Ellie Morsching Mrs. Oelke English 10 Honors 24 May 2024 Tamed In a time where women were expected to be silent and obedient, William Shakespeare writes to question the validity of such expectations. The Taming of the Shrew, written by William Shakespeare, is a complex storyline to follow, making it difficult for readers to decide whether Kate is being tamed or not. Katherina Minola is transforming from a headstrong, fiery woman to a more controlled woman of wife material due to her husband Petruchio. Katherine has been tamed because she is not always as crazy as people make her out to be, she is accepting, open, and wants love, and there are logical hints in the book that simply tell readers the truth about her tameness. Katherina is not that mean. She …show more content…
Starting off with the title. The Taming of the Shrew refers to Kate, who once was a bit of a shrew but eventually became someone more domesticated. The definition of tame from Oxford Languages reads, “make less powerful and easier to control.” Consequently, by definition, Kate has most certainly been tamed. Katherina is less powerful than she once was because she is now an equal to Petruchio. She is also much easier to control because she no longer has outlandish, violent outbursts. Now, in the text, there are some characters that tell the audience or readers the simple truth. In Act 4, scene 2, Hortensio explains how he is no longer fighting for Bianca, but instead will find a wealthy widow. Before Hortensio departed from the Minola home, he told Tranio that he would first go to his friend Petruchio’s house to learn how to tame a woman, which Tranio called, “...the taming school.” (IV.ii.56). The main point that reveals the most starts in Act 4 when Tranio says, “Ay, mistress, and Petruchio is the master, That teacheth tricks eleven and twenty long To tame a shrew and charm her chattering tongue.” (IV. ii. The.
A very prominent theme in Shakespeare's The Taming of the Shrew is society's double standards of men and women. In the play, Katherina is a very free-willed, independent woman who wishes to follow her own path in life and is not dependent on a man for her happiness. Petruchio is also free-willed, independent and speaks his mind freely. However, where Petruchio is praised for these characteristics, Katherina is scorned and called names. Petruchio is manly and Katherina is bitchy for the same traits.
The Taming of the Shrew written by William Shakespeare depicts the story of Petruchio a man who takes on the challenge of taming a shrew, a woman named Katherine (or Kate). By the end of the play, it becomes our knowledge that Petruchio has succeeded in taming Kate, because of the fact that she comes to him when she is called (or demanded to), while the other wives do not. The icing on the cake is her final speech which enforces the idea that she has been tamed by Petruchio. But it can also be seen that Kate’s final speech creates the idea that she is a powerful, smart and clever woman who was never truly tamed and instead only acting like she was. In the beginning of the play, when Kate and Petruchio first meet, her answers towards him are
In Shakespeare’s ‘The Taming of the Shrew’, the character Kate is the ‘shrew’ of the play. A shrew is a bad-tempered or aggressively assertive woman. In Elizabethan times, being labelled a shrew may lead to punishments and public humiliation. Modern day readers may look at Kate being labelled as a shrew and disagree as society today has changed since then and women are not inferior to men as they were back then. Kate is often presented by Shakespeare more positively as a complex and vulnerable character due to the fact she receives abuse from other characters in the play, an example of this is: ‘”Mates”, maid?
In William Shakespeare’s play The Taming of the Shrew, Petruchio acts as a master tamer by depriving Katherine of her necessities, being a mirror image of her, and making her agree with him. Petruchio displays the qualities of a master tamer by making her agree with all of his opinions. Acting as a mirror image, Petruchio proves he holds the role of a master tamer and will do whatever he wants. In order to be a master tamer to Katherine, Petruchio deprives her of all her basic needs and necessities.
"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
Consequently, in the play The taming of the Shrew and the sources of author Elizabeth Hutcheon, Marion Perrett and Dale Priest they have ideas amongst those sources and my three other sources have the common theme of women being objectifified and therefore the idea between those sources is that women’s roles become reversed when they let themselves be shrewed like the character Katherine did when it came to Petruchio. Amongst the first source the moral of it is one that Linda Boose argues that “Shrew and similar terms were transposed from their origin as contemptuous expressions for lower-class males into terms that gendered such hostility, displacing it away from the threat of male class revolt which remained real throughout the era and redirecting
In Shakespeare's time, the ideal wife was subservient to her husband, and it was the husband's inherent duty to take care of his wife's money, property, and person, including both physical and moral welfare. If a man's spouse proved rebellious, he had the right to physically brutalize her into submission. This social phenomenon of domesticating an unruly woman as one might an animal was the inspiration for The Taming of the Shrew. Kate fits the stereotype of the shrewish woman at the play's outset and the Renaissance ideal of the subservient, adoring wife by the play's close, but her last speech as the final monologue of the play-rightly interpreted-undercuts her stereotype.
William Shakespeare expertly produced female characters that strayed away from the one-dimensional tropes of the time. The Taming of the Shrew is no exception as it explores the inappropriate behavior of Katherine. However, Katherine isn't the only female character with distinguishable actions and hidden intentions; her sister Bianca is just as much as an indecent woman as she is. Bianca speaks often of herself throughout the play and changes her speech towards the end to be witty and crude. Additionally, her tone varies from sarcasm to bitterness if a character subjectively wrongs her. When informed that a pair of her suitors decided that she's not worth their time she is dumfounded and holds a bitter attitude asking if it's just a joke, "Tranio,
In Shakespeare's, "The Taming of the Shrew" the relationship between the sisters Katherine and Bianca appears to be strained with rampant jealousy. Both daughters fight for the attentions of their father. In twisted parallel roles, they take turns being demure and hag-like. Father of the two, Baptista Minola, fusses with potential suitors for young Bianca and will not let them come calling until his elder, ill-tempered daughter Katherine is married. The reader is to assume that meek, mild-mannered, delicate Bianca is wasting away while her much older, aging, brutish sister torments the family with her foul tongue. Katherine seems to hold resentment toward Bianca. Her father favors Bianca over Katherine and keeps them away from each others' torment. When gentlemen come calling, Bianca cowers behind her father and Katherine speaks up for herself. "I pray you sir, is it your will to make a stale of me amongst these mates?" (1.1.57-58) Bianca and Katherine dislike each other feverishly. Katherine torments Bianca with words and physical harm. She binds her hands, pulls her hair then brings her forth to her father and the gentlemen callers. Bianca denies liking any of the visitors and portrays herself an innocent that merely wants to learn and obey her elders. She says, "Sister, content you in my discontent to your pleasure humbly I subscribe. My books and instruments shall be my company, on them to look and practise by myself." (1.1.80-84) Because Katherine speaks freely and asserts herself she is labeled as "shrewish." When Hortensio describes her to Petruccio, he spews out that she is "renowned in Padua for her scolding tongue." ( 1.2.96) He gilds the lily further by clearly telling of her fair fortune if suitable man comes courting and wins her hand in marriage. Petruccio sees dollar signs and rushes onwards in grand dress and fluently gestures to court the gracious "Kate." When he first begins his ritual of winning the family and Katherine to his love, he is seeking his fortune in her dowry. The mention of her being at all undesirable does not put rocks in his path.
When someone is a female their first thought should not be weak or nurturing, just as when someone is male their first though shouldn’t always be powerful. Unfortunately it has becomes so ingrained in societies mentality that this is the way that things work. The Taming of the Shrew is a past writing piece that expands on a mentality that is modern. The male gender cannot be put into this same constraint. Petruchio is the epitome of what society would describe a male as. He thinks he is in charge and always the superior to women. He expects Katherine to always do what he tells her to do, because he believes that is her duty as his wife. Moreover he should not be expected to do that for her. Furthermore, Bianca is what many would describe as the perfect woman. She is nurturing and she does not speak out against what she is told. When she does speak she always speaks like a lady. She exists merely for decoration in the home and to serve her husband. Katherine is the inconsistency in this stereotype on femininity. Her purpose in the novel originally is to rebel against this biased thought on female gender roles. Katherine is not afraid to speak out against the things that she is told to do. If she disagrees with something she will act on it and she is just as strong as the men in the novel; which is why many of the men actually fear her. Katherine is not submissive and does not believe that the only reason that she exists is to serve a husband. Katherine does not want to be just the damsel in distress, she wants to be in charge. At the end of the novel there is a switch in the personalities of Katherine and Bianca. This alteration provides the purpose of showing that gender is not something that someone can be confined in just because they were born a female. A woman can have many different traits and still be feminine. It is impossible to put femininity in a box because there are no real qualities for what
The protagonist of The Taming of the Shrew is Katherine Minola. She is a strong willed female who speaks her mind most of the time. To suitors she seems to be violent, proud, and sullen. This description of her is very accurate. She always gives her father's company trouble by arguing with them.
The Taming of the Shrew by William Shakespeare is a play that is ahead of its time in its views toward gender roles within society. Katherine is a woman who is intelligent, and is not afraid to assert her views on any given situation. She is paired with another obstinate character in Pertuchio. The marriage formed between the two is a match made in heaven for two reasons. First, because Katherine is strong enough to assert her views, and more importantly, she realizes when she should assert them.
During The Taming of the Shrew, Shakespeare has used pleasure and pain in order to tell the story of Petruchio and Katherina’s courtship. This is problematic for modern day audiences, as they do not find the courtship methods that Petruchio employs to woo Katherina particularly comical. However, it could be argued that Shakespeare crafted The Taming of the Shrew precisely for this reason, to feature his views on patriarchy and to make the audience see what was happening through a new perspective. The Elizabethan audience would have been shocked at the methods used in order to achieve the taming, even though it was well within a man’s right to discipline his wife if she was deemed unfit. From the very beginning of The Taming of the Shrew, Shakespeare indicates that this play will not follow traditional rules of decorum, and that it is intended to both give pleasure and cause pain in order to make both Elizabethan and modern audiences take note of his underlying message.
This purpose paper examines the proper self by deconstructing and analysing the following videos/ads: “Seeing Sociologically-Marginality and Crisis, “Date Rape” and “Eating Disorders.” Sociological perspectives enable us to see things from four points of view: see the general in particular, see the strange in the familiar, seeing society in everyday lives and lastly seeing sociologically-marginality and crisis. The later (marginality and crisis) has two perspectives which are important to us. The first point to the perspective is living on the edge; whereby being an outsider brings to your knowledge the social forces that shape an individual’s life; the poor and minority groups. The second point to the perspective revolves
Ever since people started to settle into their way of living, certain expectations over a certain culture is shaped by what the elders pass down. Over generations, the culture slowly changed yet it shapes to what makes society for what it is and what is expected to come from people in that certain time period. So how does this change occur within these generations? In The Taming of the Shrew by William Shakespeare, it becomes evident that the older generation influences the younger generation and proves what is expected from its time, especially when it comes to family.