The Taming Of The Shrew And Ella Wheeler Wilcox's Woman

Hello and welcome respected audience of the Shakespeare Society. I would like to start today by thanking you for allowing me to speak on the topic of how the stereotypical roles of women have changed and evolved in a positive manner since the Elizabethan era. I will start by defining a few beneficial terms before discussing how Shakespeare’s Taming of the Shrew has been appropriated by Gil Junger’s in the 1999 movie, 10 Things I Hate About You.

Texts like Taming Of the Shrew and Ten Things I Hate About You incorporate the convention of characterisation to heighten feminism. William Shakespeare's Taming of The Shrew conveys patriarchal discourse to establish the representation of women worthy of marriage as submissive and dutiful, principally through the historical reading. Ten Things I Hate About You uses film codes and conventions to express third-wave Feminist ideas towards

As the perception of women changes constantly, society is the only factor in creating their ideal image. These societal views are the basis of their treatment, with the expectation that it is beneficial for them. However, societal expectations of women in the Elizabethan and Victorian eras severely limit their freedoms and rights. William Shakespeare’s Othello and Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein portray most women in their typical roles. Both authors depict the level of injustice in society’s treatment of women through the passivity of women causing their deaths, the silencing of vulnerable women and the portrayal of women as more humane than men.

Gender stereotypes are not a modern notion and as such expectations and limitations have always existed for both men and women. Fortunately women, who have formerly beared great burdens of discrimination, now have very liberated roles in society as a result of slowly shifting attitudes and values. Shakespeare was integral in challenging the subservient role expected of women in the 16th century. Throughout the play, ‘The Merchant of Venice’, women are expressed as powerful characters who behave, speak and live in a way that breaks away from the conformist role of females during the 16th century. Therefore, the submissive stereotype expected of women in Shakespearean time is confronted and defied through

Women in the era of Queen Elizabeth I were often portrayed through stereotypes such as, “The Good and the Badde” by Nicholas Breton. In this work women have desired traits such as loyalty, obedience, and innocence. Undesirable traits would be just the opposite, disobedience, raunchiness, treachery, loudness, and being outspoken. The play, “The Taming of the Shrew” by William Shakespeare, plays heavily to these stereotypes with the two female main characters; Bianca and Kate. Whereas Kate plays the Un-quiet one in the beginning, but transitions to more of a quiet one or the good wife while Bianca plays The Virgin.

Shakespeare’s, The Taming of A Shrew, displays many ideas that would be considered sexist by anyone reading it today. The whole idea of the story is a young man trying to ‘tame’ his young wife into doing everything that he wants her to. He expects her to meet all of his needed desires and agree with anything that he says or does. During Shakespeare’s time this was very common for women to be treated more like a servant rather than an actual wife or daughter. Today, of course, people (especially women) would not comply with the idea of men being the boss of everything and woman dutifully following their

The dehumanization of women should not be shown in a play because it is against the common morals of today’s society. In The Taming of the Shrew, the objectification of women is shown

Shakespeare’s famous literary work, The Taming of the Shrew, written in the late 1500s (clearly written before the twentieth century) is a great example of a piece of literature that when read by a contemporary reader from the twenty-first century might view as sexist. Due to the fact that this piece of literature was

All throughout Taming of the Shrew, Shakespeare sends a clear message about power and gender, and he uses many literary devices to do so which helps the reader understand the text and empathize with the characters. Although an abundance of literary devices such as symbolism and genre are used in Shakespeare’s Taming of the Shrew to highlight the discord between power and gender, setting plays the most important role because it reveals the rules and expectations of both genders in Elizabethan England. To begin, the induction shows how people from Elizabethan England view masculinity as above femininity. For example, when the lord orders Bartholomew to dress as Sly’s wife, he finds it comedic. This is considered funny because for a man to want to dress as a woman was unheard of in this society, and it subconsciously makes

Sexism is the stereotyping and discrimination based upon gender. Typically steered towards women, it has played a large part in not only our society today but in the past as well. In the play The Taming of the Shrew by William Shakespeare, it is shown in the treatment of the women by their male counterparts. It is most prevalent in the way that fortune-seeking Petruchio goes about taming his aggressive and sharp-tongued wife Katharina. By examining Petruchio’s actions and Katharina’s reactions towards his efforts at taming her, once can see that the play is indeed sexist.

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.

This play is a celebration of a woman being subordinated. Not only does Katherine become the passive and obedient partner of Petruchio (due to his starving her of food and sleep) but she also adopts this view of women for herself and evangelizes this mode of being to other women. Her final speech dictates that women must obey their husbands and be grateful. She suggests that if women do contest their husband’s they come across as ‘bereft of beauty’.

Perhaps the theme that is most recurrent in William Shakespeare's plays is that of filial relationships, specifically the relationship between daughter and father. This particular dynamic has allowed Shakespeare to create complex female characters that come into conflict with their fathers over issues ranging from marriage to independence. At the same time, the dramatist exposes his audience to the struggles women face when attempting to assert themselves in a misogynistic world. Through the daughter-father dyads portrayed in The Taming of the Shrew and A Midsummer Night's Dream, Shakespeare highlights the effects that gender constraints have on female characters while simultaneously drawing attention to the sharp contrast between both relationships.

In The Taming of the Shrew by William Shakespeare, Shakespeare reveals the flaws in gender and class roles by pointing out the flaws in when women always listen to men. For everyone that has strict parents or been in a relationship you understand these examples, the man(dad) is the boss, the women obey the man, and class roles are determined by society. Shakespeare challenges through many situations, the class and gender roles that are determined by society.

Shakespeare and the members of the Elizabethan era would be appalled at the freedoms women experience today.  The docility of Elizabethan women is almost a forgotten way of life. What we see throughout Shakespeare’s plays is an insight into the female character as perceived by Elizabethan culture.  Shakespeare’s female characters reflect the Elizabethan era’s image of women; they were to be virtuous and obedient and those that were not were portrayed as undesirable and even evil.