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Representation of women in Shakespeare's plays
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The Taming of the Shrew is a comedic, historic play written by William Shakespeare. It features the tale of Katherina. Outspoken & aggressive, her gentle but cunning sister Bianca, and the man that persistently sought to ‘tame’ Kate, Petruchio. The piece is well renowned, as it is a significant part of English literature. It is substantially influential, as the play also assisted in the shaping of gender expectations in modern times. A speech made by the protagonist, Katherina, towards the conclusion of the story is the most popular part. The speech is impactful & affecting – but, it is also highly controversial, for its misogynistic theme & women-degrading message. Although powerful & persuasive, Katherina’s speech is misogynistic. The speech …show more content…
Her message of encouraging sacrificing for men allows them to think that misogyny is acceptable. The speech gives men permission to continue maltreating their wives, bossing them around, and forbearing them from privileges (like Petruchio towards Katherina). In modern reality, men are not entitled to abuse women, let alone mistreat & neglect them. There is an immense chance of further opprobrium from critical men, and even other women. An essential factor of Katherina’s speech that allows future discrimination is her criticism of women. “Why are our bodies soft and weak and smooth, Unapt to toil and trouble in the world?” Katherina herself criticized & discriminated the women for their apparent irrational behaviour. The speech promotes abuse & further misogyny to occur in the subsequent future as it makes the women vulnerable – open to verbal attacks & tyrannical remarks from witnesses of the speech. “But that our soft conditions and our hearts, Should well agree with our external parts?” While men agree, her speech can enrage the feminine crowd – calling those who are expressive & courageous weak, and “unable worms”. Her words can create extortion to occur from witnesses as her vivid, but forceful words can be held against her & other women. By refraining from expressing dissatisfaction & requesting for their submission, Katherina allows men to take advantage of women and their compliant
“The Taming Of The Shrew” by William Shakespeare is a work of satire created to criticize the misogynistic outlooks of the 16th century. With this play, Shakespeare is trying to say that the idea and role of women in his society is deeply flawed and should be fixed, as well as to make other social commentaries, such as on the treatment of servants. Through exaggeration and parody, Shakespeare makes society look silly.
Woman used to live in a time era, where women didn 't have the voice or privilege to speak for themselves. Men were superior and predominant, a woman was forced to obey the guidelines of society 's views of how a woman should be. Being a shrew was not acceptable, don’t tease or tempt a man and that a good women depends on four characteristics. But as time progressed slowly women have been fighting for their voice; changing the views and perspectives society onces used to have on the “ideal” women and giving it a whole new concept and ideology.
Over the past 400 or so years since Shakespeare wrote _The Taming of the Shrew_, many writers, painters, musicians and directors have adapted and reformed this play of control and subjugation into timeless pieces of art. In _10 Things I Hate About You_ and Kiss Me Kate from two very different times in the twentieth century, and paintings of Katherina and Bianca from the late nineteenth century, the creators of these adaptations have chosen to focus on the role of the two main female characters in the play. The ideas surrounding these women have changed through the years, from Katherina and Bianca simply being young women who deviated from the norm of Shakespeare’s time to women who embody feminist ideals and stereotypes of the more modern world.
In Shakespeare's comedy, The Taming of the Shrew, Shakespeare has a woman as one of the story's main characters. Katherine Minola (Kate) is off the wall, and kinda crazy. Because of her actions, the “male centered world” around her doesn't know what to do with her.
The Taming of the Shrew, by William Shakespeare, deals with marriage. The ideas explored are primarily shown through the characters of Petruchio and Katharina. We are introduced to the trials and tribulation's which present themselves in their everyday lives. The characters bring up a traditional concept of male domination. Through the play we see the need for domination through Petruchio, and the methods he uses to dominate. While these ideas of male domination have remained a constant throughout the years, however recently there has been a change toward equality.
The first Shakespeare play which Zeffirelli adopted to the cinema, The Taming of the Shrew, deals with the theme of gender roles. In a grander scale the play explores the behavior expectations of males and females both in society at large and within a domestic relationship. For many years, most critics agreed that the heart of the play suggested male domination and female submission, especially to the authority of their husbands, as the accepted male-female dynamic. This view went unchanged for many years and audiences widely accepted Petruchio's “taming” of Katherina as politically correct.
A very prominent theme in Shakespeare's The Taming of the Shrew is society's double standards of men and women. In the play, Katherina is a very free-willed, independent woman who wishes to follow her own path in life and is not dependent on a man for her happiness. Petruchio is also free-willed, independent and speaks his mind freely. However, where Petruchio is praised for these characteristics, Katherina is scorned and called names. Petruchio is manly and Katherina is bitchy for the same traits.
"Women have a much better time than men in this world; there are far more things forbidden to them." -Oscar Wilde. This quote embodies the fight over gender roles and the views of women in society. Taming of the Shrew deals with Kate and Bianca, two sisters who are at the time to he married off. However, suitors who seek Bianca as a wife have to wait for her sister to be married first. Kate is seen as a shrew because she is strong willed and unlike most women of the time. In his 1603 play The Taming of the Shrew, William Shakespeare enforces traditional gender roles and demonstrates how little say women had in society. He accomplishes this through the strong personality of Kate, Baptista 's attitude towards his daughters as transactions, and
The Taming of the Shrew by William Shakespeare is a play that is ahead of its time in its views toward gender roles within society. Katherine is a woman who is intelligent, and is not afraid to assert her views on any given situation. She is paired with another obstinate character in Pertuchio. The Marriage formed between the two is a match made in heaven for two reasons. First Because Katherine is strong enough to assert her views, and more importantly, she realizes when she should assert them. The second reason the bond survives is that Petruchio is strong enough to accept the fact that Katherine has a mind and, more importantly he loves her for that reason. Petruchio cleverly weaves the relationship into the framework of society without compromising the integrity of the relationship. Petruchio does this by comparing Katherine’s at attitude to repulsive clothing. Carefully and calculatingly, Petruchio forges a relationship that is envied by all who witness it.
The Taming of the Shrew is one of the earliest comedies written by William Shakespeare. The Taming of the Shrew focuses a great deal on courtship and marriage. Especially the life after marriage, which was generally not focused on in other comedies. Notably, the play focuses on the social roles that each character plays, and how each character faces the major struggles of their social roles. Which plays into one of the most prevalent themes of The Taming of the Shrew. The theme of how social roles play into a person’s individual happiness. This is displayed through the characters in the play that desperately try to break out of the social roles that are forced upon them. This exemplified through the character, Katherine, an upper-class young maiden-in-waiting, who wishes to have nothing to do with her role.
Battle of the Sexes would have been another appropriate title for this play because the entire play is women verses men, men verses women. This battle of the sexes shows no boundaries between the rich and poor, young or old, man or women. The basis of all the rivalry stems from the fact that the men in this play look at the women as if they were objects, instead of human beings with feelings. This theory that women are merely objects creates an environment that the women have to adapt to and survive in and the environment of a person will depict what he or she will become, resulting in a battle between the sexes.
Some have made the claim that Shakespeare was pro-feminist and did all he could to illuminate the wrong done to women of his time by creating some overwhelmingly misogynistic characters. This was his way of showing men the errors of their ways and shaming them into showing women more respect. This is an interesting hypothesis for a number of reasons. First of all, there are no signs that it worked, if Shakespeare did indeed intend to reform men. Could the Bard, supposing that he was trying to shame men into changing, influence men in this manner? Can we blame him if he failed? Secondly, and by far more interesting to me, is that, in some cases, feminists seem to be more interested in martyring the Bard than in promoting feminist agendas What proof do we have that Shakespeare was really that enlightened?
Sexism is an ever changing concept in today’s world. Every day the concept morphs a little bit, changing the entire definition of what is sexist and what is not. In The Taming of the Shrew by Shakespeare, the male characters lie to and abuse their women in order to have the women marry them. Lucentio come to Padua to study, but when he sees a beautiful girl, he pretends to be a teacher in order to marry Bianca. Petruchio on the other hand forces a woman to marry him and then trains her to follow his every command. Although the The Taming of the Shrew is frequently regarded as a particularly sexist play, it is not sexist and demeaning towards women.
A Shakespearean scholar expanded on this, “The play enacts the defeat of the threat of a woman’s revolt; it does so in a comic form – thus so offers the audience the chance to revel in and reinforce their misogyny while at the same time feeling good” (Gay). The Taming of the Shrew at many points is just praising the men in the novel despite their behavior and putting down the women for being anything but perfect. The novel makes the actions happening comedic and the reader does not get upset at the things happening, but in reading further into it and comparing it to modern day, it is not hard to see the plain and simple abuse. Although gender roles are still prominent in today’s society, they are toned back. In contemporary versions of The Taming of The Shrew, such as 10 Things I Hate About You and Kiss Me Kate, the character Kate is always mitigated.
During The Taming of the Shrew, Shakespeare has used pleasure and pain in order to tell the story of Petruchio and Katherina’s courtship. This is problematic for modern day audiences, as they do not find the courtship methods that Petruchio employs to woo Katherina particularly comical. However, it could be argued that Shakespeare crafted The Taming of the Shrew precisely for this reason, to feature his views on patriarchy and to make the audience see what was happening through a new perspective. The Elizabethan audience would have been shocked at the methods used in order to achieve the taming, even though it was well within a man’s right to discipline his wife if she was deemed unfit. From the very beginning of The Taming of the Shrew, Shakespeare indicates that this play will not follow traditional rules of decorum, and that it is intended to both give pleasure and cause pain in order to make both Elizabethan and modern audiences take note of his underlying message.