Rhetoric in Woolf\'s Shakespeare\'s Sister

¶ … Rhetoric in Woolf's "Shakespeare's Sister"

Virginia Woolf's famous non-fiction work a Room of One's Own concludes with an essay on "Shakespeare's Sister." In this piece, Woolf argues that had Shakespeare had a sister who was as talented as he was, it would have been impossible for her to make a living as a writer owing to the societal limitations imposed on her by her gender during that period. Woolf convincingly claims that the act of writing has previously been limited to men, as women were expected and forced to fulfill certain roles and denied freedom of choice. They were harshly punished and ostracized from society were they to attempt to deviate from their assigned roles. In this essay, we will explore the reasons why Woolf's piece is just as effective as an argument today as it must have been when it was originally published. In particular, we will explore how the use of rhetoric - in particular, Woolf's usage of quotation, invention, and tone - combine to persuade us as to the veracity of her argument.

Woolf's argument is supported by references from such learned works as George Macaulay's History of England:

Wife-beating," I read, "was a recognized right of man, and was practised without shame by high as well as low... Similarly," the historian goes on, "the daughter who refused to marry the gentleman of her parents' choice was liable to be locked up, beaten and flung about the room, without any shock being inflicted on public opinion. 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" (Woolf 765).

Through the use of quotation, in this case by an authoritative scholar of history, Woolf is able to support her argument that the rights of women had been severely restricted prior to the 18th century. This is why, Woolf reasons, there are no great literary works to have been penned by women in this period - at least none that have survived.

Quotation is often employed as a rhetorical device for bolstering one's argument. It is frequent not only in literary essays, but also in daily conversation; when we want to support an opinion we are expressing, we often call upon the opinions of others, or a fact that is somehow confirmed elsewhere, outside of us, as a means of assuring the listener or reader that we are not alone in our judgments.

This is why Woolf returns to quotation again and again as a stylistic device throughout her essay:

Nick Greene, I thought, remembering the story I had made about Shakespeare's sister, said that a woman acting put him in mind of a dog dancing. Johnson repeated the phase two hundred years later of women preaching (Woolf 774).

Were Woolf to unequivocally state, "Men used to think that women can't act or speak," and then moved on to her next thought, then we hardly would be convinced by her argument. In order to be fully convinced, we rely on that traditional rhetorical supplement known as quotation.

The invention of a talented sister for Shakespeare is one of Woolf's greatest rhetorical inventions. Judith Shakespeare becomes a metaphor not merely for the role of woman in society during Shakespeare's time, but for the plight of all women in general, and all women artists in particular - including, in both categories, Woolf herself.

Finally, the tone of Woolf's essay sweeps us up into her argument from the very beginning and forces us to engage with the issues at hand. Woolf's tone is established at the conclusion of the first paragraph, when she gets right down to business and, like a strict school teacher, instructs us as to what we are about to do:

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 (Woolf 764-765).

In such sentences, Woolf effectively manages to combine the pedantic with the argumentative in a tone that strays free of arrogance in its plaintive appeal to the truth. Importantly, it is not a strictly "masculine" or "feminine" tone, as these qualities have been historically defined (i.e. objective vs. subjective.) Rather, it somehow combines the two into a stunning display of intellectual vibrancy that defies the premise that intellect is tied to one's gender.