Virginia Woolf (25 January 1882 – 28 March 1941) imagines that Shakespeare had an extraordinarily gifted sister named Judith. She was as adventurous as Shakespeare, imaginative, and restless in seeing the world. But she was not sent to school. Se had no opportunity to learn grammar and logic, let alone read Horace and Virgil. She probably picked up one of her brother’s books and tried to read, but his father came and told him to mind the stew or mend the stockings, not to go to the moon with the book.
More Notes: Shakespeare’s Sister
She was the apple of her father’s eye, and they spoke kindly but sharply to her. Soon, however, she was married to the son of a wool stapler, a neighbor, before she passed her adolescence. She refuses to marry, and her father beats her. Then she made a small parcel of his belongings, roped himself down one summer’s night, and took the road to London.
She was not yet seventeen. Like her brother, she also had an interest in theatre. She wanted to stand at the stage door and act, but the people laughed. The manager was startled. He said no woman could be an actress. Where could she go at that midnight? At last, Nick Greene, the actor-manager, took pity on her. She found herself with the child to the gentleman. One winter night, she committed suicide and lies buried in some crossroads.
In this manner, the author narrates women’s oppression and legal status under male dominance in England in the 16th and 17th centuries.
