Renaissance Family Politics and Shakespeare ’ s The Taming of the Shrew

1. Renaissance Family Politics and Shakespeare’s The Taming of the Shrew Jessica Huang March 7, 2003

2. Thesis Statement: • Grounded with historical aspects, Newman attempts to articulate the sexual and political fantasy that the Shrew projects as an imaginary resolution of contradictions which are never resolved in the Wetherden case, but the appearance of solution in the Shrew is only a mirage in which the displacement and deconstruction of gender role is represented (89).

3. Introduction • The events of Plough Monday 1604: a story about a drunken tanner Nicholas Rosyer, who was beaten by his wife. • The community fantasy is to reestablish the conventional modes of behavior and the subjection of a shrewish wife and to authorize patriarchal order (87). • This incident figures the social anxiety about gender and power relation which characterizes Elizabethan culture.

4. Family Politics • Sly’s two dreams: • In the first dream, Sly is satisfied by the traditional hierarchal and gender relationships in which he enjoys a lot of prerogatives; the other dream that Sly fantasizes is the “dream” of Petruchio taming Kate.

5. Family Politics • What does Induction say? • According to Newman, Sly is only convinced of his lordly identity when he is told of his “wife” (88); in the meanwhile, Sly is eagerly to exert his new power through his husbandly sexual right. • Ironically, in this male-centered culture, men depended on women to sanction their sexual and social masculine identity. • Performing the seemingly eternal nature of those culturally constructed characters subvert the fantasy of patriarchy.

6. Family Politics • Newman projects a combination of Renaissance audience, modern readership, and text itself to discuss that if works are the historical and cultural artifacts in which patriarchy as a master narrative. Providing the critiques from Louis Althusser and Frederic Jameson about textualization and narrative, the Rosyer’s case is reinterpreted in different ways and aspects. • Returning to Nicholas Rosyer’s case, his wife is not a subject because she is unnamed and only referred as a wife. • Rosyer’s wife has no voice and no family and there is no place for her to complain of her husband’s mistreatment.

7. A Shrew’s History • The power of language: language is an index of identity. • Ex.: Sly’s language style changes when he believes himself a lord. • Women and language: women get control over language and patriarchy. • Ex.: Kate’s linguistic protest is against her role in the patriarchal culture which expected her to be silent.

8. A Shrew’s History • Historical context: “ during the period from 1560 until the English Civil War, there was a crisis of order—the fear that women were rebelling against their traditional role in patriarchal culture” (90). A lot of literary works were preoccupied by female rebellion and independence. The period was filled with anxiety about rebellious and eloquent women but Newman suggests that the gender struggle can be attributed to having a female ruler at that time.

9. A Shrew’s History • One of the strategies to control of women or to keep them silent is to gaze them in public. • Women are spectacles or objects to be desired and admired. • Kate refuses to be made a spectacle. For instance, Pertruchio’s “mad-brain rudesby” could possibly make Kate as a spectacle and an object that peoplemock at (92).

10. A Shrew’s History • However, the representation of characters and Kate's performance at the final scene expose contradictions in the male domain discourse; that is, "Sly disappears as lord, but Kate keeps talking" (93).

11. The Price of Silence • Some critics may think that Kate wants be like Bianca and shows her desire for marriage in Act 2.1; however, Newman comments that Kate’s shrewishness actually is arouse by Baptista’s different attitudes toward her and Bianca.

12. The Price of Silence • Baptista emphasizes on Bianca’s silence and Kate's devilness. • It is the silence that ensures Bianca’s place in the male dominant society. • A silent woman is a treasure of exchange that assures patriarchal hegemony. • Kate is as the other because of her disapproval of those traditional folk customs.

13. The Price of Silence • Kate / Petruchio vs. Bianca / Lucentio • Kate criticizes Petruchio and the exchange system in which women are sexually exploited. • Bianca repeats word by word after Lucentio, that means her silence before man. • Petruchio has the power over Kate by means of linguistic misunderstanding, but Kate still makes playfulness of their linguistic games. Newman argues that although Kate gives up her shrewishness and submits herself to Petruchio, she still “persists in her ‘masculine’ linguistic exuberance while masquerading as an obedient wife”(96).

14. The Price of Silence • Different views of the Shrew: • Revisionists: they take Kate’s speech as ironic and her submission as pretense. Kate still lives in the patriarchal society with her old soul. • Anti-revisionists: they argue that Kate’s final behavior is similar to an animal responding to the devices of its trainer. • John Bean suggests that Kate’s change needs to be interpreted in terms of romantic comedy (or farce) in which a spontaneous change causes characters lose themselves.

15. The Price of Silence • Representation of gender subverts the cultural formation. • In the final scene, Kate represents how a woman can deliver a strong persuasion like man. • Kate’s mimeticism: Kate does not continue to speak her earlier language; instead, she adopted another strategy. According to Luce Irigaray, women were extracted from language and the only way they regain language is to resubmit herself into a masculine logic and to mimic the male language (98). • The sameness between woman’s and man’s speech: the rhetorical strategies that Kate deploys are like Petruchio’s. For instance, they both deform language by subverting it and by using puns. • Kate’s final speech presents the contradiction in this play. On the one hand women is the silent object but on the other hand women, having the power over language, disrupt their place and role in culture.

16. Missing Frames and Female Spectacles • Kate’s final speech is an ideological mirage. • The end of the play displays a kind of heterogeneity rather than unity. • Even though women try to transgress the law of women’s silence, they still remain the object of the gaze and the spectacles. • The missing frame makes the audience forget that Petruchio’s taming of Kate is presented as a play. • The indetermination of the actor’s sexuality deconstructs the mimetic effect on Elizabethan stage. Moreover, it also subverts the patriarchal master narrative by homoerotic performance (100).

17. Work Cited • Newman, Karen. “Renaissance Family Politics and Shakespeare’s The Taming of the Shrew.”English Literary Renaissance 16.1 (1986): 86-100.

18. Printable Version • HERE: a printable and portable document format of the outline for Jessica Huang’s report. • You need to have Adobe Acrobat Reader to open the file. Free download from its official site or HERE for Chinese Traditional Version!