News That Stays News

In Taming of the Shrew we see that the issue of getting married is the main idea of the happy life for the woman. And as every father Baptista wants his daughters to get married, as it is a idea of happiness, so he hires the  tutors for his daughters to teach them music and Latin. The girls will be more educated therefore will be more attractive to the future husbands. However we also see that the girls didn’t take such classes as philosophy or Law since those subjects were not considered as” woman” subjects at that time. The subjects which could make the woman more educated and developed her independent opinion on the world around her where not needed at that time. Since no man wanted his future wife to be very smart, wise and to show her intelligence, since with the intelligence and critical thinking the wife also become less dependent and more confident personality.  At those times the personality of the woman was not a desirable quality. We see this difference between two sisters – Kate who is a personality is less desirable and even not desirable at all, as oppose to her sister Bianca –who is blank, “Tabula Rasa” but she is beautiful, can play musical instruments and is calm and therefore is very desirable among her admirers.
We can see that the idea of educated woman is not desirable for marriage is not only a story for the play it is a reality acording to “The M.R.S. and the Ph.D.” by Stephanie Coontz. “An educated woman developed a “self-assertive, independent character” that made it “impossible to love, honor and obey” as real wife should.” We can see that even now, in 21 century the educated woman is more likely to face the issue that man could be afraid of her because of her knowledge and education. The idea that less educated woman could be a better wife, mother is not so common today, but still present. I think it still present because of the man tendency to be the leader in the family, to finance and support the family. For the last 100 years woman began slowly but constantly moving in the direction of playing almost the same role in family and society as man did. It probably scared man and even affected their self-esteem. But every new tendency which happens in our world is a little bit weird at the beginning and become as a norm after the period of time. I think that our generation is far more different that generation of our grandmothers and who knows what would happened with the generation of our grand-kids.

What is holding men from Katharina in the play is Katharina’s personality. She is “curst and shrewd.” The article “The M.R.S. and the Ph. D.” by Stephanie Coontz published by New York Times states that women’s chance of marriage can be affected by their education. In the past, women had to choose between education and marriage.  In the 1990s less-educated women were more likely to get married than educated women, but this is not the case today.

“An educated woman develops a “self-assertive, independent character” that made it “impossible to love, honor and obey” as a real wife should” said a physician in 1905. He stated that the more educated a woman is, the harder she find it to marry because of her confidence and independence.  He also warned that middle-class men look for women who are less educated than themselves.

The play Taming of the Shrew both daughter of Baptisa were being educated but this didn’t help them to get marry. Bianca had suitors to educate her, but she doesn’t need to be educated in order to get married since she has several men trying to woo her. I don’t think education plays an important role in marriage. Today Society is different; couples marry each because they believe they should be together for their life and not because  they want to find someone who has a matching or similar education.