Chapter 4
Content Summary for Teachers
“That one would find any woman in that state of mind in the sixteenth century was obviously impossible” through “And so we come, I continued, replacing the single short volume of Dorothy Osborne’s letters upon the shelf, to Mrs. Behn.”
Woolf reasons that no sixteenth century woman would have been able to free her mind in the way that Shakespeare had, and that likely it wouldn’t have been until later that a woman of high birth, with resources, would have ventured into writing poetry. For an example, she analyzes the poem “The Spleen” by “Lady Winchilsea”, or Countess of Winchilsea Anne Finch (1661 - 1720). Woolf praises the poem, but still finds...
