A comparison and contrast of Shakespeares Kate and Portia - Essay Example

?Compare and Contrast: Shakespeare’s Kate and Portia Two of William Shakespeare’s plays where women play pivotal roles are The Taming of the Shrew and The Merchant of Venice. Written sometime between 1593 and 1594, The Taming of the Shrew has also distinguished itself as the only Shakespearean play with an induction or a prologue that introduces the main play (Bloom 16). This farcical play revolves primarily around how a chauvinistic and materialistic, but crafty man, sets out to subjugate a woman notorious for her foul-temper and sharp tongue and turn her into a dutiful, subservient wife. On the other hand, The Merchant of Venice, written sometime between 1596 and 1598 (Janik 1), is a comedy that is built mainly around three plots: a covenant of a “pound of flesh” as a guarantee for a debt, or the bond plot; the casket plot, where a woman’s fate in marriage is anchored on three caskets, one of which contains the right material and must be chosen by a suitor to qualify him as a husband, and; a promise never to part with a ring given by the beloved, or the ring plot. In both of these plays, women play pivotal roles: in the first, Katharina or ‘Kate’ is the monkey wrench thrown into the path of the suitors of her beautiful sister Bianca and in the second, the love of the male protagonist for Portia sets in motion a sequence of events that culminate into the dilemma of resolving the issue of how a debtor carries out his promise of giving a ‘pound of [his] flesh’ to a creditor in case of default after he fails to pay his debt on time, a dilemma of which is resolved in the end by Portia herself. Shakespeare seems to be presenting in these two plays contradictory pictures of two women, one initially manifesting unfettered brazenness and license in expressing herself, but eventually prevailed upon and the other displaying stereotypical submissiveness at the outset but eventually surfacing as a crafty, intelligent and resourceful woman. Kate is introduced at the outset in The Merchant of Venice as a woman who does not typically reflect the women of her era who are submissive, feminine, quiet and gentle, accommodating and complacent. Kate is a she-devil ready to launch an attack, verbal and otherwise, on anyone who displeases her. Her roughness has not only discouraged men from wooing her, but has prompted them to verbally reject and disparage her and her lack of the ‘right’ qualities for marriage. Kate’s character is made glaringly ‘unacceptable’ in the presence of her sister, Bianca, who seems to embody the gentle, submissive qualities that men in that era ascribe as the perfect womanly qualities. Thus, Kate is perceived as ugly and Bianca is beautiful, whether these descriptions actually correspond to their physical qualities. It is this total lack of sex appeal to men that actually made her father, Baptista, foist the condition on Bianca’s suitors that the latter cannot marry until Kate herself is married. This condition must have been motivated by his protective feelings for his younger daughter knowing that it is unlikely that Kate is getting married soon or the fear that he will be stuck forever with the dominating, sharp-tongued Kate all his life that he is deviously using his youngest daughter who is attracting a lot of suitors, to ensure that Kate gets himself a husband. Either way, this condition is really clever because it transfers his responsibility of finding a husband for his daughter to others. This initial introduction of Kate’s character, however, undergoes a radical change after she meets Petruchio. Kate behaves in a fashion so unlike women of her era that she has acquired quite a reputation and has become an object of challenge to be subdued to prove one’s superior manliness rather than a woman to be wooed for her love. This is exactly what motivates Petruchio in taking her as his wife, aside from the dowry he is getting for it. Adopting a clever reverse psychology in dealing with her and easily matching wits with her, Petruchio assumes a dominating and unbending will in subjugating Kate. His taming process basically consists of twisting Kate’s words as if she were speaking gently and modestly and behaving in a socially acceptable fashion so persistently until he wears her out. In the end, Kate made a complete turnaround behaving like a docile, subservient and obedient wife to Petruchio. This complete change of character is highlighted in her speech towards the end of the play where she admonished the wives to heed their husbands’ command and lectures them of their wifely obligation to serve them in the same manner a “subject owes the prince.” Contrary to Kate’s initial introduction in the foregoing play, Portia is first established in The Merchant of Venice as a dutiful daughter, who is ready to jeopardize her own happiness by giving in to a silly request of her late father. This silly request consists of letting her suitors choose one of three caskets made of gold, silver and lead respectively. The gold casket contains a skull, the silver casket a “blinking idiot” and the lead casket has a “fair Portia counterfeit” on it and only the man who picks the last casket is qualified to marry Portia. Despite the capricious nature of this exercise, Portia dutifully imposes it on all her suitors placing her happiness on the line. This unwavering obedience to her father is put to a test when the man she truly loves, viz. Bassanio, has to take the same test. Luckily, he chooses the right casket. Unlike Kate’s seeming downhill development of character as the play progresses, Portia’s character strengthens and deepens as the next scenes are revealed. Displaying deep wisdom and craftiness, Portia resolves the dilemma posed by the agreement between two of the characters in the play involving a process to extract a “pound of flesh” from a party who defaults on his promise to pay his debts on time, while she is disguised as a lawyer. This is quite a dilemma indeed considering that extracting a “pound of flesh” necessarily entails cutting off a body part from the debtor and exposing him to physical danger and worse, death. Far from the subdued and subservient character that she was in the beginning of the play, Portia shows at this point that she is cunningly intelligent and capable of independent thinking, is quick-witted and is competent to deliver wise and just decisions as any wise man. Moreover, she has outwitted her own man and subjected him to a test of her own, in which he failed. Unlike most men, however, Portia shows her womanly side and forgives him. Kate and Portia are two characters fashioned out of women in Shakespeare’s era, which is the 16th century. Despite the backwardness of the civilization then, when women were deemed inferior to men and were expected to behave in stereotypical fashion, Shakespeare has managed to present women characters that seemed to be radically out of their time. Kate and Portia are not the typical women of that era considering that at one time, they display behavior that seemed to be out of the box. Portia is not the typical 16th century woman who is expected to be less assertive and lets men take on the difficult questions and decisions. Portia seems to be ahead of time disguised as lawyer and dispensing justice with crafty wisdom and keen sense of fairness Even today, women judges and women heads of state are not as many as their counterparts. Kate, too, is so unlike other women because at the beginning, she does not act modestly and submissively, but is quick to launch a counterattack, whether verbally or physically. It is just a little tragic that Kate made a complete turnaround in the end acting docile and absolutely yielding to her husband’s every command and wishes - or maybe not. Perhaps, Kate made a conscious decision to play the game and behave as her husband and the rest of the society expects her to be ahead of everybody. After all, in those days a woman needed a husband to survive financially as women were not on equal footing with men in so many aspects of society. Moreover, it must be tiring to be around a husband who keeps on twisting everything one says and one does. Maybe, with Kate’s turnaround, she will have the last laugh after all. Works Cited Bloom, Harold. Shakespeare's Comedies. Infobase Publishing, 1999. Print. Janik, Vicki. The Merchant of Venice: A Guide to the Play. Greenwood Publishing Group, 2003. Print. Shakespeare, William. The Taming of the Shrew, 1593-1594. Print. Shakespeare, William. The Merchant of Venice, 1596-1598. Print. Read More