Open Prompt Revision from 10/14 (1/20)

Prompt: Choose a character from a novel or play of recognized literary merit and write an essay in which you (a) briefly describe the standards of the fictional society in which the character exists and (b) show how the character is affected by and responds to those standards. In your essay do not merely summarize the plot.

      In Shakespeare’s time, women were raised to be wives.  They essentially had no power, were viewed as home makers and child bearers, and were completely controlled by their husbands.  On top of this, these “women” were often times still girls, being married off as early as fourteen.  In this society where women were at the mercy of men, Katherina of William Shakespeare’s The Taming of the Shrew, did not fit in.

            Shakespeare's character, Katherina, is not your average woman in this time period.  She is headstrong and not afraid for a moment to give her opinion to a man.  Katherina's younger sister, Bianca, on the other hand is absolutely perfect.  Bianca is young, beautiful, kind, and has captured the heart of more than one man in  Taming of the Shrew.  For example, after one of the male characters calls Katherina crazy, he says about Bianca, "But in the other’s silence do I see / Maid’s mild behavior and sobriety" (1.1.71-72). Essentially this quote says that one reason Bianca is so well loved is because she is quiet and well behaved like a wife should be.  Since Katherina knows she is not the woman Bianca is, the type of woman she needs to be to get a husband, she rebels from her society.  

            To deal with societies rejection of the "spinster", Katherina responds by acting like the most unattractive woman.  With full knowledge of what she is doing she openly insults a potential suitor when she says:

           I' faith, sir, you shall never need to fear.

           I wis it is not halfway to her heart.

           But if it were, doubt not her care should be

          To comb your noddle with a three-legged stool

          And paint your face and use you like a fool (1.1.60-65).

She gives off the attitude that she does not want or need a husband so to defy society's standard of what a woman ought to be.  Due to her dreadful manners, a man must be paid to "tame" her to become the willing wife that was so desirable.  In the end, Katherina is tamed despite her tireless efforts against it, and becomes a wife.  She fought to maintain her freedom by becoming a so-called "shrew", to make a statement to her own society that she is able to be an independent woman without a husband telling her what to do.

 

Question: After the block quotation am I supposed to indent the following sentence? It was originally one paragraph before the quote was added but I'm not positive what to do here.

Course Material (1/13)

       Although I can't personally relate to any part of Hamlet, I enjoyed reading and discussing it in class.  Of course I would have no clue what was going on if we hadn't read it in class together, but I was surprised how much I was able to pick out on my own when doing my annotations.  What helped me a lot with my annotations (other than sparknotes) was watching the movie interpretations.  Actually seeing the actions while the actors were speaking the lines made new connections for me about the text.
      For example, when Hamlet sees the ghost for the first time, he mentions something about how the ghost is wearing armor.  The line (sorry I can't find it but I promise it's there somewhere) sounds like Hamlet finds it strange to see his father in armor, even though Horatio found that to be exceedingly normal.  Later, when the ghost appears in Gertrude's room, Hamlet says, "My father, in his habit as he lived" meaning he looks like he did when he was alive.  In the reading I didn't even notice either of these lines. In the Branagh version, the ghost in the beginning wore armor and was intimidating, but later in the second ghost scene he was draped in cloth and was much calmer.  Seeing this interpretation made me go back to the text to investigate to find the evidence that proves that the ghost is imagined by Hamlet the second time and that he is actually insane at this point in the play (in my opinion at least).
      Conclusions like this make me realize how important staging is and how with the same dialogue, completely different decisions about the plot can be made.  Because of this, sometimes I found annotating to be difficult.  Finding diction was easy enough but syntax was tough for me.  In my eyes it was either iambic pentameter or prose.  If we read any more Shakespeare hopefully I can analyze subtle syntax better.