I feel like my head was a ball in a pinball machine - the 3rd chapter is so full of errors I can hardly believe - do they not teach Shakespeare in English Schools?
First Shakespeare's mother - yes, from an ancient line the Arden's however, not the wealthy Downton Abby kind of wealthy farmer - he attended King Edward school because his father, a glove maker, had worked himself to be an aldermen which allowed his boys to attend the school that were in the same rooms the aldermen meetings took place and both he and his younger brother had to leave school when William still had two years more education before graduating because the father lost his position as he also lost his money so they were poor.
As to the mother, yes, the Arden's go back to a Saxon Chief however the wealth was in land. Her father owned the land where her husband lived and worked and when her father died he bequeathed the land to Mary - she was nineteen when he died - so VWs inference of wealth and position is way off... however, it is true William's sister Anne did not attend school, instead was home learning the skills of milking, cheese-making, animal husbandry, small farming, crop selection, bee keeping, honey extraction, fruit tree growing, harvesting, jam making, bread making, cooking, possibly weaving but knitting for sure, if not sewing how to hire and oversee someone who seasonally came to sew, how to hire help, how to keep the books -
There was a PBS documentary some years ago showing the skills William Shakespeare's mother and sister would have had to know and engage in which were demanding and was an education of its own. I remember while watching comparing to what was taught at A&M and thought women were as educated as those who attend college for a similar education in farming and ranching not including the home economics required to run a home only their education was not formal and it did not include languages or history that boys who attended school were learning.
We read all this back during some of our Shakespeare discussions and at first after what VW had to say I thought maybe we missed something but reviewed and sure enough our study during our discussions had been on track - As to getting his start in theater holding horses etc. when he first arrived in London - could be I have never read anything about how he started - where as published every few years is the latest findings from those engaged with the intensive examination of his work and the one play they believe is his first, Two Gentleman from Verona they also surmise he wrote the play before he went to London -
Shakespeare scholars compare language used in the plays to the changing phrases popular during his lifetime as well as his dexterity and sophistication using language - also there was a book published in the sixteenth century after he died that is used as a bible since the author has listed the plays in chronological order. All to say Shakespeare was writing before he went to London, while he had to work since his father had lost his money and position and he married very young and had a child - yes, he had opportunity that given the same circumstance his sister would not have but, it was far from the ease suggested by VW.
Then VW's premise that there were no women poets before whatever year VW suggested - baloney - if nothing else there is Hildegard von Bingen whose harmonies would have been sung in church even during VW's time although maybe not in the Church of England - Bingen was only one of many female religious who wrote - Also, I have a book of only defiant poetry from Italian women with poems going back the 12 century - Sure in the 1980s there was a push to put between covers mostly the women's poetry that complained of their lot in life or poetry about some sad personal experience like the death of a child however, there was other women's poetry - Granted not as popular but frankly the subject matter was seldom a shared understanding of life between men and women much less did I ever come across a tongue in cheek type of poem written by a women, just as my sister found women philosophers going back to a time before Christ, and yes, the power structure made it difficult for women - But to say there was none makes it difficult to follow her argument as with her other miss-understandings - and so, where I agree with some of her argument I'm quickly confused with her, to put it kindly, inaccuracies. Frankly yes, I assumed, she should know better about some of this and she was simply being selective and blowing things up for affect.
Now this entire bit about women being sequestered and controlled and battered - the idea of Battered Woman needing protection was not even acknowledged much less women required help to get out of a bad situation, there had not been police training to recognize and protect women till the 1980s - Marriage was still taught by most religious as being forever no matter the circumstances and where divorce was more acceptable in the 60s, 70s, and for sure by the 80s not as a Catholic -
Oh we can all have our opinions now about how unfair and unjust and, and, and, but that is the problem reading history - while reading, it is difficult to put yourself in the culture and traditions of the historical time we are reading about. Personally I've had to work hard to separate the church influences that upholds traditional views when I bump into unexpected and challenging experiences - recently seeing how the change in society left a cousin in a situation where she lost her home as a direct result of following the 'rules' traditionally expected of women shook me so that I spent much of the past almost 2 years questioning, being angry at the church -
My thoughts changed when I finally realized, the religious as children attend the same schools with the same curriculum as everyone else - their values are formed by their homelife, school life, society and the culture of the day that they bring with them to the seminary so that their life experience is the screen so to speak of how they understand theology rather than this idea they arrive at the seminary a blank slate and are filled with theology therefore, they were/are walking instruments able to address all Christian as well as secular questions. Now the French novels and even some Italian novels make sense - they saw priests as flawed. One of the central characters in Victor Hugo's Les Mis is equally flawed if not more flawed than the good Knight. The churches, regardless the denomination carry forth these traditional view of women.
Needless to say AD (after divorce) I had my plate full with learning to navigate life. Thank god I had worked for a few years so that was not the struggle as it was for most women at the time - however I was asked to leave the Real Estate Company I had been associated with because of the circumstances of the divorce - We worked with high end clients and of course they could not have an agent who divorced because of pedophilia - I also lost all but one friend and a few years later two old friends did cross back across the line so to speak - I could go on with a litany of losses all because of another’s ‘flaws’ - attending meetings for survivors in the late 80s I saw most women did stay married and supported the men over their daughter - my assumption was because they had nothing to fall back on or they could not cope with who they were living with or for some there is no one, no family and in fact at that time most family members, as mine, did not believe - hurting so bad these men are charming and that is how they hook you - and that charm kicks in when you are at your most vulnerable - so yes, women's life is not what it is only because of male aggression and control -
About 10 years AD - still questioning how someone could be educated in church schools and become so painfully depraved to damage their own girl child and of course the entire issue of women as second class citizens - I spent at least 5 years researching to get some sort of answers - how and when did this all start - was it only about male aggression - I needed to make some sense out of what to me was incomprehensible - I was living as if in a fun house with those mirrors that make you look tall, fat, skinny you name it according to the mirror - that is how I tried to deduce with each person I met what mirror to present as me - I just needed to make some sense out of what was beyond my words - I felt raw and needed at least a trail out of the madness and so again, I'm hooking into VW with my own experiences and I get her exasperation railing against the unfairness she is sharing in chapter 3.
OK later - bad lightening storm again and I need to find a few of the books - yes, there are shelves and shelves of them from this time of searching for how women ended up being controlled - there are a couple thoughts that I found enlightening and I do need to make a pot of coffee and get my head together on this because I did find some explanation that I can appreciate VW would not have researched and therefore she made assumptions.