A modern retelling of Shakespeare's work - Taming of the Shrew by Pulitzer Prize winner and American master Anne Tyler in her new light-hearted enjoyable tale "Vinegar Girl". Anne Tyler's storytelling is astute yet her easy familiarity with skewed family relationships and oddball characters makes it an enjoyabe tale.…
Throughout time, the moral standards and values of society and its members greatly changes, this in turn tremendously affects the perception of the actions performed by those in the past. Specifically in the perception of literature, the perspective in which it is viewed significantly influences how people understand them. If we look at literature written in the past through a modern lens while applying modern standards and values to it, much of the subject’s essence is lost in that translation because their is no attempt to understand what the writing meant when it was written, nor an effort to try and dig deeper for analysis of the writing. This is the cause of debate of the role that sexism plays in William Shakespeare’s Taming of the Shrew.…
Imagine you being a woman during the time of The Taming of the Shrew and Cyrano de Bergerac. A man comes up to you and says that you are beautiful. He grabs you by the arm and says that you would be a perfect wife for his cousin. You try to retaliate, but he is much more stronger than you, no one helps you out because they don't think anything wrong is happening. Both Shakespeare and Edmond Rostand portray in some way a patriarchal society in the 1500’s-1600’s.…
The Taming of the Shrew, a movie based on the play by William Shakespeare, is the story of Katherine, the eldest daughter of Señior Baptista. It is the story of her change in character when she met Petruchio, who would later marry her. Katherine, in the beginning of the story, was a shrew, or an unpleasant, bad tempered woman. She was angry because her father only wanted to get her married so that he could marry Bianca, the calmer of the two. Her conflicting emotions on whether to get married because she wanted to or not to get married to prove a point caused her to become angry and bitter, making many people want to avoid her rather than tame her.…
One great writer by the name of Leo Tolstoy once wrote “All happy families are alike; each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.” In a similar light Shakespeare seems to have a similar view on family, if his plays are any reflection on his personal ideologies. As probably the most successful playwright in history, it is surprising to see that Shakespeare’s plays were not too different from each other. Once broken up into the there four genres, the tragedies are alike, the comedies are alike and so on and so forth. But one thing that does not change through out any of Shakespeare’s plays is how heavily the plot tends to rely on family.…
Women’s roles have changed throughout time. In Shakespearean time women were supposed to stay at home, care for the house and their husbands, while today women have free will and can choose who they want to be. This concept is seen in Taming of the Shrew and 10 Things I Hate About You through the character change in Katherine. In Taming of the Shrew, Katherine is defiant and refuses to obey anyone’s orders in the beginning. It is not until she is tortured that she becomes the “perfect” woman.…
Comparative essay In “the taming of the shrew” the love that Kat has, is but an illusion of love rather than the actual feeling whereas in “10 things I hate about you” there is a much more clear and truthful love that develops, this is seen through Katherine’s ability to stay true to herself. It could be argued that there is love between Katherine and Petruchio in T.O.T.S. but I believe that if there was any at all, it is more one sided because she loses the ability to speak for herself and has to be what Petruchio wants her to be.…
Imagine you are being starved and sleep deprived by the person you have just married. Then they proceed to argue with you and want to contradict everything you say or do. This is what Katherina was put through by her husband Petruchio in The Taming of the Shrew. The Taming of the Shrew takes place in the Elizabethan Era in the city of Padua. It is a comedy written by Shakespeare that shows the love between a husband and wife during this time.…
There are a lot of films that are adapted from Shakespearean plays. The movie, Kiss Me, Kate, is a musical adaptation of William Shakespeare’s Taming of the Shrew. It is a play-within-a-play. It is about Fred Graham creating his own musical version and he invites his ex-wife, Lilli Vanessi, to perform Katherine Minola. Fred has the lead role of Petruchio and he also invites his secondary romance, Lois Lane, to play Bianca Minola.…
In Shakespeare’s The Taming of the Shrew, there were two lines that caught my attention. The first is 2.1.32-36, where Katherine threatens revenge on her father and sister for not letting Katherine have her way. Second, in 5.2.143-149, Katherine is giving her speech where she chastises the other wives for not doing as their husband’s request. When I read that part of the scene I tried to put myself into the shoes of those sitting and listening to her speech, and I felt slightly disturbed that such a change occurred in what seems to be a short amount of time.…
The Taming of the Shrew Analytical Essay Shakespeare's Taming of the Shrew is far different from some of his other plays like Romeo and Juliet. Unlike Romeo and Juliet, The Taming of the Shrew portrays marriage as an economic benefit for the individual and its family rather than marrying for love. These economic barriers, in the end, determine who gets to marry whom. Petruchio is one of the characters that is going for money rather than love. At Hortensio's house, Petruchio says to Hortensio, “Hortensio, peace.…
Comparative Essay Today saying that women are property of men would come as a shock in present times, but the gender roles that Petruchio and Torvald had in their time, it would be expected. In both The Taming of the Shrew and A Doll’s House, Petruchio and Torvald do an excellent job of showing the roles they had during their time. Petruchio and Torvald show the role of men during this time by gaining sovereignty, creating their perfect spouse, men’s misogynic attitudes toward women, and the result of the men gaining preeminence. Gender norms is shown throughout both of these literary works.…
Shakespeare's stance on the value of a woman and a man's masculinity has been widely debated throughout many years. Though, many of Shakespeare's works portray a strong female character that has superiority in matters of love and portrays the male as unreliable and are made out as fools (Thrasher 40), however, this portrayal is not consistent throughout every piece of work. It can be inferred that Shakespeare's wavering stance on gender roles and who holds the power is stemmed from his personal experiences and how he places value on power. It can be inferred that Shakesphere has the perception that a gentleman was a title that one earned by obtaining wealth. By creating a powerful female character, Lady Macbeth, Shakespeare develops the relationship between gender's ability to establish power as an important theme in Macbeth.…
One can express their love in various forms and to different extents. Today, individuals continue to utter their love to their partner even through rough situations. Shakespeare makes a lot of use of love amongst characters in many his plays. Throughout the play, The Taming of the Shrew, written by William Shakespeare, Lucentio and Bianca, Baptista, and Petruchio and Katherina express their love for one another romantically, filially, and platonically. Lucentio, the son of Vincentio, and Bianca, the daughter of Baptista express their love to each other romantically throughout the play.…
Revenge, death, and marriage are ideas that are completely different from each other, but are all some major themes that can appear in many stories or plays. They can be used as one theme, or be tied together with another to create an intriguing story. Hamlet is the story of a young prince who is seeking revenge on his uncle after he murders Hamlet’s father and marries his mother. The Taming of the Shrew tells the story of how Katherine, a wealthy shrew, is “tamed” by Petruchio, a man who marries her for money. William Shakespeare’s plays Hamlet and The Taming of the Shrew have some elements such as family relationships, roles of women in society, and marriage woven into their stories that make them different and similar in many ways.…