Shakespeare’s Sister and Creative Freedom in A Room of One’s Own. 23 March 2024
Virginia Woolf Season IV: Woolf and Freedom. Live online.
Lecture 7. Shakespeare’s Sister and Creative Freedom in A Room of One’s Own (1929), with Varsha Panjwani.
What does it mean to have creative freedom for women? What kind of creativity is fuelled by freedom? What can women create to obtain freedom if we don’t have it? These are the questions that we still grapple with; these are the questions posed by Virginia Woolf in A Room of One’s Own.
This lecture examines the beating heart of Woolf’s germinal essay - Judith Shakespeare - and argues that it is through this fictional sister to Shakespeare that Woolf asks us to consider the link between women’s freedom and their creativity. Although Woolf’s Judith is denied the same creative opportunities as her brother and, in frustration, kills herself, this imaginary sister is far from dead. Shakespeare’s sister appears everywhere from Marilyn French’s novel, The Women’s Room, to Emma Whipday’s play, Shakespeare’s Sister; from Suzanne Belamy’s collage to a song by The Smiths; from Lesli Linka Glatter’s movie, The Proposition, to Nickelodeon’s animated television series, Doug.
As Judith Shakespeare reincarnates, writers fictionalize their own struggles for creative freedom through her. In other words, feminist writers employ the figure of Shakespeare’s ‘wonderfully gifted’ sister to demonstrate how the material and emotional labours expected of women are obstacles in the path of their creative aspirations but, paradoxically, they also use her to make room for women’s creativity.
The lecture will discuss Woolf’s creative strategies in crafting this fictional sister and will elaborate on why Judith Shakespeare is central to A Room of One’s Own. It will also consider the enduring legacy of Shakespeare’s sister in numerous other texts to analyse the ways in which writers have contributed towards fulfilling Woolf’s wish that we create a world in which the creative drive of Shakespeare’s sisters can thrive.
Saturday 23 March 2024
18.00-20.00 British Summer Time
19.00-21.00 Central European Summer Time
Price
£32.00 Full price
£27.00 Students, CAMcard holders
£27.00 Members of the VWSGB
All prices include VAT at 20%.