Not Your Average Love Story
What is love? Love is "a profoundly tender, passionate affection for another person" (dictionary). Yet William Shakespeare presents The Taming of the Shrew as a love story, but the two "lovers", Katherina and Petruchio, do not present passionate or affectionate love for one another at all. How could this play ever represent a love story when the couple's marriage was forced, based on money, and is about controlling Kate's independence?
Katherina and Petruchio’s arranged marriage greatly impacts how you see the kind of “love” presented between them. First, Baptista (the father of his two daughters Katherina and Bianca) forces the marriage of Katherina and Petruchio. This is because in the Elizabethan time, people were forced to marry whomever their parents chose, and they were expected to respect their decision. As shown, their marriage
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The time period they were in influences a lot in their marriage. In the Elizabethan time, everyone was required to marry within their class, so an upperclassman could not marry a woman with lower class than himself. This is one of the reasons why Petruchio wanted to marry Kate as his father recently died, with all his money passed on to Petruchio, and so he wanted an equally rich wife (Katherina). This also shows that Petruchio wasn’t marrying for love, he was marrying for money. In his own words “Antonio my father is deceas’d/ and I have thrust myself into this maze/ happily to wive and thrive as best I may” (1.2.51-53). By saying this, Petruchio makes it clear that he’s simply going to get married for money and that he’s going for the “best” (1.2.53). To verify his intentions, Petruchio asks about the money (also known as dowry) involved in his marriage with Katherina before they even meet. This is yet another reason why Kate and Petruchio are not really in