Breaking down

“Shakespeare’s Sister”

Part 1: Read "Shakespeare's Sister: From a Room of One's Own" and identify the elements of
classical argument. Describe each element in your own words and include a quote from the text
as support.

Element Description/Quotes
Introduction: This is a paragraph that leads that audience to what the author will be
discussing the life of women in the Elizabethian times using only facts
rather than opinions and speculation. She clearly wants to avoid
opinion as she views it as too controversial and unproductive.

“It would be better to draw the curtains; to shut out distractions; to

light the lamp; to narrow the enquiry and to ask the historian, who
records not opinions but facts, to describe under what conditions
women lived, not throughout the ages, but in England, say in the time
of Elizabeth.”

Background: The point of this paragraph is to inform the audience about the lives of
women in the Elizabethan era. This quote in specific as well as others
about wife beating point out the facts behind women not having the
rights men have and being abused.

“Marriage was not an affair of personal affection, but of family avarice,

particularly in the 'chivalrous' upper classes. . . . Betrothal often took
place while one or both of the parties was in the cradle, and marriage
when they were scarcely out of the nurses' charge.”

The point that the author is making in this section of the essay/story is
that there is such little documentation of the lives of women in that
time that most of the women from that time that we picture today are
based only a little in fact and mostly on speculation. Because of this,
she is saying that the story she is about to make up about
Shakeshpeare’s sister Julia is mostly going to be the work of her
imagination and speculation on the few facts there are to read.

“That she is a vessel in which all sorts of spirits and forces are coursing
and flashing perpetually. The moment, however, that one tries this
method with the Elizabethan woman, one branch of illumination fails;
 one is held up by the scarcity of facts”

Lines of Argument: The quote following this description is part of Woolfe’s made up story
that describes what she thinks would be a realistic as possible
description of Shakespeare’s fictional sister. She builds a character that
is brilliant and ambitious, but uses the contrast between the fictional
sister and Shakespeare to point out how women could not follow their
ambitions like men could.

“She had the quickest fancy, a gift like her brother's, for the tune
of words. Like him, she had a taste for theatre. She stood at the stage
door; she wanted to act, she said. Men laughed in her face. The
manager--a fat, loose-lipped man--guffawed. He bellowed something
about poodles dancing and women acting--no woman, he said, could
possibly be an actress. He hinted--you can imagine what. She could get
no training in her craft. “

This following quote begins to include Woolfe’s personal take on the

few facts about women in the era and speculation based on the facts of
today. She begins to point out that, like today where there are still
talented people who come from disadvantaged positions, there must
have been women like that in the Elizabethan time, who were smart
but could not grow their passions because of their circumstances.

“Yet genius of a sort must have existed among women as it must have
existed among the working classes. “

This next quote is speculation from Woolfe which points out that from
what we know about physiology now, it is clear that such a talented
and ambitious woman then who was being suppressed would become
insane and depressed because of her crushing and limiting situation.

“For it needs little skill in psychology to be sure that a highly gifted girl
who had tried to use her gift for poetry would have been so thwarted
and hindered by other people, so tortured and pulled asunder by her
own contrary instincts, that she must have lost her health and sanity to
a certainty.

Following her speculative story based on imagination because of the

limited supply of facts from the time, Woolfe begins expanding on her
thesis by pointing out a few other natural causes that would elicit
women being able to have their own space. She points out that there
can be crazy environments full of noise where it is impossible to think.
 Because of this, the author thinks that women should have their own
room where they can think, collect themselves, and develop ideas
much like what men were allowed to do back then.

“Generally material circumstances are against it. Dogs will bark;

people will interrupt; money must be made; health will break down.
Further, accentuating all these difficulties and making them harder to
bear is the world's notorious indifference. It does not ask people to
write poems and novels and histories; it does not need them. It does
not care whether Flaubert finds the right word or whether Carlyle
scrupulously verifies this or that fact.”

Alternative Although her argument is based on speculation, Woolfe points out that
Arguments: there are certain conclusions that we can make today that are based in
fact of today, based in the science of human nature and feelings and
the behavior of women under similar circumstances that we know
more about like women only a century or a little more ago.

“But what is amusing now, I recollected, shutting Lady Bessborough,

had to be taken in desperate earnest once. Opinions that one now
pastes in a book labelled cock-a-doodle-dum and keeps for reading to
select audiences on summer nights once drew tears, I can assure you”

Conclusion: With such a limited supply of information, Woolfe acknowledges that in

the end, there was little that was actually known about Shakespeare’s
time or him himself. There is only a limited ability to make conclusions
based in fact before you must wander into the world of speculation
and imagination, where you use facts that you know to be true as a
vague direction of where to go with your speculation.

“For though we say that we know nothing about Shakespeare's state of

mind, even as we say that, we are saying something about
Shakespeare's state of mind. The reason perhaps why we know so little
of Shakespeare--compared with Donne or Ben Jonson or Milton--is that
his grudges and sprites and antipathies are hidden from us. We are not
held up by some "revelation" which reminds us of the writer. “

Part 2: Read the article A room of one's own: why women need to have their artistic voice
heard By Brigid Delaney
1. According to the author, why do women need to have their artistic voice heard?
The author points out that women, now that they are gaining the creative rights and
rights in general that they have been denied for so long, are beginning to show their
abilities and points out many famous names of women who have accomplished much
and made significant contributions to society.
2. What does the writer mean by "writers speak to each other through time and space?"
The author points out that this means that author’s works have immortal voices. This is
because authors may die, but their writing and works stay for all time. Authors speak to
each other because present or future authors continually see the immortal works of past
authors.