Taming of the Shrew - Essential #8

1. Are Katherine and Petruchio in love?

• Love is an invisible string that ties a man and a woman together spiritually for eternity. This bond would stay strong and not break only if the man and the woman are on the same level [equality] pulling the string toward the same direction [common interests] as they journey through their lives together. Therefore, according to this definition of love, Katherine and Petruchio are not in the mist of love whatsoever.
  
• Petruchio, with the belief of totalitarian husbandhood, thinks that he has the right and duty to tame the shrew with "an awful rule, and right supremacy" (V. ii. 122). In order to make Katherine his ideal wife, Petruchio, ignoring his wife's dignity as a person, tormented her physically and emotionally "under name of perfect love" (IV. iii. 12).
  
• Katherine, after going through all those torments, finally surrendered herself to male chauvinism:"thy husband is thy lord, thy life, thy keeper, they head, thy sovereign" (V. ii. 163-164). When a person gave up his/her dignity to the other half in a marriage, there would be no dignity left in this relationship at all. Katherine was thrown into passivity when she entered the marriage. At first, she was forced to agree on "what you [Protruchio] will have it named, even that it is, and so it shall be still for Katherine" (IV. v. 24–25); however, by the end of the play, she obeys to her husband in a mindless and robotic manner. Therefore, behind the hypocritical facade of marriage, a master-servant relationship is what holding the couple together, not love.