Tamed or Pretending?
I took a Shakespeare class last semester and the first play that we read and discussed was The Taming of the Shrew. Many people in our class argued for and seemed thoroughly convinced that Kate wasn't really destroyed and that Petruchio and her had come to some kind of understanding and that they were really in love. They used the evidence that at the end Kate and a very long soliloquy at the end and that in itself screams that she was never really dominated. I can't help but thinking that people are just trying to cope with such an uncomfortable situation and perhaps they are dealing with the play by telling themselves that everything is puppies and candy at the end. From what I've read in the story there is nothing to suggest that Kate isn't anything at the end but the victim of some serious mental trauma and is merely coping to survive. If we use logic like this then surely we can turn anything that we read and see into what we want irregardless of what the writer intended by it.