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.