Puchalski 1
Kimberly Puchalski
English 428
Dr. Royster
February 2, 2005
Marital Violence in Shakespeare’s The Taming of the Shrew
Through looking at Shakespeare’s The Taming of the Shrew 1590-4(?) in the context of
“A Merry Jest of a Shrewd and Curst Wife Lapped in Morel’s Skin, for Her Good Behavior”
(1550), readers may see in Shakespeare a writer who has come up with a smart way to tame
wives without violence. However, as Emily Detmer shows in “Civilizing Subordination:
Domestic Violence and The Taming of the Shrew” (1997), the violence in Taming is just as
bad—if not worse—than the violence in “Merry Jest.” This ultimately portrays the complete
hopelessness for the equality of women to men in 16th century marriages.
“A Merry Jest” tells the tale of a shrewish, 16th century wife and the physical abuse her
“charming” husband uses to tame her. Like her mother, Joan resists the control men try to hold
over her, wanting rather to “make her husband bow” (258). Though Joan’s father warns the
husband-to-be of her shrewish-ness, the “goodman” decides to marry Joan for the money he is
promised: “[g]old and silver I would thee give / If thou her marry, by sweet Saint John, / But
thou shouldst repent it all thy life” (259). Though Joan tells him “[s]ometime among I will be the
bell” (264) while he is courting her, the “goodman” tells Joan, “I desire to be your peer,” (263)
letting her feel unthreatened. However, his manly “superiority” comes out as soon as they are in
bed on their wedding night and he forces her to have violent sex. In the morning, Joan feels
embarrassed and used and tells her mother, “I could not lie still, nor no rest to take, / Of all this
night, believe you me” (272).
Puchalski 2
A few weeks later, after Joan is cruel to her servants—“she gave them the meat, and bade
them brast” (274)— while her husband is out plowing, the husband, upset, confronts Joan and
receives a conflicting opinion on the treatment of slaves and a staff thrown at his head. Since
Joan attempts to take the upper hand and calls her husband a “simple swain” (277), her husband
vows: “I shall her coil both back and bone / And make her blue and also black, / That she shall
groan again for woe” (278). He teaches her a “lesson” by laying her in the salted hide of his
slain ox Morel (279) and using “sharp rods” to “beat her [his] fill” (282). The husband wants to
publicize his dominance and taming ability, asserting, “[n]ow I will begin my wife to tame. /
That all the world shall it know” (281). He tears her clothes and knocks her out, then places her
in the hide until she gives in: “I will never to you offend, / In no manner of wise, of all my life”
(285). Through this violence, Joan becomes the suppressed wife—not the “peer”—who he
desires.
Although the husband succeeds in the end, many readers of this tale would undoubtedly
express some distaste for the necessity of physical violence in his scheme. At the end of the tale,
the narrator addresses these readers, saying to “[f]orgive the young man, if he did sin, / But I
think he did nothing amiss” (288). As William Gouge asserts in treatise four of Of Domestical
Duties: Eight Treatises (1634), beating will not prove effective because wives “will not be
brought patiently to take it, but will resist” (227). Therefore, “[o]ther forcible means may be
used besides beating by her husband’s hands: she may be restrained of liberty, denied such things
as she most affecteth, be kept up, as it were, in hold” (228). As Domestical Duties—as well as
other documents from this time—show, he that beats his wife is no “gentleman,” and is using the
least effective method for true supremacy. Frances Dolan explains in her introduction to the tale:
Puchalski 3
“‘A Merry Jest’ opens up some doubt about the ideal of marital hierarchy and the means by
which it is achieved” (257).
Shakespeare’s Taming relieves this “doubt” which “A Merry Jest” affords, because the
“gentlemanly” Petruchio uses no physical violence on Katharina, yet still successfully tames her.
Though the shrewish mother figure and physical violence towards a wife are absent,
Shakespeare’s Taming follows quite a similar plot as “A Merry Jest.” While he is forewarned of
her shrewish-ness, Petruchio marries Kate to gain the fortune that comes with her: “. . . your
dowry ‘greed on; / And will you, nill you, I will marry you” (2.1.263-4). Taming starts to
swerve away from “A Merry Jest” when Kate strikes Petruchio and he does not strike her back.
Kate tells him: “If you strike me, you are no gentleman / and if no gentleman, why then no arms”
(2.1.218-9). Petruchio will tame Kate, but since he is a gentleman, physical violence is not
allowed.
Instead of the physical violence of wrapping Kate in the salted hide of an ox, Petruchio
follows a course similar to that suggested by Gouge in Domestical Duties: he mentally abuses
her into submission. Petruchio embarrasses her with his ill-fitted clothing at their wedding
ceremony and forces her to leave the ceremony early to go to “taming-school” (4.2.55), where he
physically abuses his servants in front of her, deprives her of food and sleep, gives her a bedtime
sermon, and tells her she must agree with him on everything, even if she knows he is wrong.
What is worse, he does it all “under the name of perfect love” (4.3.12). Through this mental
violence, Petruchio tames Kate into a woman who can no longer think for herself, who agrees
that it is nighttime when it is day (4.5.16), and who apologizes for her “mad mistaking” (4.5.47)
when she is correct. Her spirit is broken.
Puchalski 4
This argument, though, is not as easy to pinpoint unless readers take Emily Detmer’s
“Civilizing Subordination: Domestic Violence and The Taming of the Shrew” (1997) into
account. In this essay, Detmer argues that “the play signals a shift toward a ‘modern’ way of
managing the subordination of wives by legitimizing domination as long as it is not physical”
(274), a claim reiterated by the many sermons and works like Gouge’s Domestical Duties.
Detmer sees significance in readings of Petruchio’s taming as non-violent “because of the way
its representation coincides with the beginning of a modern reform model, a model that, by
locating violence only in physical injury, denies the inherent violence of domination itself”
(274).
Unlike this 16th century model, many contemporary readers like Detmer see a parallel
between Petruchio’s taming techniques and the violence of domination. To validate her
argument, Detmer considers the existence of the Stockholm syndrome, or the emotional bonding
which often occurs between hostages and kidnappers. According to Detmer, “[b]oth the abuser
and the hostage-taker assert complete control over the victim’s thoughts and actions through fear
and intimidation” (284). This syndrome’s effects, Detmer affirms, parallel the effect Petruchio’s
taming has on Kate. Petruchio’s mental abuse “wears [Kate] down until she submits” (279), and,
in terms of the contemporary Stockholm-syndrome categories of mental abuse, “Shakespeare’s
Petruchio is . . . the quintessential abuser: he isolates Kate from those who could intervene on her
behalf, and he threatens her survival ‘in the name of perfect love’” (284). By the end of the play,
Detmer claims, Kate’s “proud mind, that is, her will or her sense of self” (281), is squashed, or
“killed”, by “kindness” (4.2.179).
The perceptions of violence in “A Merry Jest” and Detmer’s “Civilizing Subordination”
seem to place the violence in Shakespeare’s Taming at opposite ends: while the author of “A
Puchalski 5
Merry Jest” may believe that Petruchio found a way to tame wives without violence, Detmer
believes that Petruchio’s mental abuse is even worse than physical violence because it kills
Kate’s spirit. Reading Taming without the context of “A Merry Jest” leave contemporary
readers in the dark about the long, arduous debate on how best to tame the shrews. Before
reading it, I did not realize that there even was a debate, let alone that Shakespeare’s depiction of
taming could be read as “civil” in comparison to other methods used. Likewise, reading Taming
without Detmer’s article would have left me feeling that Petruchio’s “taming” is more humane
than most methods because at least there was no blood shed. Once I started thinking about his
actions as emotional abuse, though, I felt even worse for Kate than I did for Joan in “A Merry
Jest.”
Whether repression by physical violence as in “A Merry Jest,” or by mental abuse in
Taming, it seems as if it was hopeless for women to truly be treated as equals by their husbands
in England during the 16th century. There was no such thing as the “Stockholm syndrome”
Detmer uses to confirm the presence of mental violence in Taming, and even if pamphlets and
books like Gouge’s Of Domestical Duties advised against physical abuse like that portrayed in
“A Merry Jest,” no one, until Detmer centuries later, feels a need to denounce the psychological
subjection of women to the needs of their husbands.
Puchalski 6
Works Cited
Detmer, Emily. “Civilizing Subordination: Domestic Violence and The Taming of the Shrew.”
Shakespeare Quarterly 48.3 (1997): 273-94.
Dolan, Frances E. Introduction. “Treatise 4 from Of Domestical Duties: Eight Treatises.” The
Taming of the Shrew: Texts and Contexts. 224-25.
Gouge, William. “Treatise 4 from Of Domestical Duties: Eight Treatises.” The Taming of the
Shrew: Texts and Contexts. 225-28.
Shakespeare, William. The Taming of the Shrew: Text and Contexts. Ed. Frances E. Dolan.
New York/Boston: Bedford/St. Martin’s, 1996. 41-139.