Virginia Woolf: Shakespeare's Sister

(1) How did Elizabethan gender roles limit opportunities in literature? (2) Why does history treat sixteenth- and seventeenth-century women with so little notice?

Virginia Woolf created a fictitious situation of the life of a woman, specifically Shakespeare's sister, who lived in the Elizabethan era. Woolf used the sister to describe the lives of women living in Elizabethan times. She spoke of their overall treatment during the Elizabethan period from both men and society in general. She described women as useless in Elizabethan times. Only men could have an education or certain jobs, while women had to stay inside. Society saw Elizabethan women, compared to men, as inferior. Women, not just in Elizabethan times, but also throughout history have had very poor treatment in particular.

Woolf described women as essentially worthless in society and worthless to men. She said, "She [women] was locked up, beaten and flung about the room" (802). Men had the "right" to beat their wives, lock them up and do as they wished with them. Women had little meaning in society. One thought of why women didn't write during the time of Elizabeth is the belief of men having the ability to write great works, so society had no need for women to do a man's job. Woolf wrote, "No woman wrote a word of that extraordinary literature when every other man, it seemed, was capable of song or sonnet" (801). If Shakespeare ever had a sister who wrote plays as well as he, she would never receive recognition and would face a great struggle.

In fiction only would society recognize women as equal to men. A woman couldn't have a career as a writer primarily because men, including Shakespeare, wrote plays. Great ones too! Woolf said, "If woman had no existence save in the fiction written by men, one would imagine her a person of the utmost importance [ . . . ] as great as a man, some think even greater" (802). She added, "Imaginatively she is of the highest importance; practically she is completely insignificant" (802). In fiction, woman is great, but in reality, she is nothing. She receives little recognition in society. Also, men have a greater access to education than women. Women therefore could not spell, read or write if at all because they couldn't attend school. Wolf thus said, "Genius like Shakespeare's is not born among laboring, uneducated, servile people" (806). Women also worked in the home, and did not have a paying job, which also limited their activities in school and society. Men forced women to marry in their early teens - burdening women with the role of wife. History also decided the fate of women in society.

Historians took little interest in women simply because people placed little attention, if any, on women. Interestingly enough, history contains the words "his" and "story," and doesn't mention "Herstory." History tells the story of men, and not women. Because of the lack of History about women, Woolf claimed to know very little of women's lives in Elizabethan times. She said a bishop once claimed, "It was impossible for any woman, past, present, or to come, to have the genius of Shakespeare," meaning a woman couldn't possibly write like he did (804).

Men, during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries never thought of women as anything more than a wife or someone who stayed home and took care of the house. Women received no formal education or equality among men. Because of their treatment in society during the time of Elizabeth, Wolf wrote, "She could get no training in her craft" (806). Without an education, women couldn't write, so finding actual writings done by women is difficult for historians. The world saw women as incapable. Woolf said, "It would have been impossible, completely and entirely, for any woman to have written the plays of Shakespeare in the age of Shakespeare" (804). Woolf thus concluded, "Any woman born with a great gift in the sixteenth century would certainly have gone crazed, shot herself, or ended her days in some lonely cottage outside the village, half witch, half wizard, feared and mocked at" (807). Due to their harsh treatment from men, women felt a great burden of ostracism of their work.
Work Cited

Woolf, Virginia. "Shakespeare's Sister." A World of Ideas: Essential Readings for College Writers. 6th ed. Ed. Lee A. Jacobus. Boston: Bedford, 2002. 801-812.