Girls could be educated by tutors at home but schools and universities were restricted to them. This was because women were not seen as to require the need for an education as all they should know, according to society at the time, was how to cook clean and raise a family.
Women also didn’t have as much power or control in their own marriage as a woman was considered to be weaker than the man. A man even had a legal right to chastise his wife as he was considered to be the ‘head’ of the marriage.
As you can see there is a large divide between the roles of men and women and that men had more promising prospects open to them and the only real option for a woman was to marry well and go into a domestic service, of a sort, to the husband.
These biased views were obviously centred on sexism towards women. Women were seen as feeble and not able to handle as much responsibility as a man and wouldn’t be able to handle what a man did. They were blatantly considered to be the weaker of the two sexes. Thus sprang forth the widely held belief that a woman’s place was at home and not doing such things as working or having a career.
Evidently the views held of women in Elizabethan times didn’t place them very highly within society and were clearly considered to be of a lesser status than men and that any woman who didn’t conform to these ideas on women was considered an outsider to society. Kate in this very much personified this outsider personality with her shrewish characteristics such as her angry outburst and constant violence to people and her surroundings. It is interesting to see how Kate is portrayed in adaptations of Shakespeare’s play and more interestingly, how she is seen to change through the course of the play or film or whatever it may be. A good example of one such adaptation is Zeferelli’s film, “The Taming of the Shrew”.
At the beginning of Zefirelli’s film, Kate is shown to be very much how the book intends her to be pictured. Kate is shown to very much live up to her bad reputation and is shown to be very much the shrew to which the title refers to as she is both scolding and bad tempered. This bad tempered nature even escalates into violence which Kate is shown to be all too capable of committing. Her image could be described as being slightly witch like as Kate’s face constantly bears a dark or even dangerous look. The camera work used throughout the film further increases Kate’s scary, sinister appearance as there are frequent close ups on her eyes which Kate visibly narrows as if in anger or disgust. There are also close ups on Bianca’s eyes, which, in comparison to Kate’s are bright and look full of energy. This is a subtle highlight to how different Kate and Bianca are once compared despite being sisters. Also Kate is constantly roaring at various instances which shows a kind of animal quality within her.
Kate also takes to breaking various objects at regular intervals in the opening scenes which shows how wild she is and shows that she can’t really control her anger or tame herself.
But as soon as Petruchio arrives in Kate’s life there is an obvious change in Kate’s character. When he presents himself to her she is visibly caught off guard by this sudden interest being taken in her rather than her younger sister Bianca. Following the two character’s tense initial meeting a chase ensues led by Kate with Petruchio in close pursuit. During the chase Katherina seems delighted, in privacy, at all the attention she is receiving but when Petruchio is in sight she adopts a pained expression to hide her true feelings of obvious excitement. When Katherina is finally caught in the end she is locked away in her room alone while Petruchio discusses the marriage with Kate’s father, Baptista. Given this time to herself Kate is seen slowly sinking down in to a chair a falling into deep though about Petruchio. She then rise and wanders over to the door to look at Petruchio through the door light which is made of red glass and casts a warm reddish glow over Kate’s face. This seems to be a symbol of how Kate is beginning to warm to the idea of being with Petruchio.
Due to the new interest being taken in Kate for once she seems to be making an added effort to improve how others see her. Before the arrival of Petruchio and despite being attractive didn’t take pride in her appearance and retained her witch like appearance. She obviously didn’t care what people thought of her appearance back then but now Kate is visibly attempting to improve people’s perception of her. She begins to take pride in her appearance and flaunts her figure more in the clothes that she wears. For example her wedding dress is rather feminine and is of a white and green which do not reflect her shrewish character at all. It could be that with the new attention she is becoming more womanly and is enjoying the way men look at her. Her make up becomes lighter and she begins to smile more which seems to be a sign of how she appreciates the people and her surroundings more and also her new found, more feminine, approach to life.
On the day of Kate’s wedding she is delighted to find that she has received wedding presents and guests have actually deemed her important enough to attend her wedding day. She looked to be touched and obviously believed that, for once, she was getting favourable attention from others instead off people thinking ill of her.
After the wedding at the following wedding reception Kate is denied the privilege of enjoying the planned celebrations and feasting and is instead cruelly whisked away by Petruchio to his estate in the country. As they are leaving the city of Padua, Kate has a choice to make because as Petruchio rides off into the rather foreboding stormy weather she is left at the gate all alone and seems to be thinking whether she is better off turning back and going home to her father and the home she knows, or to ride off into the ominous unknown in the pouring rain with Petruchio. Consequently she decides to go with Petruchio which shows that she has come to realise that she has more in common with Petruchio than she does with the people she has known all her life back home. Obviously Petruchio’s vigour and strength made her feel that she can relate to him with pleasure rather than be cooped up with people who despise her for her vigour (instead of encouraging it like Petruchio does) and consider her to be somewhat of a harridan.
By the end of the play one can see that Kate has been through radical changes as when she comes to delivering her final speech she seems to be speaking sincerely and doesn’t seem to be hiding anything. It shows that Katherine has been tamed and no longer acts as a shrew. This is made apparent by the poetic devices that Shakespeare employs in Kate’s final speech.
One of these particular devices is the listing device which, when used, repeats (lists) words and through this repetition gains impact with each repeated word, gains more strength and gains more significance in the reader’s eyes as the words get drilled into him with each word being more prominent than the last. Also if the writer has taken up time stressing the importance of what the words or phrases are talking about then it must be a thing to take note of.
An example of listings from Shakespeare’s Taming of the Shrew is from Kate’s final speech. It reads “Thy husband is thy lord, thy life, thy keeper”. This shows how Shakespeare creates an image of a husband being more to a woman and that in their relationships there are no equals, only men with their manly ‘superiority’ and women with their obedience to them. Women were expected to conform to these views which their husbands shared. The names used in this extract shows how they were even name as figures of power; such was their control of the relationship.
Another important device is the rhyming couplet which consists of tow successive lines of verse which end with similar rhymes. Both the structure of the word and the idea of the rhymed couplet convey a sense of completion as in the following example which uses two different types of words. On one line of the couplet the words are powerful and strong whereas on the second line they are the opposite of strong and are words which portray a sense of weakness and obedience.
An example of a rhyming couplet is “Or seek for rule supremacy and sway When they are bound to serve, love and obey”. This shows how women were only thought allowed to do what was asked of them and were frowned upon if they tried to have any say in what they did at all. Also the usage of the word ‘bound’ suggests that women have an obligation towards men to, effectively, serve them alone.
Shakespeare also uses a simile to convey his ideas about marriage using words to create an image of what he means. In comparing certain attributes of women to acts of nature he creates a vivid image of how shrewish women behave.
This is an extract from Kate’s final speech, “It blots thy beauty as frosts do bite the meadows Confounds thy fame as whirlwinds shake fair buds”. In this extract Shakespeare creates a new image for the audience regarding women and wives. It means that when women are loyal, loving and obedient they are beautiful and can be compared with the buds of nature but when they are angry or don’t behave how people think they should then they are considered to be like whirlwinds which are destructive. So the buds refer to the good, obedient wives who conform to their husband’s will whereas the whirlwind represents the disloyal and angry wives. The buds, the beauty of nature, are being destroyed or affected in some way by the whirlwind which is also another form of nature. The idea of two completely different aspects of nature going against each other is referring to women who do not do what the consensus expects of them and rebel against society. The image also shows the idea of spoiling something good.
A tricolon is also used in Kate’s final speech where Shakespeare vividly provides the audience with an image of how women should view their husbands. Also with the added emphasis of the same idea occurring in series makes it more significant. So, essentially a tricolon is three parallel elements of the same length occurring together.
“To wound thy lord, thy king, thy governor”, here is shown how Shakespeare gets his message across about women and wives because it portrays men and husbands as being ruler figures and people who have power and respect in people’s lives. It suggests that a man is more than just a husband in the woman’s life and is everything in her life, controlling everything to do with her.
Shakespeare uses various metaphors to convey his ideas to the audience clearly as a metaphor is easy to use and is where a comparison is made between two seemingly unrelated objects and it is a transference of one object’s characteristics into another.
“But now I see our lances are but straws”, the lance in this image is what Kate considered to be a woman’s weapon and she believes it is no longer effective ( the lance could symbolize shrewish characteristics, duly shown by Kate). This change is suggested by the lance changing into it’s complete opposite, a straw. The straw symbolizes what a dramatic change can occur because what was once a powerful weapon cannot work in a marriage. So, now Kate is married, or even found her match in Petruchio, she cannot use this weapon as it is in-effective now and pales to what effect it had previously. The straw could also symbolize how her will was weakened in the presence of another strong willed character.
In conclusion I believe that because of Kate’s obvious free will and ability to make her own decisions I believe that Petruchio must be seen as one who recognises and respects her wit, sharp tongue and fire. So Petruchio did not merely tame her but instead he gave her the confidence to be herself and the ability to shed her shrewish persona. Petruchio clearly achieved his goal and more by ‘taming’ the shrew which everyone saw in Kate and they sort of joined In a union against a society which neither fit into after coming to some kind of mutual understanding.
Jordan Wain 13th October 2004
10PMM
