What is the importance of Judith Shakespeare in A Room of One's Own?
In A Room of One's Own, Virginia Woolf uses the fictional character of Judith Shakespeare, the famous playwright's equally talented sister, to illustrate her point about the way in which the patriarchy holds back talented women, preventing them from developing their creativity and being successful.
Judith is a very clever girl, with all the gifts of her brother. Yet, from an early age, she has been actively prevented from pursuing a career as a writer by her family, who are steeped in society's unthinking prejudice towards women and girls when it comes to artistic talent. As such, Judith's family, while encouraging William's evident talents, push her into marriage at the earliest opportunity, even though this is the very last thing that she wants.
Even when she manages to escape the bonds of domestic drudgery by running off to London to become an actress, her life doesn't improve. If anything,...
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it gets worst. This is because society doesn't take her artistic ambitions in the least bit seriously because she's a woman; furthermore, there is not an established path by which she may succeed.
For most women in Woolf's day, the situation wasn't that much better. And Woolf wants her audience to join with her in acknowledging the countless women unable to attend the lecture at which she originally delivered A Room of One's Own because they're too busy washing dishes or putting the children to bed. In these women, and millions more like them, the spirit of Judith Shakespeare lives on. It is therefore incumbent on those talented women fortunate enough to have rooms of their own and a decent income to be able to do what Judith and countless others like her have been unable to do: write fiction.
What opportunities would Judith Shakespeare have had? How does Woolf address women's creativity in A Room of One's Own?
In A Room of One's Own, Virginia Woolf speculates what it might have been like if Shakespeare had an “extraordinarily gifted sister” named Judith. She sets up the scenario by explaining that Judith is perhaps even more talented than her brother but has far fewer opportunities to pursue her talent. In fact, she has no opportunities at all. She cannot get an education and must do the best she can by reading her brother's books, but her parents make her focus on the work of a woman instead, like cooking and sewing.
Judith's parents then decide that she will marry the son of a wool-stapler, but Judith wants nothing to do with that. Her father beats and scolds her and then shames her about disobeying him. Judith runs away from home and heads to London, where her brother is, but she cannot enter into the theater, either as a writer or an actress. Women simply don't do that. People laugh at her and scorn her. She has no chance to practice her craft, no opportunity to grow or develop as a person. There is simply no place for her, and Judith kills herself.
With this story, Woolf is exploring the question of the suppression of women's creativity, the reasons for it, and the results of it. Women are creative. They do have talent. They can learn and teach, create great works of art and literature. But for many centuries, they have often not had the opportunity to do so. Like Shakespeare's fictional sister, they have been relegated to a narrow sphere of life, denied education and the opportunity to explore and grow in their talents, and this is nothing less than a tragedy.
How does Woolf reconstruct the character of Judith in A Room of One's Own?
In A Room of One's Own, Woolf mounts a powerful argument that it is not women's innate inferiority that has caused them to achieve less than men as writers. Instead, she contends, it is the social circumstances in which they live.
As part of this argument, she constructs an imaginary sister for William Shakespeare and calls her Judith. Judith is born with all the innate literary talent of her brother. Like her brother, she heads to London to develop her skills.
However, unlike William, she is not taken seriously by the men who run the theater world. She is not seen as a potential talented addition to the theater but as a sex object. She is soon seduced and impregnated by her theater manager, and the pregnancy derails her life and career.
Woolf is illustrating that, because of gender stereotypes, women simply have never had the same opportunities as men to excel as writers and artists. Change the circumstances of women's lives, she says, and women will produce art and literature at an equal level with men.
Who is Judith in A Room of One's Own?
In Woolf's essay, Judith is the fictional sister of William Shakespeare. Woolf imagines her as very talented, like her brother. She, too, travels to London to break into theater. However, unlike her brother, she is not taken seriously, because she is a woman. She impregnated by a theater manager and never has the opportunities her brother does to write and excel.
The fictional Judith illustrates Woolf's point that it is not innate inferiority that has kept women from becoming great writers but their socio-economic situation. As the essay shows, woman have been, in many often subtle ways, denied the resources that flow to men and enable them the time and space to achieve. If women like Judith were taken seriously and given a room of their own (i.e., privacy) and a chance to write without intense pressure to pay bills or do household chores, they too would achieve as much as men.