Analyzing Social Roles as Constructs Pertinent to Sex

Francis Chechile

Analyzing Social Roles as Constructs Pertinent to Sex.

In Shakespeare’s Taming of the Shrew as well as Manuel Puig’s Kiss of the Spider Woman the characters feel conflict between society’s rules and their more private desires. They are forced to perform social roles that are in a more private respect artificial. This pertains mostly to social roles that define sexuality. Elizabethan ideas of social roles were inextricably bound with gender. The social role of women, especially in courting and marriage arrangements was strictly a business matter. The business was to protect or increase the family fortune and stabilize the inheritance of wealth. Women brought dowries and the ability to produce heirs. Men were expected to deal with the father, who assessed the wealth and position of the suitor and had the final say. Women were basically chattel and expected to obey the dictates of their fathers before marriage until ownership was legally transferred to the husband. The Taming of the Shrew is a comedy because it appealed to the sense of Elizabethan social decorum. Understanding the difference between sex and gender along with masculinity and femininity in The Kiss of the Spider Woman is the first step in understanding how Puig challenges gender roles and the idea of gender in this book. These ideas then relate back to the social conventions of the day. This is where the men had all of the power in the relationships as well as society and the women were more passive and just looked for excitement where they could. By forming this contrasting relationship between two male characters Puig is trying to have individuals question their society and the standards in which it places on them.

There is clear inequality in Vale...

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...’s humiliating regimen of taming because she knows whether she likes the role of wife or not that is her future.

Puig intertwines these two contrasting characters to communicate how social norms are not always the way society says they should be. Valentin and Molina were very different characters just like how men and woman were supposed to be at this time. The man had the say in the relationship and in society he dealt with all of the political operations. Molina representing the role of a woman plays a big factor into this. This shows that social roles cannot be defined because there are no set roles for man and woman. Though, Kate strings no one along and treats everyone with contempt. Did she give in so suddenly to Petruchio’s marriage suit knowing that she would, at last, achieve the reputable female social role that would improve her status in the community?