Shakespeare's Sister : Quotations
Shakespeare's Sister is a notable literary work by Virginia Woolf. A complete discussion of this literary work is given, which will help you enhance your literary skills and prepare for the exam. Read the Main texts, Key info, Summary, Themes, Characters, Literary devices, Quotations, Notes, and various study materials of Shakespeare's Sister.
Quotations
Quotes
“A very queer, composite being thus emerges. Imaginatively she is of the highest
importance; practically she is completely insignificant.”
Explanation: Woolf means that in literature women are celebrated and glorified, but in real life they were treated as powerless and invisible.
“Fiction is like a spider’s web, attached ever so lightly perhaps, but still attached to life at all four corners.”
Explanation: She compares fiction to a delicate web that is always connected to real life, even if very lightly.
“Women have burnt like beacons in all the works of all the poets from the beginning of time.”
Explanation: She says that women have always been bright and central figures in poetry, but only as imagined by men.
“She (Women) is all but absent from history.”
Explanation: Woolf points out that history books rarely mention women, except queens or noble ladies.
“Cats do not go to heaven. Women cannot write the plays of Shakespeare.”
Explanation: She uses irony to mock the absurd male beliefs that limited women’s creativity.
“Let me imagine, since facts are so hard to come by, what would have happened had Shakespeare had a wonderfully gifted sister, called Judith.”
Explanation: Woolf imagines a fictional sister of Shakespeare to explore how society destroys female talent.
“Anon, who wrote so many poems without singing them, was often a woman.”
Explanation: She claims that many anonymous writers in history were actually women whose names were hidden.
“Chastity had then, it has even now, a religious importance in a woman’s life.”
Explanation: Woolf says that society controlled women by making chastity a sacred duty.
“It is one of the great advantages of being a woman that one can pass even a very fine negress without wishing to make an Englishwoman of her.”
Explanation: She humorously says women are free from the possessive instincts that dominate men.
“If ever a human being got his work expressed completely, it was Shakespeare. If ever a mind was incandescent, unimpeded, I thought, turning again to the bookcase, it was Shakespeare’s mind.”
Explanation: Woolf praises Shakespeare’s pure and free creative mind, which was free from anger or ego.
“The best woman was intellectually the inferior of the worst man.”
Explanation: This line was said by Mr. Oscar Browning, a Cambridge examiner. He meant that even the most intelligent woman was less capable than the least intelligent man. Woolf uses this quote to show how unfairly society judged women’s intellect.