Virginia Woolf: Brilliant or Bias?

Virginia Woolf said in order for women to write fiction they need a room to themselves and money in order to support themselves. She then goes on to give an example of a hypothetical sister of Shakespeare’s that was just as talented as William but was not given the education or opportunity he was so she was unable to be successful as he was. Women writers are just as creative and have just as much potential as men, Judith Shakespeare would have never been the writer her brother if she was given the same education because society chooses what the popular literature of the time was so she may have written just as good plays as her brothers but since it was paternal society they would have chosen to read William rather than Judith Shakespeare.

Woolf begins this hypothetical story but telling the story of William Shakespeare himself. A good way to disprove the probability is to take William’s story and substituting Judith in the same position and see if she would have been able to make the same climb to success that William did. The beginning explains how William went to grammar school “Shakespeare himself went, very probably,--his mother was an heiress--to the grammar school, where he may have learnt Latin--Ovid, Virgil and Horace--and the elements of grammar and logic” we assume that this is where Shakespeare gained his prowess an amazing writer (Woolf 3,8). Now if we replace William with Judith, completely unlikely for a girl in this period to get schooling of this type. “Female literacy in England increased from a mere one percent in 1500 to twenty-five percent in 1714,” William Shakespeare lived in the late 1500’s so women literacy had probably raised slightly rose from the one percent in 1500 but was most likely still in the si...

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... support her view because it seems like she is more open minded and willing to understand that not all men are the same and there are exception that want equality for woman as much as they do.

Works Cited

• Alchin, Linda. "William Shakespeare Brothers & Sisters." William Shakespeare Brothers & Sisters. William Shakespeare Info, n.d. Web. 8 May 2014.

• Margaret J. M. Ezell. “The Myth of Judith Shakespeare: Creating the Canon of Women's Literature.” New Literary History, Vol. 21, No. 3, New Historicisms, New Histories, and Others (Spring, 1990), pp. 579-592

• Pratt, Abby F. "Virginia Woolf | The Curator." The Curator. N.p., n.d. Web. 10 May 2014.

• Reddy, Latha, and Rebecca G. Smith. "Readership." Readership. University of Michigan, n.d. Web. 11 May 2014.

• Woolf, Virginia. "A Room of One's Own." Gutenburg.net.au. N.p., n.d. Web. 7 May 2014.