Virginia Woolf & Carol Gilligan Term Paper

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In effect, because males became the model subjects for their experiments, male development was considered the normative kind of human development than those of women's. As the author contends, psychology and empirical studies about humans "have tended to regard male behavior as the 'norm' and female behavior as some kind of deviation from that norm...Thus, when women do not conform to the standards of psychological expectation, the conclusion has generally been that something is wrong with women."

Gilligan's arguments were echoed by Woolf's imaginative contemplation of the woman in the Elizabethan Age in "Shakespeare's Sister." Though composed many decades earlier than Gilligan's scientific inquiry into women subjugation, Woolf had provided a fairly accurate description of the life of women during her time in the context of the Shakespeare's society. Using the character of Judith, whom Woolf purported as the great playwright Shakespeare's sister, the author remarked how women were generally "...insignificant...absent from history...slave of any boy whose parents forced a ring upon her finger...could hardly read, could scarcely spell, and was the property of her husband."

Given these conditions, Woolf argues, it is then inevitable that Judith and all women like her would thrive to become successful artists in the Elizabethan Age. The author expresses regret because society has not allowed women to aspire for what they would have successfully become: an artist who is in tune with her feelings, uninhibited from all external influences (specifically society's influences).

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For Woolf, Shakespeare's art is a trait characterized mainly among women than men, and this fact makes his works of literature superior than the others. The feminine quality of Shakespeare's works is characterized as follows: "...his poetry flows from him free and unimpeded. If ever a human being got his work expressed completely, it was Shakespeare. If ever a mind was incandescent, unimpeded...turning against the bookcase, it was Shakespeare's mind." In effect, Woolf sets the conditions in which, like Shakespeare, women would have possibly attained had they not been excluded and impeded by their society. Woolf's essay on Shakespeare's sister provided a refreshing perspective in which literature had been, like psychology, continually dominated by males, thereby continuously providing information and works of literature and empirical studies that are biased towards men's favor and women's subjugation......

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