![]() Her life and poetry provide fresh evidence about women and changing attitudes towards natural philosophy in 18th-century England.īecause not much importance was attached to recording women’s lives, little biographical information about Tollet survives and her dates are mostly vague. ![]() A published poet of some renown and an acquaintance of Sir Isaac Newton, Tollet is remarkable for her interest in scientific investigation and natural philosophy. More insidiously, this phantom Judith had been conditioned from birth into accepting the confining norms of 16th-century society, so that the very act of trying to break free would drive her mad.Įlizabeth Tollet (1694-1754) provides a real-life example of the numerous clever sisters who got left behind at home while their brothers went off to pursue exciting careers. Most obviously, she lacked her brother’s education, having been taught the domestic skills her parents felt she needed for attracting a wealthy husband. ![]() Woolf explained that her imaginary Judith was doubly shackled. Such an ambitious young woman might, speculated Woolf, have followed William’s example and run away to the London stage, but she would have encountered a very different destiny – mockery, pregnancy and a lonely suicide. In A Room of One’s Own (1929) Virginia Woolf wondered what would have happened if Shakespeare had had an equally gifted sister, Judith. ![]()
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