Essay on Taming of the Shrew: Stand by Your Man

The Taming of the Shrew: Stand by Your Man - The Psychotherapist Perspective

The universal nature of the themes in The Taming of the Shrew, beg analysis and social critique. This comedic farce, by William Shakespeare, creates an elegant depiction of a modern life and romantic love with all of its masks and pretensions. It is easy to assume the perspective of a psychotherapist while witnessing the drama of Katherine and Petruchio’s love affair unfolding. Concepts like “emotional repression” and “therapeutic catharsis” neatly fit the “taming” scenario. In fact, this play offers many new insights into what it takes to create an enduring, viable marriage—if one understands it from a very contemporary, psychotherapeutic or even spiritual point of view. If one is distracted by the recent feminist perspectives of this play, it is easy to miss the integrity and practicality expressed in Katherine’s final exhortation to women on how to love their men:

Thy husband is thy lord, thy life, thy keeper,

Thy head, thy sovereign, one that cares for thee,

And for the maintenance commits his body

To painful labour both by sea and land,

…….I am ashamed that women are so simple

To offer war where they should kneel for peace…..

(Act V, ii, (150-153), (165-166)

Viewed through the lens of a one kind of feminist critic, we could ask: wasn’t Kate’s “taming” the result of a brutal conditioning by a manipulative Petruchio who was a kind of shrewd “behavioral psychologist?” For at the close of the play, in this passage especially, Kate appears to have metamorphosed from an intractable, ill-tempered woman into a subdued, submissive “Stepford Wife” for Petruchio. And wasn’t her final speech a humilia...

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...nt to creating a deeper, more harmonious relationship involved a mature acceptance of the dark, shadow sides of Kate. The “baggage” of her wounded past with all of its unmet needs had been waiting to be loved and transformed. In the radical courtship of Kate and Petruchio, all “buttons” got pressed, character armor was released, and in the mirror of lover and beloved, childhood vulnerabilities eventually diminished freeing up enormous reserves of creative energy. It is in this light that I appreciate Kate’s final impassioned speech to the other women who, in their selfish defiance of their new husbands had acted immaturely. For here, Shakespeare ironically exposes Bianca as the real, untamed shrew and reveals a very sagacious and loving Katherine.

Works Cited:

Shakespeare, William. The Taming of the Shrew. Ed. David Bevington. New York: Longman, 1997