Читать книгу What She Said - Monica Lunin - Страница 20

At the time of this speech, Virginia Woolf was an author practised in the art of fiction, so she was adept at conjuring the imaginary world to make her point. In ‘Shakespeare's sister’ she creates a character, derived from a period in history, in the form of William Shakespeare's sister (whom she calls Judith), and she weaves for us a tale of what her life might have been like if we assume she possessed the same talents and drive as her brothers. Rather than telling us all the ways in which women were unfairly treated, she shows us through a tale of her own creation.

Woolf spells out her technique, telling us explicitly, ‘I prefer, therefore, to put it in the form of fiction’. She steps in and out of the storyteller's shoes. When indulging in the fiction, she allows herself all of the expressive language and imagery that she is known for, bringing the story — and the injustice — to life. It is pleasing to follow her off on one tangent and then another, because somehow we know we are to extract the meaning from the tale.

In this story fragment, we are given a character, a setting and a struggle. With a few expert literary flourishes, Woolf provides us with all we need to come to our own realisation. Although technically her words were delivered as a lecture, they were not ‘lecturing’ in their delivery. Instead, a certain amount of faith is placed in the women from Cambridge to draw their own inferences and form personal impressions from the imagined life of Shakespeare's sister.

You don't need to play to the lowest (and least imaginative) common denominator in your audience. If you can find a way to present your ideas as a narrative — or even an image, example or allegory — and you can do it with panache, you might be able to make an even stronger impact. Could it be that your audience will be more convinced if they, themselves, decipher the moral of the story, as it were?