The Perfect Woman is

I'm not very well versed in Elizabethan history. But from "Shakespeare's sister" by Virginia Woolf, I can get a semi accurate, although hypothetical, glimpse into what life would be like for a woman with Shakespeare's genius but without his opportunities as a man. She is oppressed by her parents, runs away, is oppressed by society, and ends up committing suicide.

In class, we talked about Edna's life and death and if she was a hero or not. A point that was discussed was that she might not have been a hero as she did not attempt to create political change or bring attention to her struggles and many other women's struggles with oppression.  The same could be said for "Judith"- because she didn't do anything for the greater good of women everywhere, she lived and died without having done anything of value. However, these women can still be heroes without having caused any political change. As Mr. Heidcamp said, it's a double standard. There have probably been hundreds of male characters we've read about struggling with society who have done nothing to change it, but we can still easily call them heroes. Judith died without having reached any of her probable goals. But this is not by a fault of her own character. We know as readers that she is an incredibly smart individual with the capacity to write great works of fiction as her brother did. What's truly to blame is the world she lived in; treating her like property and literally not allowing her to read or write. What could we have expected them to do? She defied her parents by running away. Edna moves into her own house. But in the end there is no way for them to escape the systems they were oppressed by enough to develop the skills or live their lives they wanted to. Not everyone was born to potentially sacrifice themselves for a small chance something would change. By holding them up to that standard we are still judging them for not being the perfect woman, even a different definition of the phrase.