Chapter 3 Summary

She goes back to her home, disappointed that she still has not found the nugget of truth she is seeking for her presentation on women and fiction. Therefore, she goes back to the British Museum and takes a different tack. Now she probes why no women wrote in the past. She finds that men have always ruled, but that the women of fiction do have their own personalities and seem important. She concludes that the truth is that women have been locked up, beaten and flung about the room. In fiction, women seem heroic and admirable; in real life, they can hardly read and spell and are the property of their husbands. In fact, very little is written about women by the historians.

Then she imagines what would have happened had Shakespeare had a gifted sister called Judith. While the brother, William, is...