Taming Of The Shrew Women Essay

In The Taming of the Shrew, the audience sees the equilibrium between a man and woman through their relationship and their gender roles placed upon them because of their society and upbringing. In order to be tamed, Kate embarks on a journey to change her shrewish qualities. She transforms herself from a loud, vicious woman to the ideal wife that her husband Petruchio desired. In Act four, the audience experiences Kate’s tamed manner in a conversation between her and Petruchio, where she tells Petruchio that whatever he believes is right, to her, it is right as well. “…And be it moon, or sun, or what you please; / An if you please to call it a rush candle, / Henceforth I vow it shall be so for me” (4.5.13-15). Kate had finally submerged herself into the socially accepted role of wife. She puts all of her own faith and truth that she has learned in her

Katherina may be a shrew, but Shakespeare’s The Taming of the Shrew does not truly show a study of how a selfish, spoilt individual is made to conform to society’s expectations, or be tamed into a ‘proper’ woman. At the end of the play, Katherina is not, necessarily, tamed - she just realizes what she must to do in order to get the things she wants. Two main examples of her submitting to Petruchio in order to achieve her desires are in Act 4, scene 5, (the sun versus moon scene) as well as Act 5, scene 2 (the kiss me kate scene and her final monologue).

In the play Taming of the Shrew, written by William Shakespeare, many characters are reshaped and given new personality traits. Petruchio is known as being a cocky man who intends to help tame a shrewish young lady named Kate. There are many critics that believe Petruchio is solely obnoxious and a bully but through out his interactions with Kate it is shown that he truly cares about the well being of others. Of course at the beginning of Petruchio’s plan to tame a young lady he is acting off of his confidence and trying to impress those around him but this soon changes once he begins to interact with Kate. Petruchio proves that his ways have changed and he is only taming Kate to make her feel better about herself, “Petruchio uses psychological methods, not aggressive or barbaric ones, to tame Kate, which alls her to still be witty and intellectual, but also happily married, at the end of the play”(Natale,98). Petruchio truly believes that by taming Kate he is preforming a good deed and helping her accept herself in this process.

Marriage is presented in Shakespeare?s play The Taming of the Shrew, in a complex manner allowing readers to view the play literally as a brutal taming or ironically as a subversive manifesto. Yet, Shakespeare intends to present marriage to be full of mutual love where neither male nor female dominate but compliment each other thriving together in a loved filled relationship. The portrayal of a deep understanding, which exists in an analogical relationship and the gentle transformation, which occurs in marriage, clearly outlines marriage in the play to be a celebration of a mutual love relationship within the patriarchal foundations of society.

Examine the different ways in which Shakespeare presents the attitude towards marriage in the play, ‘The Taming of the Shrew.’

Kate and Petruchio in The Taming of the Shrew An exploration of the way Shakespeare presents the characters and relationships of Kate and Petruchio in The Taming of the Shrew. The relationship between Kate and Petruchio is central to the development of The Taming of the Shrew, as both characters clearly represent and are centrally involved in the main theme of the play, the taming of the "shrew", Kate.

The Taming of the Shrew is one of Shakespeare's most famous plays, and has weathered well into our modern era. For all the praises it has garnered throughout the centuries, it is curious to note that many have considered it to be one of his most controversial in his treatment of women. The "taming" of Katherine has been contended as being excessively cruel by many writers and critics of the modern era. George Bernard Shaw himself pressed for its banning during the 19th century. The subservience of Katherine has been labeled as barbaric, antiquated, and generally demeaning. The play centers on her and her lack of suitors. It establishes in the first act her shrewish demeanor and its repercussions on her family. It is only with the introduction of the witty Petruchio as her suitor, that one begins to see an evolution in her character. Through an elaborate charade of humiliating behavior, Petruchio humbles her and by the end

The play is thought to have been written between 1598 and 1599 as Shakespeare was approaching the mid of his career. It was the time when renaissance touched England. Though the period witnessed tremendous growth in science and learning but it was a male dominated society. Women had very little rights. Despite the fact that England was ruled by a female monarch Queen Elizabeth I for over four decades, most women had little or no power over their own lives. Women were denied formal education, the right to speak and the opportunity to hold office. Women were considered as weak and inferior to men and in need of always being protected. Women were expected to get married, bear children and look after the household. They were expected to obey the male members without question. They were expected to learn how to govern a household and become a skilled housewife. Single women were looked upon with suspicion. It was a solely patriarchal society with institutions such as marriage solely vested in elderly male authority. During that time the father chose whom his

William Shakespeare's The Taming of the Shrew is an interesting story that demonstrates the patriarchal ideas of how a marriage is suppose to be according to society, what is acceptable of a woman's role in a relationship. It's a story that has many things to show for it's been remade, and remade, even slightly altered to better relate to the teenage audience.

Elizabethan society was created on the belief the woman had no right or control over their own lives. Women had no choice in what their profession would be, as a matter of fact they weren’t allowed to have a profession such as medicine, politics and law. The only places they were allowed to work were in domestic areas. This essay will be focusing on the taming of the shrew with the role of status of women and attitudes towards marriage and courtship during the Elizabethan era. In Elizabethan society, all that women were considered of was the lower end of men and the weaker gender.

Marriage in William Shakespeare's The Taming of the Shrew At the time Shakespeare wrote The Taming of the Shrew the idealistics

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.

One of the most notorious topics of interest in the works of Shakespeare is the role women receive in his plays. The way Shakespeare wrote his plays, women were very submissive to men and had no will and choice of their own. Women were extremely reliant upon the men in their lives, believing that they were inferior and thus following their desire for the women’s lives. This included that marriages were usually arranged by a powerful male, instead of giving the woman the opportunity of choosing marriage for love. It is not surprising that Shakespeare portrayed women in a way that was familiar to him and the time era in which he lived. In A Midsummer Night’s Dream and The Taming of the Shrew, both focus on the development of love and not, with

Also, another leading character in the Merchant of Venice was controlled by her father, Jessica. But she couldn't be controlled, she eventually did what she wanted and proved to be a modern woman. Similarly, in the Taming of the Shrew, Kate is expected to marry the man her father, Baptista chooses and she has no freedom and choice of her own will. However, in the Taming of the Shrew, Kate is also being called property by her husband, Petruchio. Petruchio says that, "She is my good, my chattels, she is my house, My household stuff, my field, my barn, My horse, my ox, my ass, my anything;" Not only her father but her future husband doesn't respect her and calls her everything but his wife. Almost all of the woman in Shakespeare's play were treated as property, here you can see Portia and Kate, this clearly means that Shakespeare also agrees with this type of behaviour towards woman and that is why he always shows this behaviour towards the main female protagonists of the play. This type of behaviour towards woman was very common and both these plays have similarly shown how.

Shakespeare first challenged class and gender roles by showing how the man is the boss. In Shakespeare’s play, Baptista controls everything that happens within this family. For example in the play when Baptista finds a suitor for Kate he insists on meeting the father of the suitor because he thinks that Petruchio is just marrying for the money. “That is, not to bestow my youngest