Changing of the Boo

An exploration of male/female expectations in relationships in Shakespeare’s Taming of the Shrew and She’s All That

In Shakespeare's The Taming of The Shrew, where Petruchio, a wealthy bachelor who will do whatever it takes to find a rich wife, meets Katherine, a beautiful and unmarried, but rude and sharp-witted daughter of a wealthy lord. Bianca, Katherine's younger sister, is the object of every suitor's desire. Beautiful and wealthy, kind and sweet, Bianca has a line of suitors waiting for her father marry off Katherine before they can wed Bianca. Two of Bianca's suitors strike a deal with Petruchio, stating that he will tame and marry Katherine for money, in order to free up Bianca. The girls' father, Baptista, is ecstatic that a suitor has finally arrived to take Katherine, and orders them to be wed immediately. Since the play was released, there have been countless retellings and versions, and many take from the story directly.

The timeless tale of a man conquering and changing a woman who is inherently different is still used in movies today, shown in the 1999 romantic comedy, She's All That. In an attempt to regain status after his popular girlfriend dumps him, a popular high school jock, Zack, takes a bet offered by his friend Dean, wherein he has 6 weeks to make the girl of Dean's choice into prom queen. The girl picked is Laney, an artistic and intelligent social outcast who is known only for her love of art and her glasses. Zack has 6 weeks before prom to turn her into prom queen and reassure his status.

Romantic comedies have always changed the way society perceives romance. From early depictions of romance, such as the works of Shakespeare, love was depicted as something to live, or die for. The dramatic plays included timeless love stories, often with the play's leading man courting and winning a woman's heart. Each heroine is portrayed as the social outcast, out-shined by a more popular female. However, when the hero courts them, the difference is that Katherine is not given a choice. Both Shakespeare’s Taming of the Shrew and the 1999 romantic comedy, She’s All That, show the differences in male and female roles in relationships. Due to the differences in time period and culture, Laney is able to decide her own future where Katherine is not. Though societal change has made women more able to decide their own future, women being molded to shape the desires of men is still an ongoing theme in romantic pop culture.

"I can, Petruchio, help thee to a wife

With wealth enough, and young and beauteous,

Brought up as best becomes a gentlewoman.

Her only fault, and that is faults enough,

Is that she is intolerable curst”

-Hortensio

(Act 1, Scene 2, lines 65-70)

In this quote Hortensio, a suitor to Bianca, is striking a deal with Petruchio. Bianca’s many suitors are anxious to win her, and this can only be achieved after Katherine has been wed. After Petruchio makes it clear that he’ll marry any woman with wealth, regardless of her personality or looks, Hortensio and the other suitors see the perfect opportunity to marry off the cursed Katherine. Despite her reputation as a shrew, Katherine still wants to be married like her sister. Men’s refusal to marry her this late in life is not only embarrassing for her and her family, but also gives her less and less options for the future. At this point, Katherine’s father has no qualms about giving her off to the first man willing to pay a good dowry.

Similarly, in She’s All That, the men of the story decide the terms of the relationship.

In this scene in She’s All That, Zack Siler accepts a bet that he can turn any girl at school into prom queen. Zack accepts this bet after his popular and beautiful girlfriend Taylor dumps him. He becomes eager to prove his reputation to himself, his friends, and his ex. Laney is picked out of the crowd after falling and dropping all of her books and art supplies. It is clear from her presence in this scene that she is a social outcast, and a person who Zack’s friends would never normally associate themselves with. Soon after meeting Laney, Zack sees her fierce intelligence and discovers that she, too, avoids his crowd of friends. The portrayal of both of the central women in the stories show that they are not the type of girl that these men are supposed to go for. Both women do not conform to the expectations of their time and therefore must be changed by the men.

"For I am he born to tame you, Kate,

And bring you from a wild Kate to a Kate

Conformable as other household Kates."

- Petruchio

(Act 2, Scene 1, lines 291-293)

When Petruchio first meets Katherine, he makes his intentions clear. This quote is spoken in his first conversation with her, making it clear that he is attempting to change her. He uses the nickname Kate as a demeaning expression aimed at claiming her as his own. In an earlier line, she had deliberately told told him not to call her Kate, but he persisted, making the name a symbol of his superiority over her. To Petruchio, Katherine is a possession to flaunt, and one that should behave respectably. Regardless of her features before meeting him, Petruchio believes he can change any woman into the quiet, courteous, and obedient wife that was expected of that time (much like Katherine’s sister, Bianca). Katherine is not given a choice in her taming, nor her wedding to Petruchio, because of the same, limiting expectations.

In She’s All That, Zack imposes a similar change on Laney.

On their first date together, Zack had already begun to shape Laney into prom queen. Though doing it discreetly, Zack drops hints of how Laney could improve herself and her appearance. He does this through seemingly complementary means, like commenting on how beautiful her eyes are, or citing her “potential”. These are all steps towards her becoming the prettiest and most popular girl in school, like his ex-girlfriend Taylor. The second screenshot shows Laney post transformation, without her glasses and long hair. In this pivotal scene, Zack looks at her in awe. This is arguably the beginning of his true feelings for her. Unlike Katherine, Laney goes along with her transformation more willingly, and begins to enjoy Zack’s company after his persistent interest.

The end result of each transformation is dramatically different. In Taming of the Shrew, Katherine is successfully “tamed” by Petruchio after chiding her disobedient sister for not coming when her husband calls her. In She’s All That, on the other hand, Taylor is crowned prom queen, despite Laney’s popularity. After saving Laney from the sexual advances of his friend Dean, Zack confesses that his feelings were real, and they kiss. Though the 1999 film ends on a slightly more modern note, the central themes of deception and change are at play in both productions. Because of his reputation as the most popular guy in school, Zack believed he could turn any girl into prom queen, and his vision for Laney was that of his ex-girlfriend, Taylor. Zack successfully changes Laney into the type of girl that suits his needs, and makes her previously abject attitude toward his circle of friends vanish into love for him. The portrayal of both women shows the dominance we perceive men to hold in romantic relationships, and the level of consideration for the woman’s thoughts and desires.

Is Who Someone Marries their Parent’s Choice?

Comparing “Taming the Shrew” to “Monster in Law”

In this scene from “Monster in Law,” Viola complains about Charlie to Viola’s friend Ruby. Viola states, “My son the brilliant surgeon is gonna marry a temp.” Then, after some screaming and going to upstairs to lie down, Viola complains, “She is going to destroy him. It is so clear. She’s got no money, no career goals. She was just waiting for a rich innocent to step right into her path.” Viola does not see Charlie as a good match for Kevin because while he makes a significant amount of money from a successful job, Charlie is at a lower class part time job. Viola even assumes Charlie is partly marrying Kevin because he is wealthier than Charlie.

In order for Kevin to have become a surgeon, Viola must allow Kevin to live independently. Kevin would not have been able to study to be a surgeon and then work at a hospital without being able to make large choices without his mother. This is very different from the lifestyle of Baptista’s daughters, who cannot travel somewhere or meet with people without their father knowing, even though they are adults. By giving adult children the freedom to leave home and have careers, parents have given up the right to control who their children meet like in the times of Shakespeare. This allowed Kevin to meet and date Charlie without his mother knowing or approving. However, parents such as Viola still consider it as a part of parenting to make sure their children make good long term choices in life, such as picking an appropriate person to marry. This belief causes Viola to interfere with the wedding, but not ban the marriage altogether.

“Your father hath consented that you shall be my wife, your dowry ‘greed on, and will you, nill you, I will marry you.” 

(Act 2, Scene 1, lines 284-286)

In this quote, Petruchio is speaking to Baptista’s daughter, Katherine, after making a deal with her father that Petruchio can marry Katherine if he has her love, and negotiating a dowry. Petruchio fakes the love, but honors the rest of the deal with Baptista before marrying Katherine. Petruchio is so confident on the deal he made with Baptista that he tells Katherine he will marry her whether she likes it or not. This eliminates Katherine from making decisions over her own marriage.

Similarly, Charlie makes a deal with Viola before the wedding, but not over a dowry.

Charlie is about to call off the wedding when Viola convinces Charlie to speak to her alone. Viola tells Charlie, “Don’t blow your chance for happiness. You’ve never needed my approval. He’s loved you from the very beginning. And I promise I will get out of the way and let the two of you be happy."

“That’s not what I want. I mean, there just has to be some boundaries, Viola,” Charlie replies.

“I can do boundaries! I don’t love boundaries but I can do them,” Viola says,

“How about the number of times you call Kevin a day? Can we limit that, to, like, one,” Charlie asks.

“Oh, I need at least four minimum,” Viola counters.

“He’s 35 years old.”

“Three.”

“Two.”

“Deal,” Viola settles.

In this deal, the genders are switched. Instead of the father negotiating with the groom, the mother negotiates with the bride. Also, Viola is now persuading Charlie to marry Kevin due to Charlie giving up, instead of being a future spouse persuading a parent. The deal is over how much Viola will influence Charlie and Kevin’s relationship in the future, instead of a dowry. Viola now accepts Charlie because she realizes Charlie makes Kevin happy. Viola even gives up her right to approve the match in order to make her son happy. Now, it is more about what the children want then what the mother wants.

Since Viola is the person who makes sure the marriage happens in the end, it shows parents still feel responsible for ensuring each of their children have a good marriage. However, happiness now is a bigger factor than economic status when parents consider a match. Katherine is married to an abusive, yet rich husband. Meanwhile, Kevin marries Charlie in order to have a joyful love, even if Charlie is not as wealthy as him. While Viola did not control as much of the marriage situation as Baptista, the new couple actually wants Viola to be involved in the process. If Charlie’s parents had not died when she was young, they would likely be just as involved in the wedding.

Joan Catherine Hand was twenty-something when she met Matthew Northrop. I don’t know where they met -- I never asked. All I know is what she has told me -- that they were together, and my mom found out she was pregnant sometime after that. She wanted to keep me, so my grandparents made her get married, because they’re catholic, and they said “you can’t have a kid and not be married.”

So my mom had to get married. And he turned out to be really controlling and abusive. She couldn’t do anything or have any friends. She was stuck in this horrible situation.

She called my grandparents. THey picked her up one day when he wasn’t home, and then she went ahead and got a divorce without him.

It was an awful living situation. “This isn’t how I want my child to grow up.”

I was only eight months old when all this happened.

Part 2: your discovery of the backstory

My mom met my step-dad when I was three. I would always ask questions, because I knew he wasn’t my real father. I probably started asking about the story in earnest when I was ten, around the age when I could comprehend everything. this the

Part 3: sorting out your feelings of the story

I had the hyphenated name, and it really bothered me. “Who is this? Why is this bad person a part of my name?” I really questioned it. When I was younger, I really didn’t want the name Northrop on anything.

Part 4: how you feel now

I feel like my mom did well with raising me without my father. I always knew that he was a part of my life, but he wasn’t a good guy to my mom, and I wouldn’t want a person like that around all the time.

there was this one time when i was maybe 13 when i was spending some time on facebook. i somehow came across the people that were blocked by my account, and one of the names was Matthew Northrop. i sat there pondering whether i should unlock him or not for a while. i clicked it, and freaked. i was scared, what if i did something bad? would my mom get mad at me?

I can’t remember.

It sounds like an excuse, but it’s always been a serious problem for me. What I can’t remember, I can’t write, talk about, or do. The vivid details that many people love to write about are missing from my mind, which makes it difficult to write anything well.

I can’t picture things in my mind. I don’t remember what a face looked like the second I turn away from it, I don’t remember what a voice sounds like the second I stop listening, I don’t remember what a sensation feels like the second I stop feeling.

I can’t remember my sister’s words and actions and feelings when she was accepted into SLA. I can remember that she did. I can remember that she was excited. But that hardly makes for a good story to say: “She got into SLA. She was excited.”

I can’t remember what it felt like to blow past a deadline last year, or the year before, but at least I can imagine the feeling of dread knowing you need to write, you can write, you have to write, you will write, you don’t write. This feeling is constant.

It’s amazing how literal things can be sometimes. Before I came to SLA, I thought being “under pressure” was just a figure of speech. But since then, I’ve come to be familiar with the vise around the temples that is missed expectations. The pain of not knowing is a splitting headache, one that lets up only when I allow myself to not care. This feeling is constant.

I consider myself to be good at making words line up with punctuation so that they sound nice. Sometimes those words even mean something.

I am not a good writer. I can’t conjure descriptions that instantly bring to mind the feelings my readers and I have in common because I don’t remember what those feelings were like. I can’t conjure descriptions of the canyon I hiked down in 9th grade because I don’t remember what the canyon looked like, what it felt like. I can’t conjure descriptions of what it felt like to be in the hospital thinking I might have to give up one of the only things I love because I don’t remember. I can’t conjure descriptions because I can’t remember.

It’s frustrating trying to remember and not being able to, not being able to write. Frustration is a hot feeling, an angry, bitter feeling, a feeling of disappointment, a feeling of entitlement. I need to remember in order to write, I think, and if I don’t I’ll fail. I should be able to remember, I think, so why can I not? I know the answer, of course, is that I don’t know, and that answer is as frustrating as the question.

I can remember frustration vividly because I am describing it to you, my reader, as it happens.

Some of my earliest memories involve the Atlantic Ocean, swimming in it and laying on its beach in the sun. I remember these things happening. I am sure the water was salty and the sun was hot, these are facts. The sand was gritty, and the jellyfish stung, these are facts. But feelings: how the water tasted, how the sun and sand and felt, how the view looked from the crest of a wave, are missing. I can’t write about those memories, despite cherishing them, despite them being part of the core of my identity, because I know nothing about them that isn’t common knowledge.

I’m talking to my parents. It’s 2014, and I have an english benchmark still to start that was due several days ago. We’re angry at each other because we each feel like the others aren’t listening. They ask why I haven’t started my benchmark. I say I don’t know.

I can’t remember.

It hurts, sometimes. I don’t, or maybe can’t, deal with it very well. The pressure builds, and as it does the familiar feeling of pressure on my head builds with it. I want to do anything else but think, even as I know I need to think, even as I know I need to write, even as I know I need to remember. But I can’t, or maybe don’t, remember.

I switch tabs, and find a comfortable spot, and read about how Joel Embiid is going to save the Sixers, how Chip Kelly ruined Christmas, and how LSV thinks Jace is a format staple. Because being elsewhere is safe. Not thinking doesn’t hurt.

But I can’t not think. Not thinking is dangerous. Not thinking gets me weeks behind with no way to catch up, desperately hoping that next time I think and do my work, so I don’t end up in the same situation, feeling lost and alone and desperate and failure.

Bartle is a character in a book called “The Things they Carried,” a book that I wouldn’t read for another 6 years. One event in the story was him having to shoot up a car even though he didn’t want to. Not to compare my actions to shooting up a car, or anything else for that matter, but to me, it conflicted my “morals” in a similar way that the event conflicted his.

It is always nice waking up at ten in the morning. I would have been late for school if it wasn’t for winter vacation. I was in the 4th or 5th grade. We were going to New York for Christmas, I couldn’t wait for it. It was originally meant to be a surprise, but I figured it out a few days before. I had been in New York, but never really as a vacation. Everything was already packed, I already knew what I wanted to do when we got there, I was just happy to get away from normal life for awhile. I could have had a nice vacation, but I hated my teachers and they hated me. For my Christmas and going away gift from them to me, they decided it would be best to give me a pink slip. It didn’t mean that I was fired from school, it was there way of basically saying “You should know better, give this to your parents.” I was always a straight A student. I always did my homework and always did the best on tests. I just didn’t like them and they knew it. I don’t know why they would give me a pink slip, they always did it, but I wasn’t sure why.

We left for New York on a train, it took years to get there, but somehow we made it there just before noon. We got off the train, walked up a lot of steps, and then we were in Grand Central Station in New York. It was annoying, everybody was walking like they were late, the unintentional pushing and shoving that they were probably use to. It would have been fun to start kicking people in the shins, but that wouldn’t have helped anyone. We walked outside of the station, it was supposed to be cold, but somehow I felt the warmth of everyone walking by, it was weird. I didn’t know where we were going, nobody really told me, but it was really nice to look at all the tall buildings. We walked around for awhile, then we got to our hotel that we were staying in. It was in Time Square, from our room, we got to see the giant displays from the windows. We weren’t there for long though, we left out later to get dinner. My sister always made things interesting, because of her allergies, we usually had to do some extra searching to make sure that her need were accommodated. It wasn’t a bad thing though, and the search turned into an I-Spy game through the crowd to find a place she could eat at. After we found food for her, we went to Roxy’s. I had a burger (this was back before my vegetarian days) and then an oreo cheesecake. After that we walked some, we went to the Nintendo Store and the M&M store. We got back to our hotel at around 9, we unpacked and then went to sleep.

I never actually went to sleep though, I just stayed up and watched the repeating commercials flashing on the giant screens outside the window. The fact that I had a pink slip was getting to me for some reason. It wasn’t rare for me, they were always stapled into my journal so I couldn’t forget. It’s just that in this instance, I had hid it under my bed, I didn’t really expect anyone would see it in my room, no one was home. This is an event similar to what Bartle went through. A person might say “You didn’t have to hide it.” But I did, it’s not that I wanted to just ignore it or maybe I did, and I had eventually told her after vacation, I just wanted to to leave that back and home for when we came back. I had brought my Nintendo, but I never played it, knowing that I probably shouldn’t. To me, it was interesting how much I was thinking about it, but I normally think a lot. I think that it was more of the feeling of not telling my mom. If I would have told her before or during our vacation, everything would have been different.

Video: https://www.wevideo.com/hub/#media/ci/561928006