 In A Room of One 's Own , Virginia Woolf created a character , " Judith Shakespeare " , although she is supposed to be Shakespeare 's sister rather than his daughter . Besides the similar names and setting , there is no other direct connection between Judith , Shakespeare 's daughter , and Woolf 's creation , and in fact Shakespeare 's sister was named Joan . In Woolf 's story Shakespeare 's sister is denied the education of her brother despite her obvious talent . When her father tries to marry her off , she runs away to join a theatre company but is ultimately rejected because of her gender . She becomes pregnant , is abandoned by her partner , and commits suicide . Woolf 's Judith was created in an attempt to fill a historical gap . Woolf intended to make a point about the struggle that a female poet and playwright would have had in the Elizabethan age . Woolf speculated as to why there were so few talented women from that time . " What I find deplorable , " she observed , " is that nothing is known about women before the eighteenth century . " 
