Katharina or Kate, the shrew of William Shakespeare's The Taming Of The Shrew is sharp-tongued, quick-tempered,and prone to violence and violent outbursts, especially to anyone who tries towin her love. This is shown from the beginning in Act O

Katharina or Kate, the shrew of William Shakespeare’s The Taming Of The Shrew is sharp-tongued, quick-tempered, and prone to violence and violent outbursts, especially to anyone who tries to win her love. This is shown from the beginning in Act One with the scene among Hortensio and Gremio and her. When Gremio proclaims her “too rough” (I.i.55) and Hortensio claims that they want mates “of gentler, milder mould” (I.i.60), she strikes back with such words as “To comb your noddle with a three-legg’d stool and paint your face and use you like a fool.” (I.i.64-65)

Her hostility and anger towards her suitors is infamous within the town of Padua. Her anger and rudeness actually hides her deep sense of insecurity, not to mention her jealousy towards her sister, Bianca. She speaks these words to her father; “What, will you not suffer me? Nay, now I see she is your treasure, she must have a husband; I must dance bare-foot on her wedding day and for your love to her lead apes in hell. Talk not to me: I will go sit and weep till I can find occasion of revenge.” (II.i.31-36). Clearly she is spiteful because he has more love for Bianca. They feel that she may become an old maid with no husband or children, and she herself believes it to be a possibility.

The Elizabethan era was a hard time for most women. When you are born and raised in a society that is male dominated, you have no choice but to come to terms with it. Mary Wroth states in her writings “a seventeenth-century woman was usually dependent on men for self-respect and survival, no matter what her talents or his feelings” (Swift 162). A woman of that time not only did not have the individuality and independence that we today take for granted, apparently she didn’t even have rights to her own children. According to Mary Beth Rose of the Shakespeare Quarterly, “a mother had no legal rights over guardianship of her children unless explicitly appointed as guardian by her husband in his will…According to the law, in sum, the married woman did not exist” (Rose 293).

Society’s expectations concerning a woman’s role in a marriage during Shakespeare’s lifetime were that a woman should sacrifice her individuality in submission to her husband. Such a sacrifice is totally unacceptable to Katharina, who enjoys her independence.

Most of Shakespeare’s society believed that the woman should submit to her husband, and yet they did not necessarily expect the wife to sacrifice all of her independence and sense of self. “During the Renaissance the nature of womankind was a major topic of debate. Numerous dialogues, defenses, paradoxes, and tributes devoted to sustaining woman’s excellence were published, and in them history was rewritten to include the achievements of womankind. Often these texts demonstrate that women are capable of acting with prudence, temperance, fortitude, and justice, and thus are capable of being independent of male political and moral authority”. (Benson 98)

I imagine Katharina to be a very beautiful girl. But her foul temperament is offsetting to so many that she is known as an untamable shrew with no hope for marriage even in spite of her large dowry. The fact that Katharina’s dowry is just as large as Bianca’s has no bearing with the suitors Hortensio and Gremio, as shown in Act One, Scene Two says Hortensio, “why, man, there be good fellows in the world, an a man could light on them, would take her with all her faults, and money enough.” (I.ii.124-126). To which Gremio replies, “I cannot ...