Taming Of The Shrew Feminist Analysis

During the play The Taming of The Shrew Katherine’s behavior attributes the struggles of being a victim of problems. The way she copes is allowing herself to be easily influenced by her father, manipulated by Petruchio. The possibility of a mental illness hinders her to be submissive when women shouldn’t be submissive to their husbands. Katherine from the play The Taming of The Shrew is embodying all of the traits of a feminist but consequently in the play the traits of being a feminist aren’t important anymore. The speech at the end is the illustration of a mentally ill woman so easily influenced by the ideals of submission and domesticity instead of being the feminist heroine she is portrayed to be. In the play she is a free spirited woman
in a male dominated world not knowing what to do with her attitude. In the play there are so many aspects where her attitude has affected her and the possibility of being mentally ill is at play. The first aspect is when her father Baptista which isn’t a character manipulating her announces “That now fair befall thee, good Petruchio, the wager thou hast won, and I will add unto their losses twenty thousand crowns, another dowry to another daughter, for she is changed, as she had never been. (5.2.124-128 Shakespeare) which correlates to the idea that she transforms into an unrecognizable woman her father realizes that the daughter he thought he knew is now not what he thought she was. The behaviors she is displaying are due to feeling that Baptista favors Bianca and that Bianca is indulged with suitors while she remains alone. Therefore she isn’t a woman who should be submissive and act out in these behaviors that are outrageous and way beyond her.
This behavior causes a divide in her feminine soul and generates a counter argument that this isn’t a woman being crushed or submissive because in the play Baptista Minola has two daughters.
One of them is favored more by her father while the other sister is more likely to end up alone. There is the soul amongst her personality that has been displayed by countess traits. Which then “Her strength as a woman will be well served when the parts of her personality that represent the masculine value of aggression and goal seeking are united with the feminine value of relatedness (Ulanov, 2001, p. 117), and although this is going against the idea of women being submissive to their husbands because it further contributes to the idea of a mental illness. The struggles are portrayed so lightly in this quote due to it describing that Katherine is well suited for someone that is aggressive like her, but in the play the character Katherine doesn’t find someone fitting this trait but Petruchio who is willing to marry her for selfish reasons. McAuliffe who has portrayed Katherine twice adds: "That's basically what I say to my husband: I will put my hand under your foot if you want – but I trust you not to ask me to." Shrew, she says, is a warts-and-all portrait of a marriage: "You make room for each other, you fit their holes and they fit yours. Yes, they drive you potty – but that's between you two. You are a united front. That's what Kate and Petruchio learn. They are one person by the
end, which I completely disagree because being a shrew shouldn’t be how a marriage is portrayed and especially a character Katherine who has the deceptive and manipulative behavior of a bipolar person.
This behaviors are displayed during their first meeting because they argue during the first meeting and although this is connected to their sexual tension it displays correctly the idea of how Katherine shouldn’t allow herself to stoop so low to the point of being controlled by Petruchio.
“It is very difficult for the dragon slaying, heroic masculine principle to simply endure suffering without taking some kind of action. But learning to suffer is how the feminine side in a man is redeemed and the feminine principle as well” (von Franz, 1999, p. 82), and Katherine is enduring the suffering as well as Petruchio, Katherine from the domestic abuse she receives from Petruchio. He doesn’t hit her, but the words and how he sends her to the taming school to be no longer shrewed is a sign of abuse. Petruchio from the behavior of Katherine, and these two behaviors are signs of bipolar disorder because they are both displaying different sides to themselves and completely embodying different characters at the end, one forced to believe that being a shrew is the way to go and the other being stuck in an arranged marriage. The play is presented as “a story of a woman who is subjugated and mentally abused by her husband and this correlates to the manipulation of the characteristics that feminist Katherine embodies and the manipulation by her father marrying her off. These forms of manipulation make the play one worth reading if you’re in this situation like the shrew Katherine ends up
being in.