English assessment
How do Shakespeare and Plath show the strength of feeling for women?
Katharina is a fiery spirited woman and with the male dominated world around her. Men don’t quite know what to do with her.
A lot of what we know about Kate generally comes from what they say about her (like when they called her a devil like in act one). We hardly see her and hear her and yet her character is well established.
In the taming of the shrew many people want to marry a very beautiful laddie called Bianca but her dad won’t let anyone marry her unless her older sister Katherine gets married, it is not like Katherina is a man’s dream as she is so dominative and offensive with words. I have proof that Katherine is known evil (taming the shrew, act 1, scene 1)
“Gremio: what’s that I pray
Hortensio: marry,sir,to get a husband for her sister
Gremio: a husband? A devil!”.
This also shows that people in the play are rather fearful of her and that only a devil (evil angle) could marry her.
Katherina is also very offensive and smart with her words and can twist words that are aimed at her and aim it back at the person trying to offend her for example
“Petruchio: come, come, you wasp! I ‘faith you are too angry.
Katherina: if I be waspish best be aware of my sting.
Petruchio: my remedy is then to pluck it out.
Katherina: aye, if the fool could find were it lies.
Petruchio: who knows not where a wasp does wear he’s sting? In he’s tail.
Katherina: in he’s tongue.
Petruchio: whose tongue?
Katherina: yours if you talk of tales, and so farewell.
Petruchio: what, with my tongue in your tail? Nay, come again good Kate, I am a gentlemen.”
This example shows how she goes Petruchio lost in he is own words and within this quote there is a sign of male dominance, ill quote “Petruchio: who knows not where a wasp does wear he’s sting? In his tongue?
Petruchio does not need to go into detail about a “bee” but why automatically say the “bee” is a he? they simply could’ve said a word like ‘it’, for example “in its tongue?”
Plath uses very powerful sentences and emotional sentences to show how she feels and express her feelings for example “I would have killed myself gladly that time any possible way there are these veils, shimmering like curtains”.
She even shows her loneliness by saying “I talk to god but the skies are empty”
She shows so many feelings in her poems there is even more for example “if you expect nothing from no one you won’t be disappointed “which is her basically saying that she does not rely on any on, this may have a something to do with last time she did rely on someone it did not go to how she thought it would.
Plath was 8 when her dad died of complications of diabetes and he was a very strict father, who the memories of her father being strict haunted her through in and out of her relationship and left her nothing but bad memories of him.
In the poem ‘daddy’ she expresses her feelings to the world. Ill quote
“There’s a stake in your fat black heart
And the villagers never liked you.
They are dancing and stamping on you.
They always knew it was you.
Daddy, daddy, you bastard, I’m through.”
When she makes poems like this it helps her release herself instead of having to hold it all in which can lead to further emotional issues, its interesting cause she makes him sound like a beast when she says, all the villagers never liked you, that shows me a pic (in my mind)) of back in the times were they thought there were witches, and shows that she thinks everyone hates mine, when she says black heart it makes it sound like he is not human and black is a very dull colour which symbolises evil and very emotionless.
React!