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 element they use is an introduction which can be seen as
ambiguous. Need to go straight to the facts to understand why somen
are poorer than men (see quote).

Could not any women write worthy literature, when men were proven
very capable?

Writing is attached to real life, especially fiction, and to make money

people have to write things, pleasing people. Therefore opinions are
often distorted by things, instead one needs to go straight to the facts.

“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:
Background is that women were often abused, their marriages were
seen as status symbols, not relationships, often married before they
had met the other person. They had little choice in some of the biggest
decisions they were making. Women were possibly portrayed
positively and much better than their lives actually were.

“Indeed, if woman had no existence save in the fiction written by men,

one would imagine her a person of the utmost importance; very
various; heroic and mean; splendid and sordid; infinitely beautiful and
hideous in the extreme; as great as a man, some think even greater.
But this is woman in fiction. In fact, as Professor Trevelyan points out,
she was locked up, beaten and flung about the room.”
 Women are so magnificently portrayed in the fictional world compared
to who they really are as a human.

Lines of Argument:
1. Nobody writes about women because they are not involved in
history. Men too often are the leaders of movements and
centers of societal change that historians want to include.
History does not record the simplistic roles, mainly parts of the
lives of women. Why did women not write in the Elizabethan
age? What would happen if Shakespeare had a sister, what
would those writings look like.
2. The suppressed women were the talented women. They may
have had to use anonymity to disguise their arguments. The
state of mind needed to be creative was not allowed because of
this suppressive nature,
“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. But what is the state of mind that is most propitious
to the act of creation, I asked.”
The world never asked for women to write things. This
suppressed their thoughts. Women are wrecked minding the
opinions of society.
3. Women support, and are servants to men. That was their lives.
They don’t meddle with serious business, that not being their
responsibility.

Alternative Alternative argument: To write a work of genius like men did was
Arguments: extremely difficult. Women didn’t have the capacity to do that.
It says that of the world, “It will not pay for what it does not want.”

Conclusion: Shakespeare/the best writers keep their mind in free thought and
unobstructed. With a clear mind, Shakespeare could write without
worry about what people would say about his writing, and his writing
was resultantly better. He didn’t desire to proclaim his injuries, he
desired to proclaim his mind. There is the inherent argument in here
that this is why women couldn’t write.
“There must be no obstacle in it, no foreign matter unconsumed.”

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?
We don’t know what happened in their lives, history doesn’t tell that story. Women have the
right to be heard now with recent reforms. Their history is told when they share what has
happened to them.
2. What does the writer mean by "writers speak to each other through time and space?"
In writing, all the writing of each writer blends together to form a larger picture. Each writer consumes
another's' writing, learns from it, and writes based upon what they have heard. There are little barriers
to who you are once you are out there.