Rhetoric in Woolf's Shakespeare's Sister Term Paper

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Johnson repeated the phase two hundred years later of women preaching (Woolf 774).

Were Woolf to unequivocally state, "Men used to think that women can't act or speak," and then moved on to her next thought, then we hardly would be convinced by her argument. In order to be fully convinced, we rely on that traditional rhetorical supplement known as quotation.

The invention of a talented sister for Shakespeare is one of Woolf's greatest rhetorical inventions. Judith Shakespeare becomes a metaphor not merely for the role of woman in society during Shakespeare's time, but for the plight of all women in general, and all women artists in particular - including, in both categories, Woolf herself.

Finally, the tone of Woolf's essay sweeps us up into her argument from the very beginning and forces us to engage with the issues at hand. Woolf's tone is established at the conclusion of the first paragraph, when she gets right down to business and, like a strict school teacher, instructs us as to what we are about to do:

It would be better to draw the curtains; to shut out distractions; to light the lamp; to narrow the enquiry and to ask the historian, who records not opinions but facts, to describe under what conditions women lived, not throughout the ages, but in England, say in the time of Elizabeth (Woolf 764-765).

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In such sentences, Woolf effectively manages to combine the pedantic with the argumentative in a tone that strays free of arrogance in its plaintive appeal to the truth. Importantly, it is not a strictly "masculine" or "feminine" tone, as these qualities have been historically defined (i.e. objective vs. subjective.) Rather, it somehow combines the two into a stunning display of intellectual vibrancy that defies the premise that intellect is tied to one's gender.

As the essay progresses, the author's tone increases in sharpness and intensity: "Literature is strewn with the wreckage of men who have minded beyond reason the opinion of others" (Woolf 775). Here, Woolf's tone combines the philosophical with the metaphorical, offering a keen insight into the psychology of genius that a more refined, restricted tone - filled with subtlety but devoid of passion - would fail to articulate.

It is not merely the content of Woolf's "Shakespeare's Sister" that has persuaded and inspired so many scholars and artists throughout the years. It is what that content consists of - namely, its rhetorical flourishes. Through an expert deployment of such rhetorical devices as quotation, invention, and tone, Woolf achieves the not insignificant task of defying traditional modes of perceiving the masculine and feminine in writing….....

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