Petruchio’s cruel actions aren’t justifiable at all. From the very beginning it’s clear that his intention is not for winning Kate’s affection but rather winning the dowry that she comes with. He sees marrying Kate and taming her as a game and he’s willing do whatever it takes to succeed at this game. He treats the wedding as a joke by showing up late and wearing his questionable clothing. It’s so bad that Kate’s father said he wouldn’t allow Kate to be married unless Petruchio changed is clothing. He answers back by saying that Kate his marrying him as a person and not his clothing so therefore it shouldn’t be that big of a problem. In addition, Petruchio is constantly acting like a tyrant and is abusive to all surrounding him. He demonstrates his blatant disregard for other’s emotions and wellbeing time after time. Petruchio shows no respect for his servants or his newlywed wife. He is constantly yelling at his wife and his servants and he even goes as far as to striking his servants for doing nothing wrong at all. Kate tries to pull him back during the scene where he’s angry at all his servants but he just ignores her altogether. By the end of Act IV scene I, he tries to justify his actions by saying that all his actions aren’t done in vain and they’re all for the goal of taming his shrew of a wife. He claims that treating her like dirt will eventually turn her into a lady as well as a good wife. Petruchio is determined to treat her inexplicably in order to change his wife from her current state into an obedient wife. It appears as though he tends to take things further than they should be taken. We do see in the end though that his methods did indeed work and the Kate who was once a shrew is no more. She did in fact change into a better wife then all the others. She is the only woman that comes to her husband’s side at the end of play. Even though Petruchio’s methods did end up working, his actions were fairly questionable. He practically tortured her until she changed in the woman he wanted her to change into. It was cruel and selfish for him to do that. The ends did not justify the means in this case.
3 comments:
The question that you raise at the end of your entry is: who determines how far things should be taken? How are we to know if if Petruchio has taken his "taming" further than he should have by the standards of Shakespeare's time? Considering the awful treatment many men received at the hands of their husbands during this time period, Shakespeare may have actually been advocating for restraint through Petruchio. The centuries of changing values make it very difficult to evaluate the societal norms of a time period long past.
You should also consider the fact that his treatment comes to a success. At the end Kate has become one of the most obedient wife.
You say that, "He claims that treating her like dirt will eventually turn her into a lady as well as a good wife." Although I would never consider what he did as excusable and I hardly find what Kate becomes as an ideal wife I think in Shakespeare's time it would be thought that he had succeeded. His claim that his awful treatment of her transformed her into an obedient housewife seems as though it is entirely correct. The way he treated her was terrible but the result was the wife he was looking for. I feel that his treatment of her was an entire success. He got exactly what he wanted in a wife.
Post a Comment