denham’s proposal, even though she is in love with him.

In her essay “In Search of a Room of One’s Own” Virginia Woolf used Shakespeare’s sister as a metaphor to explain the position of women in Elizabethan era. Since author finds it difficult to find any trace of women in the Elizabethan era, she creates a fictional character through imagination, and to feel situations that the women in Elizabethan society would have had to go through. Woolf compares fiction to a “spider’s web” (520) that permeates life “at all four corners” (520). Through this metaphor, she personifies narratives of women suffering as a spider’s web that cling to our material reality. For Woolf, our lived stories are a part of this web which can be changed, destroyed or, re-spin with our imagination. In my paper, I argue that Wolfe uses the metaphor of a spider’s web as a heuristic device to make a case for literacy analysis and fiction as tools for exercising narrative agency and challenging stories that deny us representation in this world. To illustrate this, she creates an imaginative character, named Judith Shakespeare, to surface the gender inequality in the Elizabethan era. For this purpose, she not only writes a new chapter of Elizabethan history that centers the perspective of the women, but she also gives voice to women of that era who, like Judith her main character, were silenced and delegitimized by the spider’s web of their time.

“Thinking about Shakespeare’s sister,” resonated how women were treated and how their opportunities differ from that of a man. Virginia Woolf tries to boil down the main cause of why there are not any great women authors. Is it because women do not have the ability to be or raw talent great writers? Woolf’s essay examines the life of William Shakespeare’s sister to answer this question: What kind of life would have Judith lead? Judith is a fictional character created from Virginia Woolf’s imagination.

The narrator returns home disappointed that she hasn't found some piece of truth to explain the poverty that women don’t share with men. Woolf thinks she needs a historian to describe the conditions of women through history. Compared to men, woman’s lives seem non-existent. She describes fiction as being connected to life but as careful as a spider-web and, in

The title of my project is Virginia Woolf as a feminist in reference to Mrs. Dalloway.