On Unsinkable Absolutely Unsinkable

The following sample essay On Unsinkable Absolutely Unsinkable. It is somewhat ironic that the last speech of the play, and Katherina’s longest speech is about how women should appreciate men and she is lecturing the other women about men working hard so they can give their wives what they want, when throughout the play she had had the complete opposite opinion. She says that a husband should be ‘thy lord, thy king, thy governor’, all of these things being important people in the social hierarchy, and so making her point of the importance of a husband.

Katherina even offers to place her hands beneath Petruchio’s feet in token of his duty; something that it is doubtful she would have done at the beginning of the play. Throughout the play there is also a use of imagery of hunting and animals and in Shakespearian times hunting was thought of as being aristocratic, particularly hawking (hunting using birds of prey). In the play Petruchio symbolises the hunter, and Katherina symbolises the hawk, so through this Katherina is seen as being inferior to Petruchio, as the hawk would be inferior to the hunter.

Hunters would have to tame their hawk in similar ways which Petruchio tamed Katherina. We can see this imagery in many parts of the play where particularly Petruchio makes references to hunting, for example V ii Petruchio says, ‘I’ll venture so much of my hawk or hound, but twenty times so much upon my wife’. This shows Petruchio’s confidence in the fact that he has managed to tame Katherina, as he is willing to twenty times more on her than he would on a hawk or hound, and in the end his trust in Katherina does of course pay off.

Get quality help now

KarrieWrites

Verified

Proficient in: Other

5 (339)

“ KarrieWrites did such a phenomenal job on this assignment! He completed it prior to its deadline and was thorough and informative. ”

+84 relevant experts are online

Hire writer

The relationship between Katherina and Petruchio completely changes by the end of the play. It is subtly developed over time, through which we can see Katherina ever so slowly warms to Petruchio, until in Act V Scene ii Katherina shows her gratitude to Petruchio, and finally is ‘tamed’. Petruchio tried taming Katherina since the very beginning, doing many things such as starving her, depriving her of sleep, and making her go against her own judgment, in order to turn the feisty and aggressive ‘shrew’ into a good, respectful wife.

Petruchio’s quick wit and sometimes aggressive behaviour is kept throughout the play, which allows Petruchio to control Katherina and declare a form of authority over her. In Act 5 Scene 2, the last scene, it seems as though he may by less overpowering by saying, ‘Come on and kiss me, Kate’, which suggests perhaps love for her, or at least more respect now that she has changed from being a shrew, to a more agreeable woman.