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The role of women in shakespearean times
The role of women in shakespearean times
The concept of gender role
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Marriage in William Shakespeare's The Taming of the Shrew At the time Shakespeare wrote The Taming of the Shrew the idealistics
and attitudes to not only marriage, but also women were of a whole
different nature. A woman would have had to be married to someone with
the same social status. The man would indeed have to be rich and offer
a safe and secure future. Marriage was based around social standings,
money, trade and a way to make an alliance. At the time queen
Elizabeth was on the thrown and society saw that unless a man owned
property he could not vote. This meant that the average man had no
vote and a wife would only be another asset to his collection.
Elizabethan society saw women not as a partner or friend or an equal
on the contrary, a servant, a way of making money, someone to sleep
with.
An idealistic woman for Elizabethan times would be a woman who would
honour obey serve and have dignity. A woman would not work or have a
choice or opinion on finances or property or any important matters. At
the time to have a wife who would not follow her husband's orders and
commands was a disgrace, and an embarrassment, which is the reason
Petrucio went so far to tame Kate and prove everyone wrong. A woman
had to look after listen to and respect her husband. Women who were
considered shrews or to have a scolding tongue, then she was
considered to be the wrong material for a wife. Men would never want a
woman who dared to undermine her husband. As Henry VIII said to his
w...
... middle of paper ...
.... Whilst Petrucio think she's tamed she's
not she has just learnt to find a compromise after all its what she
actually wants. Kate has been badly behaved and angry simply because
no one cared enough for her.
Kate shows Petrucio in her speech and all her family just ho he is.
People who have written it off as a piece of dramatic irony or her
giving up were simply wrong and underestimating Kate's intelligence
and character. Her speech was to show to Petrucio that's eh will find
a compromise with him and that they will be all right. When Petrucio
commands Kate to come, normally Kate would have flown in up in arms
shouting and creaming but instead she came because that's what no one
expected she was proving them all wrong and putting them all to shame.
She had the chance to show up her sister and to look better than her.
" 'As Marriage Binds, and Blood Breaks': English Marriage and Shakespeare" Shakespeare Quarterly 30, (1979):
Once the father had made this choice the daughters were forced to obey. The romance was seen as a pursuit of love to win the girl. In 10 Things I Hate About You, I chose to deal with the issue in The Taming of the Shrew in a similar fashion but with one significant difference. Marriage is the focal point in the play "not to bestow my youngest daughter before I have a husband for the elder".
Examine the different ways in which Shakespeare presents the attitude towards marriage in the play, ‘The Taming of the Shrew.’
Petruchio physically asks her to sit on his lap “come sit on me” in a
Centuries ago in Elizabethan England there were many traditions about marriage and the treatment of women. One strong tradition of these times was the practice of marriage between races. Interracial marriages were considered extremely taboo. (High Beam). In this era marriages were arranged by the parents with strong help from the local church. The individuals had little choice as to who they would marry. (Elizabethan England Life). Yet another example of these traditions was the respectable treatment of women. While the husband was in charge of his wife, as was the father, the husband were expected to treat the women right (Elizbethi). In spurning all of these traditions, Shakespeare demonstrates a view of marriage far different from that of Elizabethan England, in doing this he is trying to plant new ideas in the people who read or view the play.
“The Taming Of The Shrew” by William Shakespeare is a work of satire created to criticize the misogynistic outlooks of the 16th century. With this play, Shakespeare is trying to say that the idea and role of women in his society is deeply flawed and should be fixed, as well as to make other social commentaries, such as on the treatment of servants. Through exaggeration and parody, Shakespeare makes society look silly.
"Women have a much better time than men in this world; there are far more things forbidden to them." -Oscar Wilde. This quote embodies the fight over gender roles and the views of women in society. Taming of the Shrew deals with Kate and Bianca, two sisters who are at the time to he married off. However, suitors who seek Bianca as a wife have to wait for her sister to be married first. Kate is seen as a shrew because she is strong willed and unlike most women of the time. In his 1603 play The Taming of the Shrew, William Shakespeare enforces traditional gender roles and demonstrates how little say women had in society. He accomplishes this through the strong personality of Kate, Baptista 's attitude towards his daughters as transactions, and
Sexism is an ever changing concept in today’s world. Every day the concept morphs a little bit, changing the entire definition of what is sexist and what is not. In The Taming of the Shrew by Shakespeare, the male characters lie to and abuse their women in order to have the women marry them. Lucentio come to Padua to study, but when he sees a beautiful girl, he pretends to be a teacher in order to marry Bianca. Petruchio on the other hand forces a woman to marry him and then trains her to follow his every command. Although the The Taming of the Shrew is frequently regarded as a particularly sexist play, it is not sexist and demeaning towards women.
In The Taming of the Shrew, the concept of love is a means of emotional manipulation, and manipulation is nothing more than a means of control between men and women. William Shakespeare critiques the patriarchal social structure by ironically employing the manipulative stance Petruchio takes towards winning Katherine as his wife by charming her with words and manipulating her psychologically, and then taming her after their marriage through legal, physical, financial, and psychological control and manipulation. Though Petruchio may think he yields power over his wife, Katherine uses obedience as a tool of manipulation and has the control of the household, as can be seen by her ironic speech at the end of the play, where she claims women must serve their men. Shakespeare uses the irony of a man using manipulation as a tool for control to magnify the significance of the power women yield through manipulation, thus proving that men and women engage in a power-shifting struggle.
in this play, women are used as a symbol of male power, or lack of it.
Over the past 400 or so years since Shakespeare wrote _The Taming of the Shrew_, many writers, painters, musicians and directors have adapted and reformed this play of control and subjugation into timeless pieces of art. In _10 Things I Hate About You_ and Kiss Me Kate from two very different times in the twentieth century, and paintings of Katherina and Bianca from the late nineteenth century, the creators of these adaptations have chosen to focus on the role of the two main female characters in the play. The ideas surrounding these women have changed through the years, from Katherina and Bianca simply being young women who deviated from the norm of Shakespeare’s time to women who embody feminist ideals and stereotypes of the more modern world.
Taming of the Shrew: Male Domination. The Taming of the Shrew, by William Shakespeare, deals with marriage. The ideas explored are primarily shown through the characters of Petruchio and Katharina. We are introduced to the trials and tribulations which present themselves in their everyday lives.
It is well known that Shakespeare’s comedies contain many marriages, some arranged, some spontaneous. During Queen Elizabeth's time, it was considered foolish to marry for love. However, in Shakespeare’s plays, people often marry for love. With a closer look into two of his most famous plays As You Like It and Twelfth Night or What You Will, I found that while marriages are defined and approached differently in these two plays, Shakespeare’s attitudes toward love in both plays share similarities. The marriages in As You Like It’s conform to social expectation, while the marriages are more rebellious in Twelfth Night. Love, in both plays, was defined as
A Shakespearean scholar expanded on this, “The play enacts the defeat of the threat of a woman’s revolt; it does so in a comic form – thus so offers the audience the chance to revel in and reinforce their misogyny while at the same time feeling good” (Gay). The Taming of the Shrew at many points is just praising the men in the novel despite their behavior and putting down the women for being anything but perfect. The novel makes the actions happening comedic and the reader does not get upset at the things happening, but in reading further into it and comparing in to modern day, it is not hard to see the plain and simple abuse. Although gender roles are still prominent into today’s society they are toned back. In contemporary version of The
Battle of the Sexes would have been another appropriate title for this play because the entire play is women verses men, men verses women. This battle of the sexes shows no boundaries between the rich and poor, young or old, man or women. The basis of all the rivalry stems from the fact that the men in this play look at the women as if they were objects, instead of human beings with feelings. This theory that women are merely objects creates an environment that the women have to adapt to and survive in and the environment of a person will depict what he or she will become, resulting in a battle between the sexes.