This reflection is inspired by Virginia Woolf’s book A Room of One’s Own, and by the thoughtful podcast Zong Heng Si Hai (纵横四海) by Xieyin Melody, whose cultural commentary on literature and society offers a powerful lens through which to revisit Woolf’s ideas today.

If Shakespeare had a sister, equally talented and imaginative, would we ever have heard her voice? To explore this question, let’s turn to Virginia Woolf’s A Room of One’s Own, in which she argued that: “A woman must have money and a room of her own if she is to write fiction.”

Money represents economic independence, while a room of one’s own represents intellectual and psychological freedom, a protected mental space where one’s thoughts and feelings can develop without constant interruption or social control. Only when these two conditions exist can a person truly possess the freedom of mind required for creativity and self-expression.

Oxbridge and the Conditions of Women’s Writing

In order to create narrative freedom, Woolf invents a fictional university called Oxbridge, a combination of Oxford and Cambridge in her book. She also renames the women’s colleges where she delivered her lectures as Fernham.

The name is symbolic. Fern refers to a type of wild plant. In her podcast, Xieyin Melody offers an interesting explanation of the name. Some readers believe Woolf chose “Fernham” because the gardens of women’s colleges were often poorly maintained due to limited funding. Others read it as a metaphor: women, like wild ferns, growing quietly and resiliently in the overlooked corners of intellectual life.

During her lecture on “Women and Fiction,” Woolf imagines herself sitting by the river, thinking about the topic. With a hint of irony, she suggests that if one were to discuss women writers, perhaps one could only mention a small handful of names:

Frances Burney

Jane Austen

Charlotte Brontë

Emily Brontë

Mary Russell Mitford

George Eliot

and Elizabeth Gaskell.

Even within literary history, the list of recognized women writers once seemed surprisingly short.

The Beginning of a Female Literary Tradition

One of the earliest figures Woolf mentions is Frances Burney, who published her novel Evelina at the age of twenty-six. The novel follows a young woman navigating the complexities of London society and helped establish what later became known as the novel of manners. Rather than focusing on heroic adventures, this type of fiction examines social rituals, class structures, and everyday life, often with subtle satire that exposes the hypocrisy behind polite society, as explained by Xieyin Melody in her podcast.

Jane Austen and the Female Sentence

It was Jane Austen who refined this literary tradition. Beyond perfecting the novel of manners, Austen developed a distinctive narrative voice that Woolf later described as “the female sentence.” While much of the dominant literary language of the time was grand, authoritative, and rigid, Austen’s prose was fluid, witty, ironic, and precise. Her writing captured the subtleties of social interaction through a perspective that was both observant and quietly rebellious. For example, the famous opening line of Pride and Prejudice reads:

“It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife.”

At first glance, the sentence sounds like a confident social rule. Yet the irony quickly becomes clear: in reality, it is often families with unmarried daughters who are most eager to find wealthy husbands. Austen’s sentence gently exposes the economic logic behind marriage while maintaining an elegant, conversational tone.

In Pride and Prejudice, Elizabeth Bennet emerges as one of the earliest female characters in literature with a clear sense of individual agency. She observes, reasons, and forms her own judgments, an approach that marked a significant shift in how women could appear within fiction.

The Other Reality of Women Writers

Yet not all women writers had the relatively stable life that allowed Austen the time and freedom to write.

Mary Russell Mitford, known for her collection Our Village, wrote constantly to support her financially irresponsible father, despite her literary success.

George Eliot, whose real name was Mary Ann Evans, adopted a male pen name in order to be taken seriously by the literary establishment. Her masterpiece Middlemarch is now considered one of the greatest novels of the Victorian era.

Meanwhile, Elizabeth Gaskell explored social tensions of industrial Britain in North and South and later wrote the influential biography The Life of Charlotte Brontë. Through her work, she helped shape the public understanding of Brontë’s life and legacy.

In a sense, this represents an early form of “girls supporting girls.” Through writing, documenting, and remembering one another, these women ensured that at least some female voices would survive within literary history.

Yet even with these remarkable writers, the number of women whose names survived in literary history remained strikingly small. This raises an important question: why were so many female voices missing from the record in the first place? To illustrate the historical barriers faced by women, Woolf introduces one of the most memorable thought experiments in literary criticism: Shakespeare’s imaginary sister.

Shakespeare and Judith

Let us imagine that William Shakespeare had a sister, equally gifted, equally brilliant. Woolf names her Judith.

Shakespeare himself was able to attend school, study Latin, read classical texts, and learn grammar and rhetoric. As a young man he travelled to London in search of opportunity. Drawn to the theatre, he began working around the playhouses, eventually becoming an actor and playwright. His career flourished; he performed on stage, moved within artistic circles, and was even summoned to perform before the queen. His life unfolded at the cultural centre of his time.

But what about Judith? Judith would have shared the same curiosity about the world. She might also have longed for education, books, and intellectual discovery. Yet she would not have been allowed to attend school. Even if she secretly taught herself to read and picked up her brother’s books, she would likely be interrupted after only a few pages, called away to mend stockings, stir pots, or complete household chores. Reading, after all, was considered an unnecessary distraction for girls.

By her teenage years, marriage would be arranged for her. Suppose she resisted. Suppose she protested, cried, or refused. In Woolf’s imagined story, such defiance would not be met with understanding but with anger. She would be reminded not to shame the family, not to disobey her father, not to bring dishonour through rebellion.

But let us imagine she escaped. Like her brother, Judith might run away to London, driven by her love of theatre. She might stand outside the theatre doors asking for a chance to act.

What would happen? Most likely the men would laugh. For centuries, women entering intellectual or artistic fields have often been mocked in remarkably similar ways, whether they attempt to write, preach, compose music, or speak publicly.

The ridicule rarely changes; it simply reappears every few generations. Woolf once compared such attitudes to watching a dog attempting to walk on its hind legs. The surprising thing, people say, is not that it does it well, but that it does it at all.

And even if Judith persisted, the freedoms available to her brother would remain inaccessible to her. Could she wander the streets at night? Meet strangers in taverns? Build networks of fellow writers and performers?

Almost certainly not.

In Woolf’s imagined narrative, Judith’s story ends tragically. Vulnerable and unsupported, she becomes involved with a theatre manager and finds herself pregnant. Her extraordinary talent, equal to Shakespeare’s, never has the chance to develop. Her life, and her potential, disappear before they can be realised.

Woolf writes that she dies young and is buried anonymously at a crossroads. Her genius vanishes with her.

The Silence of History

Judith represents more than a single fictional character. She symbolises the countless women whose creativity was never recorded, whose voices were never heard, and whose stories never entered literary history. As Xieyin Melody points out in her discussion of A Room of One’s Own, Woolf often imagined the hidden lives behind the fragments of history. Whenever she read about a woman accused of witchcraft, a woman said to be possessed by the devil, or a village herbalist condemned as a witch, Woolf felt that behind these figures there might have been a silenced novelist or a suppressed poet, perhaps even a hidden Jane Austen, forced into anonymity.

Woolf suggests that many anonymous poems and songs throughout history may have been written by women. It was often women who composed ballads and folk songs, singing quietly to their children while enduring the monotony of long winter evenings. These songs survived, but their creators’ names rarely did.

Why, then, did so few of these women leave their names in history?

One reason, Woolf suggests, lies in the social constraints women faced. Even if a woman managed to overcome the barriers to education and creativity, she could still face accusations of impropriety simply for making her voice public. For centuries, female visibility itself was often treated as a threat to moral virtue. A woman who wrote, spoke publicly, or appeared in cultural life could easily be labelled immodest or shameful. Breaking free from this deeply internalised expectation required extraordinary courage.

For centuries, women were denied education, economic independence, professional networks, and the freedom to live outside rigid social expectations. What is striking is how echoes of these limitations still exist today. In some parts of the world, women still need permission from male relatives simply to leave the house or pursue education. Even in more modern contexts, subtle forms of restriction remain: women may be asked in job interviews whether they are married or planning to have children, and their professional opportunities may shrink as they grow older or start families, because employers assume they will need to prioritise childcare, which may interfere with their work.

Under such conditions, creative potential was often stifled before it could even begin.

The Poet Still Lives

As Xieyin Melody reflects in her discussion of A Room of One’s Own, one of the most troubling questions Woolf raises is this: When women’s horizons are gradually and invisibly narrowed, can true freedom still exist?

Sometimes these limitations are so subtle that they appear natural, framed as “family roles,” “traditional divisions of labour,” or the idea that women should focus more on domestic responsibility than on intellectual or creative exploration. Yet these narratives can quietly shape the boundaries of what women believe they are allowed to see, pursue, or imagine.

Recognising this shrinking of perspective is therefore the first step toward resisting it.

At the end of A Room of One’s Own, Woolf returns to the figure of Shakespeare’s imaginary sister, the gifted poet who never had the chance to write and whose life ended in silence. But Woolf refuses to believe she is truly gone. She writes that the poet who never wrote a word, buried at a crossroads, is still alive. She lives in the minds of women everywhere: in those who are not in lecture halls or literary circles tonight, but perhaps washing dishes or putting children to sleep.

And one day, when women have the material independence Woolf imagined, five hundred pounds a year (though we need more money today) and a room of one’s own, when they cultivate the habit of freedom and dare to write what they truly think, the lost poet may finally return.

When that moment comes, Woolf suggests, Shakespeare’s sister will rise again. Drawing strength from generations of forgotten women, she will speak, and this time, the world will hear her.

Perhaps this is also what International Women’s Day invites us to remember: that the voices once silenced are still with us, waiting for the space, the freedom, and the courage to be heard. After all, as John Donne wrote, no one is an island, entire of itself. Every voice is a piece of the continent, a part of the main. Our relationship is not merely between men and women, but between human beings and the real world. And when that relationship becomes freer and more honest, it benefits everyone.

And perhaps somewhere among us, Shakespeare’s sister is still writing, finally with a room of her own.

By Huiwen Wang, SGO Projects Officer