Female Portrayals in The Taming of the Shrew Adaptations

Shakespeare’s The Taming of the Shrew is undoubtedly a play concerning gender dynamics and gender roles. The female characters, Bianca and Katherine, are often dismissed as lacking agency and the will to resist their controllers. The recent film adaptation, Junger’s 10 Things I Hate About You (1999), claims it presents the story in a more empowering and feminist light. However, this film has its own problems, and its level of sexism may equal or even surpass Zeffirelli’s The Taming of the Shrew (1967). The film resorts to banal tropes and discreetly sexist portrayals of women in addition to female sexualization, vapidity, superficiality and narcissism, dependency, and stereotypical feminism. The film “ultimately reiterate[s] strikingly conservative attitudes toward gender and sexuality” (Balizet 827). Despite this, the more recent film is often defended over its predecessor (Pittman 144).

Kate from The Taming of the Shrew wears dark clothing, has dark hair, and wears elegant dresses. If one did not experience her tantrums first-hand, she would appear to be a normal and beautiful woman. However, this interpretation of Katherina is extremely violent, even to her father and younger sister. Kat of 10 Things I Hate About You is very thin, blonde, and dresses in dark and unfashionable clothing. She is an intelligent and outspoken rebel against the norm. She is given the stereotypical role of an over-zealous feminist-turned-misandrist who reads Sylvia Plath, disregards her appearance, and sees all men as equally evil. She purposefully tries to not be like other girls and drives an old, beaten-up car. As a result of her outspokenness she is unpopular. Kate’s peers describe her as “a bitter, self-righteous hag who has no friends” (Junger 06:02) and a “heinous bitch” (08:42). Unlike Kate, Kat is only physically violent to boys who violate her. Her violence is primarily verbal, and her intelligence and sarcasm allow her to craft scathing attacks when necessary.

The interpretation of Bianca from The Taming of the Shrew is the epitome of femininity; she is thin, blonde, and soft-spoken, and she wears light and elegant dresses. Bianca from 10 Things I Hate About You is similar but exaggerated according to teenage stereotypes — she is fashionable, popular, “vapid,” and “conceited” (Junger 09:42–09:57). For example, she claims, “there’s a difference between like and love, because I like my Skechers, but I love my Prada backpack” (05:16) Even when her sister reveals her traumatic sexual experience, Bianca is focused on how it has affected her. Despite these character flaws, she is presented as the most desirable girl in all of Padua High.

10 Things I Hate About You, while claiming to profess a “girl power” message, sexualizes and objectifies these two teenage girls. Kate and Bianca from The Taming of the Shrew do wear low-cut and tight dresses but only because that was the style during the Elizabethan Age. The interpretation of these sisters is sexual, but not purposefully sexualized. In 10 Things, Bianca is considered the ideal woman because of her conforming to standards of beauty. She is sexualized from the first slow-motion moment Cameron sees her. He does not yet know her, but because of his infatuation with her appearance, he has convinced himself that he is in love with her. Even after her lack of depth is proven by her remarks about like and love, he still stares after her and devises a plan to “get” her. His obsession with her appears to be only superficial. On the other hand, Lucentio also first glimpses Bianca from across a courtyard; however, when Bianca sees Lucentio, she seems to reciprocate his interest (Zeffirelli 7:50). Cameron believes that if he hangs around Bianca enough he will eventually convince her to like him — even though she shows no interest. Because Lucentio and Bianca show a mutual attraction to each other, it would not be unreasonable for Lucentio to pursue her. Cameron’s pursuit, however, is unwarranted and appears to be the result of his objectification of Bianca. Through movies such as 10 Things I Hate About You, girls are taught early in their adolescence that “To be a girl is to be a body” (Balizet 823).

Contrary to Bianca’s appearance, Kat is considered unattractive because of her “Rambo look” (Junger 10:49) — dark, oversized shirts and pants and a general disinterest in fashion. This reinforces the idea that a lack of femininity is undesirable. Kat is not sexualized until Patrick watches her dance at the concert and she shows her femininity. The audience voyeuristically observes her through Patrick’s gaze, and she is turned into a sexual object in a tube top and short skirt. She is further sexualized when she gets drunk at a party and dances erotically on a table. In her attempt to free Patrick from detention, Kat’s usefulness is determined by her sexuality as she flashes her chest to her teacher and uses her femininity to charm him. Her sister Bianca says she has “definite potential buried under all [that] hostility” (25:09), and as the movie progresses, Kat begins to wear more revealing (sleeveless, lower cut, midriff-bearing) shirts and more colorful clothing.

The fathers in these movies, Baptista Minola and Walter Stratford, hold slightly different control over their daughters and are motivated by different reasons. Walter seems to have no excuse for controlling his daughters, besides his desire to keep the girls chaste. When Kat questions why he makes all of her decisions for her, Walter says, “I’m your father. That’s my right” (Junger 27:30), making his need for control seem even more arbitrary and less justified. In comparison, Baptista from The Taming of the Shrew does have a good reason to marry off Kate first — if she does not get married soon, she will be considered a spinster and never be able to find a husband. Bianca is only a casualty of this decision.

Patrick’s control over Kat is more sinister than her father’s, and he leads her through cycles of abuse disguised as a teen love story. He essentially stalks her, appearing at the guitar store, the bookstore, the concert, and the football stadium seemingly randomly. Patrick humiliates Kat, and then she humiliates herself for him. Patrick first humiliates her by turning down her drunken kiss, and then Kat humiliates herself by flashing her teacher. Patrick humiliates Kat again by admitting he was paid to date her, and finally, Kat humiliates herself by reading a very personal poem to an audience of her peers. Again, some of these humiliations are related to Kat’s sexuality, while Patrick’s self-humiliation by singing in the football stadium is more of a comedic act and does not imply anything about his sexuality (Pittman 148). Shakespeare’s Sonnet 141 describes a relationship where the author loves a woman and would act as her servant, despite not liking her personality. Kat relates to this poem and reinterprets it to specifically apply to her relationship with Patrick. She says, “mostly I hate the way I don’t hate you. Not even close, not even a little bit, not even at all” (Junger 1:29:50–1:30:45). Although part of her despises Patrick, Kat still finds herself attracted to and submitting to him, becoming his “servant.” To apologize for all of her humiliation, Patrick buys Kat a guitar, and somehow this unexpected gift draws her back in and reconciles his betrayal. In the last scene, Patrick literally silences Kat with a kiss while she is in the middle of a sentence. The film closes after the main female character is silenced by a man, leaving a very “disturbing” message about the agency that should be allowed to women (Hateley). Patrick shows mental, emotional, and physical control over Kat, and she seems to surrender to him again and again.

One of 10 Things I Hate About You’s themes is that a good heterosexual relationship can cure a woman’s problems or her unruliness. Unlike Kate, Kat must be given a reason to desire independence. She experienced a negative relationship after Joey took advantage of her sexually, but her relationship with Patrick “heals” her (Pittman 147). This idea implies that Kat is “only desperately feminist” (Lamm 17) because she is unable to fulfill her feminine need for a relationship. While Kat is given more of a reason to be hostile than Kate, Kat’s reason is superficial. She tries to be edgy and antagonistic, but her behavior is all a façade, and she is only acting out of resentment. Instead, she longs for a boyfriend who can provide her with a satisfying romantic and sexual experience. She abandons her tough image because of Patrick’s pickup lines, grand gestures, and stalking.

Even though the film sexualizes and objectifies Kat and Bianca, another prominent idea in 10 Things is that sex causes impurity. The film’s main advocate of chastity is the girls’ obstetrician father, who gives an anecdote about delivering a fifteen-year-old’s baby; he claims she said “I should have listened to my father” (Junger 14:35). His entire reason for not allowing the girls to date is to preserve their virginity, and to him, the ultimate physical mark of impurity is a teenage pregnancy. Walter makes Bianca wear “The Belly” before she goes out to a party so she will see the consequences of being unchaste. The girls’ reaction “suggests this is part of a common household ritual meant to give her an embodied experience of pregnancy as shameful” (Balizet 828). The only way Walter can keep himself calm and feel “The deep sleep of a father whose daughters aren’t out being impregnated” (Junger 5:24) is by taking control of his daughters’ bodies.

What Walter does not know is that Kat has already been sexually active, despite his efforts. She says, “Everyone was doing it, so I did it” (Junger 1:16:20), but she eventually regretted giving in to Joey. After that incident, she became cynical and antisocial. This implies that sexual encounters are something lamentable and can cause a popular person like Kat to turn into a misanthropic loner (Balizet 829). Throughout the film, Kat’s impurity is subtly referenced, and she is shamed for it. When she reveals her sexual experience to Bianca, Bianca immediately dismisses the trauma and instead blames Kat. During Patrick and Kate’s paintballing session, Kat’s pure white coveralls are dirtied by paint — a literal symbol of her impurity. When Patrick kisses her for the first time, the soundtrack proclaims, “I’m surprised that you’ve never been told before that you’re priceless, yeah, you’re holy even when you are not new” (Junger 1:09:40–1:09:55). The implication is that Kat’s being “not new” is something shameful and something that will make her less desirable.

On the other hand, “It is because [Bianca] is so clearly depicted as a virgin that she is also seen as a sexual prize” (Balizet 830). Balizet claims that “advocates for virginity (or “born-again” virginity) often employ the very element they seek to withhold — sex — to sell their message of purity as paramount” (825). When she is described by her suitors, Bianca’s purity and also her sexuality are highlighted. She is sexualized by the other boys at the school, who announce “Virgin alert” (09:07) when she is in the area and predatorily stare at her as she passes. Cameron agrees with Michael that Bianca wears a “strategically planned sun dress” (Junger 10:32) only to tease the boys, as it is a known fact that she is not allowed to date. The reason Cameron gives for liking Bianca even though he hasn’t met her yet it that “She’s totally pure” (10:03). Michael justifies Cameron’s pursuit of Bianca to Patrick by saying that his “love is pure, purer than, say, Joey Donner’s” (29:35). This suggests that only someone who is pure of thought and intention is worthy of someone as pure as Bianca, but Michael and Cameron also discuss her as a sexual object. “The equation of virginity with purity presents girls with a double bind, since girls are taught to be pure but expected to be desirable” (Balizet 826).

At first glance, 10 Things I Hate About You seems to suggest that Kat’s ideology influences Bianca, as seen by Bianca’s punching Joey at prom (1:25:24), but in reality it is the opposite. After Patrick begins to pursue her, Kat slowly starts to dress like Bianca — more fashionably and more femininely. This culminates in Kat’s uncharacteristically delicate appearance at prom — her dress is light purple, she is wearing pearls, and her hair is complexly pinned up in a fashion reminiscent of Bianca’s hairstyles. In the last scenes, when she reads her personal poetry aloud for the class, Kat wears a flowery, flowy, white top and a shorter purple skirt. This is a stark contrast to her all-black, baggy, and grungy outfits from the beginning of the film. Lamm posits that Kat is an example of “manifest femininity,” in which “at the core of their being, all women want to be pretty, to be popular, and to have a man with whom they can have heterosexual intercourse” (17). This seems to be true for her character, as when she enters into a relationship with Patrick, her femininity and adherence to social norms return. The implication here is that her feminism was only an act and that it did not come easily or naturally to her. Kat’s transformation seems to suggest that “feminists have sought to conceal” this longing, “yet [it] can only ever be unsatisfactorily closeted” (Lamm 17). On the other hand, in The Taming of the Shrew, it does appear true that Kate influences Bianca. She teaches Bianca, as well as other women, to obey her husband in order to keep peace in the marriage and get what she wants.

One common question for both films is this — do the girls have some agency, and do the Katherinas really give in? Surprisingly, the Biancas appear to be evenly matched. In The Taming of the Shrew, Bianca is given some freedom behind the scenes. She appears submissive to her father, but she uses her tutoring sessions to meet with Lucentio. She chooses which of the suitors to pursue and elopes with him behind Baptista’s back. Bianca from 10 Things I Hate About You also subversively sees suitors against her father’s wishes, and she makes her own decision to be with Cameron instead of Joey. However, Kate and Kat’s situation is more complicated. In 10 Things, Kat is silenced and punished by her peers and teachers for voicing her opinions and defending herself. Kat is “‘tamed’ by a romantic relationship,” showing her that “existing social ideologies are acceptable, [and] that she is happiest when least resistant to them” (Hateley). In The Taming of the Shrew, even when Kate begins to obey Petruchio’s commands, she still makes this decision for herself. She does not give in to Petruchio — she makes the decision to make her life easier and does what she must to get what she wants. For example, Petruchio demands a kiss from Kate in the open street, and to prevent him from leaving, she only partially fulfills his command — she kisses the tip of his nose instead of his mouth (Lamm 12). In light of Kate’s behavior throughout the film, one would conclude that Kate’s speech at the end about wifely duties is delivered with irony. She does not truly believe what she is saying, especially considering the wink she aims at the women when she has finished her obedience speech (Lamm 16).

10 Things I Hate About You, while claiming to subvert sexist ideas, only succeeds in perpetuating them. Bianca is portrayed as the sexualized virgin, while Kat is portrayed as impure and a half-hearted feminist. Kate from The Taming of the Shrew is a much stronger character. She satirizes the cultural norm of her time, when a woman blindly obeyed her husband and submitted to his will. Kate endures the trials from her husband, yet, unlike Kat, she maintains her values and is the truly subversive character of these two movies.

Works Cited

Balizet, Ariane M. “Just Say Yes: Shakespeare, Sex, and Girl Culture.” Women’s Studies, vol. 44, no. 6, 2015, pp 815–841, EBSCOhost, doi: 10.1080/00497878.2015.1045687.

Friedman, Michael D. “The feminist as shrew in 10 Things I Hate about You.” Shakespeare Bulletin, vol. 22, no. 2, 2004, pp. 45+, Academic OneFile.

Hateley, Erica. “A Gendered Educational Agenda: What’s Wrong with 10 Things I Hate About You?” Australian Screen Education, vol. 57, 2010, pp. 129–135, EBSCOhost.

Junger, Gil, director. 10 Things I Hate About You. Touchstone Pictures, 1999.

Lamm, Zachary. “The cinematic shrews of teen comedy: gendering Shakespeare in twentieth-century film.” Genders, no. 49, 2009, Academic OneFile.

Pittman, L. Monique. “Taming 10 Things I Hate About You: Shakespeare and the Teenage Film Audience.” Literature Film Quarterly, vol. 32, no. 2, 2004, pp. 144–152, EBSCOhost.

Zeffirelli, Franco, director. The Taming of the Shrew. Columbia Pictures Corporation, 1967.