I found a lot of what Carson discusses to be very interesting, both in the context of The Taming of the Shrew and in other media, myth, and the world in general. Something in particular that struck me was her analysis, “throughout most of the ancient and some of the modern discussions of voice: female sound is bad to hear both because the quality of a woman’s voice is objectionable and because woman uses her voice to say what should not be said” (133). We see this very obviously throughout The Taming of the Shrew, Katherine’s entire speech is defiant of what women should do and consequently be; not only does she speak, but she says vile things that should remain unsaid, while the men who use language to speak ill of her never criticize one another for their own foul words. Further, there is ultimately a conflation of her actions and her being; she becomes a shrew in society because of the way and the very fact that she uses her voice.
In relation, the examples of judgment that Carson lists in the article’s first sentence immediately called to mind Hollywood’s reliance on oversimplification, with voice in particular being a signifier of one’s true personality. A movie that jumped out at me was Singin’ in the Rain, which ties this concept into the entire plot of the film; an actress’s voice is not only shrill, but what she says reveals her to be stupid, and so she is kept quiet during all publicity events. The 1920s studios are able to profit off her because they’re only making silent films (and the male star can easily get away with doing all the talking at press releases anyway). So the conflict lies in their transition to talkies, in which by definition she must now speak if the studio is still going to capitalize off her body. As with The Taming of the Shrew, gendered signification of voice makes it difficult to imagine this plot with reverse gender roles.
very interesting, Maya! I too am interested in the focus on women’s saying “what shouldn’t be said” and “discharging” those things in a public way. Also the reduction of a woman’s whole essence to her voice alone–and your example from Hollywood is wonderful!
The Carson piece discusses the sonic quality of women’s voices that makes them less palatable to the male ear, which has historically dictated how women’s speech is perceived in different contexts. This reminded me of the part in Women and Power in which Mary Beard discusses how society has taught us that these same tonal qualities are inherently less trustworthy and authoritative than deeper, male speech. We are not born thinking shrill voices are silly or unpleasant — this is learned and reinforced throughout our lives. It made me think of our conversations with the Bread Loaf actors about the importance of seeing (and hearing) Shakespeare performed, and how that guides our interpretation of the text. When casting a Katherine, knowing all the cultural baggage associated with the shrew figure and the supposed deviance of her speech, the quality of the actresses voice is an incredibly important factor to consider. Having little background in acting or theater myself, I wonder how much directors consider the tonal quality of the actresses they choose for this role. A Katherine with a deep, guttural male voice threatens the patriarchy in a very different way than a Katherine with a shrill, berating voice. I would also have to imagine that the way Katherine’s voice sounds in relation to the obedient Bianca or the boastful Petruchio impacts how the audience hears her.
On a separate note, and back to the Carson piece, I was intrigued by the theory that women have two mouths, their mouths and their vaginas, and looseness in one means looseness in the other. A talkative woman, therefore, is a sexually immoral one. I had heard this theory before but forgotten about it, and it is interesting to think about in the context of Taming of the Shrew. This connection between speech and sexuality reinforces the physical nature of speech as embodied and threatening to the male order. Just like female infidelity threatens to cuckold men and deny them control over their own households/offspring, speech too is granted that same power. Petruchio’s horrible plan to torture Katherine into submission takes on new meaning if it is also a scheme to control her sexually. This ties into Petruchio’s repeated line in the last act, “Kiss me, Kate.” Once he has “tamed” the shrew, he has the ability to control not just her mouth but her sexuality as well, ordering kisses when he wants them despite her initial discomfort. By banishing the shrew from the woman, Petruchio takes power over these two (apparently) connected aspect of Kate’s identity and can yield them to his benefit.
excellent! The issue of the tonal qualities of women’s voices is so important, and has another twist in the early modern context with the use of boys’ voices–hence Cleopatra’s concern about an actor “boying her greatness”… Yes, the analogy between the “two mouths” is very important, and lingers all through the early modern period…more on that today.
“No shame but mine. I must, forsooth, be forced
To give my hand, opposed against, my heart,
Unto a mad-brain rudesby, full of spleen,
Who wooed in haste and means to wed at leisure…
“Go, girl. I cannot blame thee now to weep,
For such an injury would vex a very saint,
Much more a shrew of [thy] impatient humor.”
(3.2.8-29)
Perhaps the one time that Katherine is allowed any sympathy, is when she is nearly jilted at the altar of her forced marriage. While waiting for Petruchio to show up, Katherine laments at her situation, and notes the irony that from now on she will be known as “mad Petruchio’s wife,” despite the fact that neither of them want to be married. Her weeping in this scene is seen as justifiable, as though the only time Katherine is allowed to show extreme emotion is when a certain amount or type of pain is enacted upon her. When a man (Petruchio) is not fulfilling his duty to a woman, that is when we must draw the line. In the eyes of Baptista, marriage is Katherine’s only form of worth, and when her only form of worthiness is taken away from her or threatened, that is the truly sad act. Despite Petruchio’s tardiness and ridiculous attire, Baptista is still happy to marry Katherine off because who else will take a shrew like her? Baptista knows the type of man Petruchio is, but would still contribute to an arbitrary social practice rather than doing what is best for his daughter, which would in turn mean giving her autonomy and unsettling the continuum. To Shakepeare’s benefit, Petruchios’ scorning of the shrew is looked down upon, Gremio calls him “a devil, a very fiend”(3. 2.157). But then again, Katherine is still labeled “a devil, the devil’s dam” (3. 2.158).
In Performative Acts and Gender Constitution, Judith Butler talks about the notion that gender is really a historical idea, strategizing for cultural survival. This exchange between Baptista and Katherine seems like a battle for survival of those roles that come with gender. The main imperative is for Katherine to get married, not because of a dowry or for social mobility, but because it would be failing the system if she didn’t, because the “various acts of gender creates the idea of gender”(Butler 273), and marriage is the most essential performative act of one’s gender. It is not within the realm of reality for Katherine to remain unmarried because that would present a flaw in this system. If she were to be happy being single, then what was the point of those gender expectations and roles that have been constructed for centuries? In this way, the seemingly intimate act of marriage is politicized, in that it reinforces the ideals of an outdated system that strives to sustain the gender binary.
Really great points, Mel; people have often struggled with how to interpret that “mad marriage” scene, and I love your interpretation here–that K gets B’s sympathy primarily because this is a moment when she is ostensibly fitting into the social script–and I totally agree that marriage is a political act in that context.
For me, reading Anne Carson’s piece, “The Gender of Sound,” framed The Taming of Shrew in a way that I hadn’t considered before, especially in regard to the female voice (or lack thereof). Carson’s piece was very quotable (at times, the examples literally made me laugh out loud because they seemed so unbelievably outlandish), but her statement, “Putting a door on the female mouth has been an important project of patriarchal culture from antiquity to the present day. Its chief tactic is an ideological association of female sound with monstrosity, disorder and death” really stood out, and colored the rest of my reading of both her text, and Shakespeare’s play (Carson, 121). Not only does this quote remind me of the age-old adage, “children should be seen, not heard,” but it puts into words exactly what Petruccio is attempting to do in his “taming” of Kate; put a door over her mouth to force her to submit to him.
The comparison of women to children became clearer to me as I continued reading the article. Women are essentially seen as existing on the same plane as children; they cannot control their emotions; they talk too much and they are generally difficult to control. Katherina is essentially treated like a child by the men in the play as a way to control both her actions and her beliefs, especially in the scene performed by the Breadloaf actors the other day in class. The themes that Carson touches upon play well into the excerpt of scene 2.1—specifically, the emotional crumbling of the first rendering of Katherina when she is “broken” by Petruccio.
After watching the first interpretation, I was struck by how violent and sexually-charged the scene was. Katherina was truly the “shrew,” and she wielded her voice as a weapon against the equally brutal Petruccio. Her voice, however, proved no match for the battle, when she was eventually worn down by her suitor, and the patriarchal society that traps her, and dissolved into defeated tears. In fact, the performance and the reading also reminded me of the TedTalk that we watched on the first day of class, Soraya Chemaly’s “Rage Becomes Her.” Chemaly details female emotional outbursts, like crying, as pent up rage, and yelling, as Carson writes, is a cathartic experience for women. However, both of these acts serve to cement the women’s place in relation to men, perpetually restricting them to being “lesser” than men.
wonderful points, Kara! I’m amazed by how much you manage to integrate everything we’ve been doing here. I too was struck by the sexualized violence of the first interprteation, and it’s very interesting to think about that in terms of weaponized language, as well. The crying, yelling etc. also fits so well with Carson’s take on the constraints on women’s speech, such that these marginalized speech acts are bound to occur.
I found the ancient idea of women having “two mouths” to be poignant when considering the “bantering” scene between Petruccio and Katherine. Carson describes this ancient idea, saying both the mouth and vagina were expressed by “stoma” with words to differentiate “upper” and “lower” mouth, connected to the rest of the body by the neck and cervix. Carson says, “Both mouths provide access to a hollow cavity which is guarded by lips that are best kept closed” (131). This idea was interesting in a general context of thinking about historically categorized “loose women” as being both more sexually and verbally free, and that our historic conception of a “proper woman” includes an exemplification of self-control, both verbally and sexually. Once I started thinking about this concept in terms of The Taming of the Shrew, I started thinking of the sexualized language in act 2, scene 1. It seemed to me that Petruccio assumes that since one of Kate’s mouths is open (since she speaks freely and unabashedly) that the other “mouth” must be open as well, and so he feels free to crudely speak about her sexually.
Petruccio sexualizes the conversation, forcing double entendres and pretending to misunderstand Katherine’s intent, thereby making her “two mouths” interchangeable. She addresses him verbally and he responds essentially, to her vagina. Petruccio initiates the sexualized conversation by telling her to sit on him, which she rejects and then he responds, “women are made to bear, and so are you” (II.I.198). He sexualizes the conversation, combatting her verbal eloquence with vulgar puns. She even tries to shut down the connection between genitals and verbal banter saying, “if you talk to tales, and so farewell” to which he responds, “what, with my tongue in your tail? Nay, come again” (II.I.213-5). Here, the overlap of mouths and genitalia is tangibly introduced in the conversation. Despite Kate’s refusal to engage with his sexual word play, Petruccio keeps returning to the subject, as if he is thinking that her outspokenness means that he can freely refer to her as his sexual object.
Great observations, Colleen. I totally agree about 2.1–the sexualized language helps to show just how dangerous the identification of the “two mouths” is–he is attacking her verbally but it is really also a sexualized assault.
In reading Carson’s essay, I was especially interested in her discussion of the patriarchal anxiety around “the use of signs to transcribe upon the outside of the body a meaning from inside the body which does not pass through the control point of logos, a meaning which is not subject to the mechanism of disassociation that Greeks called sophrosyne or self-control” (128). Unmediated self-expression, that which has not been translated into the abstract and arbitrary constructs of man-made language is inherently dangerous to a patriarchal order which defines itself on the binaries that language depends on and creates. For example, the ololya or female ritual scream that Carson discusses, is not symbolic of anything but itself: it does “not signify anything but its own sound” and thus can transcend the binaries of a symbolic order, simultaneously representing either “intense pleasure or intense pain” (125).
The emphasis on learning/tutoring/education throughout The Taming of the Shrew seems to explore this patriarchal need to squeeze lived experience (especially female lived experience) into the narrow definitions of abstract masculine logic in order for it to exist. Bianca, the patriarchy’s ideal woman is “apt to learn and thankful for good terms” (2.1.170). She is eager to translate and reduce herself into logos and in doing so hand over her “‘natural’ female affinity for all that is raw [and] formless” to “the civilizing hand of man” (124). The untamed and Katherine at the start of the play, by contrast refuses to submit to the symbolic order represented by education. Following her tutoring session, Baptista asks Hortensio “Why, then thou canst not break her to the lute?” (140) to which he responds “Why, no, for she hath broke the lute to me” and explains how Katherine smashed the instrument over his head when he “bowed her hand to teach her fingering” (153-60). She refuses to mediate her self-expression through the instrument and relies instead on the direct bodily expression of physical violence which, like her, cannot be defined, pinned down, or contained by logos.
Excellent–this is a really great integration of Carson’s point about sophrosyne/self control with what’s going on in TS. I completely agree that what we see on stage is a kind of disciplining of Kate’s interior/exterior that is deeply embedded in patriarchal norms.
“Woman is that creature who puts the inside on the outside. By projections and leakages of all kinds–somatic, vocal, emotional, sexual–females expose or expend what should be kept in,” Carson states in ‘The Gender of Sound’ (129). I found this idea of “the leaky jar of female sexuality” to be fascinating in relation to Early Modern medical discourse surrounding the Galenic humors. If women’s bodies are seen as inverted and open, then it would make sense that women would be seen as being much more susceptible to imbalances of their humors, causing ailments such as hysteria and melancholy (as Freud and Breuer seemed to have found out later on). With the capacity for “leakage,” women’s bodies are not only susceptible to imbalances of their biles, but they also have no control over this ‘leakage.’ According to all of the medical texts I’ve read from this time period, it seems as though only a man, with his distinctly masculine power of restraint, would have the ability to, essentially “shut a woman up” (figuratively and literally) and control this ‘leakage’ of emotions and fluids.
We see this figurative ‘blockage’ play out in Shakespeare’s ‘The Taming of the Shrew,’ when Katherine can’t help but expel ‘shrewish’ insults at Petruchio, calling him an “ass” (II.i.210) and comparing his face to a crab’s. Furthermore, Kate is described as “mad” multiple times throughout the play, particularly after one of her impulsive outbursts. It is not until the very end of Act V that she is as “contained” as her sister. The play essentially follows Petruchio’s mission to ‘shut up’ Kate: closing both sets of her lips and having complete control over her body. It is only when Kate’s actions align with her father and her husband’s desires that she is no longer seen as unruly, and mad.
Really good points, Gemma–I’m particularly fascinated by your application of the “leaky” concept to language, and how that allows us to read K’s verbal fluency as a displaced dramatization of her flouting of sophrosyne much more generally. This is very promising and I hope you can keep thinking about this idea.
Judith Butler, amongst her many thoughtful analyses of performative gender, made the claim, “Gender is a performance with clearly punitive consequences. Discrete genders are part of what ‘humanizes’ individuals…those who fail to do their gender right are regularly punished.” It’s very clear to me how that manifests in Taming of the Shrew, particularly since not only is Katherine punished for not conforming to society’s idea of a woman during that time, but also how those closest to her allow this to happen. It was very interesting that Bianca, who should feel some solidarity with her sister, is passively—if not actively—supportive of the men around her attempting to beat Katherine into submission. In Act III Scene 2, when Katherine wants to go to the feast following her marriage against the wishes of Petruchio, nobody attempts to stop a clearly violent and aggressive man from forcing her to leave with him. As a reader, I found this to be a very dark and disturbing moment in what Shakespeare intended to be a comedy, since it foreshadows the “taming” that is about to occur. However, there are several people, including her family, present that see the signs of Petruchio’s anger and madness but fail to see the threat that it poses to Katherine. Bianca even goes as far as to say that they are well-matched, which is completely untrue considering the power dynamics. Because Katherine does not conform to performance of gender expected, she’s not even considered human. That is why she is not perceived as a victim of abuse or domestic violence and thus not deserving of being saved or protected from threats.
Judith Butler’s article on gender identity helped me to better understand the socially manipulated position of subversion into which Katherine is forced in Shakespeare’s The Taming of the Shrew. Butler establishes that gender is not a stable identity, but rather “an identity constituted in time— an identity instituted through a stylized repetition of acts” (270). Thus, Katherine’s position as a woman is dependent upon her adherence to the acts that have been historically decided to designate women.
In the beginning of the play, Katherine is seen to fail in her womanhood because she is not quiet as her sister, Bianca. Petruchio lauds Bianca for her “bashful modesty” and “mild behavior” (2.1.48-49). In contrast, Katherine opts to subvert this behavioral expectation by maintaining an independent, strong-willed spirit. She resists Baptista’s attempts to control her, and verbally objects to Petruchio’s marriage proposal. Her scorn of gender norms is clear, and she is a willing agent in her disregard of such oppression. However, once she marries Petruchio and moves into his estate, her resistance takes a darker turn. At his home, Petruchio concocts a plan to “kill a wife with kindness” in order to “curb her mad and headstrong humor” (4.2.177-178). By depriving Katherine of food, sleep, and overall dignity under the pretense of genuine care for her wellbeing, Petruchio aims to weaken her will to be free. In the process, Petruchio forces Katherine to be docile, and ridicules her harshly when she accidentally isn’t. For example, he convinces her to admit that the sun is the moon, and then accuses her of lying when she concedes to agree with his ludicrous statement.
Petruchio is undertaking a theatrical performance of his own by designing a world in which Katherine is never correct; and, in turn, Katherine is forced to adopt certain female-gendered traits like submissiveness in order to survive. Butler points out that “performing one’s gender wrong initiates a set of punishments both obvious and indirect, and performing it well provides reassurance that there is an essentialism of gender identity after all” (279). Indeed, we see that throughout Act IV Katherine is continuously punished for failing to perform her expected gender roles– and her punishment, ultimately, the forceful adhesion to these roles so that Petruchio may be satisfied in his understanding of gender identities.
excellent! Your reading of Butler allows you to see how P’s “taming” of Kate is actually a way of forcing her to enter into a predetermined gender script.
Petruchio: “Nay, then you lie. It is the blessed sun.”
Katherine: “Then, God be blest, it is the blessed sun./ But sun it is not, when you say it is not,/ And the moon changes even as your mind./ What you will have it name’d, even that it is,/ And so it shall be so for Katherine” (Act IV. Scene V. Lines 18-22).
Leading up to this passage Katherine and Petruchio argue about whether the light comes from either the sun or moon. Katherine insists it’s the sun while Petruchio, out of spite, says it’s the moon. This is the first instance of Kathrine submitting to Petruchio. From this submission Katherine begins to accept the fact that her identity now relies on her relationship with Petruchio; a relationship where Petruchio is the master who will call Katherine what he wishes (i.e. her nickname Kate) and control how she will act. Katherine states, “what you will have it name’d, even that it is,/ And so it shall be so for Katherine” (Line 21-22). Petruchio adopts the role of owner and domesticator of the wild female in his performance as husband. Controlling every aspect of Katherine’s life from diet, clothing to cage; Petruchio builds a new Katherine that is palatable to society. As the sun and moon rely on Petruchio’s designation, so too does Katherine’s gendered identity as his wife.
Judith Butler discusses this manipulation of gender in her article “Performative Acts and Gender Constitution.” Setting aside the fact that the character Katherine is in reality a performance of the female gender by a man both within the play and on the stage with actors; the malleable fabric of gender in the play showcases Butler’s claim that gender is a historical production through social relationships. Petruchio understands his role as husband to be one who tames his wife; a role that has been passed on through generations to fortify the image of a strong and dominating male gender. At first glance, Katherine would appear to be an individual who goes against the grain of society, challenging Butler’s claim of a constructed gender wholly apart from the individual. Yet, Katherine’s anger is undoubtedly rooted in her unhappiness with her powerless wealthy social position as a woman. The “shrew,” Katherine, was produced by society as much as the newly domesticated Kate is produced by her relationship with Petruchio. As suggested by Butler, Katherine’s gender transformation was simply a shift in role from untamed falcon to dove, all while performing the script drafted by society.
great observations–especially your sense of (following Butler) how social enforced and scripted Kate’s actions are. The passage you choose to discuss P’s power over Kate is also interesting–it begins with language and naming!
In our class discussion on Thursday, I was particularly intrigued by the juxtaposition of various ideas from the Judith Butler piece, the primary material about real-life taming of “shrews” (or “scolds”) in Elizabethan England, and of course the play itself. While I was reading the third and fourth acts of the play this weekend, I was considering those ideas, so this is (I hope) an account of my consideration. As I understand Butler’s ideas, she puts forth a common perspective of identity – the “theatrical” view that takes the idea of a “subject” as a given as well as entirely authentic – but encourages us to delve deeper than that surface. How should we delve deeper than the “theatrical” view? As I understand it, Butler’s argument is that we have no real “core” – I imagine Aristotle’s anachronistic delight because he explicitly rejected Plato’s idea of forms – but that we construct an “essence” through various repeated actions and thought processes, and that this “essence” helps create a societal and historical reality in which we live.
This argument brought up several ideas and tangents, the most urgent of which I will try to distill here. I love theater, and I always wrestle with the ideas of embodiment and performance of identity. In many ways the “theatrical” view of identity resonates with me, because our actions and words are simply performance of what’s going on inside our brains. So in that sense I strongly disagree with Butler’s view of identity because it too easily disregards something that I genuinely believe should have more weight. It goes without saying that I was horrified at what people did to tame “shrews” back in the day; indeed, the bridle looked like a torture device, and the cucking stool process is the equivalent of waterboarding. I was also thinking about the overt double standard that men (whether in the public sphere or in the home) could speak as much as they wanted and exercise power/authority as often as they so desired, but if women strove for at least equality in their marriages, they would be labeled a shrew/scold.
Lastly, the public sphere (which was also discussed in the Butler) and who controls it is also intriguing for me. In The Scarlet Letter, the scaffold was the public sphere; indeed, a surprising amount of the action of that story took place in that arena. While Hester did get to speak occasionally, it was always allowed by men (who of course controlled and dominated the arena). Butler agrees that the public sphere has always been a male space; although it is difficult to get an accurate sense of the larger scenes in the play (because I cannot see the actors embody their characters in the space), it still seems that the male characters control the public spheres of The Taming of the Shrew. My sincerest apologies for the disparate nature of these thoughts; I hoped they would be at least somewhat more organized. With that said, this is an entirely accurate translation of my thoughts and ideas at this time, so there you are. Until next time!
these are all really interesting observations, Mark! I like your insights about the public sphere, in particular, which definitely does fit well with Butler’s argument.
BAPTISTA
Content you, gentlemen. I will compound this strife.
’Tis deeds must win the prize, and he of both
That can assure my daughter greatest dower
Shall have my Bianca’s love. 365
In this passage from Act 2 Scene 1, Baptista asks Tranio and Gremio what they can offer to Bianca. Whoever has the best proposition, or dower, in his eyes would win Bianca’s hand in marriage as well as her love–as if that was his own to dictate. This scene shows the transaction of women that perpetuates the idea of women as objects. Judith Butler, on Performative Acts and Gender Constitution, mentions the feminist and cultural anthropology and kinship study to show that the “heterosexually-based system of marriage” is one that perpetuates and guarantees the exchange and consumption of material goods (Butler, 275). Bianca–the woman–is the “material goods,” the main object of transaction that comes with a worth that is determined by how well she performs her role as a woman in her society.
Bianca possesses a worth greater than Katherine’s, obvious with Baptista’s concern about her well-being when and if she becomes a widow. He asks Tranio: “If you should die before [your father], where’s her dower?” (2.1.411). Whereas with Katherine, Petruchio holds the decision of whether or not he will marry Katherine based on the dowry she provides. Hortensio says: “[Petruchio is] to marry her if her dowry please” (1.2.186). Baptista does not ask for details regarding Katherine’s dower–Petruchio provides this information himself. This difference in Baptista’s treatment of Bianca from Katherine shows the consequences that come with the quality of a woman’s performance. Baptista’s simple question (“If you should die before him, where’s her dower?” (2.1.411)) on Bianca’s behalf emphasizes her worth as a woman, which determines her right to the feme sole kind of freedom. Whereas Katherine, based on Baptista’s actions, does not. A woman’s worth, as dictated by her act, determines her right to freedom.
excellent observations and a great passage choice–yes, these passages seem intentionally to emphasize that marriage is a “market place” organized by and for men.
The Judith Butler reading for this week brought a lot of theoretical tools to the table for which to better examine both our class discussions and the play at large. Butler is making the argument that we should look beyond the phenological and theatrical view of identity which takes the idea of the ‘subject’ as both given and authentic. Instead, she says, we have no distinct core, but rather, through sets of repeated acts, fabricate a form of ‘essence’ and constitute a socio-historical reality that we situate ourselves within. This argument made me think a lot about the discussions we had about public space in our previous class because, though Butler is talking about individual bodies that carry out these performative acts, she also acknowledges how that informs and is regulated by public space, constituting, as she states, “social laws explicit.” If social bodies “constitute social reality”, do some bodies, e.i. the ones who perform ‘right’, have more power to create and inform and regulate this reality? Where do we see this in the play? Who has agency, and of what kind? By that, I mean, can embodiment become reconfigured as a site for the enactment of subversive power? Otherwise, it would seem that our bodies exist passively within this script that we have no way of interacting with in a porous way. Do we see this in any of the characters in the play? These were just a few of the things I was thinking about! Best,
Amy
These are very interesting observations, Amy–I’d love to pursue that question about which kinds of bodies get power, and why; and I also think that Butler does leave room for subversive applications of gender enactment, but it’s interesting to think about whether there is any room for that in this play…
Petruchio’s insistence on calling Katherine “Kate” seems to be a way to verbally diminish Katherine into something lesser than she is. In fact, Petruchio does not once say the word “Katherine” in this entire play. He greets her: “Good morrow, Kate, for that’s your name, I hear” (2.1.163, 2.1.178). And she immediately corrects him, to no avail: “Well you have heard, but something hard of hearing — They call me Katherine that do talk of me” (2.1.179-180). But this correction just unleashes a monologue filled with the repetition of “Kate” so that it turns into somewhat of a patronizing chant or song: “Plain Kate,” “bonny Kate,” “Kate the curst,” “super-dainty Kate,” “the prettiest Kate in Christendom” (2.1.181). Katherine later speaks of herself in the third person, re-naming herself with her real name while standing alone at her own wedding ceremony: “Would Katherine had never seen him through” (3.2.26). This almost seems to be Katherine’s way of re-claiming the “Katherine” (really, the full woman) she was before Petruchio broke her down into the “Kate” who showed up to the ceremony. “Katherine,” she seems to say, would never have agreed to this. But in Petruchio’s discursive sphere, Katherine really is simply Kate. He made her into “Kate” with mere condescension and repetition, using the name in his mock flatteries and flirtations, just as he later “tames” her by “killing her with kindness.” Petruchio, in incessantly re-naming Katherine’s female body as “Kate,” re-organizes her role in his theatrical script as smaller, milder; something he has created, molded, re-named (and tamed).
I also want to add that this name-calling seems to be Shakespeare’s attempt at revealing how not-witty Petruchio is. Katherine manages to berate him, her sister, and her father through intricately crafted banter, while Petruchio resorts to simple, clunky mockery when he yells at his servants in Act 4: “Foolish knave” (4.1.98), “peasant swait,” “whoreson malthorse drudge” (4.1.100), “whoreson, beetle-headed, flap-eared knave” (4.1.128), “heedless joltheads and unmannered slaves” (4.1.137). He seems like the real shrew of this pair.
excellent! Two interesting ideas emerge here–that P uses the power of language (and especially naming) to control and diminish Kate from the beginning; and also that he integrates language and violence very effectively-as in the insults you mention at the end. I think the violence to the servants is deliberately threatening to Katherine.
September 18, 2019 at 10:58 pm
I found a lot of what Carson discusses to be very interesting, both in the context of The Taming of the Shrew and in other media, myth, and the world in general. Something in particular that struck me was her analysis, “throughout most of the ancient and some of the modern discussions of voice: female sound is bad to hear both because the quality of a woman’s voice is objectionable and because woman uses her voice to say what should not be said” (133). We see this very obviously throughout The Taming of the Shrew, Katherine’s entire speech is defiant of what women should do and consequently be; not only does she speak, but she says vile things that should remain unsaid, while the men who use language to speak ill of her never criticize one another for their own foul words. Further, there is ultimately a conflation of her actions and her being; she becomes a shrew in society because of the way and the very fact that she uses her voice.
In relation, the examples of judgment that Carson lists in the article’s first sentence immediately called to mind Hollywood’s reliance on oversimplification, with voice in particular being a signifier of one’s true personality. A movie that jumped out at me was Singin’ in the Rain, which ties this concept into the entire plot of the film; an actress’s voice is not only shrill, but what she says reveals her to be stupid, and so she is kept quiet during all publicity events. The 1920s studios are able to profit off her because they’re only making silent films (and the male star can easily get away with doing all the talking at press releases anyway). So the conflict lies in their transition to talkies, in which by definition she must now speak if the studio is still going to capitalize off her body. As with The Taming of the Shrew, gendered signification of voice makes it difficult to imagine this plot with reverse gender roles.
September 19, 2019 at 10:33 am
very interesting, Maya! I too am interested in the focus on women’s saying “what shouldn’t be said” and “discharging” those things in a public way. Also the reduction of a woman’s whole essence to her voice alone–and your example from Hollywood is wonderful!
September 18, 2019 at 10:20 pm
The Carson piece discusses the sonic quality of women’s voices that makes them less palatable to the male ear, which has historically dictated how women’s speech is perceived in different contexts. This reminded me of the part in Women and Power in which Mary Beard discusses how society has taught us that these same tonal qualities are inherently less trustworthy and authoritative than deeper, male speech. We are not born thinking shrill voices are silly or unpleasant — this is learned and reinforced throughout our lives. It made me think of our conversations with the Bread Loaf actors about the importance of seeing (and hearing) Shakespeare performed, and how that guides our interpretation of the text. When casting a Katherine, knowing all the cultural baggage associated with the shrew figure and the supposed deviance of her speech, the quality of the actresses voice is an incredibly important factor to consider. Having little background in acting or theater myself, I wonder how much directors consider the tonal quality of the actresses they choose for this role. A Katherine with a deep, guttural male voice threatens the patriarchy in a very different way than a Katherine with a shrill, berating voice. I would also have to imagine that the way Katherine’s voice sounds in relation to the obedient Bianca or the boastful Petruchio impacts how the audience hears her.
On a separate note, and back to the Carson piece, I was intrigued by the theory that women have two mouths, their mouths and their vaginas, and looseness in one means looseness in the other. A talkative woman, therefore, is a sexually immoral one. I had heard this theory before but forgotten about it, and it is interesting to think about in the context of Taming of the Shrew. This connection between speech and sexuality reinforces the physical nature of speech as embodied and threatening to the male order. Just like female infidelity threatens to cuckold men and deny them control over their own households/offspring, speech too is granted that same power. Petruchio’s horrible plan to torture Katherine into submission takes on new meaning if it is also a scheme to control her sexually. This ties into Petruchio’s repeated line in the last act, “Kiss me, Kate.” Once he has “tamed” the shrew, he has the ability to control not just her mouth but her sexuality as well, ordering kisses when he wants them despite her initial discomfort. By banishing the shrew from the woman, Petruchio takes power over these two (apparently) connected aspect of Kate’s identity and can yield them to his benefit.
September 19, 2019 at 10:35 am
excellent! The issue of the tonal qualities of women’s voices is so important, and has another twist in the early modern context with the use of boys’ voices–hence Cleopatra’s concern about an actor “boying her greatness”… Yes, the analogy between the “two mouths” is very important, and lingers all through the early modern period…more on that today.
September 18, 2019 at 10:05 pm
“No shame but mine. I must, forsooth, be forced
To give my hand, opposed against, my heart,
Unto a mad-brain rudesby, full of spleen,
Who wooed in haste and means to wed at leisure…
“Go, girl. I cannot blame thee now to weep,
For such an injury would vex a very saint,
Much more a shrew of [thy] impatient humor.”
(3.2.8-29)
Perhaps the one time that Katherine is allowed any sympathy, is when she is nearly jilted at the altar of her forced marriage. While waiting for Petruchio to show up, Katherine laments at her situation, and notes the irony that from now on she will be known as “mad Petruchio’s wife,” despite the fact that neither of them want to be married. Her weeping in this scene is seen as justifiable, as though the only time Katherine is allowed to show extreme emotion is when a certain amount or type of pain is enacted upon her. When a man (Petruchio) is not fulfilling his duty to a woman, that is when we must draw the line. In the eyes of Baptista, marriage is Katherine’s only form of worth, and when her only form of worthiness is taken away from her or threatened, that is the truly sad act. Despite Petruchio’s tardiness and ridiculous attire, Baptista is still happy to marry Katherine off because who else will take a shrew like her? Baptista knows the type of man Petruchio is, but would still contribute to an arbitrary social practice rather than doing what is best for his daughter, which would in turn mean giving her autonomy and unsettling the continuum. To Shakepeare’s benefit, Petruchios’ scorning of the shrew is looked down upon, Gremio calls him “a devil, a very fiend”(3. 2.157). But then again, Katherine is still labeled “a devil, the devil’s dam” (3. 2.158).
In Performative Acts and Gender Constitution, Judith Butler talks about the notion that gender is really a historical idea, strategizing for cultural survival. This exchange between Baptista and Katherine seems like a battle for survival of those roles that come with gender. The main imperative is for Katherine to get married, not because of a dowry or for social mobility, but because it would be failing the system if she didn’t, because the “various acts of gender creates the idea of gender”(Butler 273), and marriage is the most essential performative act of one’s gender. It is not within the realm of reality for Katherine to remain unmarried because that would present a flaw in this system. If she were to be happy being single, then what was the point of those gender expectations and roles that have been constructed for centuries? In this way, the seemingly intimate act of marriage is politicized, in that it reinforces the ideals of an outdated system that strives to sustain the gender binary.
September 19, 2019 at 10:36 am
Really great points, Mel; people have often struggled with how to interpret that “mad marriage” scene, and I love your interpretation here–that K gets B’s sympathy primarily because this is a moment when she is ostensibly fitting into the social script–and I totally agree that marriage is a political act in that context.
September 18, 2019 at 9:55 pm
For me, reading Anne Carson’s piece, “The Gender of Sound,” framed The Taming of Shrew in a way that I hadn’t considered before, especially in regard to the female voice (or lack thereof). Carson’s piece was very quotable (at times, the examples literally made me laugh out loud because they seemed so unbelievably outlandish), but her statement, “Putting a door on the female mouth has been an important project of patriarchal culture from antiquity to the present day. Its chief tactic is an ideological association of female sound with monstrosity, disorder and death” really stood out, and colored the rest of my reading of both her text, and Shakespeare’s play (Carson, 121). Not only does this quote remind me of the age-old adage, “children should be seen, not heard,” but it puts into words exactly what Petruccio is attempting to do in his “taming” of Kate; put a door over her mouth to force her to submit to him.
The comparison of women to children became clearer to me as I continued reading the article. Women are essentially seen as existing on the same plane as children; they cannot control their emotions; they talk too much and they are generally difficult to control. Katherina is essentially treated like a child by the men in the play as a way to control both her actions and her beliefs, especially in the scene performed by the Breadloaf actors the other day in class. The themes that Carson touches upon play well into the excerpt of scene 2.1—specifically, the emotional crumbling of the first rendering of Katherina when she is “broken” by Petruccio.
After watching the first interpretation, I was struck by how violent and sexually-charged the scene was. Katherina was truly the “shrew,” and she wielded her voice as a weapon against the equally brutal Petruccio. Her voice, however, proved no match for the battle, when she was eventually worn down by her suitor, and the patriarchal society that traps her, and dissolved into defeated tears. In fact, the performance and the reading also reminded me of the TedTalk that we watched on the first day of class, Soraya Chemaly’s “Rage Becomes Her.” Chemaly details female emotional outbursts, like crying, as pent up rage, and yelling, as Carson writes, is a cathartic experience for women. However, both of these acts serve to cement the women’s place in relation to men, perpetually restricting them to being “lesser” than men.
September 19, 2019 at 10:39 am
wonderful points, Kara! I’m amazed by how much you manage to integrate everything we’ve been doing here. I too was struck by the sexualized violence of the first interprteation, and it’s very interesting to think about that in terms of weaponized language, as well. The crying, yelling etc. also fits so well with Carson’s take on the constraints on women’s speech, such that these marginalized speech acts are bound to occur.
September 18, 2019 at 9:29 pm
I found the ancient idea of women having “two mouths” to be poignant when considering the “bantering” scene between Petruccio and Katherine. Carson describes this ancient idea, saying both the mouth and vagina were expressed by “stoma” with words to differentiate “upper” and “lower” mouth, connected to the rest of the body by the neck and cervix. Carson says, “Both mouths provide access to a hollow cavity which is guarded by lips that are best kept closed” (131). This idea was interesting in a general context of thinking about historically categorized “loose women” as being both more sexually and verbally free, and that our historic conception of a “proper woman” includes an exemplification of self-control, both verbally and sexually. Once I started thinking about this concept in terms of The Taming of the Shrew, I started thinking of the sexualized language in act 2, scene 1. It seemed to me that Petruccio assumes that since one of Kate’s mouths is open (since she speaks freely and unabashedly) that the other “mouth” must be open as well, and so he feels free to crudely speak about her sexually.
Petruccio sexualizes the conversation, forcing double entendres and pretending to misunderstand Katherine’s intent, thereby making her “two mouths” interchangeable. She addresses him verbally and he responds essentially, to her vagina. Petruccio initiates the sexualized conversation by telling her to sit on him, which she rejects and then he responds, “women are made to bear, and so are you” (II.I.198). He sexualizes the conversation, combatting her verbal eloquence with vulgar puns. She even tries to shut down the connection between genitals and verbal banter saying, “if you talk to tales, and so farewell” to which he responds, “what, with my tongue in your tail? Nay, come again” (II.I.213-5). Here, the overlap of mouths and genitalia is tangibly introduced in the conversation. Despite Kate’s refusal to engage with his sexual word play, Petruccio keeps returning to the subject, as if he is thinking that her outspokenness means that he can freely refer to her as his sexual object.
September 19, 2019 at 10:39 am
Great observations, Colleen. I totally agree about 2.1–the sexualized language helps to show just how dangerous the identification of the “two mouths” is–he is attacking her verbally but it is really also a sexualized assault.
September 18, 2019 at 8:23 pm
In reading Carson’s essay, I was especially interested in her discussion of the patriarchal anxiety around “the use of signs to transcribe upon the outside of the body a meaning from inside the body which does not pass through the control point of logos, a meaning which is not subject to the mechanism of disassociation that Greeks called sophrosyne or self-control” (128). Unmediated self-expression, that which has not been translated into the abstract and arbitrary constructs of man-made language is inherently dangerous to a patriarchal order which defines itself on the binaries that language depends on and creates. For example, the ololya or female ritual scream that Carson discusses, is not symbolic of anything but itself: it does “not signify anything but its own sound” and thus can transcend the binaries of a symbolic order, simultaneously representing either “intense pleasure or intense pain” (125).
The emphasis on learning/tutoring/education throughout The Taming of the Shrew seems to explore this patriarchal need to squeeze lived experience (especially female lived experience) into the narrow definitions of abstract masculine logic in order for it to exist. Bianca, the patriarchy’s ideal woman is “apt to learn and thankful for good terms” (2.1.170). She is eager to translate and reduce herself into logos and in doing so hand over her “‘natural’ female affinity for all that is raw [and] formless” to “the civilizing hand of man” (124). The untamed and Katherine at the start of the play, by contrast refuses to submit to the symbolic order represented by education. Following her tutoring session, Baptista asks Hortensio “Why, then thou canst not break her to the lute?” (140) to which he responds “Why, no, for she hath broke the lute to me” and explains how Katherine smashed the instrument over his head when he “bowed her hand to teach her fingering” (153-60). She refuses to mediate her self-expression through the instrument and relies instead on the direct bodily expression of physical violence which, like her, cannot be defined, pinned down, or contained by logos.
September 19, 2019 at 10:40 am
Excellent–this is a really great integration of Carson’s point about sophrosyne/self control with what’s going on in TS. I completely agree that what we see on stage is a kind of disciplining of Kate’s interior/exterior that is deeply embedded in patriarchal norms.
September 17, 2019 at 6:18 pm
“Woman is that creature who puts the inside on the outside. By projections and leakages of all kinds–somatic, vocal, emotional, sexual–females expose or expend what should be kept in,” Carson states in ‘The Gender of Sound’ (129). I found this idea of “the leaky jar of female sexuality” to be fascinating in relation to Early Modern medical discourse surrounding the Galenic humors. If women’s bodies are seen as inverted and open, then it would make sense that women would be seen as being much more susceptible to imbalances of their humors, causing ailments such as hysteria and melancholy (as Freud and Breuer seemed to have found out later on). With the capacity for “leakage,” women’s bodies are not only susceptible to imbalances of their biles, but they also have no control over this ‘leakage.’ According to all of the medical texts I’ve read from this time period, it seems as though only a man, with his distinctly masculine power of restraint, would have the ability to, essentially “shut a woman up” (figuratively and literally) and control this ‘leakage’ of emotions and fluids.
We see this figurative ‘blockage’ play out in Shakespeare’s ‘The Taming of the Shrew,’ when Katherine can’t help but expel ‘shrewish’ insults at Petruchio, calling him an “ass” (II.i.210) and comparing his face to a crab’s. Furthermore, Kate is described as “mad” multiple times throughout the play, particularly after one of her impulsive outbursts. It is not until the very end of Act V that she is as “contained” as her sister. The play essentially follows Petruchio’s mission to ‘shut up’ Kate: closing both sets of her lips and having complete control over her body. It is only when Kate’s actions align with her father and her husband’s desires that she is no longer seen as unruly, and mad.
September 19, 2019 at 10:42 am
Really good points, Gemma–I’m particularly fascinated by your application of the “leaky” concept to language, and how that allows us to read K’s verbal fluency as a displaced dramatization of her flouting of sophrosyne much more generally. This is very promising and I hope you can keep thinking about this idea.
September 16, 2019 at 9:20 pm
Judith Butler, amongst her many thoughtful analyses of performative gender, made the claim, “Gender is a performance with clearly punitive consequences. Discrete genders are part of what ‘humanizes’ individuals…those who fail to do their gender right are regularly punished.” It’s very clear to me how that manifests in Taming of the Shrew, particularly since not only is Katherine punished for not conforming to society’s idea of a woman during that time, but also how those closest to her allow this to happen. It was very interesting that Bianca, who should feel some solidarity with her sister, is passively—if not actively—supportive of the men around her attempting to beat Katherine into submission. In Act III Scene 2, when Katherine wants to go to the feast following her marriage against the wishes of Petruchio, nobody attempts to stop a clearly violent and aggressive man from forcing her to leave with him. As a reader, I found this to be a very dark and disturbing moment in what Shakespeare intended to be a comedy, since it foreshadows the “taming” that is about to occur. However, there are several people, including her family, present that see the signs of Petruchio’s anger and madness but fail to see the threat that it poses to Katherine. Bianca even goes as far as to say that they are well-matched, which is completely untrue considering the power dynamics. Because Katherine does not conform to performance of gender expected, she’s not even considered human. That is why she is not perceived as a victim of abuse or domestic violence and thus not deserving of being saved or protected from threats.
September 17, 2019 at 10:34 am
excellent–this is a great application of Butler’s idea that not performing gender “properly” is actually dangerous…
September 16, 2019 at 9:07 pm
Judith Butler’s article on gender identity helped me to better understand the socially manipulated position of subversion into which Katherine is forced in Shakespeare’s The Taming of the Shrew. Butler establishes that gender is not a stable identity, but rather “an identity constituted in time— an identity instituted through a stylized repetition of acts” (270). Thus, Katherine’s position as a woman is dependent upon her adherence to the acts that have been historically decided to designate women.
In the beginning of the play, Katherine is seen to fail in her womanhood because she is not quiet as her sister, Bianca. Petruchio lauds Bianca for her “bashful modesty” and “mild behavior” (2.1.48-49). In contrast, Katherine opts to subvert this behavioral expectation by maintaining an independent, strong-willed spirit. She resists Baptista’s attempts to control her, and verbally objects to Petruchio’s marriage proposal. Her scorn of gender norms is clear, and she is a willing agent in her disregard of such oppression. However, once she marries Petruchio and moves into his estate, her resistance takes a darker turn. At his home, Petruchio concocts a plan to “kill a wife with kindness” in order to “curb her mad and headstrong humor” (4.2.177-178). By depriving Katherine of food, sleep, and overall dignity under the pretense of genuine care for her wellbeing, Petruchio aims to weaken her will to be free. In the process, Petruchio forces Katherine to be docile, and ridicules her harshly when she accidentally isn’t. For example, he convinces her to admit that the sun is the moon, and then accuses her of lying when she concedes to agree with his ludicrous statement.
Petruchio is undertaking a theatrical performance of his own by designing a world in which Katherine is never correct; and, in turn, Katherine is forced to adopt certain female-gendered traits like submissiveness in order to survive. Butler points out that “performing one’s gender wrong initiates a set of punishments both obvious and indirect, and performing it well provides reassurance that there is an essentialism of gender identity after all” (279). Indeed, we see that throughout Act IV Katherine is continuously punished for failing to perform her expected gender roles– and her punishment, ultimately, the forceful adhesion to these roles so that Petruchio may be satisfied in his understanding of gender identities.
September 17, 2019 at 10:34 am
excellent! Your reading of Butler allows you to see how P’s “taming” of Kate is actually a way of forcing her to enter into a predetermined gender script.
September 16, 2019 at 8:59 pm
Petruchio: “Nay, then you lie. It is the blessed sun.”
Katherine: “Then, God be blest, it is the blessed sun./ But sun it is not, when you say it is not,/ And the moon changes even as your mind./ What you will have it name’d, even that it is,/ And so it shall be so for Katherine” (Act IV. Scene V. Lines 18-22).
Leading up to this passage Katherine and Petruchio argue about whether the light comes from either the sun or moon. Katherine insists it’s the sun while Petruchio, out of spite, says it’s the moon. This is the first instance of Kathrine submitting to Petruchio. From this submission Katherine begins to accept the fact that her identity now relies on her relationship with Petruchio; a relationship where Petruchio is the master who will call Katherine what he wishes (i.e. her nickname Kate) and control how she will act. Katherine states, “what you will have it name’d, even that it is,/ And so it shall be so for Katherine” (Line 21-22). Petruchio adopts the role of owner and domesticator of the wild female in his performance as husband. Controlling every aspect of Katherine’s life from diet, clothing to cage; Petruchio builds a new Katherine that is palatable to society. As the sun and moon rely on Petruchio’s designation, so too does Katherine’s gendered identity as his wife.
Judith Butler discusses this manipulation of gender in her article “Performative Acts and Gender Constitution.” Setting aside the fact that the character Katherine is in reality a performance of the female gender by a man both within the play and on the stage with actors; the malleable fabric of gender in the play showcases Butler’s claim that gender is a historical production through social relationships. Petruchio understands his role as husband to be one who tames his wife; a role that has been passed on through generations to fortify the image of a strong and dominating male gender. At first glance, Katherine would appear to be an individual who goes against the grain of society, challenging Butler’s claim of a constructed gender wholly apart from the individual. Yet, Katherine’s anger is undoubtedly rooted in her unhappiness with her powerless wealthy social position as a woman. The “shrew,” Katherine, was produced by society as much as the newly domesticated Kate is produced by her relationship with Petruchio. As suggested by Butler, Katherine’s gender transformation was simply a shift in role from untamed falcon to dove, all while performing the script drafted by society.
September 17, 2019 at 10:36 am
great observations–especially your sense of (following Butler) how social enforced and scripted Kate’s actions are. The passage you choose to discuss P’s power over Kate is also interesting–it begins with language and naming!
September 16, 2019 at 8:42 pm
In our class discussion on Thursday, I was particularly intrigued by the juxtaposition of various ideas from the Judith Butler piece, the primary material about real-life taming of “shrews” (or “scolds”) in Elizabethan England, and of course the play itself. While I was reading the third and fourth acts of the play this weekend, I was considering those ideas, so this is (I hope) an account of my consideration. As I understand Butler’s ideas, she puts forth a common perspective of identity – the “theatrical” view that takes the idea of a “subject” as a given as well as entirely authentic – but encourages us to delve deeper than that surface. How should we delve deeper than the “theatrical” view? As I understand it, Butler’s argument is that we have no real “core” – I imagine Aristotle’s anachronistic delight because he explicitly rejected Plato’s idea of forms – but that we construct an “essence” through various repeated actions and thought processes, and that this “essence” helps create a societal and historical reality in which we live.
This argument brought up several ideas and tangents, the most urgent of which I will try to distill here. I love theater, and I always wrestle with the ideas of embodiment and performance of identity. In many ways the “theatrical” view of identity resonates with me, because our actions and words are simply performance of what’s going on inside our brains. So in that sense I strongly disagree with Butler’s view of identity because it too easily disregards something that I genuinely believe should have more weight. It goes without saying that I was horrified at what people did to tame “shrews” back in the day; indeed, the bridle looked like a torture device, and the cucking stool process is the equivalent of waterboarding. I was also thinking about the overt double standard that men (whether in the public sphere or in the home) could speak as much as they wanted and exercise power/authority as often as they so desired, but if women strove for at least equality in their marriages, they would be labeled a shrew/scold.
Lastly, the public sphere (which was also discussed in the Butler) and who controls it is also intriguing for me. In The Scarlet Letter, the scaffold was the public sphere; indeed, a surprising amount of the action of that story took place in that arena. While Hester did get to speak occasionally, it was always allowed by men (who of course controlled and dominated the arena). Butler agrees that the public sphere has always been a male space; although it is difficult to get an accurate sense of the larger scenes in the play (because I cannot see the actors embody their characters in the space), it still seems that the male characters control the public spheres of The Taming of the Shrew. My sincerest apologies for the disparate nature of these thoughts; I hoped they would be at least somewhat more organized. With that said, this is an entirely accurate translation of my thoughts and ideas at this time, so there you are. Until next time!
September 17, 2019 at 10:37 am
these are all really interesting observations, Mark! I like your insights about the public sphere, in particular, which definitely does fit well with Butler’s argument.
September 16, 2019 at 5:37 pm
BAPTISTA
Content you, gentlemen. I will compound this strife.
’Tis deeds must win the prize, and he of both
That can assure my daughter greatest dower
Shall have my Bianca’s love. 365
In this passage from Act 2 Scene 1, Baptista asks Tranio and Gremio what they can offer to Bianca. Whoever has the best proposition, or dower, in his eyes would win Bianca’s hand in marriage as well as her love–as if that was his own to dictate. This scene shows the transaction of women that perpetuates the idea of women as objects. Judith Butler, on Performative Acts and Gender Constitution, mentions the feminist and cultural anthropology and kinship study to show that the “heterosexually-based system of marriage” is one that perpetuates and guarantees the exchange and consumption of material goods (Butler, 275). Bianca–the woman–is the “material goods,” the main object of transaction that comes with a worth that is determined by how well she performs her role as a woman in her society.
Bianca possesses a worth greater than Katherine’s, obvious with Baptista’s concern about her well-being when and if she becomes a widow. He asks Tranio: “If you should die before [your father], where’s her dower?” (2.1.411). Whereas with Katherine, Petruchio holds the decision of whether or not he will marry Katherine based on the dowry she provides. Hortensio says: “[Petruchio is] to marry her if her dowry please” (1.2.186). Baptista does not ask for details regarding Katherine’s dower–Petruchio provides this information himself. This difference in Baptista’s treatment of Bianca from Katherine shows the consequences that come with the quality of a woman’s performance. Baptista’s simple question (“If you should die before him, where’s her dower?” (2.1.411)) on Bianca’s behalf emphasizes her worth as a woman, which determines her right to the feme sole kind of freedom. Whereas Katherine, based on Baptista’s actions, does not. A woman’s worth, as dictated by her act, determines her right to freedom.
September 17, 2019 at 10:38 am
excellent observations and a great passage choice–yes, these passages seem intentionally to emphasize that marriage is a “market place” organized by and for men.
September 16, 2019 at 5:13 pm
The Judith Butler reading for this week brought a lot of theoretical tools to the table for which to better examine both our class discussions and the play at large. Butler is making the argument that we should look beyond the phenological and theatrical view of identity which takes the idea of the ‘subject’ as both given and authentic. Instead, she says, we have no distinct core, but rather, through sets of repeated acts, fabricate a form of ‘essence’ and constitute a socio-historical reality that we situate ourselves within. This argument made me think a lot about the discussions we had about public space in our previous class because, though Butler is talking about individual bodies that carry out these performative acts, she also acknowledges how that informs and is regulated by public space, constituting, as she states, “social laws explicit.” If social bodies “constitute social reality”, do some bodies, e.i. the ones who perform ‘right’, have more power to create and inform and regulate this reality? Where do we see this in the play? Who has agency, and of what kind? By that, I mean, can embodiment become reconfigured as a site for the enactment of subversive power? Otherwise, it would seem that our bodies exist passively within this script that we have no way of interacting with in a porous way. Do we see this in any of the characters in the play? These were just a few of the things I was thinking about! Best,
Amy
September 17, 2019 at 10:39 am
These are very interesting observations, Amy–I’d love to pursue that question about which kinds of bodies get power, and why; and I also think that Butler does leave room for subversive applications of gender enactment, but it’s interesting to think about whether there is any room for that in this play…
September 15, 2019 at 2:32 pm
Petruchio’s insistence on calling Katherine “Kate” seems to be a way to verbally diminish Katherine into something lesser than she is. In fact, Petruchio does not once say the word “Katherine” in this entire play. He greets her: “Good morrow, Kate, for that’s your name, I hear” (2.1.163, 2.1.178). And she immediately corrects him, to no avail: “Well you have heard, but something hard of hearing — They call me Katherine that do talk of me” (2.1.179-180). But this correction just unleashes a monologue filled with the repetition of “Kate” so that it turns into somewhat of a patronizing chant or song: “Plain Kate,” “bonny Kate,” “Kate the curst,” “super-dainty Kate,” “the prettiest Kate in Christendom” (2.1.181). Katherine later speaks of herself in the third person, re-naming herself with her real name while standing alone at her own wedding ceremony: “Would Katherine had never seen him through” (3.2.26). This almost seems to be Katherine’s way of re-claiming the “Katherine” (really, the full woman) she was before Petruchio broke her down into the “Kate” who showed up to the ceremony. “Katherine,” she seems to say, would never have agreed to this. But in Petruchio’s discursive sphere, Katherine really is simply Kate. He made her into “Kate” with mere condescension and repetition, using the name in his mock flatteries and flirtations, just as he later “tames” her by “killing her with kindness.” Petruchio, in incessantly re-naming Katherine’s female body as “Kate,” re-organizes her role in his theatrical script as smaller, milder; something he has created, molded, re-named (and tamed).
I also want to add that this name-calling seems to be Shakespeare’s attempt at revealing how not-witty Petruchio is. Katherine manages to berate him, her sister, and her father through intricately crafted banter, while Petruchio resorts to simple, clunky mockery when he yells at his servants in Act 4: “Foolish knave” (4.1.98), “peasant swait,” “whoreson malthorse drudge” (4.1.100), “whoreson, beetle-headed, flap-eared knave” (4.1.128), “heedless joltheads and unmannered slaves” (4.1.137). He seems like the real shrew of this pair.
September 17, 2019 at 10:40 am
excellent! Two interesting ideas emerge here–that P uses the power of language (and especially naming) to control and diminish Kate from the beginning; and also that he integrates language and violence very effectively-as in the insults you mention at the end. I think the violence to the servants is deliberately threatening to Katherine.