How might a play challenge or reinforce a viewer’s

expectations?
Challenge: Focus on Baptista, Katherine and Bianca
Expectations/Attitudes (Elizabethan):
Women were not equal to men.
(No) Equality
Antifeminism (there was no feminism)
Expectations/Attitudes (Modern):
Individuality
Feminism
Equality
Parental Relationships
Readings:
Feminist:
The oppression of Katherine through inhumane ways (torture,
deprivation, deceit, and starvation)
The thought that women are lesser than men (no rights, couldn’t
inherit etc.)
Objectification of women (fathers paying men for marrying their
daughters)
Double standards of women (had to be pretty and submissive etc.)
Pschy
Ideas:
- Start of play: Katherine challenged Elizabethan expectations of
women – should be submissive, unopinionated and obedient.
- End of play: Challenged Modern expectations of humans
(generalised) – should not force others into a mould
(individuality), women are not lesser than men (feminist),
women are not objects to be sold off (feminist and possibly
humanist)
- Humanist – Katherine’s monologue
- Slightly challenges Modern expectations of equality – Katherine
being looked down on for having opinions, while male
counterparts have bountiful opinions.
 - On the flip side of ^ challenges modern expectations of
(opinions/ equality/individuality) again – Katherine attempting
to force her ideology onto Bianca.
- Baptista – Challenges modern expectations on parenting –
parents should not have favourites (he blatantly displays his
favourite (Bianca)) only favours Bianca as she is the ‘ideal’
woman.
- Petruchio – challenges Modern expectations of equality:
Tortures Katherine into submission
Gender roles:
Elizabethan:
- Women generally stayed home – did chores and cared for kids.
- Men were granted power over women – demanded obedience.
- Bravery and intellect were expected of all men.
- Women could not claim independence.
Gender roles:
Modern:
- Equal: Men can also stay home/women can be breadwinners
Examples:
Katherine’s torn/ruined dress (costume) Ideas to unpack about the dress:
This shows Katherine’s old ways (stubborn,
opinionated, unladylike) wearing down. The
dress clearly displays this idea which
challenges both Elizabethan and Modern
expectations, as she is still stubborn and
‘unsuitable’ in the eyes of people from the
Elizabethan times. On the contrary, this also
challenges Modern expectations, however not the expectations of her, more so
of Petruchio. As a man, in modern times, he should not attempt to conform his
wife to his ways. Especially not in the way he does, he uses inhuman torture to
submit her to his ideals. The dress helps show how much Petruchio is wearing
her down and trying to mold her into the perfect woman.
Baptista turning away from Katherine.(proxemics, facial expressions)

Turning his back on her as she does not

fit into the ideal woman mold.
Katherine putting Hortensio in his place. (Blocking choices, dialogue, facial
expression, proxemics): “No mates for you, unless you were of gentler, milder
mold.” Relate to Judith Butler

Was ever gentlemen thus grieved as I? (Gait, dialogue)

“Sir, to your pleasure humbly I subscribe”

“The more fool you for laying on my duty” (Simone De Beauvoir

Don’t depend on me to wait on your call

Theorists:
Feminist:
Judith Butler
- Gender, according to Butler, is by no means tied to material bodily facts
but is solely and completely a social construction.
- “Gender is not something one is, but rather something one does or
performs”.
Simone De Beauvoir
- “women only become women because of the circumstances of their
society”
Virginia Woolf

Psychoanalytical:
Sigmund Freud
- Freedom of speech (free association)
- Oedipus Complex

Lends itself to