PETRUCHIO’S ASSOCIATION WITH KATHERINE: TAMING A SHREW OR CREATING A SHREW?
INTRODUCTION
William Shakespeare’s play — The Taming of the Shrew is about a very arrogant and rude woman. A short reading will give a comical idea of how to tame a shrew, but at the same time it will portray the patriarchal mindset of people where they want a woman to be traditional, sensitive and obedient. The same thing happened to Katherine; from a straight outspoken woman, she was turned into a traditional woman. The problem is women had to show people that they were soft, and later Katherine had to pretend of being soft and obedient. This complicated personality is a part of shrewish nature; thus Katherine became a shrew from an honest, straightforward human. 1 Petruchio made this transformation possible through his association with Katherine, and this paper will come across to Katherine’s approach with a feminist outlook.
WHAT DOES IT MEAN TO BE A SHREW?
The literal meaning of shrew [woman] is an unpleasant, arrogant and argumentative woman. According to Carolyn E. Brown, in the medieval period the word “shrew” used to be applied for men and it meant a wicked, evil-disposed, or malignant man; but Chaucer used this term for both male and female. By the end of sixteenth century this terminology started to be used for women (165). In The Taming of the Shrew, Katherine was known as shrew, but according to Brown, one part of “shrew’s tricky nature is that they often appeared as doves before marriage and turned into beasts after the ceremony” (169). It means a shrew is an unpleasant, complicated person who’s actions do not match with his/her mind. Such complicated, cunning persons say something in front of others, but have something else inside their mind. The play is about taming a shrewd person, where tame means to domesticate something. It means a shrewd person is being domesticated [like animal] in this play. This paper will look forward to examine the validity of domesticating Katherine [shrew?] with a feminist perspective.
PETRUCHIO AND KATHERINE
Petruchio — a businessman from Verona wanted more and more money, though he inherited his dead father’s wealth. He was ready to marry any type of woman for money. He agreed to marry Katherine when he heard about the huge dowry from Hortensio, he said, “One rich enough to be Petruchio’s wife- / As wealth is burden of my wooing dance-” (Shakespeare I.ii.65–66) which means he wanted to marry only for money, and he saw woman as a way of earning wealth. On the other hand Katherine was known as an arrogant, rude woman among the people; she was a quarrelsome person in everyone’s eye. In fact, this behavior was a result of the cultural mind-set of men and women (Barry 117), for example, Hortensio told her, “Mates, maid! How mean you that? No mates for you, / Unless you were of gentler, milder mould” (I.i.59–60). She was always taunted by people like this, they used to keep her distant because of her outspoken personality; perhaps these types of manners were behind Kate’s rough behavior. Her direct way of speaking, especially with males, made her different from other traditional women of a patriarchal society. This difference in Katherine and the mindset of traditional people were the reasons that she was called a shrew. Brown has mentioned that her shrewishness was a result of cruelty and oppression of a patriarchal society; and she might adopt this shrewish tendency to protect herself from the misogynistic world (164). The following part will focus on Petruchio and Katherine’s relationship.
MARRIAGE OF PETRUCHIO AND KATHERINE: RELATIONSHIP
The beginning of Petruchio and Katherine’s relationship was complicated, it was almost a lie. The marriage proposal was only an outcome of greed that made Petruchio stubborn for marrying Katherine; though Katherine did not give her consent, the marriage was final. Here, Petruchio behaved politically to marry Kate, he said to her, “Thou must be married to no man but me, / For I am he am born to tame you, Kate,” (II.i.277–78); it was almost like a threat to her. It seemed that Petruchio would marry her by any means, and after marrying he would mend her ways. Katherine did not approve this proposal, but Petruchio acted like a very gentle, loving person in Katherine’s father’s presence. The cunning Petruchio praised Katherine and said to Baptista, “If she be curst, it is for policy, / For,she’s not froward, but modest as the dove” (II.i.294–95).
After that the male dominating society gave priority to Petruchio’s wish rather than paying heed to Katherine’s disagreement. Because of having a patriarchal mind-set, Petruchio wanted his wife to be traditional, soft and obedient. In this play, we can see “the inequalities and potential brutality of male power, the patriarchal attitudes” (Slights 159) which gave permission to do anything with wives (Winter 102); for this reason Petruchio could easily do, whatever he wanted. It was almost as if it was a male’s duty to tame and domesticate a female. To make Katherine like other stereotypical women, he applied various tricks against Katherine. In spite of trying her best, she could not protest, and in one position she had to leave her honest, straightforward behavior. Petruchio’s behavior portrayed their alliance more like a power relationship rather than a husband wife relationship, and one of the easiest ways in a male dominating society is to control wives. Since he had to depend on her for financial security, he took out this disgrace on his male pride by abusing her. We must remember that he used to beat his servant without any reason (I.ii.17), and later dominated Katherine; it happened because of his sense of power, and ego. This domination was once intolerable to Kate, but what compelled her to change her honest behavior? The following part will give the answer of this question.
TAMING OF KATHERINE THE SHREW
Petruchio adopted several tricks for altering Kate’s independent nature, but his methods were like tortures for Katherine. His determination of changing Katherine anyhow could lead him to any extent. He was happy for his own cunning nature, he was saying himself that it was a “way to kill a wife with kindness”, and thus he would “curb her mad and headstrong humour” (IV.i.195–96). He was planning to destroy Katherine’s honest and direct behaviors, and planned to bring obedience for her husband. He started to apply his tricks from the very beginning, when he was about to marry her. He used almost every ways to insult her; he dressed like a psychologically imbalanced man in his wedding, disturbed the guests and friar, finally he did not let Katherine to have the wedding feast. Petruchio followed several ways to bring her under control; he did not even let her to eat or to sleep. He was being very happy when he saw that the tired Katherine could not eat or sleep. We see him saying proudly, “She eat no meat to day, nor none shall eat. / Last night she slept not, nor to-night she shall not” (IV.i.184- 85); here we can see his cruelty — he was torturing Kate by his actions.
After that we can see that Petruchio became successful, Katherine was tamed, but how was it possible? Why did Katherine obey Petruchio’s orders? In actual fact, at that period husbands had supreme power over their wives. It was a natural rule for them, according to “the English Common Law, ‘The husband and the wife are one, and the husband is that one’” (Winter 102); it means husband had all the power in a marital relationship, and wife had to obey her husband. This power gave permission to the husbands to do anything to their wives; this patriarchal mind-set was the reason behind Kate’s changed behavior. Petruchio dominated, and tormented Katherine in various ways. He did not let her go to her father’s place because Kate did not agree with his wrong judgment, for example: When he told the wrong time, Kate corrected his mistake; for this reason he said, “I will not go to-day, and ere I do, / It hall be what o’clock I say it is” (IV.iii.191- 92). Kate had to tolerate these types of tortures only for the sake of society; society would not allow her to go against her husband. Moreover, Petruchio had the authority to give any type of punishment he wanted, if she would defy him.
Then she had to endure severe consequences; that male dominated society would not let her to leave Petruchio’s house, nor let her to live in her own house. Besides, she was not loved by the people because of her arrogance; everyone considered her as a quarrelsome person; probably there was no one to help her out. In these circumstances, she was compelled to change her behavior; she could not go against Petruchio. Her spirit was being choked both psychologically and physically, for this reason she could not empower herself.
TAMED OR WAS MADE ANOTHER SHREW?
Katherine could not empower herself; she could not raise her voice against Petruchio; but does it mean that she was tamed? If we carefully read the play, we will see that though she was compelled to obey Petruchio, her heart was free and honest like before [like a feminist].3 Petruchio could only control her external behavior, but from her inside she was the same Katherine. Before being tamed Katherine was an honest, truthful, straightforward person; she did not hide anything like other women of her time, but she was quite arrogant. We can assume that she was rude and arrogant because of the society; she had the idea about the inequalities of male and female. She knew about the rules and boundaries for women, but we do not see her paying heed to all the norms; we see her arguments with males. It can be the result of her disliking for the traditional boundaries for women. Perhaps this is why she had inferiority complex and tried to dominate others by her words. She might have wanted attention also; we see her to transfer her anger on others as well. In spite of all these, she can be called a good hearted human; when the “horse stumbled, Petruchio did not go to fetch the horse off her” (Empson 126), he started to beat his servant Grumio. At that time, she “waded through the dirt to pluck him off” (IV.i.68) Grumio, and “she prayed, that never prayed [emphasize mine] before” (IV.i.69) to rescue a servant from her husband’s wrath. She was better than many other people; she left her arrogance and prayed for a servant. In Empson’s view, she must had a lot of good in her somewhere (126).
Before the taming progression, we do not see Katherine ever trying to console people with sweet words, but she was always very honest and did not care about others’ thoughts regarding her behaviors. Then, she could not be called a shrew — a cunning woman, but later she had to talk according to the advantages she could get. She knew what was really wrong in her heart, but started to speak those would make Petruchio soft. From here, she had to be clever with her words, her external behavior had to become fake, she had to tell “frank lies” (Empson 126); for example we can look at Kate and Vincentio’s conversation. Kate called the old Vincentio a “Young budding virgin” (IV.v.36). Thus she started to show herself as a soft, obedient wife; here she started to have something inside her mind, and something else in her lips.
From this point, she had to become complex and cunning like Petruchio, she had to behave cleverly for keeping the situation in her favor. This complicated personality is a part of shrewish nature. However, her cunning disposition was not negative; she did not intend to harm anyone by her activities, she just wanted to save herself from Petruchio’s agony. Now, if we see Katherine’s character from a different position, her transformation will seem like a feminist approach. Though she changed her outspoken and external behavior, she did not change her liberal thoughts; she started to speak indirectly, and we can see the proof in The Taming of the Shrew. Kate’s final speech was a mocking of patriarchal society, her tone was quite sarcastic. She spoke about the duties of a wife towards her husband, but at the same time her tone raised questions about the validity of those duties. She showed that men did not need someone equal to them, but they need subjects who would listen and obey every single word of what their husbands said (V.ii.159–60). Again, she talked about females’ soft and weak body, and for this reason women should give their husbands supremacy (V.ii.170). On the contrary, we see her to save herself from the horse which means she was strong enough to save herself (IV.i.66–68); Petruchio did not help her. Then why was she saying, women were weak? Was not she actually mocking the belief of society? Therefore, we cannot say that Petruchio was able to kill her independence, able to remove her liberal thoughts. She just changed her way of expressing; before she used to tell everything directly, and later she had to express her feelings in the mask of gentle, obedient words. Probably, the force of the society made her a pessimistic feminist from an outspoken person.
CONCLUSION
Petruchio and Katherine’s relationship cannot be marked by their love, but by the power relationship. Though she was appreciated by all after her changes, she was not honest with her heart; she had to put an act for her safe and independent life. We get to know her feelings from her last speech which was a mockery of the traditional duties of a wife. Her strong characteristics made her a feminist, though she could not do anything openly because of society’s outlook; she did not take risk of her independence. It can be said that Shakespeare might have also wanted us to see if all the traditional duties of a wife are valid or not; he perhaps wanted to show how women are oppressed in society while telling the ways of taming a shrew.
