Image credit: 东南西北, by Le Yin
QINCI LI
Read the Faculty Introduction.
In his comedy The Taming of the Shrew, William Shakespeare portrays how Katherine, under the taming of her husband Petruchio, transforms from a shrewish contrarian to a deferential wife like her sister Bianca. However, Katherine’s dramatic reformation, accompanied by the comedy’s ridiculous and playful tone, undermines the credibility of her submission; Taming thus becomes more like a satire, poking fun at men’s wishful celebration of women’s ostensible subjugation. Similar dubiousness towards women’s submission also exists in Lessons for Women, a survival guide for newlywed wives composed by Ban Zhao, the first female historian in the Han Dynasty. When we reexamine Taming through the window of Ban Zhao’s work, specifically, where she persuades women to defer to men in language, we discover that, together with Bianca who has already tamed her language upon appearing on stage, Katherine exemplifies “linguistic taming”— a series of strategies available for women in response to overwhelming patriarchal pressure — through linguistic disguise, avoiding verbal confrontations, and strategically adopting silence. More importantly, as Katherine gradually transforms her language from bellicose to forbearing, she also undergoes an inner voyage from aggressive self-isolation from the patriarchy, to liberated self-acceptance. Thus, linguistic taming, especially for headstrong women like Katherine, not only empowers them to manipulate their male partners for power alliances within the patriarchy, but also alleviates the tension between their strong personalities and external societal pressure.
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