Virginia Woolf turns to history books in her attempt to find out about women writers. Discuss with reference to Shakespeares Sister

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The lack of women writers in a particular age and the lack of historical records regarding women are silent indicators of the suppression of the voice of women in society. In her subtle exploration of the status of women in society, Virginia Woolf exposes appalling facts about the condition of women during earlier centuries in England. Gender bias was strong in Elizabethan England: men and women were not treated as equals. We are shocked to know that “wife-beating was a recognized right of man”. Also, girls were denied education in England up to the eighteenth century.

Women in real society were completely different from the inspiring female characters that we see in great works of literature. In reality, according to social dictates, women were subservient to men. The complete lack of information about women before the eighteenth century in England shows the extent of discrimination against women on the basis of gender and their low position in society.

By means of imaginative reconstruction, Virginia Woolf explores what would have happened to a talented woman if she had been born in Shakespeare’s times. Through this method, the writer raises fundamental issues concerning gender bias such as denial of education to the girl-child, denial of expression of the self and one’s talents, and denial of choice in personal matters. Suppression of identity of women in the patriarchal society of sixteenth and seventeenth-century England was so severe that any woman of the exceptional genius of those times would have been led to commit suicide, become crazy, or live in utter isolation—Woolf concludes.

In the concluding section of the essay, Shakespeare’s hypothetical sister Judith emerges as a symbolic figure of a woman of genius, seeking to come to life in a conducive atmosphere for appropriate self-expression. The writer calls for a change of attitudes in society, whereby one can find parity between men and women, whereby women find space, courage and liberty to express themselves.

Hope this helps.