A Look at Patriarchy in Shakespeare’s The Taming of the Shrew

In his essay, "Women in Shakespeare Comedies: A Feministic Perspective," Muhammad Ayub Jajja says, "Feminist Criticism, among other things, examines the way sin which literature undermines or reinforces the social, political and economic status of women" (Jajja 113).  In looking at William Shakespeare's The Taming of the Shrew, it becomes apparent the importance of marriage within Katherine's world. 

"Shakespeare upholds and reinforces patriarchy in 'The Taming of the Shrew.' It is shown that marriage is the ultimate destiny and the final standard of the success and triumph of a woman's life.  A woman has no life outside the institution of marriage, a major postulate of a woman's life." (Jajja 114) 

Patriarchy is the practice and belief that men are superior to women.  Shakespeare wrote in a time when it was a patriarchal society yet expressed his female characters as strong, independent, and even outspoken.  Such an example can be seen in his play The Taming of the Shrew. Katherine is called ‘shrew’ for her inability to conform to the ideal woman: “A good woman is expected to be soft, mild, affable, modest as a dove, absolutely chaste and slow in speech” (Jajja 114).  Kate, as Petruchio calls her, is unwilling to conform to societal rules and it is because of this that he sets out to tame his would-be wife, which he does by way of linguistically bantering with her as he woos her, and then by starving her and keeping her awake at all times when they are finally married.  All of this torture is designed to tame the forwardness in her so that she displays the traits thought to make her a good and ideal woman. 

To begin, Petruchio decides he wants a wife and sails off to Padua where he hears from friends about Katherine, the shrew, and he concludes that he must have this woman.  Is he eager to have her because of her significant dowry?  Or does he see this as an opportunity to prove his dominance over such a woman as this that would leave no doubt in anyone’s mind that he, the man, is superior to her, the woman?  The answer can be found in his pep talk to himself just before he meets Katherine:

“I’ll attend her here
And woo her with some spirit when she comes.
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 washed with dew.
Say she be mute and will not speak a word;
Then I’ll commend her volubility,
And say she uttereth piercing eloquence.
If she do bid me pack, I’ll give her thanks,
As though she bid me stay by her a week.
If she deny to wed, I’ll crave the day
When I shall ask the banns and when be marrièd.
But here she comes—and now, Petruchio, speak.” (II.i.163-175)

In this passage, the audience sees how he intends to be contrary to everything she says, no matter what direction her thoughts go.  He will do the complete opposite of everything she does and says in order to confuse her into submitting to him and agreeing to marry him.  In this pep-talk, it appears that Petruchio merely wants the challenge of a difficult woman in order to gain social standing among the men of Katherine's hometown for having tamed the untamable.  It doesn’t quite go as he would expect, though.  Natasha Korda says in her article "Household Kates: Domesticating Commodities in the Taming of the Shrew," “The content of Petruchio’s punning ‘chat’ with Kate, however, is principally preoccupied with determining her place within the symbolic order of things” (116).  The order of things in this play would be for Katherine to be a good woman and desire an advantageous match to a man that would further her father’s standing in society.  In the essay "From Shrew to Subject: Petruchio's Humanist Education of Katherine in the Taming of the Shrew, Elizabeth Hutcheon writes, “As an outspoken woman, she poses a threat to the patriarchal structures that enclose her."  This sums up the problem with Katherine nicely.  She will not conform to what’s expected of her and so when Petruchio uses his chat to try and woo her, she turns things around.

Katherine and Petruchio meet in the second act at last, and instead of Petruchio being able to gain her affections, or at least her compliance, she turns everything around so that it’s unclear as to who is actually coming out on top in the verbal exchange.  “Kate neither rails nor remains silent and instead draws him into witty sexual banter.  Indeed, their meeting does not follow the script of male dominance he has rehearsed nor the Petrarchan wooing he predicts, but it is instead derailed by Kate," Amy Smith says in her article "Performing Marriage with a Difference: Wooing, Wedding, and Bedding in the Taming of the Shrew."  Katherine outsmarts the ‘supreme’ male and fights with words against him in order to gain the upper hand. 

“PET. Come, come, you wasp. I' faith, you are too angry
KAT. If I be waspish, best beware my sting.
PET. My remedy is then to pluck it out.
KAT. Ay, if the fool could find it where it lies.
PET. Who knows not where a wasp does wear his sting?
            In his tail.” (II.i.203-207)

Katherine uses the pun of the wasp sting to show Petruchio to beware her, and yet at the same time she is the one who is drawing attention to where a stinger normally is on a wasp, in its rear end, or buttocks.  Katherine is the one steering the direction of the conversation and Petruchio picks up where she leaves off and continues rolling with her own pun.  “This banter precipitates a series of fluid power shifts between Kate and Petruchio-first one, then the other is ‘on top’- and thereby contradicts the idea that courtship and marriage are exchanges in which women necessarily, by definition, lose” (Smith).  Continuing on in this vein, “Kate takes Petruchio’s comment that all women are meant to bear and shifts the meaning from the bearing of children to a second sexual meaning that calls attention to Petruchio’s desire for her” (Smith).  Katherine is continuously trying to one up the man she will call husband, and he is also trying to turn her words around, neither one of them coming out on top, so to speak, but end up drawing a stalemate.  Finally, Petruchio says to her,

“And therefore, setting all this chat aside,
Thus in plain terms: your father hath consented
That you shall be my wife, your dowry 'greed on,
And, will you, nill you, I will marry you.
Now, Kate, I am a husband for your turn,
For, by this light, whereby I see thy beauty,
Thy beauty that doth make me like thee well,
Thou must be married to no man but me.” (II.i.258-265)

He is telling in her in no uncertain terms that she will marry him because he and her father have already agreed on her dowry and because she is as beautiful as everyone says, she will not be married to anyone else but him.  In her article, "Fathering Herself: A Source Study of Shakespeare's Feminism," Claire McEachern says, “A daughter’s departure through marriage marks the end of paternal control, although a measure of control persists in the father’s choice of his daughter’s husband” (273).  Even though Katherine is a shrew, she still does not get her way in who her father decides is to be her husband.  She is essentially forced to marry a man she does not love nor want, but because she is merely a daughter, she has no real say in that decision of her life. 

Within this play, Shakespeare seemingly writes to portray Katherine as a strong and independent woman who is trying to stand up to the societal rules for women, but he can’t deviate from these rules enough to make her a truly strong character and so reverts back to making her marry Petruchio.  “Shakespeare here appears as ‘the patriarchal bard,’ an early modern author incapable of subverting patriarchal structures, able only to promulgate and reinforce a cultural ideology invested in subordinating women” (McEachern 270).  It is interesting to note here that while Shakespeare is writing Katherine’s part as one who rails against the confines of her sex, she does ultimately submit to her father’s and then her husband’s will.  Shakespeare cannot completely make her a feminist in that she would be left unwed and grow into a spinster, a woman who does not marry, nor recognizes her ‘full potential’ in marriage.  “For a daughter is not more than a commodity belonging to the father” (Jajja 114).  She is merely to be passed from one man to be ruled by another, as is the way of a patriarchal society.

Moving on to when Petruchio finally ‘owns’ Kate, he takes advantage of the situation completely in order to break Katherine to his desires.  He insists that they leave right after the wedding, keeping Katherine from enjoy the feast or reception being held in their honor, as his first act of complete dominance over her will, because she is unwilling to leave her home and hometown so soon.  He takes what he sees as his own, his property, and leaves with it, regardless of her feelings or desires. 

“Petruchio’s blunt assertion of property rights over Kate performs the very act of domestication it declares, reduced to an object of exchange (‘goods’ and ‘chattels’), Kate is abruptly yanked out of circulation and sequestered within the home, literally turned into a piece of furniture or ‘household stuff.” (Korda 122)

Petruchio does what he can to keep Katherine confused and unhappy, all with the purpose of breaking her of her ‘shrewness.’  She is excluded and neglected to the point of suffering, but at least she’s not being beaten or raped as others in her position would have been in similar type situations.  Instead, “He applies torture, keeps her hungry, and denies sleep to her, to break her into obedience to her keeper” (Jajja 115).  He is trying to get her to be as obedient as society would have her be in order to become the ideal wife. When she does finally succumb to his tortures, Katherine is transformed into not just Petruchio’s idea of a good wife and woman, but to patriarchy’s rules that say she must submit to her husband just like a subject does to their ruler (Hutcheon).  And so, Kate gives in and acknowledges to her husband that his word is law to her: 

“Then God be blessed, it is the blessèd sun.
But sun it is not, when you say it is not,
And the moon changes even as your mind.
What you will have it named, even that it is,
And so it shall be so for Katherine.” (IV.v.19-23)

She is acquiescing to her husband’s will in saying the sun is the sun, or if he says it is the moon, then she will say it is the moon too.  She is agreeing with whatever he says, thus complying with his every wish from this point on in what is expected of her as a good and ideal wife.  “Katherine is now a patriarchal woman, who conforms to the assigned role and behavior to her gender” (Jajja 115). 

In closing, Shakespeare has written a play about a character who upholds her feminine virtue in complying with her husband’s wishes, reinforcing the patriarchal rules that society imposes on her.  She becomes a dutiful wife at the tutelage of Petruchio and shows that, “Patriarchy encourages women to remain silent” (Jajja 114).  The Taming of the Shrew closes, however, with Katherine scolding her sister and the Widow into obeying their husbands as she does hers, and as they should based upon the ideals of society of the time.  Patriarchy is shown to be the upmost constraint for a woman of this time, and even though Katherine tried to fight against it, lost in the end.  Still, she shows that she is the strong and independent woman who began the play, only now she is compliant and submissive to her husband’s will and encourages the other brides to be as well.

 Works Cited

Hutcheon, Elizabeth. "From Shrew to Subject: Petruchio's Humanist Education of Katherine in the Taming of the Shrew." Comparative Drama. ProQuest, 2011. Web. 17 Feb. 2014.

Jajja, Muhammad Ayub.  “Women in Shakespeare Comedies: A Feministic Perspective.” Journal of Education Research. Department of Education IUB, 2013. Web. 13 Feb 2014.

Korda, Natasha. “Household Kates: Domesticating Commodities in the Taming of the Shrew.” Shakespeare Quarterly. Folger Shakespeare Library, Summer 1996.  Web. 13 Feb 2014.

McEachern, Claire. “Fathering Herself: A Source Study of Shakespeare’s Feminism.” Shakespeare Quarterly. Folger Shakespeare Library, Autumn 1988. Web. 13 Feb 2014.

Smith, Amy L. "Performing Marriage with a Difference: Wooing, Wedding, and Bedding in the Taming of the Shrew." Comparative Drama. ProQuest, 2003. Web. 17 Feb. 2014.