Ghiglia Woolf

Ghiglia Woolf (1882- 194 1) gave a series of lectures on women and novels at Cambridge University, and his thoughts became the basis of the later landmark work My Room. In the following anthology, Woolf looks for information about English women in the Renaissance. Suppose Shakespeare has a sister named Judea, and describe her unfortunate situation in Elizabethan England.

So, I came to the bookshelf where the history books were displayed, and took down a newly published book, Professor Treviyan's History of England. I looked up "women" again, found "their status", and then turned to the marked pages. "Beating a wife," I read, "is a man's recognized right, and the upper class or the lower class can do it openly ... Similarly," historians continue to say, "a daughter who refuses to marry a man chosen by her parents may be locked in a room and beaten without causing a slight shock to public opinion. Marriage has nothing to do with personal feelings, but with the family's greed for wealth, especially in the "chivalrous" upper class ... Engagement is often held when one or both parties are still in infancy, and marriage is usually held before they leave the nanny's care. " This is about 1470, which is very close to Chaucer's time. About 200 years later, in the Stuart period, the status of women was mentioned again. "Upper-middle class women still can't choose their husbands. Once a husband is appointed, he is the monarch and master, at least laws and customs can make him so. Even so, trevelyan concluded, "Women in Shakespeare's works, like those in credible biographies in the17th century, … are not lacking in individuality and characteristics. ..... Indeed, if a woman does not exist except in novels written by men, people will imagine her as an extremely important person; Variety; Noble and despicable; It is radiant, sloppy and greedy, beautiful and ugly; As great as men, some people even feel greater than men. But this is just a woman in the novel. In fact, as Professor trevelyan pointed out, she was locked in her room and kicked.

A very unique and complex creature appeared like this. In imagination, she is extremely important; In fact, she is nothing. She is full of the title page of poetry; She is everywhere, but she doesn't appear in history. She controls the lives of kings and conquerors in novels; In fact, as long as her parents forcibly put the ring on her finger, she is the slave of any boy. Some of the most inspirational words and profound thoughts in literature are all spit out from her mouth; In real life, she can hardly read and spell, which is her husband's property.

Reading the historian's book first, then the poet's book, people must have conceived a strange monster-a bug with eagle wings; The spirit of life and beauty is chopping board oil in the kitchen. But these monsters, no matter how ridiculous they think, don't actually exist. To make her lifelike, we must think poetically and realistically at the same time, so as to combine with reality-she is Mrs. Martin, 36 years old, wearing blue clothes, a black hat and brown shoes; Don't forget the novel-she is a container in which all kinds of spirits and forces keep chasing and flashing. However, once people try to apply this method to Elizabethan women, they can't get some enlightenment; Unable to proceed due to lack of facts. People don't know any details about her, anything real and substantial. History rarely mentions her. ..... Occasionally mention a woman, an Elizabeth, or a Mary; Some queen or some lady. However, middle-class women can't dominate anything except their brains and morality, and they can never take part in any great sports, which together constitute historians' views on the past. We won't find her in any anecdotes. Aubrey hardly mentioned her. She never describes her life and hardly keeps a diary. She only has a few letters. She didn't leave any plays or poems for us to evaluate her. I think what people need is a lot of information (why doesn't a talented student at Newham College or Gordon College provide such information): at what age did she get married; Generally speaking, there are several children; What is her house like? Do you have your own room? Does she cook? Does she have a servant? All these facts are somewhere, perhaps in the parish notebooks and books; Biographies of ordinary Elizabethan women must be scattered somewhere. If someone can collect them, they can be written in books. When looking for books that are not on the shelf, I think it is beyond my courage to suggest rewriting history to students in famous universities. Although I admit that this requirement often seems a bit odd, unrealistic and biased, why can't they add something to history? Of course, this supplement must use an obscure name, so that women can appear in it. Why don't they do this? People often catch a glimpse of the great men in biographies and disappear into the background in an instant. Sometimes I think what is hidden is a wink, a smile, maybe a tear. ..... I feel very sad, before18th century, we knew nothing about women. I don't have an example in my mind that I can think over and over again. Here I want to ask why there were no women writing poems in Elizabethan times, and I'm not sure how they were educated. Whether they have learned to write; Whether you have your own living room; How many women gave birth before 2 1 year old; Generally speaking, what did they do from eight in the morning to eight in the evening? Obviously they have no money; According to Professor trevelyan, whether they like it or not, they got married before they left the children's room, probably when they were fifteen or sixteen. Based on this, I come to the conclusion that it would be really strange if one of them suddenly wrote Shakespeare's plays. I think of an old gentleman who died. I think he was a bishop. He declared that no woman had Shakespeare's genius in the past, present and future. He has written a manuscript for the newspaper on this issue. He also told a woman who consulted him that cats can't actually go to heaven, he added, although they have some kind of soul. How hard these old gentlemen have worked to save lives! In their way, the boundaries of ignorance have narrowed! Cats can't get into heaven. Women cannot write Shakespeare's plays.

Anyway, when I was looking through Shakespeare's works on the shelf, I couldn't help thinking that the Bishop was right at least in this respect: it was impossible for any woman in Shakespeare's time to write Shakespeare's plays, absolutely impossible. Let me imagine, since it is so difficult to get the truth, what if Shakespeare had an amazing sister, let's just call her Judith? Shakespeare himself probably went to grammar school (his mother is an heiress), where he may have studied Latin-Ovid, Virgil and Horace, as well as the basics of grammar and logic. As we all know, he is a wild child, stealing rabbits and perhaps hitting deer. Moreover, he had to hurry to marry the woman next door, and she gave birth to a doll for him in less than ten months. This deviant behavior forced him to try his luck in London. It seems that he is very interested in drama; At first, he led a horse at the gate of the theater. Soon, he found a job in the theater, became an accomplished actor, lived in the center of the universe, met all kinds of people, practiced his art on the stage, showed his wit in the street, and even went in and out of the Queen's palace. In the meantime, we might as well assume that his talented sister stays at home. She is as adventurous, imaginative and eager to see the world as he is. But she didn't send her to school. She had no chance to learn grammar and logic, let alone read Horace and Virgil. She occasionally picks up a book, which may be her brother's, and reads a few pages. But then her parents came in and told her to mend socks, or watch stew, or forget books and newspapers. They are sarcastic but kind-hearted, because they are a well-off family, know the living conditions of women and love their daughter-really, she is probably the apple of her father's eye. Perhaps, she secretly painted a few pages in the attic where the apples were stored, but she carefully hid them or burned them. However, not long after, when she was only a teenager, she was betrothed to the son of a nearby wool merchant. She strongly objected that she hated marriage, but her father gave her a good beating for it. Then her father stopped scolding her. In turn, he asked her not to hurt him or humiliate him in the marriage. He said he would give her a beaded ornament or a delicate skirt; There are tears in his eyes. How can she not listen to him? How can she break his heart? However, the strength of her own talent alone pushed her to this step. She packed her things into a small bag, dragged a rope, and slipped downstairs on a summer night, passing through London. She is not yet 17 years old. The bird singing in the hedge is not as beautiful as her. Her tone of voice has the most agile imagination, which is similar to her brother's talent. Like him, she is interested in drama. She stood at the door of the theater, and she said she wanted to act. The men laughed in front of her. The theater manager, a chubby and talkative man, burst out laughing. He boasted that a woman acting is like a poodle dancing-he said that no woman can be an actress. He hinted-you can imagine what he implied. She can't get technical training. Can she find food in the inn or wander the streets in the middle of the night? However, her talent is fictitious, and she is eager to get rich nutrition from the life of men and women and the study of their lifestyles. Finally-because she is very young, her face looks strangely like the poet Shakespeare, with the same gray eyes and curved eyebrows-finally Nick Green, the actor's agent, sympathized with her. She found herself pregnant with that gentleman's child, so-when the poet's heart is trapped in a woman's body and can't break free, who knows how hot and fierce the poet's heart will become? One winter night, she committed suicide and was buried at a crossroads, just outside the elephant and castle inn where the carriage stopped.

I think that if a woman in Shakespeare's time had Shakespeare's genius, her story would develop like this. But as far as I am concerned, I still agree with the late bishop, if he is really a bishop-it is hard to imagine that any woman in Shakespeare's time could have Shakespeare's genius. Because a genius like Shakespeare doesn't come from a manual worker, an uneducated person, but a slave. Genius didn't come from Saxons and Britten in England in the past, and it won't come from the working class now. So, how did it come from those women? According to Professor trevelyan, they started working almost before they left the children's room. Their parents forced them, and the forces of law and custom firmly bound them. However, just as this or that kind of genius must exist in the working class, it must also exist in women. A emily bronte or robert burns shines from time to time to prove the existence of this genius. But, of course, genius never writes on paper. However, when reading that a witch is trapped in the water, or a woman is possessed by the devil, or a clever woman is selling herbs, or even a very outstanding man has a mother, I think we are expected to find a vanished novelist, a repressed poet, a silent and unknown Austin, and a emily bronte. She was tortured by her genius and pulled her head desperately in the wilderness. Indeed, I want to speculate further that most of Nong, who wrote so many unsigned poems, was a woman. I think, Edward Fitzgerald thinks, it was a woman who wrote those folk songs, sang them to her children in a low voice, and sang and spun yarn in that long winter night.

This may or may not be true-who can tell? However, looking back at the story of my sister Shakespeare, I think the fact is that any woman who was born in the16th century and has great talent is bound to commit suicide crazily or spend the rest of her life in a lonely hut outside the village, half like a witch and half like a warlock, which makes people afraid and ridiculed. Because you don't need too many psychological skills, you can say for sure that a talented woman who tries to use her talents in poetry will be opposed and obstructed by others in this way, and will be tortured and torn by her contradictory instinct, so she will definitely lose her health and reason.