The second reason is that feminism today needs now to both redefine and renew its primary focus, and to then take a clearer, more definite, more unified direction, with which a majority of average women everywhere can still identify, as they did during the mid-to-late 20th century.

             In "Shakespeare"s Sister" from her longer work A Room of One"s Own, the British novelist and essayist Virginia Woolf describes how, in the 17th century, if William Shakespeare would have had an equally talented sister, one who also yearned for a career in acting and as a playwright, Judith Shakespeare, unlike her brother William, would have been unable to even begin to realize that dream. As Virginia Woolf describes her imaginary Judith, and Judith"s hopes, talents, and pathetic circumstances: .

             She had the quickest fancy, a gift like her brother"s, for the tune of words. Like.

             him, she has a taste for the theater. She stood at the stage door; she wanted.

             to act, she said. Men laughed in her face. The manager-a fat, loose-lipped.

             man-guffawed. He bellowed something about poodles dancing and women .

             acting-no woman, he said, could possibly be an actress. He hinted-you.

             can imagine what. She could get no training in her craft. Could she even .

             seek her dinner in a tavern or roam the streets at midnight? (p. 1381).

             Clearly, women today (at least in places like the United States, and in European nations like England, where Woolf"s Judith would have lived, had she actually existed) have gained many more rights, freedoms, and privileges than any woman would have had in Shakespeare"s time. These include, as Jennifer Conley notes, Any woman wishing, today, to train to become an actress, playwright, or both (or doctor, accountant, astronaut, etc.), would not find the obstacles Judith would have found. .

             She might, however, find different obstacles to her professional aspirations, whatever they might be, based on ways that females are still raised and socialized, and on messages that they (especially vis-à-vis men) still continue to internalize and believe.