How does Woolf use language to emphasize the idea that

brilliant women were often feared in the 16th century?

She describes these women as psychologically tortured.

She describes these women as "pulled asunder."

She describes these women as lonely and isolated.

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She describes these women as "half witch, half wizard."

She describes these women as "half witch, half wizard."

Explanation:

Virginia Woolf's "A Room Of One's Own" is an essay that is regarded as one of the most prominent feminist texts of all times. In this essay, Woolf details how women failed to be included in the same equality level of the men, irrespective of what she is capable of.

In one part of the essay where she mentions the 'fictional' case of Shakespeare's sister Judith. She states that were Judith a real person, who knows what she might be capable of. She might even be of the same intellectual level with her brother or even more. But just because she's a female, she was expected to be in the house taking care of household works.

Now, according to her, if there had been women like the fictional Judith in real life, she would have "gone crazed, shot herself, or ended her days in some lonely cottage outside the village, half witch, half wizard, feared and mocked at". This is exactly why women need equal status like their men. The phrase "half witch, half wizard" implies the hate and fear that they represent, for witches and wizards were one of the evils that the society as a whole condemn. Thus, Woolf uses these words to lay emphasis on the fear that brilliant women of her period were subjected to.