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After A Separation Of Several Centuries, Attitudes Between

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After a separation of several centuries, attitudes between the sexes have changed either significantly or rather little in either direction depending on where one resides. In Shakespeare’s time, women were considered little more than property to be exchanged between her father and her possible husband to be. Those women who wish to escape such burdens had little other options. All they had was other disinheritance or the convent. Katherine Baptista in The Taming of the Shrew tried to fight such emotion oppression on her own terms the best way she knew how, by being so feisty and untampered that many men chose to run away from here. It would take another man willing to be paid to attempt to win her so that another can marry her sister …show more content…

To him, it was a means to an end. Money was all that mattered to him. That may have changed at the end of the play but it is hard not to consider that putting Katherine through such tactics to “tame her” was not as burdensome for him considering what he would have to gain later. This passage makes us believe that love is secondary to his goals in finding marriage and when Lucentio finds him and arranges an offer, it is too tempting to refuse despite the challenges that face him with Katherine. Perhaps we see this violent and brutal streak in Petruchio before Katherine and he even meet, as the play begins with Petruchio striking his servant Grumio and with Grumio warning everyone what was to come: I pray you, sir, let him go while the humour lasts. O ' my word, an she knew him as well as I do, she would think scolding would do little good upon him: she may perhaps call him half a score knaves or so: why, that 's nothing; an he begin once, he 'll rail in his rope-tricks. I 'll tell you what sir, an she stand him but a little, he will throw a figure in her face and so disfigure her with it that she shall have no more eyes to see withal than a cat. You know him not, sir. (I.ii.106-114) While he does not strike Katherine physical as he does with Grumio, it still implies if it came to that (which it almost does), he would not have any issues with doing so. He may not have needed to resort to physical

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