Shakespeare's Sister

  

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Virginia Woolf’s essay “Shakespeare’s Sister” in the collection A Room of One’s Own was written in a time when women were not writers and the freedom of expression was not a woman’s right. In Woolf’s essay she addresses the lack of education that women receive during her time period. (It should be noted that she is addressing fellow women who are privileged enough to be attending college.) Woolf creates a fictional character named Judith and dubs her as Shakespeare’s sister.

 
 

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If Shakespeare had a sister, she would have been nearly illiterate. She would have desired and thirsted for knowledge to some capacity, if not more, than her brother William. The problem is that she is not a boy. Her desiring knowledge and having a hunger to know more was not accepted or celebrated by the parents.

If Shakespeare had a sister, she would have been beaten for her desire to learn. She would have been told to get back to work. Work being her womanly chores like cooking, cleaning, mending clothes, and watching children. This would have been the world of Judith Shakespeare. A sad comparison to that of the illustrious playwright. 

 

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If Shakespeare had a sister, she would have desired to break the mold. With this desire and longing she would have tried to become an actress. She would have been laughed at and mocked because acting was a man’s job just like reading was only for men. She would have been duped by a manager who offers her a promise of her dream and become pregnant. 

 

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If Shakespeare had a sister, she would have wound up dead because of the patriarchy. She would have died because she was silenced and her voice never mattered. She would have died because she couldn’t offer anything outside of what women were expected to even though her heart longed for more. Judith Shakespeare’s life would have been controlled and dictated by men and who they told her she was as opposed to who she wanted to be. 

 

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Woolf argues that if women were given a room of their own to write they could be successful writers just like men. The problem is that men were given the rooms to write while women were to go and clean the room up after the men. I think that Woolf means more than just a room of one’s own. I think by room she means the freedom to have a work space, to think outside of the normal confines of the society, and the right to imagine passed the borders of what men say they should imagine. This room is figurative. She means women need room to write. As in, they need freedom in society to be able to foster and house these ideas. They need and deserve to be able to pursue knowledge. A room of one’s own is more than an actual room it’s a way of thinking in society. 

 See you soon, 

Sarah Johnson