Katherine In Korda's Domestic Economies

Katherine is viewed as an outlier when compared to other woman characters in Shakespeare hence why the play centers around her shrewish nature. However Shakespeare wrote the play to prove a point that any girl that acts like this is a detriment to her family or any man in her life. In Natasha Korda’s, Shakespeare’s Domestic Economies, she describes Kate behavior before she was “domesticated” as “untamed, animal-like consumption, Tranio’s remark….. wears away at both her father’s resources and at her own value as well”(Korda 2002). Korda’s book revolves around the term “domestic economy”, which she believes describes a woman’s value in Shakespeare. A woman is measured by her output of tasks in her household as well how many resources she drains from her family. For instance Kate before she was married was draining her families resources and because of her unwillingness to get married the family wasn’t receiving much in return. This is why I believe Kate, despite her hate for marriage and Petruchio, let herself be tamed. She knew the drain she was on her family and she wanted to prove her loyalty by biting the bullet and saying I do. If a woman has no value to her family, she is ultimately a failure according to Korda.
To start, in The Taming of The Shrew, Kate was a shrew in the first place because she felt her family didn’t appreciate her. She is always being compared to her more attractive …show more content…
If she only picked a side, either he family or her lover, none of these problems would have existed. Even her death, at the end could be blamed on her divided loyalty. She killed herself because of everything that had happened including the death of four people. Who could face their family after that debacle? Juliet at the end of the day was a Capulet and that was what defined her. Their families fought for centuries and the bloodshed spread to Juliet