Brief Questions Shakespeare’s Sister

Answer

Brief Questions Shakespeare’s Sister 

• What is a perennial puzzle for the author?

Ans: The author wonders why no woman wrote during the Elizabethan age though men did.

• Why does the author say fiction is like a spider’s web?

Ans: Because fiction, like a web, is delicate and must be connected with real life.

• What kind of affair was marriage in the Elizabethan age?

Ans: Marriage was a matter of family greed, especially among the rich.

• What was the position of women during the Stuart period?

Ans: It remained the same—women still could not choose their own husbands.

• What did law and custom make the husband?

Ans: Law and custom made the husband lord and master of his wife.

• What contrast is found between poetry and history about women?

Ans: Women fill poetry everywhere but are almost absent from history.

• What difference exists between women in fiction and reality?

Ans: In fiction, women are wise and strong, but in real life, they were uneducated and weak.

• What does the writer not feel sure of?

Ans: She is unsure how Elizabethan women were educated or how they spent their days.

• At what age were Elizabethan women usually married?

Ans: They were married at about fifteen or sixteen.

• What did an old bishop remark about women?

Ans: He said no woman, past or future, could ever have Shakespeare’s genius.

• Why could a woman genius not be born in the Elizabethan age?

Ans: Because women were uneducated, forced to marry early, and lacked freedom.

• What does the author say about Shakespeare’s state of mind?

Ans: She says Shakespeare never revealed his feelings while writing his plays.

• Why do mighty poets die in misery?

Ans: Because the world remains indifferent