Key Facts

• Full Title: Shakespeare’s Sister (an excerpt from A Room of One’s Own)
• Writer: Virginia Woolf (1882–1941)
• Title of the Author: Novelist, Essayist, Feminist, and Modernist Thinker; a central figure of the Bloomsbury Group
• Written Time: 1928 (originally delivered as a series of lectures at Newnham College and Girton College, Cambridge)
• First Published: 1929 (in A Room of One’s Own)
• Genre: Feminist Essay / Social Criticism / Literary Imagination / Argumentative Prose
• Tone: Analytical, Reflective, Ironical, Sympathetic, and Persuasive
• Form: Prose essay blending argument, fiction, and historical imagination; uses a hypothetical narrative of Shakespeare’s sister “Judith” to make a feminist point
• Narrative Voice: First-person reflective narrator (Virginia Woolf herself, combining intellect and imagination)
• Point of View: First-person (subjective, reflective, and socially critical perspective)
• Structure: Divided within A Room of One’s Own; this section focuses mainly on,
• The Social and Educational Inequality of Women
• The Imagined Life of Shakespeare’s Sister (Judith Shakespeare)
• The Impact of Patriarchal Society on Women’s Genius and Expression
• Style: Elegant and imaginative prose enriched with irony, symbolism, historical analysis, and emotional appeal. Woolf blends fact with fiction, using rhetorical questions, vivid imagery, and a conversational tone to engage readers.
• Central Idea: Women of genius, like men, have existed, but patriarchal society deprived them of education, independence, and creative opportunity. “Judith Shakespeare,” imagined as Shakespeare’s equally gifted sister, could never become a writer because society denied her freedom, education, and recognition.
• Significance: A landmark feminist essay exposing how social, economic, and educational inequality silenced women’s voices in literature. It became a foundation text for feminist literary criticism and women’s rights movements.
• Summary in One Line: “Genius needs freedom, and women were denied it.” (“প্রতিভার বিকাশের জন্য স্বাধীনতা দরকার—আর নারী সেই স্বাধীনতা থেকে বঞ্চিত ছিল।”)
• Setting:

• Place Setting: England (mainly Elizabethan London and Stratford, in imagination; also Woolf’s Cambridge lectures)
• Time Setting: 16th century (Elizabethan Age), contrasted with early 20th century England (modern feminist awakening)