The Taming of the Shrew, examines the social formations of newly emerging bourgeoesie marriage particularly in the Kate and Petruchio scenes, which offers the fullest representation in the play of gender relations and marrige roles that circulated thr...
The Taming of the Shrew, examines the social formations of newly emerging bourgeoesie marriage particularly in the Kate and Petruchio scenes, which offers the fullest representation in the play of gender relations and marrige roles that circulated throughout the age. The economic reality of marital arrangements is voiced by both Baptista and Petruchio early on in the play. They both describe marriage as a business arrangement among men and view Kate as a product to be bargained for. Kate is forced by such circumstances to the self-defensive stand of shrewishness to discourage such bourgeosie suitors. But Kate, the insubordinate woman, is wooed mainly after her marriage by Petruchio, who, with his political and economic power, is able to overmaster her. Petruchio also reacts against the abuses of the class to which Baptista and Kate belong in the particular instance of the church wedding, but he remains essentially a man of his class. After forceful marriage Kate comes to remaine that to survive she must redirect and dispell this male's absurd aggression and she does so in behavior that he understands. She subverts her husband's power without attempting to challenge it, and she does so in a gamesome spirit. Finally the dominance/submission relationship of husband and wife seems to change into the mutuality of the husband and wife, but this mutuality is based on affections and respect and not power, which only the husband enjoyed.
By having the other new wives refuses their husbands in the wager, Shakespeare not only returns to the opening tensions of the play, creating a new shrews, but conveys the point that Kate's dilemma was not an anomaly. This open endedness suggests that the illusion of dominance and independence is interwoven with the necessity of mutual understanding and the limitation of it.