English
Literature: Shakespeare in Performance
Tutor:
Vicente Fores
Katherina Minola: An
Unheard Voice?
Katherina
Minola’s critical analysis of the ‘marriage-authority’ relationship in The Taming of the Shrew
Question: What kind of garment do women most
love to wear?
Answer: The breeches.
Question: What kind of water is the most
deceitful?
Answer: A woman’s tears.
Question: Why is the worst woman in the world
good?
Answer: Because she’s food for something, or
good for nothing.
And the woman’s reply:
How
wretched is a woman’s fate,
No
happy change her fortune knows;
Subject
to man in every state,
How
can she then be free from woes?
Anon.,
Woman’s Hard Fate (1733)[1]
Erika
Schwartz
Avda. Blasco Ibañez
119, Pta 48B, Piso 12
46022
Matrícula: 6361 7101
3469 0431
E-mail:
ecatsch@alumni.uv.es
Table of Contents
1. Introduction 2
2. Understanding Comedy 2
3. Married women in
Shakespeare’s times: hidden women? 5
4. Gender and sexuality in
Shakespeare? 8
5. Love and Abuse in marriage? 9
6. Katherina: ‘the rebel who was tamed’? 10
7. Katherina’s selfhood? 16
8. Conclusion 17
9.
Bibliography
18
1. Introduction
This paper presents a critical analysis
of Katherina Minola in The Taming of the
Shrew supported by a generic overview of the characteristic
’marriage-authority’ and ‘gender-sexuality’ relations in the Elizabethan
period. The most fundamental characteristic of English society during
Shakespeare’s time was its high degree of stratification, its distinctive and
all-pervasive system of social inequality.
The reality of inequality was visible everywhere, and women were the
most affected as they were dominated by men. The aim of this paper is to show
Katherina’s suffering, isolation and oppression within the comedy, and also,
with most of the characters of the play. Moreover, a brief overview of what comedy
really is will be given in order to explain how society conventions affected
women; examples of this will be given with reference to Katherina, the character
of this analysis.
2.
Understanding Comedy
To begin with, some definitions of
comedy will be given in order to provide a better understanding of the themes
dealt in The Taming of the Shrew.
Comedy could be simply defined as a dramatic presentation which makes us laugh,
but literary and cultural critics, however, tend to regard something as a
comedy not because it makes us laugh – laughter may be evoked in tragic
circumstances – but because a certain set of conventions is an acknowledgment
that they remain in place. Shakespeare’s plays referred to as comedies are so
designated primarily because they adhere to a particular set of expectations –
not necessarily because they are funny. The conventions of comedy include:
disguise, often involving cross-dressing: thwarted love; mistaken identity;
marital and romantic misunderstandings. Comedies often end in multiple
marriages. (cf. McEvoy 2000: 122- 125)
Some typical examples apart from The Taming of the Shrew (1593-94) are: The Comedy of Errors (1592-94), A Midsummer Night’s Dream (1595-96), As You Like It (1599). However, what they
all seem to have in common is their preoccupation with the journey of young
women (and sometimes men) from the state of virginity to that of marriage.
Whereas tragedy works towards death,
comedy traces the passage of young
people out of their ‘parents’ control and into marriage. It’s less obvious why
marriage should be regarded as an end: if anything, it is the beginning of a
totally new story. It is the point, however, where sexual desire becomes
legitimised (approved of by those in power), socialised (accepted by society at
large) and channelled in a particular direction. In other words, comedy is
often about one or more young persons whose love meets an obstacle of some
sort. (cf. McEvoy 2000: 126-7)
Often some sort of resistance to this
obstacle, be it parental disapproval or the apparent refusal of the loved one
to return that love, is shown. The central plot of a comedy often requires the
young people to disguise themselves, usually with women cross-dressed as men
(Portia in The Merchant of Venice), to
abscond into the woods (Hermia and Helena and their lovers in A Midsummer Night’s Dream), or to
undertake a journey (Petruccio and Katherina in The Taming of the Shrew). When they emerge on the other side of the
experience, something will have happened to make their love a social reality in
some way, and the play ends with an apparently happy union.
However, there is considerable
disagreement among historians and critics about the position of women in
English society during Shakespeare’s time. Some feminists are keen to stress
the utter oppression of women in all domains of life: economic, domestic,
sexual, familial and personal. Others point out that while it is certainly true
that women were in no way regarded as equal to men in official aspects of life,
the Puritan doctrine of ‘companionate marriage’, which stressed the spiritual
equality of man and wife in a loving relationship, was related to a kind of
feminist flowering in this period among the middle-class women. Those whose
Protestant beliefs encouraged them to consider themselves the spiritual equals
of their husbands, but who did not hold anti-theatrical views – and who would have attended the London theatres. (cf. McEvoy 2000: 128). Furthermore,
there is considerable evidence that women were far more active in economic life,
employed as skilled workers, managers of large domestic organisations and small
businesses (Orgel 1996: 73-4). Of the Puritans, the British feminist critic
Juliet Dusinberre has written:
“Their
reforms were aimed at men and women equally, but their effect was greater for
women because they alleviated the exploitation made possible by the economic
dependence of the woman. Thus the agitation for women’s rights and for changed
attitudes to women which was a vital aspect of the society for which
Shakespeare wrote was to a large extent set in motion and furthered by the most
powerful pressure group, both numerically and morally, of the time, and one
which had the moral support of the most talented and creative of Shakespeare’s
contemporaries. This was the climate … in which Shakespeare took root as a dramatist.
The drama
from 1590 to 1650 is feminist in sympathy.” (Dusinberre 1996: 5)
However, whether this was a period of
relative freedom for women, or one of oppression totally
unacceptable by modern standards remains a controversial point among critics
and historians. For example, the novelist and feminist critic Stevie Davies has
pointed out the legal realities of life for a married woman in Shakespeare’s
times:
“Possessing
no civil or civic functions, she was debarred from office in camp (the army),
council (government), bench or jury-box (the courts). She could neither vote
nor be a candidate, nor (generally) give evidence in a lawcourt. She could not
make a contract, sue or be sued. The reason for this was that a married woman
did not, in law exist. … Furthermore she could not own property because she was property. She owned neither the
dowry she brought with her, nor the roof over her head, neither the jewels, if
any, round her neck, nor the very clothes in which she stood up.” (Davies 1995:
10)
Whatever the true situation was, it
remains the case that in this paper the comedy The Taming of the Shrew stands as an important evidence for the
status of women in this period. They are not separated from their background,
but part of our understanding of women’s lives at this point in history.
3. Married
women in Shakespeare’s times: hidden women?
In relation to the introduction that was
already given, Laurance adds that Early modern English society was highly
patriarchal. From the monarch to the father of the humblest family, culture and
institutions upheld the dominant position of men. In early modern
Furthermore, marriage was crucial to a
woman’s identity and had a symbolic importance separate from its incidence in
the population. Historians concentrate on two aspects of mariage: on the
arrangements for marking a marriage (courtship, dowries, portions, settlements,
inheritance) on the one hand, and on relationships within marriage
(particularly the conjugal relationship, but also relationship between parents
and children) on the other. (cf. Laurance 1994: 41)
Laurence also states that marriage is a
form of legal contract. It also describes a relationship between a woman and a
man which has both a public and a private aspect. Normally the public aspect
(legal) is more well-known than the private one, which is quite the opposite in
Katherina and Petruccio’s marriage. Does marriage, namely the legal contract,
really help to develop Katherine’s identity or the loss of it? (ibid: 41)
Following Laurence (1994: 42) the
purpose of marriage was set out in the Book of Common Prayer, the form of
marriage officially used by everyone from the sixteenth century until 1645 and
from 1660 until 1689. It was firstly, for the procreation of children; secondly,
for remedy against sin and to avoid fornication (sex between unmarried people
or between an unmarried woman and a married man, as well as to avoid venerous
diseases and propagate hygiene); and thirdly, for the mutual society, help and
comfort of the partners. Additionally, there was a social power. An Elizabethan
marriage, moreover, a Christian marriage (monogamy) supports and joins together
not only two people but two families; it was a principle means for extending
and consolidating a lineage’s wealth and influence in the community.
The
Taming of the Shrew is
usually explicit about the financial stakes in Katherina’s marriage to
Petruccio. Love and money is a potent combination that is only possible through
marriage. In contrast, polygamy also coexisted but it was viewed with horror.
(cf. Lawrence 2000: 63-66). Perhaps, the idea of constant courtship represented
by Bianca or even Luciana (The Comedy of
Errors) was an indirect way that Shakespeare manipulated to identify a
certain beginning of polygamy.
In addition, women were living in a man’s
world where the father’s role in the family is clearly recognized in the
analogy between the state and the family. It was implied by James I in 1610:
‘Kings are … compared to the fathers of families, for a king is truly Parens
Patriae [father of this country], the political father of his people. The
father is seen here as someone who could dispose of his inheritance, his favour
and his punishment to his children at his own pleasure. (cf. Laurence 1994:
236). This will be seen later in Katherina’s speech.
Nevertheless, the father of the country
was the king, but the mother had no equivalent. The king’s consort was not
expected to play this role, and while a queen reigning in her own right might
be regarded as the parent of her country, no attribute specific to motherhood
was attached to this. Indeed, Queen Elizabeth’s virginity and distance from
motherhood were celebrated. Some theorists referred to children and parents rather than simply father and
child, but no special role for the mother was implied in this. (cf. Laurence
1994: 237) The only institution which might be said to have had the attributes
of a mother was the church, but the questions of authority raised by the
Reformation and, later, by the spread of nonconformity were rather more
patriarchal than matriarchal in spirit. The concept of the mother in the church
owes more to abstract ideas about the qualities a mother is supposed to posses
(nurturing, welcoming, all-forgiving) than to any notion about a mother’s
relationship with her children.
A wife’s obedience to her husband was
both upheld and subverted by religion. In 1500 religious uniformity was
regarded as the essential pillar of political stability; by 1760 religious
pluralism was a fact of life and political loyalty was defined in a different
way, in secular terms. A wife was bound to follow her conscience, but she was
also bound to obey her husband. If the family provided an analogy for the
state, the state also provided an analogy for family relationships, especially
in relation to a wife’s obedience to her husband. (cf. Laurence 1994: 237-8)
Moreover, in 1700 Mary Astell wrote that neither law nor custom afforded women
redress from the misuse of a
husband’s power:
“He who has
sovereign power does not value the provocation of a rebellious subject, but
knows how to subdue him with ease, and will make himself obeyed; but patience
and submission are the only comforts that are left to poor people, who groan
under tyranny, unless they are strong enough to break the yoke, to depose and
abdicate, which I doubt would not be allowed of here.“ [2]
In addition, McEvoy (2000: 69-70)
assumes that many writers of the time asserted women’s inferiority to men. Some
drew on the medieval tradition that blamed mankind’s fall on Eve; and the same
tradition saw a woman as a temptress, sexually insatiable once she had lost her
virginity. Others thought of a woman as an incomplete man, lacking the faculty
of reason and the ability to control emotions. She was controlled, like the
tides, by the fickle moon, as her menstrual cycle showed. Fluidity and excess
were qualities attributed to women in literature. Female attributes in general
seemed to patriarchal attitudes to be unrestrained.
Compactness, hardness and closedness were features of the male body which
seemed particularly appropriate in a world where being an emotionless, fit and
skilful warrior was one definition of virtue. Female bodies were soft and
expansive, and given to the production both of extra fluids (milk, menstrual
flow) and children. Their sexual appetite was supposed to be insatiable
compared with that of men. Though men were certainly dominant in this society,
female sexuality was a powerful threat to men. It was argued that chastity was
the principal female virtue, and that chastity and sexual fidelity were the
female equivalents of male heroism in battle: both required physical courage in
order to win glory against powerful, natural instinct.
Finally, McEvoy (1994: 69) continues
telling that women’s inability to control her tongue elevated silence to the
position of highest female virtue. Yet all this stands against the many
intelligent, witty and determined women found in this period. And for most of
Shakespeare’s life the monarch was a woman …
Finally, Kahn talks about marriage and
identity in Katherina’s case. Katherina objects to society’s codes: she wants
freedom of speech in an age that does not permit her this liberty. Katherina
does not want indiscriminate speech: she simply wants to be permitted to
protest:
My tongue will tell the anger of my
heart,
Or else my heart concealing it will
break.
And rather that it shall, I will be
free,
Even to the uttermost, as I please,
in words. (IV.III.77-80)
Being true to herself when society’s
values are in opposition to yours is a struggle, as the predicaments of
Katherina reveal, but Katherina’s second line above shows the consequences of
not being true to oneself: emotional damage. Katherina says simply that speech
is “psychologically necessary for her survival” (cf. Kahn 1981: 108)
4. Gender and
sexuality in Shakespeare?
According to Traub to begin to understand
gender and sexuality during Shakespeare’s lifetime, the patriarchal household
plays a major role. Patriarchy in the late sixteenth century referred to the
power of the father over all members of his household – not only his wife and
children, but his servants or apprentices. The father figure was likened to the
ruler of the realm, and a well-ordered household was supposed to run like a
well-ordered state. Early modern culture was resolutely hierarchical with
women, no matter what their wealth or rank, theoretically under the rule of
men. Because women generally were believed to be less rational than men, they
were deemed to need male protection. Legally, a woman’s identity was subsumed
under that of her male protector; as a ‘feme covert’ she had legal or economic
rights. (cf. Traub 2004: 130)
Moreover, Traub expresses an extreme
example of this belief in The Taming of
the Shrew, when Petruccio, newly married to Katherina, calls her ‘my goods, my chattels. She is my house, my
household-stuff, my field, my barn, my horse, my ox, my ass, my anything’
(III.III.101-3). At the end of the play Katherina appears to acquiesce, as she
instructs other women – whether seriously or ironically – to welcome their
subservience (V.II. 150-8).
Employing the analogy of household and
kingdom, Katherina encourages other women to accept their ‘natural’
inferiority. This position of inferiority required women to strive for four
virtues: obedience, chastity, silence, and piety. Yet, the existence of the
notion of a shrew or scold – as embodied in rebellious characters like
Katherina – suggests that not all women obeyed or kept silent. ‘Shrew’ links female insubordination to
unruly female speech, and speech was one of the women’s most powerful weapons.
Condemning women as shrews or scolds was a useful tactic for men wary of losing
their authority. (cf. Traub 2004: 131).
Latimer also points out that Katherina’s condemnation as a shrew starts in her
own house with her own father, Baptista. He does not care about her as he
throws her to her suitors. He does not do this with her little sister, Bianca.
Katherina finds no protector in her father. Katherina is a woman left to fight
her own battles, with even those of her own household against her, she can hardly
fail to be rough and rude, and perhaps, because of this, she acts sometimes out
of jealousy or injustice. (cf. Latimer 1997: 201)
5. Love and
Abuse in marriage?
Other than a comedy Maguire says: The Taming of the Shrew is a farce. In
real life, violence is tragic not comic. In reality, repeated angry outbursts
by a man for the purpose of controlling a woman are far from funny. In real
life, denying a human being food and sleep constitutes cruelty not comedy.
These are tactics of brainwashing cults and political torture. (cf. Maguire
2004: 76)
Maguire defines abuse (2004: 77) as a
contemporary term with a very long practical history. Obviously, any culture
that legally views women as objects owned and traded by men, as spiritually
evil and in need of subjugation and physical correction, as physically
substandard versions of men, as intellectually inferior and institutionalizing
this view in education, politics, and law, and that views marriage as a
hierarchy rather than a partnership, is likely to lead to abuse. Maguire
assumes (2004: 78) that Katherina is the most obvious Shakespearean example of
an abused woman. Although New Criticism may interpret Petruccio’s
contradictions (“Say that she rail, why then I’ll tell her plain / She sings as
sweetly as a nightingale”; II.I.170-1) as a game, a loving tease with the
positive psychological aim of behaviour modification, in the twenty-first
century it is difficult to find the subjugation of a woman a suitable
subject for comical treatment.
Early modern society divided women into
two categories: those who are silent (and therefore desirable) and those who
are talkative (and therefore unmarriageable). In the first acts of the play
Katherina’s sister, Bianca, is praised for “silence” and “mild behaviour and
sobriety” (I.I.70-1), while Katherina is described as a wild animal, a
“wildcat”, a ”wasp”, a “devil”, a “fiend of hell” (I.II.196, II.I.209, I.I.66,
I.I.88).
6. Katherina:
‘the rebel who was tamed’?
Following some facts already explained
in chapter 4 by Latimer:
[…] Katherina’s condemnation as shrew starts in her
own house with her own father, Baptista […]
Rutter explains the ‘shrew’ situation saying that:
“When people
are calling you a shrew, you start living the name. If you are told you are
ugly, you start acting ugly. Kate has started acting ‘shrew’, and the
reputation gives her an amazing amount of power: she tyrannises everybody, she
radiates disapproval, she makes uncontrollable noise, and it is always
massively at her own cost. Supposing we said ‘shrew’ equals ‘noisy one’.
Along comes the man to tame the noisy one. And for almost five acts we never
hear her speak.” (Rutter 2004: 256)
Rutter justifies Katherina for her wild
behaviour with her sister at the beginning of the play because she is acting
out of isolation, out of being misunderstood by a patriarchal society and by her
own family. Kate simply tries to be heard. (cf. Rutter: 256). Moreover, Rutter
continues, Petruccio takes her home to
“rails,
and swears, and rates, that she, poor soul,
Knows not which way to stand, to
look, to speak,
And sits as one new-risen from a
dream.” (IV. I. 147-183)
What is more, Petruccio tortures
Katherina when he tells her that he brought her lunch and then distracts her in
order to avoid her eating it, ‘And now, my honey love / Will we return unto thy
father’s house.’ Another example of a silent Katherina would be the one of the
hat that Katherina wants so desperately. Petruccio says it is a ‘terrible hat’,
‘frightful hat’ whereas she says it is ‘a wonderful hat’. Katherina defends
here her point of view against her husband’s oppression:
“Why sir, I trust
I may have leave to speak;
And speak I will, I am not a child,
no babe:
Your
betters have endured me say my minds;
And
if you cannot; best you stop your ears.
My
tongue will tell the anger of my heart;
Or
else my heart, concealing it, will break:
And
rather than it shall, I will be free
Even
to the uttermost, as I please, in words.” (IV. III. 73-121)
“Love
me or love not, I like this cap;
And
it I will have, or I will have none.” (IV. III. 73-121)
Katherina is a young woman who always
speaks her mind and is not afraid to be rude and aggressive when she needs to
be. She wants a husband – but not the one approved of by her father. She is
courted against her will by Petruccio, who openly admits that he has come to
Padua in search of a wife with a rich dowry, no matter what she is like (I.
25-76) (cf. McEvoy 2000: 130). Katherina’s father is very happy to get her off
his hands, even though she positively refuses the match. In this comedy, the
desire of a woman to reject all suitors who are not to her liking is the female
need to be brought under male control. It is done in the most domineering way
possible, short of actual violence. That act of control might either be seen as
exposing the injustice of male definitions of what a woman should be or as simply
reinforcing those definitions. (ibid: 130)
Petruccio’s courtship and marriage seem
designed to humiliate Katherina and destroy her spirit. This is related to the
idea of family already explained above. His behaviour is calculated to
embarrass and degrade her as much as possible. After the wedding he takes her
off to his house where he refuses to let her eat or sleep, pretending that he
is doing it for her own good (IV.I.197-211). Eventually she seems to accept
that his authority over her is complete, even to the point where she will agree
that the sun is the moon (IV 5 18-22), or an old man is a young woman if he
says it is (IV.5.37-41). In the final scene Katherina wins her husband’s bet at
a dinner-party that she is the most obedient of those wives present, as she stoops
in a gesture of submission to place her hand beneath Petruccio’s foot. In the
longest speech of the play she offers the other wives a series of well-worn
traditionalist reasons why men should have authority over women:
Katherina Thy husband is thy
lord, thy wife, thy keeper,
Thy head, thy sovereign, one that
cares for thee,
And for thy maintenance; commits his
body
To painful labour, both by sea and
land;
To watch the night in storms, in day
the cold, 150
Whilst thou
liest warm at home, secure and safe;
Such duty as the subject owes the
price; 155
Even such a woman owerh to her
husband;
And when she is froward, peevish,
sullen, sour,
And not obedient to his honest will,
What is she but a foul contending
rebel,
And graceless trailor to her loving
lord? 160
I am ashamed that women are so simple
To offer war when they should kneel
for peace,
Or seek for rule, supremacy and sway,
When they are bound to serve, love
and obey. (V 2 146-64)
However, considering the fact that the
play is ‘a play within a play’, and is not presented to its audience as a
‘reality’ in which they are to believe, this speech does not invite us to take Petruccio’s
actions and Kate’s submission seriously: the play becomes a kind of fantasy of
male wish-fulfilment, while consciously admitting that this view of the
male-female relationship exists only in fiction. (cf. McEvoy 2000: 132). We are
free to see it as a demonstration that gender roles played by men and women in
society are in fact ‘constructed’ and do not form part of their essential
nature. Or perhaps, ‘the play within a play’ was a perfect Shakespearean tactic
to lessen women possible reality.
Davies also says that so many of the characters seem drawn from stock types of the
Italian commedia dell’arte, undermining
any confidence the audience might have that they are supposed to regard these
characters as a representation of the world as it is. (cf. Davies 1995: 50)
Consequently Katherina’s submission is very much an imaginary resolution of the conflict with her husband. Her final
speech holds up the conventional reasons for male supremacy, as advanced by
Renaissance writers, as fictions that are no more to be believed as themselves than as someone else. The
ending, argues Dusinberre (1996a: 108), is, to say the least, ambiguous and
equivocal. The clinching last line of the play expresses the incredulity of the
characters that Katherina really has not been ‘tamed’ at all (V.II.189). To
this the American feminist critic Karen Newman (1986: 46) has argued that to
show gender relations on stage as ‘natural’ in a woman is to reveal the
artificiality of those relations by exposing their contradictions. She sees
Katherina’s behaviour, right up to the end of the play, as a refusal to be
categorised and controlled by the power structures by which men subordinate
women. She refuses either to be silent or to submit herself as a passive public
object for the male gaze. In this period obedient women were praised for their appearance.
Disobedient women, especially those who ‘talked too much’, were publicly shamed
by being ducked into rivers or ponds. In some cases a vicious metal gag, called
‘the branks’, was clamped around the mouth. Katherina, according to Newman,
refuses to be seen and not heard. She takes on the male language and undermines
it in two ways. The first one is the riddling wordplay with Petruccio,
through which she refuses to accept that he has a right to decide on the
meaning of his own words. In fact, her puns expose marriage as an (unequal)
sexual exchange in which women are exploited to produce offspring for men with
no benefits (such as respect or affection) for themselves. Her wordplay
emphasises the transparency of Petruccio’s interest in her as a mother to his
children, irrespective of whether she wants him or not. Her language emphasises
his unworthiness to be her partner:
Petruccio Myself am moved to woo thee for my wife.
Katherina Moved! In good time! Let him that moved you
hither 195
Remove you hence, I knew you at the first
You
were a moveable.
Petruccio Why, what’s moveable?
Katherina A joined stool.
Petruccio Thou has hit it; come sit on me.
Katherina Asses are made to bear, and so are you. 200
No such jade as you, if me you mean.
Petruccio Alas, good Kate, I will not burden thee,
For knowing thee to be but young and light.
Katherina Too light for such a swain as you to catch,
And yet as heavy as my weight should be. 205
(II. I. 194-205)
She may be the object of his sexual
innuendo, but she retains her dignity and has the last word about what the
language of the exchange actually means. Throughout the trials of her wedding
day and night, Katherina insists on her right to have her voice heard (III 2
207-21; IV 3 73-80). Petruccio deliberately mishears her, distorting what she
says to suit his meaning. Female speech in the play is associated with female
independence; it is not to be listened to. Newman reads Katherina’s apparent
capitulation in the final scene as too knowing and blatant to be accepted at
face value. The only language available for a public statement like her final
speech is male language; the only rhetoric she is allowed to deploy is that of
the male. As a woman capable of ‘miming’ the male role to such effect, she
exposes its contradiction. In the end, she has not been silenced. The comedy
genre’s resolution requires a ‘happy union’. This is the speech to which the
plot has been leading; it is the only way in which comedy can end. But it is
not Petruccio who says it. If she is tamed, how is it she holds the stage at
the end, unsilenced? (cf. Newman 1986: 51)
Petruccio’s action produces not a muted beauty, the object of his
taming, but a female version of himself.
However, Davies says that the play is a
blatant and offensive metaphor for man as the tamer of an unruly horse or a
wayward hawk:
“Men are
masters and women are their animals to be tamed.” (Davis 1995: 11)
If at the end two shrews (Bianca and the
Widow) remain, that just shows how never-ending the task is.
When Petruccio describes his wife as ‘my
household stuff, my field, my barn, my horse, my ox, my ass, my anything’
(III 2 231-2), it is not intended to shock; it is a simple statement of the
legal realities of marriage. Katherina’s language does not quiet escape
Petruccio’s control through its wit and wordplay. Instead he often makes her
appear as if she is only repeating what he wants her to say (IV 3 103-5). He
knows what she really means, even if she is saying the opposite (IV 1 and IV
3). She must realise this. When Katherina at his bidding calls the sun the moon
(IV 5 2-22), it is not exposing the absurdity of Petruccio’s demand for total
domination. Rather, it shows her realisation that nature itself is turned
upside down if she insists on turning the equally natural social order of male
supremacy on its head (Davies 1995: 11).
At the end Katherina is allowed the
play’s longest speech, even though she is a woman, because it is her husband
speaking through her at last. There is irony intended. Finally, Thompson says
that Katherina is seen as an animal to be tamed, and especially as a hawk or
falcon, as in Petruccio’s explanatory soliloquy at the end of IV.1:
“(…) My falcon
now is sharp, and passing empty;
And,
till the stoop, she must not be full-gorged,
For
then she never looks upon her lure.
Another way I
have to man my haggard (…)” (IV 1.
161-4)
Katherina is
isolated and is the only Shakespearean heroine without a female
friend at any
point in the play (cf. Thompson 1984: 29)
7. Katherina’s
selfhood?
According to Maguire Katherina in the Taming of the Shrew displays her
selfhood by insisting on retaining her name. Katherina has a reputation as a
“shrew”, the label given to any woman who talked too much. During the
Renaissance period (cf. Maguire 2004: 26). Petruccio, attracted to Katherina’s
dowry, and perhaps to the challenge she represents, is determined to woo her.
Petruccio’s unorthodox tactic is to disorient Katherina by opposing everything
she says and does, like an authoritarian father would do with her rebel
daughter’s education:
“Say that she rail, why then I’ll
tell her plain
She sings as sweetly as a
nightingale;
Say that she frown, I’ll say she
looks as clear
As morning roses newly wash’d with
dew.” (II.I.170-3)
If she is silent, he will praise her
“piercing eloquence” (II.I.176); if she rejects him, he will act “as though she
bid me stay by her a week” (II.I.178). When Petruccio meets Katherina he
proceeds rhetorically as planned, countering her shrewish reputation by
claiming he has heard her praised for mildness and obedience. (cf. Maguire 2004: 27)
Petruccio’s first linguistic tactic is
that he renames Katherina. “Good morrow, Kate, for that is your name, I hear”
(II.I.184). Katherina immediately corrects him, perhaps seeing in the shortening
an attempt to diminish her, perhaps feeling defensive about her name: “They
call me Katherina that do talk of me” (II.I.184). Undaunted, Petruccio bombards
Katherina with her new name:
“You lie, in
faith, for you are call’d plain Kate,
And bonny Kate, and sometimes Kate
the curst;
But Kate, the prettiest Kate in
Christendom,
Kate of Kate-Hall, my super-dainty
Kate,
For dainties are all Kates, and
therefore, Kate,
Take
this of me, Kate of my consolation” (II.I.191-4)
Katherina resists his revision,
insisting on her name, her identity, on her way of being and seeing. (ibid: 27)
8. Conclusion
In this paper Katherina’s character was analysed in a feministic
way because I really consider that the play itself has only one interpretation,
the one of women’s oppression. The different parts of this analysis allow the
reader to understand, firstly, what marriage really meant in Elizabethan times,
secondly, how Katherina lived and survived through this hell. Katherina, in my
opinion, is not totally tamed in the end. She pretends to be so in order to
live under the society’s conventions.
Unfortunately, she was alone; she could not do enough to evade her undesired
position. This paper’s aim was not to discover a new topic of The Taming of the Shrew, but to show
that women like Katherina did exist but were totally speechless, totally
unheard. Marriage was merely an appearance for those women capable of being
impostors, and not for those, who were capable to express what they wanted.
Fortunately, this situation has changed since then …
9. Bibliography
Primary
Shakespeare, William. The Complete Works of William Shakespeare.
Secondary
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Davies, S. William
Shakespeare: The Taming of the Shrew. Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, 1995.
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Dusinberre, Juliet. Shakespeare and the Nature of Women. (2nd
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Lawrence, Danson. Shakespeare’s Dramatic Genres.
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Maguire, Laurie E. Studying Shakespeare: a guide to the plays.
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McEvoy, Sean. Shakespeare: the basics.
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Smith, Emma. Shakespeare’s Comedies.
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Margareta and
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[1] From Eighteen Century Woman Poets. ed. R. Lonsdale:
[2] Mary Astell. Some Reflections upon Marriage, 1700,
quoted in Bridget Hill (ed.), Eighteen
Century Women: an Anthology. George Allen and Unwin, 1984. p. 113.