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.
In William Shakespeare 's play, The Taming of the Shrew, was written in 1590’s to 1610. This time period was very hard for a women. The culture was very misogynistic, the culture demanded that a women
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Domesticity was what a “good woman” was out to be and obedience was obeying to the husband in everything he said or asked to be done. In the 1820’s and 1860’s, women were resided to four characteristics in piety, purity, submissiveness and domesticity. “The Cult of Womanhood”explained these four characteristics. First, Piety the modern young woman of the 1820s and 1830s was known for their workings with their religion. In the nineteenth‐century society believed that women had a particular propensity for religion to bring the world out of sin through her suffering, through her pure, and passionless love. Second, Female purity was also highly revered. Without sexual purity, a woman was no woman, but rather a lower form of being, a ʺfallen woman,ʺ unworthy of the love of a man and unfit for their company. Third, Men were the submissives and doers‐‐the actors in life. Women were to be passive bystanders, submitting to fate, to duty, to God, and to men. Women were warned that this was the order of things. A true woman knew her place, and knew what qualities were wanted of her. Fourth, domesticity Womanʹs place was in the home. Womanʹs role was to be busy at those morally uplifting tasks aimed at maintaining and fulfilling her piety and purity. The Cult of Domesticity is mostly based on the time of pre civil war, woman in that time era were expected to keep the household a peaceful from the evils of the
However, it introduces the nineteenth century idea of “the cult of domesticity”. Historian Barbara Welter wrote an article on the idea in 1966 that explains this early nineteenth century ideology that a woman 's role at home should focus on: piety, purity, submissiveness, and domesticity (Welter 151). The cult of domesticity roughly breaks down to it being a woman 's duty to be respectfully religious, sexually pure before marriage, accepting of male dominance over women, and the overpowering idea that domesticity will preserve a woman from her own wandering
The Role of Women in Challenging the Status Quo in Shakespeare's Taming of the Shrew
Consequently, in the play The taming of the Shrew and the sources of author Elizabeth Hutcheon, Marion Perrett and Dale Priest they have ideas amongst those sources and my three other sources have the common theme of women being objectifified and therefore the idea between those sources is that women’s roles become reversed when they let themselves be shrewed like the character Katherine did when it came to Petruchio. Amongst the first source the moral of it is one that Linda Boose argues that “Shrew and similar terms were transposed from their origin as contemptuous expressions for lower-class males into terms that gendered such hostility, displacing it away from the threat of male class revolt which remained real throughout the era and redirecting
Taming of the Shrew, had a great story line, which can be related to several movies that exist today i.e. Othello, 10 Things I Hate about You, and The Lion King. In William Shakespeare's play, The Taming of the Shrew, the shrew played by Katherine, had a terrible perspective on life and just about everything else. Her negativity was caused by her younger, more pulchritudinous sister Bianca. Bianca wanted to get espoused. She had all of the men's hearts, Katherine retained none. If Katherine got espoused then Bianca could get espoused. She authentically was a shrew who needed to be tamed.
In Shakespeare's time, the ideal wife was subservient to her husband, and it was the husband's inherent duty to take care of his wife's money, property, and person, including both physical and moral welfare. If a man's spouse proved rebellious, he had the right to physically brutalize her into submission. This social phenomenon of domesticating an unruly woman as one might an animal was the inspiration for The Taming of the Shrew. Kate fits the stereotype of the shrewish woman at the play's outset and the Renaissance ideal of the subservient, adoring wife by the play's close, but her last speech as the final monologue of the play-rightly interpreted-undercuts her stereotype.
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.
Power is the capability of influencing others in their behavior. It all connects to him trying to tame Katherine. He wants to change her behavior and he contains the power of doing this because at the end she respects him more than any other female would respect their husband. Throughout the play, The Taming of the Shrew, by William Shakespeare, Petruchio, Katherine 's husband, contains the power in the relationship because he is able to change her behavior.
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 Taming of the Shrew" is a great example of Shakespear's use of women. Shakespeare indeed does transcend the stereotypes of his own time.
In Shakespeare’s ‘The Taming of the Shrew’, the character Kate is the ‘shrew’ of the play. A shrew is a bad-tempered or aggressively assertive woman. In Elizabethan times being a labelled as a shrew may led to punishments and public humiliation. Modern day readers may look at Kate being labelled as a shrew and disagree as society today has changed since then and women are not inferior to men as they back then.
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.
Many of Shakespeare’s plays are seen as either sexist or humorous, with room to discuss. The way the men in “The Taming of the Shrew” treat the two female characters has been very controversial, because of how they look at them as if they are possessions and not actual people. Some argue that the play is not truly sexist because of the way Shakespeare wrote it to be a comedy. Because of it being a comedy, it not only sheds some light on a dark subject, but also mocks it, making it more obvious as to how sexism is a preposterous idea. To some, Shakespeare’s portrayal of sexism is a bad thing, but if you look a little closer, the mockery of the subject is more apparent because of how extravagant the male characters’ personalities are toward the women in the play. Gremio and Hortensio constantly fight over Bianca’s hand in marriage, even to the point of Gremio stating, “You may go to the devil’s dam! Your gifts are so good here’s none will hold you.- Their love is not so great, Hortensio, but we
The Taming of the Shrew is set in a time period that did not accept women as we do today. In today's society, women who are strong and independent and quick witted are praised. In Elizabethan times women were supposed to know their role in life, being good to their husbands, making children and taking care of them. There were no women in politics, there were no women in business, it was only acceptable for women to participate in domestic areas of life. Women could not live a respectable life in this time period without a male figure to take care of them, rendering them helpless without men. If there was anything that must be done involving economics or education, it was up to the men. Men were the ones who worked and brought home the money to support the family. The roles of men and women were very distinct, and it resulted in giving the men the majority of the power.
This play has many themes of patriarchy concerning the roles of males and females in a marriage, the authority of fathers over their families, husbands over wives, and men over women (Bloom 13). In the title alone, there's the indication of the husband over the wife, the "taming" of the shrew (16), and the word shrew that is chosen to describe Katherine is somewhat demeaning. In modern day society there is no such boundaries put on women. There should not be one party who overpowers the other one. It is a marriage, a bond that is shared, and each should be respected in the same way. Today, women and men are equals in a marriage, or at least in the United States. Women are no longer as oppressed as they once were. This play is rather primitive on the views of women in society.
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 in to modern day, it is not hard to see the plain and simple abuse. Although gender roles are still prominent into today’s society they are toned back. In contemporary version of The