Reflections on Summer

Ah, summer! How I have missed the high temperatures, the chirping of bugs as the sun goes down, and the delights of eating ice cream like a messy 9-year-old! What delights await in the rising of the dawn each day?

I will always remember my summers growing up in Lakewood, CA, living just a few yards away from Bloomfield Park: a menagerie of wade pool, two playgrounds, table games, and picnic tables always full of parties with free food. I say free food, because if the party was a birthday party for a child, well, being a child, I was always invited to partake in the festivities. I'm sure I was mistaken as a friend of a friend, or as the daughter of a friend, to whom was invited to the party. Either way, I didn't care, as long as I got some free birthday cake out of it!

As an adult, though, summer evenings have become much more somber due to the fact that it is in the evenings when I earn my living working at CaptionCall as a Communications Assistant. A fancy title in a big company designed to relay calls for those who just cannot hear as well as they used to. That doesn't mean I can't spend my time dreaming of yesteryear, though.

In the relative coolness of the shade of a tall spruce, I used to sit and dream of becoming an adult. I wouldn't have anyone telling me what to do and not to do, how to dress, where I could and couldn't go. My 9-year-old self could not comprehend societal rules and norms to which I followed because my mom told me to follow them.

Now I realize that there are certain things we do and there are certains things we don't do, as adults, because it is not considered 'acceptable.' Who decided that it was unacceptable to spill ice cream all over the place like a 9-year-old anyway? If I want to be a messy eater and thoroughly enjoy myself, well, that is my right as an adult!

My inner-child rejoices because I can finally do what I want, dress how I want, and go where I want.

So enjoy your ice cream, folks! Enjoy it however it pleases you best to enjoy it. I'm going to drown myself in rainbow sherbert and get it all over my face and lick my fingers clean!

What is a Girl Gamer? And How Did She Come to Exist?

I am a girl and I play video games.  Shocked?  Please, don’t mistake me.  I don't mean to say that I play games like Farmville or Mystery Manor on Facebook like some girls do in their boredom or absence of social activity and then claim they are ‘girl gamers.’ I mean I play real games on real consoles where I stay up for hours on end trying to kick ass and take names. Shocked now?  Well, I know I'm not the only one as I have several friends who are girls who play games for hours on end as well.  And yet, when we go to conventions, or start debating the merits of say World of Warcraft over Final Fantasy XIV with our male counterparts, they look at us like we've grown a second head.   I see your skeptical look.  I want you to take note: I am not saying that I am a girl gamer.  I make the distinction that I am female and I play games.  Why the distinction?  Because somehow, someway, it has become popular to be a ‘girl gamer,’ which I think stems from the fact that somewhere girls decided that was the way to attract a boy. 

So, why is it perfectly acceptable for guys to be gamers while girls have to be segregated as 'girl gamers?'  We all play the same games, we all lose the same amount of sleep trying to beat just one more boss, and we all know what it’s like to feel that depression after finishing a really great game before we can go on to the next one.  Our head is still loaded in the world of the video game we just finished, there needs to be time to mourn the loss of something so familiar that it felt like family for a time.  If anyone is nodding their head in agreement, then you know exactly what I mean, and that makes you a gamer. It shouldn't matter if you're a guy or a girl, and yet somehow it does.

So why do some of us girls become the awesome gamers that we are? Well, speaking from my own experience, I grew up with boys in the house and they all played video games.  I was the youngest, and only girl, therefore, I never got a turn on the Nintendo (that's NES, old-school style).  When I did get my turn, as dictated by my mom or grandma to the boys, I almost always died within the first few seconds, and that was it. My turn was over. That is so unfair!  Well, eventually, I started staying inside while all my cousins and brothers were outside playing on their skateboards or break-dancing on pieces of cardboard, and I built up my skills and got good at making Mario move the way I wanted him to.

That was the beginning of my obsession with video games.  I'm sure if I had other girls around me growing up, I wouldn't have been so concerned with what the boys were doing.  Turns out, I ended up becoming more involved in video games then even my male family members, because I put in more time playing games.  Some of my earliest reading materials were video game magazines.  It was so long ago that I can’t even remember the names of those magazines, but I do remember that they were the ones in which I memorized the card layout from Super Mario Bros. 3.  Incidentally, I still have those card configurations memorized.  You start with the card in the top right corner, and that’s the one that tells you which pattern to follow.  You remember, right?  It was always so exciting when that little ace card would pop up to give me freebies.  It still is exciting, I downloaded SMB3 to my Wii as soon as I saw it available. 

I remember when I got my XBOX360 and played an online game, I tried using a headset for the first time and was talking along with all the other players, all males, and everyone stopped talking when they heard my voice.  It was eerie how quiet everyone got before the onslaught of questions.  They all started asking who I was, wanted to know why I was playing Dead or Alive 4, if I was really playing, if I was really a girl, blah blah blah. And at that time, I was young enough and naive enough to fall in the trap of trying to prove my gamerness.  Because it is obvious to the guys I was interacting with that I wasn't actually a girl, I was some prepubescent boy pretending to be a girl.  Or I was some guy's girlfriend wearing the headset while she watched him play. Because I couldn’t possibly be playing video games of my own accord, I’m a girl. 

But I am a girl who actually enjoys a past time that is traditionally thought of as a guy’s past time.  The reason I play video games is because I get a similar entertainment as to when I read books, for me, it’s an escape.  I get to be someone else for a time, enter another world where I'm a superhero or a kickass pink ninja.  I save the world.  I save the prince.  I am not a damsel in distress, unless that's the angle I'm playing, because I can be quite the impressive actress, so long as I’m seen and not heard.  I don’t make that mistake anymore, because even though girl gamers are out there, they’re still not as commonplace as they should be.  You see, I play video games just as well, if not better, than any other male out there, so what does it matter that I'm a girl? Do I sit around playing video games in my underwear?  Well, do you?  I’m 95% certain I know the answer to that question.

The idea of the ‘girl gamer’ has been glorified beyond the simple uplifting of putting women on a pedestal.  She's the Holy Grail and yet when she's found, she's shunned or met with disbelief.  Believe me when I say, we are out here, and we are not all pretending to be something we're not.  We have forums and Facebook pages, we laugh at stereotypical girl gamer memes that show up on social media sites, such as the scantily clad Playboy bunny biting her lip seductively as she holds up a gaming controller of the newest platform like she knows the difference between a Playstation 4 or an XBOX One.  I’m also 95% certain that she doesn’t.  That’s the difference between the type of girl gamer she is, and the type that I am. I know how to kick ass on Call of Duty.  I get sentimental over RPG storylines.  And I am a sucker for insanely crisp graphics with a backdrop of gorgeously hand drawn works of art.  I am more than a girl gamer.  I’m a gamer.  I leave you with the words from one of my favorite book trilogies, “May the odds be ever in your favor.”

What Is Art: A Look in to Popular Culture of Mona Lisa Smile

"What is art?  What makes it good or bad?  And who decides?" (Schiff, Schindler, Goldsmith-Thomas & Newell, 2003) Professor Katherine Watson asks of her students in "Mona Lisa Smile." What Professor Watson is doing is having her students define a movement in popular culture of the time.  The movie "Mona Lisa Smile" uses art to depict high culture in this time, as the girls of the fictional college, Wellseley, are members of an elitist society made up of all white families, which separates them from their professor, as she is considered of low-culture because of her marital status as much as her upbringing and breeding.  With the use of such things as advertisements and paint by numbers art sets, Professor Watson explains to the audience not only how popular culture shifts and moves but how it compares to high culture, which is a similar motif in many other films, such as "Titanic."  Ultimately, this film is a good example of how high culture and popular culture differ as well as come together.

First, the story of "Mona Lisa Smile" moves in a linear pattern, flowing in a sequential order; however, it does start at the end, with a reformed student, Betty Warren, writing an editorial about her now favorite professor, Ms. Watson.  As Betty narrates, the movie opens with Professor Watson as she rides a train towards Wellseley, on her way to her first job as an arts history teacher.  It does not use flashbacks, only offers backstory through the gossiping and later questioning of their professor. The audience learns that Professor Watson is in fact, an unmarried woman with low breeding, but Betty states, "It was whispered that Katherine Watson, a first year teacher from Oakland State, made up in brains what she lacked in pedigree" (Schiff, Schindler, Goldsmith-Thomas & Newell, 2003).  Professor Watson, having gone to school, and presumably grown up in a liberal state, moves to one of the most conservative states in the United States, and has to adjust to their standards and way of life.  She is called "subversive," which, in that place, is considered a profound insult. 

Professor Watson is depicted as a woman way ahead of her time.  She says in the movie, in response to an editorial written by Betty, "I didn't realize that by demanding excellence I would be challenging . . . the roles you were born to fill" (Schiff, Schindler, Goldsmith-Thomas & Newell, 2003).  Enraged, she confides in another professor and further states, "A finishing school disguised as a college . . . I thought that I was heading to a place that would turn out tomorrow's leaders, not their wives" (Schiff, Schindler, Goldsmith-Thomas & Newell, 2003).  Professor Watson has a difficult time adjusting to this conservative way of life.  In the end though, she does have a profound effect on the girls in her class, except maybe not the way she'd intended. They do not go off to become the leaders of tomorrow, but instead think about the world around them in a different way. 

Secondly, the theme of popular culture in this movie is shown through the art that appears all throughout.  The first piece of art shown is actually an advertisement for Camel Cigarettes.  The ad reads, "When your courses are set, and a real dream boat you've met . . . have a real cigarette!" (Schiff, Schindler, Goldsmith-Thomas & Newell, 2003).  The ad reads as though enjoying a cigarette is synonymous with good grades and love, every woman's "desire."  This is a reflection of the culture that would read the paper or magazine this advertisement is featured in.  It is not just high culture advertising though, it would be considered popular culture, and according to John Storey in Cultural Theory and Popular Cutlure: An Introduction (2009), advertising is considered the main reason of cultural decline by Leavis (p. 24).  Advertising itself is the reason for the lessening of culture and the standard way of living according to Leavis (Storey, 2009, p. 24).  In reading and agreeing with the advertisements of the day, ladies of Wellesley are debasing themselves to a lower culture then they were born into.

 Then, Professor Watson explains to her students about Vincent Van Gogh, "With the ability to reproduce art, it is available to the masses.  No one needs to own a Van Gogh original . . . they can paint their own: Van Gogh in a box ladies, the newest form of mass distributed art, paint by numbers" (Schiff, Schindler, Goldsmith-Thomas & Newell, 2003).  In the 1950s, paint by numbers were all the rage, bringing high culture art to low culture individuals.  Van Gogh, a painter who is considered to be fine art, is now produced for the masses, transforming it to popular culture.  Van Gogh is no longer high culture for the elite to enjoy, but part of popular culture for everyone to enjoy. "Ironic, isn't it?  Look at what we have done to the man who refused to conform his ideals to popular taste, who refused to compromise his integrity.  We have put him in a tiny box and asked you to copy him" (Schiff, Schindler, Goldsmith-Thomas & Newell, 2003), Professor Watson explains to her students, which is a good example of how high culture becomes part of popular culture.

Storey (2009) explains another point with regards to high culture, that Stuart Hall and Paddy Whannel believe that not all high culture is good, nor is all popular culture bad, that there are shades of gray based on popular discrimination (p. 52).  In the case of "Mona Lisa Smile," Professor Watson is asking her students to look at the world around them from outside of themselves, to see what others see.  She says in the movie, "Contemporary art . . . what will future scholars see when they study us?  A portrait of women today.  There you are ladies" (Schiff, Schindler, Goldsmith-Thomas & Newell, 2003).  Professor Watson is showing them a slide of an advertisement which is exactly what a Wellseley graduate is expected to do, what she is trained to be: cook, clean, and care for her husband and children.  That is all she is expected to do, regardless of pedigree, education, or even what she wants.  The advertisements of the day are not good or bad, simply are a reflection of what is. 

Finally, the story told in "Mona Lisa Smile" is comparative with other movies of similar interests, such as "Titanic," in which an upper class woman is challenged by a man of lower-class to be herself regardless of her station in life.  She appears to be all that she should be, and yet early on in the film, the audience is shown that she has appreciation for the art of Monet, which in her time is a contemporary artist, but who is now considered fine art even though it is mass produced for everyone to see and enjoy, which shows another example of where high culture becomes popular culture.

In conclusion, "Mona Lisa Smile" tells a gripping story about a woman who is attempting to break the social norm by giving the women of Wellseley College something more to aspire to.  Professor Watson shows the students in her classroom just how effective art can be in regards to culture, whether it is high or low, good or bad, does not matter, but that each woman sees for herself the truth and questions that truth.  The art depicted in the film is a reflection of the setting in which the story is told from, which is conservative, privileged, and elitist, where the women at Wellseley are taught, "Your sole responsibility will be taking care of your husband, and children . . . but the grade that matters the most is the one he gives you" (Schiff, Schindler, Goldsmith-Thomas & Newell, 2003), meaning her husband.

References

Schiff, P. (Producer), Schindler, D. (Producer), and Goldsmith-Thomas, E. (Producer) & Newell, M. (Director). (2003). Mona Lisa Smile [Netflix].  United States: Revolution Studios.

Storey, J. (2009). Cultural Theory and Popular Culture An Introduction. Dorchester, Dorset: Pearson Education Limited.

To Wed or Not To Wed

It is often wondered if Shakespeare wrote his characters based on people whom he knew in his life, because the characters are so vivid and so diverse that no two are anything alike. It’s his female characters that especially stand out. Take for example Kate from Taming of the Shrew and Miranda from the Tempest, who are as opposite as can be: Kate is outspoken and often speaks her mind, while Miranda is mindful and listens to everything her father says.  Kate dislikes Petruchio when they first meet, but Miranda falls in love at first sight of Ferdinand.  Kate is forced to marry Petruchio, where Miranda is in agony to watch Ferdinand suffer in order to prove his love for her. Despite the two female characters being so very different, their fathers want what's best for them: good marriages to men who will provide for them.

First, the women of the two plays are as different as night and day as one is straightforward in speech while the other is heedful.  Kate from Taming of the Shrew is seen as being too outspoken and is the reason for the play taking on the name 'shrew.'   When Hortensio finds out that Petruchio is looking for a wife, he begins telling Petruchio about Kate, but describes her as "intolerable curst,/ And shrewd and froward so beyond all measure" (I.ii. 70-71).  True to form, when we first see Kate, she doesn't hold her tongue at all and speaks plainly what's on her mind. In her first scene, Kate says to her father, "I pray you, sir, is it your will / To make a stale of me amongst these mates?" (I.i.57-58). She mocks him outright, showing that she is disagreeable by nature, but she is not wrong.  Instead of standing there quietly while Baptista basically pimps out his daughters to suitors, she demands to know his intentions.  It is forward and unbecoming of a woman to speak out in front of would-be husbands and to speak so abruptly to her father, and thus makes her look like the shrew everyone calls her.  Whereas in the Tempest, Miranda's first scene shows her hanging on to her father's every word, listening and obeying him completely. Prospero, explaining her heritage, keeps making sure she's paying attention, "Sir, most heedfully" (I.ii.79) and “O, good sir, I do” (I.ii.89) is how she responds to him.  Miranda is completely taken by the story that her father tells to her and listens as an obedient child should. She behaves just as an obedient daughter should behave unlike Kate of Taming of the Shrew.  Kate is outspoken while Miranda is not.

Next, we see the differences in the two females even further upon their reactions of meeting their intended fiancés within the plays.  The audience is shown that Kate does not like Petruchio when they first meet in the second act during the exchange between the two to be wed.  Kate says to Petruchio to be gone, "Moved,” in good time. Let him that moved you hither/Remove you hence. I knew you at the first/You were a moveable" (II.i. 190-191).  However, Petruchio insists on calling Katherine Kate in his ploy to subdue the terrible shrew, to which Kate replies, "Well have you heard, but something hard of hearing./They call me Katherine that do talk of me" (II.i.177-178).  At her first opportunity, she's already correcting Petruchio and being as obstinate as possible. All throughout the next several lines, she contradicts him at every point, insisting that she is not his and that she does not love him, "Too light for such a swain as you to catch,/And yet as heavy as my weight should be" (II.i.198-199).  However, with Miranda, she has a very different take on her future husband. She sees him at the behest of her father and instantly thinks him handsome and falls in love. When Miranda first sees Ferdinand, she says, "I might call him/A thing divine, for nothing natural I ever saw so noble" (I.ii.413-414). She admits to herself aloud saying that she has feelings for Ferdinand almost immediately, "Why speaks my father so ungently? This/Is the third man that e'er I saw, the first/That e'er I sighed for. Pity move my father/To be inclined my way!" (I.ii.440-443). So, while Kate tries to dismiss Petruchio, Miranda falls head over heels for Ferdinand and wants nothing more than to be with him.

The final major difference is indeed the fact that both women have opposite responses to whom they are to marry: while Kate refuses, Miranda is eager to hers. Petruchio explains in no uncertain terms that she is to be his wife, whether she likes it or not, "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" (II.i.258-61). Kate continues to refuse, even to the point of wishing him dead, "I’ll see thee hanged on Sunday first" (II.i.289).  At this point in the play, Kate still refuses to change and to stay the shrew, still expressing herself, no matter how difficult everyone finds her.  However, in the Tempest, Ferdinand professes his love directly to Miranda saying, "Oh, if a virgin,/And your affection not gone forth, I’ll make you/The queen of Naples" (I.ii.445-46).  Prospero proceeds to try to make life miserable for Ferdinand, to which Miranda begs him not to, "O dear father,/Make not too rash a trial of him, for/He’s gentle and not fearful" (I.ii.469-70). The only time that it appears Miranda has a backbone is when she’s singing of her love’s virtues and praising him to her father in order to keep him from torturing Ferdinand.  However, it is merely a test in order to determine if Ferdinand truly loves Miranda and is not just taken over with lust by her beauty and innocence.  Miranda even goes so far as to say she will do Ferdinand's work for him, "If you’ll sit down,/I’ll bear your logs the while. Pray, give me that./I’ll carry it to the pile (III.i.23-25).  Of course Ferdinand refuses, to which Miranda expresses that she's just as able to do his work as him, "It would become me/As well as it does you, and I should do it/With much more ease, for my good will is to it/And yours it is against" (III.i.29-30).  But Miranda is willing to do what she can for Ferdinand and he is willing to do the same, they both will work hard to be with one another.

In conclusion, even though the two female characters in Shakespeare's plays are so very different, they both end up the same way: married.  Kate does eventually bend to her husband's will, while Miranda finally escapes the island to which she and her father were banished to with her husband. Do they live happily ever after? Well, the audience can decide for themselves. In the end, it didn't matter that Kate was obstinate and outspoken, nor did it matter that Miranda was naive and obeyed without fail. Because in the end, they both got what each father wanted for them, and that was to be married and taken care of for the rest of their lives.

Works Cited

Shakespeare, William. The Complete Works of William Shakespeare. Illinois: World Library Inc., 2010. Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation. Web. 26 Jan 2014. 

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.

Matrilineage in The Joy Luck Club

Amy Tan's The Joy Luck Club is an amazing story which uses monologues to tell the stories of 8 women, mothers and daughters, all Chinese, who live in San Francisco.  A major theme throughout is the importance of culture and identity as expressed through monologues from the women in the story and makes for an interesting read because the Chinese culture is a patriarchal society, where power flows from father to son, not mother to daughter.  In her article, “Daughter-Text/Mother-Text: Matrilineage In Amy Tan's Joy Luck Club,” Marina Heung states, "Because of their historical devaluation, women in the Chinese family are regarded as disposable property or detachable appendages despite their crucial role in maintaining the family line through childbearing" (par. 11).  Basically, despite women being the child bearers of the sons which will grow into men, they are reduced to being less important and having nearly no worth or value.  What makes this novel interesting is that the mothers try to hold on to their first culture, which treated them so cruelly, despite being integrated within a second culture in America while teaching their daughters to identify with their Chinese heritage.  Through the monologues, the main lessons that can be learned are the matrilineal relationships between the Chinese mothers and their American daughters, the importance of handing down the culture and history of the mothers to the next generation, and the search for identity among these two differing cultures for both mothers and daughters.

To begin, one of the key factors in The Joy Luck Club is the matrilineage of mothers and daughters.  The story itself is woven around each pair of mothers and daughters and the stories shift from person to person so that the reader can understand each woman's history and why they are the way they are. With the article "Negotiating The Geography of Mother-Daughter Relationships in Amy Tan's 'The Joy Luck Club,'" Michelle Wood states, “Tan’s dedication of the book, “To my mother and the memory of her mother,” suggests that the mother-daughter relationships the text portrays in China provide a critical framework from which to analyze the mother-daughter relationships in the United States” (82-83).  Because the mothers of the story were raised in China and faced difficulties because they were born female, they all want to keep their daughters from experiencing the same troubles.  In America, the daughters aren't taught the Chinese way, but are expected to be Chinese regardless. 

Stephen Souris says in his article, "'Only Two Kinds of Daughters': Inter-Monologue Dialogicity in the Joy Luck Club," that "Each mother hopes to establish a closer relationship by telling her [daughter] a story. And each mother is shown with a story to tell. Each mother offers the second installment of her life story" (par. 33).  Each daughter carries the burden of their mother's personal tragedies that occurred when the mothers were younger, even if they do not know what burden it is they carry.  They only feel burdened by a mother they cannot understand.  Patricia Hamilton explains in her article "Feng Shui, Astrology, and the Five Elements: Traditional Chinese Belief in Amy Tan's The Joy Luck Club," that,

The same spirit of individualism that seems so liberating to the older women makes their daughters resistant to maternal advice and criticism. Born into a culture in which a multiplicity of religious beliefs flourishes and the individual is permitted, even encouraged, to challenge tradition and authority, the younger women are reluctant to accept their mothers' values without question. (par. 3) 

Each daughter chooses her own path in a way that the mothers never could when growing up in China and it is through this individualism that the daughters can question anything without the fears their mothers felt when in China. 

 For one of the daughters, Lena St. Clair says in the story "Rice Husband," "To this day, I believe my mother has the mysterious ability to see things before they happen" (Tan 149).  Because Lena believes this, she appears hesitant to show her mother her new house with her husband, "Knowing that there is something wrong with the rigid policy she and Harold follow of sharing all costs equally, she is afraid her mother will confront her with a truth she does not want to admit" (Souris par. 29).  With Lena's mother, Ying-ying, Lena is uncertain whether to trust her mother's instincts, and is afraid to even ask the questions of herself because she knows in her heart that her marriage is flawed, but does not see any way out of it.  Because of Ying-ying's history, she sees the same flaws in her daughter's husband as she saw in her own first husband, and so shares with Lena her own story.  Ben Xu says in his article, "Memory and the Ethnic Self: Reading Amy Tan's The Joy Luck Club," "the mother does all this not in the capacity of a self-righteous mother, but as a co-victim who has managed to survive" (13), which is to show the daughter that she too can survive. 

With these matrilineal relationships occurring within the story, the reader can recognize the importance of culture to the mothers and the passing down of their culture, as well as their family heritage, to their daughters so that they can understand one another, in the hopes of bridging the gap that exists between the Chinese born mothers and American born daughters.  "The mother-daughter relationships in both China and the United States represented in The Joy Luck Club not only provide a link between the past and the present but also suggest how the ability, or the inability, for mother and daughters to share geographically informed cultural stories influences both mother-daughter relationships and individual and cultural identity" (Wood 83).  Because of the inability to link the past to the present, the mothers try to relate their stories to their daughter's lives to help the daughters understand where they come from, not to make the daughters become like them, but to give them the opportunities they themselves never had.  In the novel, An-mei Hsu admits that she tried to raise her daughter, Rose, the opposite of the way that she was raised, "I was raised the Chinese way: I was taught to desire nothing, to swallow other people's misery, to eat my own bitterness.  And even though I taught my daughter the opposite, still she came out the same way" (Tan 215).

Despite the similarities between the mothers and daughters, "the narrative makes the reader poignantly aware of the distance between each mother and daughter by showing the unbridged gap between them and the potential for sharing and communication that is only partially realized" (Souris par. 33).  The mothers speak a broken form of English, combining it with their native Chinese, the main language spoken in the home.  The daughters all understand Chinese, but speak English exclusively to differentiate themselves from their mothers (Heung par. 25).  How effective can this form of communication be between the generational distances, though?

Another question is how effectively maternal language functions as a medium of transmission between generations.  The mothers in the novel worry that the family history and knowledge preserved in their hybrid language will be elided after their deaths.  At one point, June comes to understand how important it is for her aunties to preserve the meaning of "joy luck": "They see that joy and luck do not mean the same to their daughters, that to these closed American-born minds 'joy luck' is not a word, it does not exist.  They see daughters who will bear grandchildren born without any connecting hope from generation to generation" (pp. 40-41). (Heung par. 28)

In their communicating with each other, the daughters hear but do not listen to what their mothers are trying to teach them: lessons on survival, hope, and family.  The mothers want their daughters to understand them and in their stories of their lives before coming to America, they express themselves the only way they know how, in the hopes that the daughters will finally see them. 

All of the Chinese mothers had been victimized in their native land, and they overcame unbelievable obstacles to get to where they could raise their daughters without the same fear as their own mothers faced, and this is what they wish their daughters to see and to know: what it took to get to where they are now.

All the stories included in the first section of the book are about mother-narrators's experiences of victimization.  These old memories help shift the narrators, especially in an unfamiliar environment, to a growing belief that people are all victimized, in one way or another, by events beyond their control. (Xu 6-7) 

It is natural for a mother to want to protect her children from suffering the same sorrows as they themselves suffered.  That is why it is shown to be so important in The Joy Luck Club that the mothers share their life experiences with their daughters, to pass on their history to the next generation.  But even June recognized the gap that existed between herself and her mother: "We translated each other's meanings and I seemed to hear less than what was said, while my mother heard more" (Tan 37).  June was not raised in China, did not face the same difficulties her mother did and so was unable to comprehend the depth of emotions that Suyuan felt.  "Having immigrated from a land where women were allowed almost no personal freedom, all the Joy Luck mothers share the belief along with Suyuan Woo that 'you could be anything you wanted to be in America' (132)" (Hamilton par. 2).  That was the purpose of the Chinese mothers immigrating to America, so that they could raise their daughters without fear, without oppression, and without being victimized further. 

Finally, there is the recurring theme of the search for identity within the stories of The Joy Luck Club.  The mothers in the novel are all Chinese born immigrants to America, seeking a new way of life, something better then what they had been used to back in China.  In America, they find a diversity of cultures which allows for women to be who they are, without the control of a man.  As Hamilton says, "A persistent thematic concern... is the quest for identity.  Tan represents the discovery process as arduous and fraught with peril.  Each of the eight main characters faces the task of defining herself in the midst of great personal loss or interpersonal conflict" (par. 1).  With the mothers, it is arranged marriages, separation from family, bad marriages, and death that are the conflicts within each of their lives which shape them early on in China.  They see their daughters suffering similar conflicts, such as bad marriages with daughters Lena and Rose.  However, it is Suyuan's death which catapults June into a world she is unfamiliar with: her mother's past; and facing the truth behind the "Chinese fairy tale[s]" (Tan 25) June thought her mother was telling her, which, in fact, turned out to be Suyuan's own story.  "The journey encompasses [June]'s attempts not only to understand her mother's tragic personal history but also to come to terms with her own familial and ethnic identity" (Hamilton par.1). 

Then, with the story between the Jong matrilineal relationship,

Waverly Jong feels immobilized by her mother's "sneak attack" (191), and at first completely misses the disenchanted heroic style that underlies the "sneakiness" of her mother's attack.  What she fails to see is that her mother's "sneakiness" is meant to prepare her for dealing with the unpredictable, in which she will constantly find herself faced with unstructured situations and the need to survive on her own. (Xu 10)

The desire of all the mothers in The Joy Luck Club is to prepare their daughters for when they will no longer be there with them, to protect them, to guide them.  Lindo is attempting to prepare Waverly for what she cannot see, to which Waverly feels as though her mother is attacking her instead of preparing her.  Waverly cannot see what her mother is doing, because she does not try to see from her mother's point of view.  As Wood states, "The daughters' quest to interpret both their mothers' and their own ethnic identity disrupts the daughters' ability to forge individual identities of strength in the way their mothers' did; that is, through the cultural stories of place they shared with their mothers" (84).  Because the daughters did not grow up in China, did not grow up in the Chinese way, it becomes more difficult for the daughters to really understand or sympathize with their mother's personal experiences and really take hold of all that their mothers are trying to teach them about finding their own identities.

In conclusion, Tan's The Joy Luck Club is a story that shows a matriarchal society built between mothers who were born in China, who later give birth to daughters in America, and their desire to pass down all that it means to be Chinese and female, which could only be learned in China, despite their daughters being more American than Chinese.  "The daughter may look like the mother, or even identify with her; and yet, the two are still worlds apart from each other" (Xu 7).  With the use of monologues, Tan's novel unfolds as the mothers tell their daughters their own stories of who they were in China and what happened to them, in the hopes of keeping their daughters from repeating the mistakes of the past while on their own search for personal identity.  The novel is framed with the story of Jing-mei "June" Woo and her mother, Suyuan Woo, who has passed away and is the catalyst for the rest of the "Joy Luck Aunties" desire to share their stories now, before they, too, pass on without their daughters knowing who they were or the importance of their cultural heritage. "These two frame stories, ending with a family reunion in China, suggest strongly a journey of maturity, ethnic awakening, and return-to-home, not just for Jing-mei Woo, but metaphorically for all the daughters in the book" (Xu 14).

 Works Cited

Hamilton, Patricia L. "Feng Shui, Astrology, And The Five Elements: Traditional Chinese Belief In Amy Tan’s The Joy Luck Club." Melus 24.2 (1999): 125. Academic Search Premier. Web. 18 Apr. 2014.

Heung, Marina. "Daughter-Text/Mother-Text: Matrilineage in Amy Tan's Joy Luck Club." Feminist Studies 19.3 (1993): 597. Academic Search Premier. Web. 18 Apr. 2014.

Souris, Stephen. "`Only Two Kinds of Daughters': Inter-Monologue Dialogicity in The Joy Luck Club." Melus 19.2 (1994): 99. Academic Search Premier. Web. 17 Apr. 2014.

Tan, Amy. The Joy Luck Club. New York: Penguin Books, 1989. Amazon.com. Kindle. 20 Apr. 2014.

Wood, Michelle Gaffner. "Negotiating The Geography Of Mother-Daughter Relationships In Amy Tan's "The Joy Luck Club.’" Midwest Quarterly 54.1 (2012): 82-96. Academic Search Premier. Web. 19 Apr. 2014.

Xu, Ben. "Memory And The Ethnic Self: Reading Amy Tan's The Joy Luck Club." Melus 19.1 (1994): 3. Academic Search Premier. Web. 19 Apr. 2014.