What If Shakespeare Had A Sister?

Virginia Woolf initiations this Essay: What if Shakespeare Had Had a Sister? By being very dismayed about not being able to acquire an explanation on why men are richer than women or why women are poorer than men. She wants to make sure that she gets facts and not opinion. Thus she decided to visit the time of Elizabeth and discover why women did not write, but men were writing non-stop and achieving literary excellence. Shakespeare comes up and Woolf compares his writings to “enchanted spider webs.” She used Professor Trevelyan’s History of England to find out where women stood in society. She discovered that women were beaten and arranged into loveless marriages and it was seen as socially accepted. She then thinks of the women she was familiar
She envisions what would have transpired from if the infamous William Shakespeare had a sister of equal talent and intellect. Woolf compares and contrasts how William Shakespeare’s life was versus how “Judith Shakespeare’s” life would have been. Judith? If one looks in the biblical history Judith was a very tough and brave woman who chopped off the head of the king in order to deliver her people. It is obvious based off the knowledge that Woolf obtained from viewing Professor Trevelyan’s History of England that Judith’s life would have many more roadblocks than that of William’s. Woolf states that William went to grammar school, got married to his choice, worked in theater, met important people in theater, and continued on his own very good path resulting in his magnificent plays and 154 beautifully crafted sonnets. Now Judith on the other hand would never attend school, would be discouraged by family to not study on her own, would be forced into marriage as a young teen, denied work in a theater, and would commit suicide due to all the harsh roadblocks in her life. Woolf then agrees with the bishop and says that no woman could possess the genius of Shakespeare because they were not in the right
And if a woman came to write something that amounted in importance and brilliance then they would probably title it as a man’s work or anonymous. She comes to the assumption that any woman who had her own genius and did not keep it a hidden would have probably been beaten or burned or shunned from all of her society. Woolf then says if a woman was born with a gift then she would probably not be able to live without becoming insane. Woolf believes that the famous “Anon” was a woman. She then names multiple others who have come out to be actual women: Edward Fitzgerald, Curer Bell, George Elliot, and George