<P> In one section, Woolf invented a fictional character, Judith, "Shakespeare's sister," to illustrate that a woman with Shakespeare's gifts would have been denied the same opportunities to develop them because of the doors that were closed to women . Like Woolf, who stayed at home while her brothers went off to school, Judith stays at home while William goes off to school . Judith is trapped in the home: "She was as adventurous, as imaginative, as agog to see the world as he was . But she was not sent to school ." While William learns, Judith is chastised by her parents should she happen to pick up a book, as she is inevitably abandoning some household chore to which she could be attending . Judith is betrothed, and when she does not want to marry, she is beaten and then shamed into marriage by her father . While Shakespeare establishes himself, Judith is trapped by the confines of the expectations of women . Judith kills herself, and her genius goes unexpressed, while Shakespeare lives on and establishes his legacy . </P> <P> In the essay, Woolf constructs a critical and historical account of women writers thus far . Woolf examines the careers of several female authors, including Aphra Behn, Jane Austen, the Brontë sisters, Anne Finch, Countess of Winchilsea, and George Eliot . In addition to female authors, Woolf also discusses and draws inspiration from noted scholar and feminist Jane Ellen Harrison . Harrison is presented in the essay only by her initials separated by long dashes, and Woolf first introduces Harrison as "the famous scholar...J---- H---- herself". </P> <P> Woolf also discusses Rebecca West, questioning Desmond MacCarthy's (referred to as "Z") uncompromising dismissal of West as an "' arrant feminist"'. Among the men attacked for their views on women, F.E. Smith, 1st Earl of Birkenhead (referred to as "Lord Birkenhead") is mentioned, though Woolf further rebukes his ideas in stating she will not "trouble to copy out Lord Birkenhead's opinion upon the writing of women". Birkenhead was an opponent of suffrage . The essay quotes Oscar Browning through the words of his (possibly inaccurate) biographer H.E. Wortham: "'...the impression left on his mind, after looking over any set of examination papers, was that...the best woman was intellectually the inferior of the worst man ."' In addition to these mentions, Woolf subtly refers to several of the most prominent intellectuals of the time, and her hybrid name from the University of Oxford and the University of Cambridge--Oxbridge--has become a well - known term, although she was not the first to use it . </P> <P> The narrator of the work is at one point identified as "Mary Beaton, Mary Seton, or Mary Carmichael", alluding to the sixteenth century ballad Mary Hamilton . In referencing the tale of a woman about to be hanged for existing outside of marriage and rejecting motherhood, the narrator identifies women writers such as herself as outsiders who exist in a potentially dangerous space . It is important to note that Woolf's heroine, Judith Shakespeare, dies by her own hand, after she becomes pregnant with the child of an actor . Like the woman in the Four Marys, she is pregnant and trapped in a life imposed on her . Woolf sees Judith Shakespeare, Mary Beaton, Mary Seton, Mary Carmichael, as powerless, impoverished women everywhere as threatened by the spectre of death . </P>

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