l affection, but of family avarice.”
Her death exposes how family and society together destroyed a woman’s freedom and identity.
No Scope for Education or Talent: Judith’s suicide also stands for the death of women’s intellect. While Shakespeare went to grammar school, Judith stayed at home, told to “mend the stockings or mind the stew.” She had imagination but no chance to learn or think. She tried secretly to write, but fear and shame made her burn her papers. Society believed that women should be silent and obedient. Her ignorance was not her fault. It was forced upon her by men who denied her mind.
Society’s Hostility to Genius: Woolf clearly states that
“All the conditions of her life, all her own instincts, were hostile to the state of mind which is needed to set free whatever is in the brain.”
Judith had the same gift as Shakespeare but lacked freedom, education, and privacy. When she ran away to London, she was ridiculed by theatre people and ultimately betrayed. Society’s cruelty made her feel unworthy of living. Her suicide was not weakness but a result of a world that hated women’s genius.
Death as the End of Suppression: Judith’s death represents the final stage of suppression. She could not live in a world that insulted her dreams. Woolf’s sympathy is deep when she says Judith “found herself with child” and killed herself “one winter night.” Her death is not only personal tragedy. Rather, it is the destruction of many women’s hidden genius. Like Woolf writes,
“Mighty poets in their misery dead.”
The misery here is social, not personal; it comes from injustice that silences women forever.
Historical Silence and Lost Voices: Woolf points out that even history ignores women like Judith. Historians recorded the lives of kings and queens, not the sufferings of ordinary women. The author says,
“The moment, however, that one tries this method... one is held up by the scarcity of facts.”
This absence proves that many Judiths lived, dreamed, and died unheard. Their suicides were silent protests against a system that gave them no right to live freely or create beauty like men.
In short, Judith’s suicide is Woolf’s powerful symbol of women’s crushed genius and broken freedom. It reveals that a woman of talent could not live in the sixteenth century without losing her honour or her life. Through Judith’s tragedy, Woolf mourns the wasted potential of countless women. She also urges society to give women “a room of their own” so that no genius must die unseen again.
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