Analysis of Judith Shakespeare in Virginia Woolf

Analysis of the hypothetic character Judith Shakespeare in Virginia Woolf Looking through the book shelf, Virginia Woolf realized that even with a willingness to get to know about women and women’s thoughts about fiction at that age, it would be unlikely to access the objective truth--there was simply a lack of writing on the goodness of women by men, neither was there enough self-reflecting materials written by women to be found. It was a time when prejudice in men’s mind was wildly active in the unhealthy society, which means she had to assume, to imagine what the situation was like for women. To this end, Woolf created the character of Judith Shakespeare in order to precisely present to the audience to awake them into clarity and into independence of their own. In the first paragraph, she spoke with irony, using sharp sentences like “cats do not go to heaven” to express her anger. Then she admitted that the “gentlemen’s” words was in some way fair, which shows the frustrating reality for women. The finality in the word “completely and entirely” conveys her determination and deep desperation combining with sarcasm toward sexism. She uses five lines to describe the detailed background of the story: Shakespeare’s experience that eventually made him a great dramatist and poet. In comparison, the last sentence in the paragraph seems short, whereas it vigorously pointed out the only difference between the siblings--gender, makes the most discrimination. The third paragraph was the body part of the story. It was already an uneasy life for the girl, probably what every female back then lived through in their teenage. Judith possesses the same talent and dream in her heart with her brother, but “the man laughed in her face” was how she was humiliated and brokenhearted everywhere she went to. The character of the manager was a very typical figure of the general impression of “gentlemen”. She put it with harshness and contempt-- “you can imagine what” shows the