ticulation in the art itself. The different outcomes of the Shakespeare's serve to dramatize this point, and account for the fact that women were not writing literature at that time. Good art should not betray the personal circumstances surrounding its production. The fact that we know so little about Shakespeare as a person is a reason for the greatness of his art (Roseman 20).Incandescence would have been impossible for a woman in the 16th century. She continues her history by tracing the slow emergence of women writers out of that blank past. The first would have been women of "freedom and comfort" who had the resources not only to spend their time writing, but also to brave public disapproval. Such examples are Lady Winchilsea, Margaret of Newcastle, Dorothy Osborne, Aphra Behn, Jane Austen and George Eliot (Woolf 65). The narrator gives several reasons why they all might have been attracted to the novel. These women wrote in the space of the sitting room. Without any formal literary training, the education 19th century women received in reading character and behavior would have been their main asset (Woolf 67). The statement that there is a female way of writing a woman's sentence is one of Woolf's most provocative claims. She argues that women see, feel, and value differently than men, and because of this they must also write differently if they are to be true to themselves and their experience (Roseman 21). As women change, and their social roles and realities evolve, what is "natural" to them will change for the better: "She may begin to use writing as an art." Woolf wants to preserve the richness of difference between men and women. But it must be as flexible and evolving as women themselves. Women have a creative power that differs from that of men, one that has found expression (Woolf 90). Education should bring out those differences, and enhance the variety of human culture. "Women and Fiction, it is fatal," she concludes,...
