How do Shakespeare and Plath show the strength of feeling of women?
Looking at the two authors work, the taming of the shrew (Shakespeare) and Sylvia Plath’s two poetry’s ‘daddy’ and ‘the arrival of the bee box’ we see to angry and infuriated women who express themselves with emotions. The emotions shown by the two women are very similar but shown in different ways, the taming of the shrew written by ‘William Shakespeare’ expresses the women’s emotion within the script on the other hand Sylvia Plath emotions are not as direct and her work is very hard to link together, she also goes into much detail in her work to make you feel it and understand her life in a way of which no other author does. Sylvia Plath’s does not just give you emotion on the paper she goes in to detail so you look more into her poems and think about what she is telling you. In this essay I will look at how the feelings are shown through the language the authors use and the performance of the play also how the authors express the strength of feeling of women.
In the taming of the shrew Katharina is put across as a unhappy, moody and miserable women, it’s just a cover up for how bad Katharina gets treated. Shakespeare shows Katharina as a strong willed woman who is always sticking up for herself. The women in Padua in the time had no say in anything and that’s why Katharina wanted to speak out and stick up for herself. It was normal in those days for women to be seen as if they were nothing and as if they were useless compare to men on the other hand who were seen as important people and controlling. This is why Katharina would come across as aggressive and as rude because the people watching the play would have the idea in their head that women weren’t allowed to argue with men, and Katharina is doing the complete opposite. This is affective as it confuses the audience and makes them think more about the play and about how women were treated in those days. In the play you see many lines where Katharina is shown as if she is a bad person and as if she is rude , where she is just sticking up for herself. We see this in act 2 scene 1 pages 69 where petruchio says “come, come you wasp! I faith you to angry”, Katharina:” if I be waspish best beware of my sting”. This might seem rude and ignorant but she is just sticking up for herself and not letting Petruchio control her. If you watch the play and read the book now you can see that the play is a comedy and you can see that Katharina is actually sticking up for herself because nowadays everyone is treated with equal respect. So you can see the differences from the time Shakespeare was around to compare to how equal rights are seen now.
Looking at Katharina and Sylvia Plath I think they are not similar and I believe they express their feelings in opposing ways also their personalities seem very different. Katharina is very intelligent and smart. We see this in the play act 2 scene 1 page 69 when she is having an argument with her husband petruchio and he referrers to Katharina as a wasp and she replies with “if I be waspish, best beware my sting” this statement shows the intelligence of Katharina, being a women and outwitting a man was a big deal in those days, as the women of Padua were controlled by men. The two men controlling Katharina’s life was her father baptista and her husband later on in the play petruchio. In the three texts there was a pattern I came across which showed that the two women who were controlled by men, would like to know and feel what it was like to be in power. Between the two women the express of feelings is very different as Sylvia goes deep and explains her feelings compare to Katharina’s smart and cockiness approach.
Sylvia Plath who was an angry, miserable and frustrated woman who expressed her feelings of women in a different approach compare to Shakespeare. Sylvia Plath’s dad died when she was only eight years old which must have changed her whole life. I think this changed her life as she expresses her feelings in a way of letting her emotions out about her father’s death and how it’s been for her over the years without him. She expressed the feelings of women through poetry. Sylvia wrote two poems which were called ‘daddy’ and ‘the arrival of the bee box’. The poem ‘daddy’ was about her father’s death and how she feels about the tragedy. Sylvia goes into much detail and lets out all her emotions in the poem ‘daddy’. She uses similes and metaphors to give the reader an understanding of the anger she felt towards her dads death. Sylvia describes her dad as big person in her life, we get this understanding of the feeling when she talks about her dad being a statue and she could be referring him to a well-known landmark for example the statue of liberty which is a famous land mark and stands out all around the world. She also could also be referring him to a statue because she got no feelings or response from him and a statue gives out nothing but silence. She also compares her dad to an evil Nazi and herself to a Jew. This gives us the impression that her dad was very controlling of her and also told her what to do, just like Jews were controlled by Nazis. Sylvia Plath also talks about creating a model of her father and marrying him the impression she cannot live without him and he is very vital in her life. On the other hand ‘the arrival of the bee box’ is about Sylvia being in control and knowing what it feels like. We see this when she says “ they can die, I need feed them nothing, I am the owner” this shows us her feeling like she controls others and how she is in control for once.
After focusing on the two women, Katharina from ‘the taming of the shrew’ and Sylvia Plath you can now see they express their feelings of women in different ways.
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