Chapter+3

Type Chapter 3 – **History of Women’s Impediments to Write Fiction** (Aurore) Narrator returns home, disappointed, as she did not gather truth about why “women are poorer than men” (pg.41) from her research at British Museum. -  Questions what conditions women lived in during Elizabethan times  à  lack of facts from history -  Fictitious literature (imaginative work) linked to human sufferance + material things -  Contradictions: Women at the same time of high importance in fiction, but in reality insignificant “Some of the most inspired words, some of the most profound thoughts in literature fall from her lips; in real life she could hardly read, could scarcely spell, was the property of her husband” (pg.43) -  Formulates Shakespeare’s female equal to compare males and females living conditions & restrictions “it would have been impossible, completely and entirely, for any woman to have written the plays of Shakespeare in the age of Shakespeare” (pg.46) -  Internal conflicts of women with “gift” of writing fiction = violent imagery -  Men’s writing faced indifference, women’s faced hostility  à  needed certain elements: motif of food, own room, time and money = material things -  In order to creature genius literature, need to be no distractions both physical &emotional  “the mind of an artist, in order to achieve the prodigious effort of freeing whole and entire the work that is in him, must be incandescent, like Shakespeare’s mind” (pg 56)