The Taming of the Shrew

One knows a concept is important to a society when there’s specialized language for it, and the Padua of this play has numerous terms to describe an angry woman: she’s a “shrew,” she’s a “haggard,” she’s “froward.”

Curiously enough, though, the exact behavior this set of words describes ranges widely. Katherine is “shrewish” for breaking lutes over people’s heads and tormenting her sister, certainly, but also for weeping, for replying in kind to other people’s insults, and for objecting to being married off to whoever will have her. Bianca is a “haggard” for kissing the suitor of her choice on the sly, and she and Hortensio’s widow are both “froward” merely for sending their husbands word that they’re presently occupied and can’t come see them right now.

In other words, while violent anger is certainly the most dramatic manifestation of the “shrew” problem, the concept has more to do with flouting an accepted (and strict) societal standard of femininity. It’s telling that any kind of female resistance is lumped under the general heading of “choler”; the men in this play might well have reason to fear that women who disobey are also dangerously angry.

This fear also manifests in the way most of the men approach Katherine: They talk a big game but mostly seem terrified. Baptista wrings his hands and scolds weakly; Hortensio veers between shooting off brief insults and staggering away from confrontations with a lute-shaped bruise on his face; most of the rest of the men steer clear of Katherine altogether. Petruchio, on the other hand, makes it very clear that he has no such fears and dismisses the cowards around him: “Tush, tush, fear boys with bugs!” (1.2.213).

Perhaps Petruchio’s eventual successful (if complicated) relationship with Katherine rests not just on a semi-comic bout of psychological torture but on the fact that he isn’t afraid of her—and because he isn’t afraid, he can see her as an actual person. He understands that she doesn’t really want to be outraged all the time or to be seen as outraged all the time. She wants to participate in society—but on her own terms, not as a faker like Bianca.

In one reading, what Petruchio ultimately teaches Katherine is that, for women, outward compliance allows a lot more leeway for transgression. A person who performs the “virtuous wife” can land some pretty good zingers while lecturing about how a virtuous wife should behave.

In another reading, this play is a straightforward expression of anxiety about how oppressed women don’t like being oppressed, don’t want to stay oppressed, and might always be on the verge of breaking out against their oppressors—as, at the end, Bianca and the widow both do, albeit in ways that threaten nothing more substantial than their husbands’ egos and purses. In that light, Katherine’s speech at the end should be taken at face value as a token of gracious defeat. But again, this play rarely seems to want its audience to take anything at face value.