Virginia Woolf

A Room of One’s Own Chapter 3

What I liked about this particular passage is how she created an alter ego for William Shakespeare to prove her point that because of the times no woman could write plays like the famous playwright. She creates Judith , sister to William. While they both supposedly grow up in the same household, both were not afford the same benefits. Judith is just as talented as her brother, but with the prejudice of her sex, she was limited to how far he “genius: would go. Knowing she would not go far in the theater, a different fate awaits her: “ Yet her genius was for fiction and lusted to feed abundantly very young, oddly like Shakespeare the poet in the face, with the same grey eyes and rounded brows-at last Nick Greene the actor-manger took pity on her; she found herself with child by that gentleman and so-who shall measure the heat and violence of the poet’s heart when caught and tangled in a woman’s body?-killed herself one winter’s night and lies buried at some cross-roads where the omnibuses now stop outside the Elephant Castle”.(pg1241) This outlook shows that the times were based not only on social status, as proven by the aristocracy, but also by gender status. This is the type of writing that made her famous, and this theme of inequality goes throughout her writings. I must admit that I recognized the famous name of this author but knew very little about her. She seemed to me to a very adamant advocate for women’s rights, and she chose to express these beliefs in her writings. I think the answer is clear she was right, no woman could write like Shakespeare that the time not because of lack of genius but because of what was allowed by society, What a shame that is; imagine how many people we will never know about from that time that did not write because they were woman.