TheTaming of the Shrew: Organized Religion and Obedience Essay

Lastly, many women have fewer rights than men, for example divorce, how many people they marry and how they dress.

Throughout centuries of human existence, women have been deemed as inferior to men in multiple different cultures and religions. Men have developed a norm to be the individual who carries out duties to help maintain a stable life for himself and the family in which he is providing for. Because of this fundamentalist approach towards how society should be, women’s rights have been suppressed throughout political, social, and cultural actions. The Islamic religion in particular, is fond of abusing the rights of women and empowering the rights of men in such a way that it has created a permanent existence of conflict within countries who follow Islam. In fact, in the Quran it states that women must have lesser authority than men, therefore their

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.

The Taming Of The Shrew by William Shakespeare is an introduction in the everpresent battle of women to be loving and caring wives, while at the same time holding on to our independence. Its plot is derived from the popular 'war of the sexes' theme in which males and females are pitted against one another for dominance in marriage. The play begins with an induction in which a drunkard, Christopher Sly, is fooled into believing he is a king and has a play performed for him. The play he watches is what constitutes the main body of The Taming OfThe Shrew.

unequally in marriage, in court, and in society. Difficulty through marriage for Muslim women can come from age, divorce, and having to be subservient to their husbands. Not only is there difficulty in marriage, but also in the unequal treatment in the islamic justice systems, such as when “evidence given by a female witness counts for half that given by a man” (Dargie 22). Although the societies of major Islamic countries differ, it is clear that women are not represented equally to men in any of them, for example having to dress and act certain ways so as not to attract any attention from men. However, there are Islamic women who are willing to change how their religion views females by speaking out and encouraging others to do the same.

The Taming of the Shrew is set in a time where women are severally inferior to men and Katherine has in her mind that Petruchio controls him and therefore cannot lash out at him to what he is doing to her. She has to listen to him and obey him no matter what he says and that this is all out of love. Petruchio’s taming will make her love him. “The more my wrong, the more his spite appears...he does it under name of perfect love As who should say, if I should sleep or eat ’Twere deadly sickness or else present death.” (4.3.

In William Shakespeare’s comedy, The Taming of the Shrew, Katherine’s sarcastic tone towards obedience is shown through diction and details throughout her final speech. Katherine’s sarcastic tone shown through diction in the final speech is implied when she talks about a women’s role as a wife. Katherine makes it clear that the role of a wife is that she is, “Bound to serve, love, and obey” (5.1.180). However, this can be implied as sarcasm because at the beginning of the comedy, Katherine is quite the spitfire. She is known to be hateful and scornful to everyone, which is why nobody is interested in marrying and loving her.

In “An Introduction to Muslim Women’s Rights,” Azizah al-Hibri discusses how patriarchy affects the interpretation of Quran. She argues that Muslim jurists that interpreted the Quran and Islamic Law, lived in a patriarch world. Their views about men and women are based on the patriarchy in their societies, hence, their interpretation of the Quran and Islamic Law represents patriarchy. Al-Hibri argues that throughout the Quran, God emphasizes his Oneness and says that all humans were created by him from one soul. This emphasizes the concept of tawhid; there is no God but Allah and that Allah considers all human beings equal regardless of their gender. Furthermore, she argues that for Allah, the one who is the most pious is the most honorable, hence, gender plays no role and does not make one superior than the other. Moreover, she argues that considering men to be naturally superior to women is the same mistake that Satan committed. He considered himself to be naturally superior to others and refused to bow to Adam. Aziza Al- Hibri also gives suggestions for what important changes need to be made in order to improve the status of Muslim women in the society. She argues that any interpretation that may be harmful towards any member of the society should be re-evaluated, which include issues such as guardianship, polygamy and divorce, so that Muslim women are given the rights that their religion gives them. Al-Hibri’s work is useful for my research as it argues that the way jurists translated the Quran was affected by the society they lived in. Hence, they interpreted the Quran in a patriarchal context and manipulated it to validate that men are superior to

In Shakespeare’s comedy, “The Taming of the Shrew”, the author depicts the subjection of a willful woman to the will of her husband. 2 The female protagonist in the play, Kate, has a shrill tongue, a hot temper and irrational attitude giving her the reputation of a “shrew”. The first way Shakespeare portrays marriage in this play is by showing the female subject to being married as the victim who is passed from her father to the suoiter of her father’s choosing. In “The Taming of the Shrew”, Kate is seen as an object in her courting and marriage to Petruchio .

Islamic women are allowed to make decisions on their own when it comes to marriage. According to Islamic Law, a woman is granted the right to choose her husband and cannot be forced to marry anyone without their consent.(Braswell, p.155) As a wife, she must stand behind her husband at all times. If her husband does not

The Qur’an and the practice of the Prophet Muhammad seem to recognize the different functions and mutually supportive roles of men and women, encouraging an equal and balanced social and family life. In seventh-century Arabia, the Qur’an extended the right of property ownership and financial independence to women. It prohibited the practice of female infanticide and other abuses, and significantly modified marriage and divorce practices. While many Americans consider Islam to be an “oppressive religion” with regard to women, Muslim women often comment on the liberty and dignity they extract from their faith. Many Muslim women say that true Islam is often compromised by oppressive practices that have their roots in cultural differences or political expediency; general ignorance and lack of engagement with the diversity inherited within the tradition contribute to the continuation of these

Popul Vuh, Paradise Lost, and Genesis, in their own respective ways, deal with female disobedience. Blood Moon from Popul Vuh and Eve from Genesis disobey their respective male counterparts for a specific cause that is special to each of them. Both are empowered by disobeying their respective patriarchs, but, Blood Moon is uplifted as a hero for her specific actions, while Eve is seen as a sinful disobeyer, however this illustrates the reality of the role of a typical Western women or Mayan woman in today’s society. Disobedience cultivates both stories, and uses the female characters as a vehicle to implement the overall theme. In Popul Vuh, dealing with Blood Moon specifically, she refuses to give the identity of the individual who impregnates

A woman’s role in society has been continuously put to question throughout history, a dispute still present to this day. During the rise of Islamic faith and Middle Ages, strong representations of pro-femininity, wit and power were arising in literary works in effort to create a new image of womanliness, before faintly present in historical works. Through bias interpretation, women formally known as unskilled and lacking purposeful attributes to society besides baring children and servicing to their husbands were glorified for their true abilities in legendary works such as, The Arabian Nights, The Wife of Bath’s Tale, and The Book of the City of Ladies. The primary argument of woman’s inferiority towards men in society can be linked to religion,

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

Unfortunately, the era of men and women being equal was hasty. Briefly after Mohammed’s death Islamic society changed, so did the interpretations of the Quran to meet different circumstances. Almost simultaneously women became inferior almost being viewed as possessions and property. Having choices was no longer an option for women, whatever the man said became the law. Girls at birth could be killed by their father’s because boys carried the name of the family while girls usually were concubines, workers, or sold. Most significantly women’s roles depended largely on what the husband’s economic status was. If the husband was a farmer the wife had to help in the fields or if the husband worked in the city she had to help run the business.