What I would call the ‘Shakespeare effect’ was presented by Woolf mainly to address the limitations that (at her time) past and present women writers face. Woolf’s women Shakespeare is a fictional creation that as Woolf’s story of her progresses represents the simple fact that any women with the exceptional abilities of Shakespeare would be denied the same opportunities to develop them because of the ‘doors’ that are closed to women. Judith, like the young Woolf, stays home while her brother goes off to school and is therefore trapped within the home: “she was as adventurous, as imaginative, as agog to see the world as he was. But she was not sent to school.” This prose holds the hopes of ‘Judith’ against that of William (Shakespeare) in the first sentence, then it abruptly curtails her chances of fulfilling her potential with a “but” and from then on the Shakespeare part of this book tells the sad story of Judith’s wasted potential leading and representing the reality that women are trapped within the expectations of women. For Woolf, Judith Shakespeare ends up becoming an exemplification of the danger and waste in denying women education and the means to determine the course of their own lives.
Woolf’s building of a history of women’s writing is critically constructed. She examines the careers of several different women; Aphra Behn, Jane Austen, the Brontë sisters, Anne Finch, Countess of Winchilsea, and George Eliot. Also Woolf discusses and draws inspiration from Jane Ellen Harrison who, in the essay, is only represented by her initials. While Woolf criticises the way these women hid their intelligence, she also mentions some commonly referred to antifeminists, Lord Birkenhead and Oscar Browning. When Woolf brings up the topic of Lord Birkenhead she plainly reveals her position on this topic by saying that she will not “trouble to copy out Lord Birkenhead’s opinion upon the writing of women”. This statement clearly shows her anger that anyone could believe any woman is not equal. Woolf uses the words of Oscar Browning’s biographer (“…the impression left on his mind, after looking over any set of examination papers, was that… the best woman was intellectually the inferior of the worst man.”) to subtly refer to prominent intellectuals of the time and her hybrid name of Oxford and Cambridge (Oxbridge) in a rather controlled way. This clearly presents to her audience her ability as an intellectual to pose an intellectually comical rebuttal.
It is interesting that to convey one of her messages that women everywhere are threatened by the ‘spectre of death’ Woolf uses the four mentioned Marys; Mary Beton, Mary Seton, Mary Carmichael and Mary Hamilton. Woolf identifies that the four Marys, and herself, exist as outsiders in a potentially dangerous space. It is intended that the four Marys, like Judith Shakespeare (whom dies by her own hand after becoming pregnant with the child of an actor), are ‘pregnant’ and trapped in a life that is imposed upon them. The main detail attained from Woolf’s four Marys along with Judith Shakespeare is that Woolf herself see’s these women and others that are powerless and impoverished as simply threatened by the man made and held ‘spectre of death’.
The topic of lesbianism introduced purposefully into Woolf’s essay with the mention of the writer Mary Carmichael is interesting because what it conveys to her audience doesn’t seem to be along the lines of what she has been saying so far (“Women need a room of their own”) but rather amusingly it seems that Woolf was giving Radclyffe Hall (the hall the original lecture took place in) a demonstration on how to present and write a lesbian themed lecture or piece of literature. This was criticised by one of Woolf’s scholars ‘Jane Marcus’ mainly, I believe, because this section of her essay has nothing to do with the freedom of women. However the freedom of women was the topic of Woolf’s ramble upon lesbians. Woolf’s demonstration of how to write about lesbianism is a fascinating method that she used to get across that all women have the right to do as they please just as much as men have.
Virginia Woolf’s essay, lecture and book “a room of one’s own” Is a delicate essay that flows from one theme to the next. Each of these themes have many internal meanings which when all brought together reveal a co-ordinated thesis which Woolf conveys to all the women whom she focuses upon. This thesis is that a room must be had so that women can write and that money is needed to write but most importantly women must own themselves. Woolf’s use of a mental journey to show the women of Radcyffe hall her beliefs is spectacular and thrilling once realised. This journey went from; the lack of access women have to education, through a fictional character which had opportunities denied to her, back through the history of women literature and their weaknesses in not standing up for themselves, to the four Marys that withheld their fear of denial and ‘men’ in their hearts and finally towards the cover of lesbianism which when unveiled showed the internal need for women to write and be acknowledged. Virginia Woolf’s essay is a wonderfully complicated piece of work that takes great concentration to perceive the message behind the continuous educated and concise rebuttal.
