Renaissance%20Family%20Politics%20and%20Shakespeare

1
Renaissance Family Politics and Shakespeares 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

• Slys 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 Rosyers case
  is reinterpreted in different ways and aspects.
• Returning to Nicholas Rosyers case, his wife is
  not a subject because she is unnamed and only
  referred as a wife.
• Rosyers wife has no voice and no family and
  there is no place for her to complain of her
  husbands mistreatment.

7
A Shrews History

• The power of language language is an index of
  identity.
• Ex. Slys language style changes when he
  believes himself a lord.
• Women and language women get control over
  language and patriarchy.
• Ex. Kates linguistic protest is against her
  role in the patriarchal culture which expected
  her to be silent.

8
A Shrews History

• Historical context during the period from 1560
  until the English Civil War, there was a crisis
  of orderthe 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 Shrews 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, Pertruchios mad-brain rudesby could
  possibly make Kate as a spectacle and an object
  that people mock at (92).

10
A Shrews 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 Kates
  shrewishness actually is arouse by Baptistas
  different attitudes toward her and Bianca.

12
The Price of Silence

• Baptista emphasizes on Biancas silence and
  Kate's devilness.
• It is the silence that ensures Biancas 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 Kates speech as ironic
  and her submission as pretense. Kate still lives
  in the patriarchal society with her old soul.
• Anti-revisionists they argue that Kates final
  behavior is similar to an animal responding to
  the devices of its trainer.
• John Bean suggests that Kates 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.
• Kates 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 womans and mans speech
  the rhetorical strategies that Kate deploys are
  like Petruchios. For instance, they both deform
  language by subverting it and by using puns.
• Kates 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

• Kates 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
  womens silence, they still remain the object of
  the gaze and the spectacles.
• The missing frame makes the audience forget that
  Petruchios taming of Kate is presented as a
  play.
• The indetermination of the actors 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
  Shakespeares 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 Huangs report.
• You need to have Adobe Acrobat Reader to open the
  file. Free download from its official site or
  HERE for Chinese Traditional Version!