Relationships and Gender Roles in Taming of the Shrew

Relationships/Gender Roles in Taming of the Shrew

Gender Roles in the Taming of the Shrew

William Shakespeare's the Taming of the Shrew is probably the play which is most liable to feminist interpretations among the writer's works. The main heroine of the play, the 'shrew' is Katharina, a young, unmarried woman who is well-known for her ill temper and her shrill tongue. Katharina is also the elder sister of Bianca, a much more gentle and temperate character who is wooed by no less than three men at the same time. The old Baptista Minola, the father of the two young women, refuses to consent to the marriage of his younger daughter before Katharina herself finds a husband. These conflicts are resolved when Petruchio, a young man from Verona, arrives and resolves on marrying Kate for her fortune, despite her reputation as a 'shrew'. Gradually, through an ingenious procedure, Petruchio manages to 'tame' Katharina and to turn her into the model wife, such as she had to be according to the patriarchal society. The text is thus obviously a commentary on the gender roles such as they were seen in Shakespeare's time and such as they are in the patriarchal society in general. While the play is intended as a comedy where the main source of humor is precisely the surprising transformation of the 'shrew', the disobedient wife who refuses to comply with the orders given by her husband, into a model of mildness and absolute obedience, it is obvious that the text offers itself easily for a feminist reading. Thus, Katharina cannot be said to suffer a transformation from a negative to a positive character, as the text would have it. In fact, through her transformation she loses her right to speak and act on her own, and becomes merely a 'puppet' of her husband.

Thus, in the maze of the significations that the play puts forward, it is hard to discern whether the author meant this 'taming' process of the woman into the wife as an ironic statement or whether he actually encouraged the misogynist views of the patriarchal society. What is certain though is the fact that, in the play, Katharina does not evolve from the negative to the positive character, but rather from the free woman to the wife who loses consequently all her rights and becomes merely a puppet to fit into the pre-established gender role she is ascribed by society. What made her seem ill-tempered was exactly the freedom she took in her speech (a thing uncommon and almost preposterous for a woman at the time) to say her own mind and act according to her own pleasure. In this she obviously fails to be the prototypical woman of Shakespeare's time: the graceful, delicate, coy lady who is too modest and shy to speak for herself. Obviously, the querulous and forward personality that Kate possesses in the beginning of the play does not fit the patriarchal pattern of womanhood. Marriage is thus the key in the text and the key of the shrew's transformation: by entering her normal role as a wife, Kate also becomes the prototypical, obedient woman. Thus, it is obvious that at that time marriage meant no less than depriving the woman of all her freedom. Before he marries Kate, Petruchio declares that he will be her tamer and make her take up her role as a wife: "Will you, nill you, I will marry you. / Now, Kate, I am a husband for your turn; / Thou must be married to no man but me; / for I am he am born to tame you Kate, / and bring you from a wild Kate to a Kate / Conformable as other household Kates."(Shakespeare, 24) the wife obviously needs to be 'conformable', that is, obedient and devoid of any personal will to speak or act in a certain way. The transformation was probably meant by Shakespeare as a personality metamorphosis as Kate who is wild at the beginning becomes truly domestic at the end, a household wife like all the rest. It is plain to see nevertheless that this transformation has a much wider signification: it is not Kate's personality that is changed it is merely that she takes up a common role, that, at that time, was the only position acceptable for a woman. She in fact loses her personality and becomes utterly silenced.

The means that Petruchio uses to tame his new wife is clever but also very degrading for her. Pretending to do her will in everything and to seek only her absolute contentment, Petruchio exercises Kate's patience by letting her famish and by depriving her of sleep, under the pretense that the food is not good enough for her and the bed not well made. He then calls the tailor over, offering her beautiful and costly attires with which he again finds fault and consequently refuses to buy them. He thus curbs her will by making her dependent on his own temper and desires. While it can be said that Petruchio's purpose is to tame Kate by turning her own weapons on herself, the way in which he abuses of his power is obviously degrading for the wife. Petruchio's method of taming is thus to ignore Kate's temper and simply reverse the terms. Thus, he tells everyone that she is the contrary of what she appears to be, and declares that people have judged her wrong: "Father, 'tis thus: yourself and all the world, / That talk'd of her, have talk'd amiss of her: / if she be curst, it is for policy, / for she's not froward, but modest as the dove; / She is not hot, but temperate as the morn; / for patience she will prove a second Grissel, / and Roman Lucrece for her chastity"(Shakespeare, 34) by this reversal of every term used to describe Kate Petruchio virtually annihilates her personality by ignoring her and playing his own game instead. At first, Katharine attempts to resist and maintain her ground, but still in the end she is won over. As she herself observes a woman will be 'made a fool' by the men around her if she does not resist, that is, she becomes a mere instrument of their will and pleasure: "Gentlemen, forward to the bridal dinner: / I see a woman may be made a fool, / if she had not a spirit to resist."(Shakespeare, 55) the woman is thus not allowed to be herself, to act independently or to displease the men in any way or else she will be instantly called 'a shrew'.