Double standards between men and women are portrayed through the three texts in a perhaps surprisingly similar fashion despite the near four hundred year difference in publishing dates between ‘The Taming of the Shrew’ and ‘The World’s Wife’. Shakespeare arguably included his concept of this duplicity to empathize with the audience he was presenting to, whereas Carter, with the development of women’s rights mostly over the 20th century, is showing The Bloody Chamber as an irony. It’s an irony that still, despite there being the inaugural female Prime Minister and the newly introduced Sex Discrimination Act in 1975, that there should still be such inequality between genders. Duffy meanwhile adopts ‘The World’s Wife’ to be an outcry. A text of protest against the age-old archaic values of the encroaching new millennia, to attempt to empower women to subvert the notion of historically seated patriarchy. This is achieved through pieces of performance poetry such as ‘Eurydice’ and ‘Frau Freud’ where Duffy directly addresses ‘Girls’ or in the latter, more mature piece, ‘Ladies’. Both these two modern texts have had a sprawling influence on the public consciousness in the fight for equality - such an example of this being the consistent reduction in the gender pay gap from 37% in 1979, to 27% in 1999, down to 14% in 2015. As Marissa Mayer, CEO of ‘Yahoo!’, contemporarily vocalises: “there are [now] amazing opportunities all over the world for women”, due, hopefully, in part to the work of this breed of British literary heritage. Duffy & Carter’s work help this cause. True equality is slowly becoming more realistic. Duplicity seem to pervade the fabric of relationships in all three texts with each being seen to have an emphasis on highlighting the role of economics within such partnerships. In ‘The Taming of the Shrew’, it provides a backbone for what the play orbits around. What is interesting is that men in this case are the consumers and brokers whereas women are the commodities to be traded. This broker role is exemplified by none more so than Baptista. His lines “Faith gentlemen, now I play the merchant’s part / and venture madly on a desperate mart” is an obvious reference to the selling power he holds but also the risk he understands in bringing a couple together that “was ever clapped up so suddenly” as Gremio points out. The use of a heroic couplet here highlights the importance of the deal that has been done and perhaps foreshadows the troubles that their relationship will entail. Eminent critic Coppelia Kahn compounds this idea of consumerism saying: ‘Baptista is determined not to marry the sought-after Bianca until he gets an offer for the unpopular Kate, not for the sake of conforming to the hierarchy of age as his opening words imply, but out of a merchant’s desire to sell all the goods in his warehouse.’ Petruchio too provides us with an archetypal representation of the consumer figure with an almost now iconic line: “I’ve come to wive it wealthily in Padua / If wealthily, then happily in Padua”. Shakespeare’s use of epanalepsis here highlights the single mindedness that Petruchio possesses, he is only interested in marrying wealthily - the formulaic nature of the statement is congruent with his formulaic outlook on marriage.
‘The Bloody Chamber’ and ‘The Taming of the Shrew’ share the same portrayal of the other side to this narrative, the viewpoint of women. The post-confrontation scene between Petruchio and Katherina leading to Petruchio’s declaration of marriage robs Katherina of her voice. “’Tis bargained, ’twixt us twain, that she shall still be curst in company” is what Petruchio lies to Baptista about. Structurally, Shakespeare does not include a response from Katherina before she exits. Despite Katherina’s earlier protestations of “I’ll see thee hanged on Sunday first!” she is not responded to directly by either Baptista or Petruchio. Instead, the servants (characters of lower class) have to parrot what Katherina says in order to get a response from Petruchio - highlighting double standards between men and women of the bourgeoise. Carter shows a similar effect in ‘The Bloody Chamber’ short story where the protagonist’s mother asks her a question relating to her feelings towards the Marquis: “Are you sure you love him?” to which the narrator replies “I’m sure I want to marry him”. This purposeful parallelism by Carter between the two sentences, and their nature of placement on separate lines provides structural emphasis for fact the protagonist is avoiding the question and in fact does not love the Marquis. Moreover, the narrator is therefore again robbed of a voice - her true feelings are disguised beneath having to provide for her family as the relationship becomes an economic transaction - illustrated through the comment “she might at last banish the spectre of poverty from its habitual place at our meagre table”.
Duffy casts the issue of double standards in a relationship through its economics in a novel light compared to the largely interconnected understanding of men and women playing dominant and subservient roles that ‘The Taming of the Shrew’ and ‘The Bloody Chamber’ portray. Duffy shows us a number of poems in the collection that show discontempt with the man’s work. The poem ‘Mrs Darwin’ gives us a very short, yet insightful view into the dynamics that govern the relationship between the two Darwins that Jeanette Winterson introduces as: ‘the glorious “Mrs Darwin” with its Edward Lear nonsensical sense’. Mr. Darwin, famous for ‘The Origin of Species’ shows a sartorial account from Mrs Darwin as to how ‘that chimpanzee over there reminds me of you’. The diaries are perhaps a reference to how on Darwin’s expeditions it would be his wife that would record notes, showing a sense of subservience of wife to husband. Admittedly, this parallels ‘The Taming of the Shrew’ and ‘The Bloody Chamber’ but where the difference lies is that Mrs. Darwin’s attitude is of bitterness. She is the victim of double standards in so far as her idea of evolution was perhaps stolen due to her lack of credibility and lack of formal education in the sciences. As a result of this attitude towards women in science, during the whole of the 1800s, there were only sixteen female biologists in the entirety of the UK - an extremely low number considering the scientific revolution was so conducive towards males in science. Duffy’s representation of Mrs. Darwin’s bitterness as a result is compounded by her using capitalization on ‘Him’ and ‘Chimpanzee’ to liken Mr. Darwin’s attitudes of gender to such an animal.
A further example of women’s anger at the man’s work is shown in ‘Mrs Icarus’ and in particular, Mrs. Icarus’ exasperation at man’s stupidity. The idea of of hypocrisy is expounded upon here through her husband’s unrelenting attitude towards his work while she has no choice but to be ashamed for what he has done. ‘Prove to the world / he’s a total, utter, absolute, Grade A pillock’ refers to Icarus’ attempt to fly to the sun. Duffy’s listing of derogatory adjectives shows she is intelligent enough to realise this is not possible while he perseveres, to his detriment. A similar idea can be found in ‘The Taming of the Shrew’ where Katherina understands that Petruchio’s attempt to subdue her culminates in him demanding the sun be called ‘the moon’. Here, Katherina gives in to this subservient position but counterintuitively, also finds herself empowered as she is able to dictate that they go “Forward...since we have come so far”. Shakespeare shows, through the use of iambic pentameter in this shortened soliloquy, that in this case, despite Katherina giving in to Petruchio’s names, she is the one embodying the dominant courting role. Here, the concept of double standards finds itself manifested through Katherina originally being treated as inferior in the relationship, but now subversively finding herself in a position she has transformed it to her advantage. A final notion of the man’s work leading to double standards between the genders is observed in ‘Mrs. Aesop’. Mr. Aesop, being a slave of ancient Greece, became a fabulist eventually leading to a collection of books in his name. Duffy assumes that these are his work and so uses Mrs. Aesop to critique her husband, calling him ‘Tedious’ and an ‘Asshole’. Duffy uses a structural device where she crafts five line stanzas before ending them with one word sentences. This effect is dramatic and intentional, and can be paralleled perhaps to how Mr. Aesop ‘could bore for purgatory’ before Mrs. Aesop responds curtly and is again, robbed of a voice. This can be compared anaphorically to the arrangement of Katherina and Petruchio’s marriage and to Mrs. Darwin seeing her findings taken away from her - as Jeanette Winterson succinctly and conclusively puts it: ‘Some of these poems are laments for women in captivity’. When his work’s economic incentive is greater than that of the familial, the relationship breaks down and historically, the only thing keeping man and woman together was obligation to the church, and obligation of woman to man. This would be the case for Mrs. Aesop and so she resorts to castration to rid herself of him: ‘“I’ll cut off your tail all right”...That shut him up. I laughed last, longest’ shows Duffy’s use of alliteration to signify how she is the one holding the balance of power and can also be seen as a mocking of the traditional fable, in which appears such a language device. In a similar vein to Shakespeare’s understanding of Katherina’s submission, Duffy explores the concept that instead of being powerless by the presence of double standards, women are able to take matters into their own hands. Mrs. Aesop can end her relationship in the only temporally congruent manner, murder.
Presented in both texts (to similar degrees) is a notion of patriarchy and control from man to woman. In the Taming of the Shrew this is arguably seen through Katherina’s final speech in her statement “Thy husband is thy lord, and thy keeper”. The epimone serves to highlight either the apparent sincerity of Katherina’s new reformed idea of her relationship with Petruchio, or her zeal in saying such a statement makes it obvious she is being sarcastic. As Ealasaid Gilfillan commenting on ‘The Company of Women’ production quips: “It was brilliant satire and often hilarious”. Regardless, double standards are compounded as it would never happen to be that Katherina is Petruchio’s lady or keeper. A sense of possession is also portrayed through Petruchio’s comments of saying that Katherina is “[His] Goods, [His] house…[his] household stuff”. Shakespeare’s use of refrain on the prefix “[His]” provides a similar language device to that of wedding vows and perhaps foreshadows the extent to which Katherina becomes Petruchio’s property. The notion of false pretence is a motif which too appears often throughout the first short story of ‘The Bloody Chamber’ with references such as the Marquis’ face being “like a mask” and the narrator’s question of “I might see him plain...but, where?”. This marries together idea that the Marquis can be hidden whilst the narrator is obliged to show her honest self, further propagating the concept of double standards. Marina Warner echoes this sentiment in explaining: ‘She rewrites the conventional scri pt formed over centuries of acclimatising girls – and their lovers – to a status quo of captivity and repression’. Carter is showing this duplicity cannot go on. Relationships require equality.
Duffy is the only one of the writers to show how men can become the possession of women and eliminate the notion of there being societal double standards. In ‘Queen Kong’, who is Duffy’s persona, says ‘I picked him, like a chocolate from the top layer of a box’. Her simile here underlines how the physical size of a being dictates the extent to which they have power, and not the gender. Women would be able to have power, if they were that much bigger than men, perhaps. Simply put, she removes notions of sexism by making it physically impossible for the man to resist Queen Kong. Duffy also mimics the inconsideration that men often have had for women with her descri ption of Queen Kong’s treatment of him after his death. Duffy uses the phrases: ‘He would be pleased. I wear him round my neck now’ as a metaphor for man’s animal like ignorance of the needs of women. Most humans would find the idea that Queen Kong ‘[wore] him round [her] neck’ and used ‘tiny emeralds for eyes’ as something which is disturbing, yet Queen Kong firmly believes ‘he would be pleased’. This misunderstanding is typical of historical attitudes of men taking women as property and provides startling similarities to Baptista’s refusal to listen to Katherina’s objection of “I’ll see thee hanged on Sunday first!”
The very physical representation of what should be a state of equality in ‘The Bloody Chamber’, the wedding ring, conjures up symbols of eternity and ownership which are expounded upon through: “When he put the gold band on my finger, I had, in some way, ceased to be her child from his wife”. It’s at this point where a cataphoric reference to “I seemed reborn in his unreflective eyes” is made. The narrator feels like a new entity to the Marquis, shifting away from her mother’s care. Carter’s use of ‘gold band’ rather than ring also provides references to historic uses of restraint, instead of it being a loving gesture. The use of a metal band is reminiscent of a torture device called the Scold’s Bridle, first used in 1567 on women of ‘shrewish’ or ‘scold-ish’ nature, and something Carter perhaps intentionally played on in her message that women are still being oppressed in similar ways as four hundred years ago. The wedding ring used by the Marquis serves the same purpose of capturing innocent women that the aforementioned archaic device did. A similar, and more overtly sinister gift presented by the Marquis is “a choker of rubies” which as Carter states was similar to “an extraordinarily precious slit throat”. This gives us as a reader a foreshadowing that there is a unity between death and wedlock. Carter briefly mentions the events succeeding French Revolution, namely the ‘Reign of Terror’ and the red ribbon motif specifically relates to the ‘Bals des victimes’ which were balls held where relatives of victims attended to commemorate the dead, part of which some did by wearing a red ribbon. Carter however mentions that the wearers of the red ribbon were those that “escaped the guillotine” yet subversively, in reality it was simply relatives of those who had been guillotined. This is perhaps Carter’s way of preconfiguring the end of her plot, and injecting hope into storyline which mimics the ‘Reign of Terror’.
Lastly, the concept of sex in the two texts is explored correspondingly with ‘The Taming of the Shrew’ and ‘The Bloody Chamber’. Katherina shows her understanding of Petruchio’s (previous) ways with her comment in Act III of: “He’ll woo a thousand, ‘point the day of marriage, make feasts,...yet never means to wed where he hath wooed.” Katherina understands that Petruchio presents himself as someone that seldom follows through on the inklings of a relationship that he may establish. Historically, Petruchio may have been referred to as a ‘rake’ which has a similar meaning to that of a playboy. Despite being typically used more towards the end of the 17th century, Shakespeare may well have used it as a character archetype to demonstrate the inequality between Petruchio’s hedonism and Katherina’s shrewish nature. Shakespeare’s use of asyndeton perhaps exasperates Katherina’s distaste at his actions and the upset that it brings her - she’s the one berating herself for getting involved with such a man. Furthermore, one of the last lines spoken in the play highlights a typical characteristic of comedies of the era an ending of consummation of marriage. He states: “Come Kate, we’ll to bed…[To Lucentio] T’was I won the wager, though you hit the white, and being a winner, God give you good night”. Katherina, at this point, has finished her speech after her monologue to the other women and doesn’t protest to such a suggestion. Critic Lucy Komisar understands this idea that Katherina is still independent, and Petruchio is still, essentially, a playboy in commenting on Arin Arbus’ production saying: ‘Kate should be played as a smart, independent woman and Petruchio as a rake who is taken by her style’.
One of the most revealing references to sex in ‘The Bloody Chamber’ is where the protagonist remarks on a figure in her music room in the castle. She says “My music room seemed the safest place, although I looked at the picture of Saint Cecilia with a faint dread what had been the nature of her martyrdom”. Here, she is referring to the patroness of musicians whose story mirrors that of hers. Cecilia was coerced into marrying a nobleman and when the time came to consummate the marriage, a guardian angel was there to protect her. Furthermore, her death also provides similarities to how the narrator is almost executed in ‘The Bloody Chamber’, being struck three times on the neck. Carter is attempting to highlight how the dismissal of the narrator’s virginity through consummation of marriage by the Marquis shows the double standards expected of women depending on the disposition of the man. While for most of recorded western history, virginity has been prized, here the Marquis is seemingly more than happy to have a “one sided struggle” in order to take her virginity. It is not prized and is instead used to his own ends. What’s interesting is that in ‘Mrs Beast’, Duffy shows an intentional role reversal between man and woman which finds similarities with ‘Queen Kong’. What it does is highlight the duplicity in how we are to imagine men and women to act in the same situation. Mrs Beast has a sense of vulgarity about her language that is typically associated with men, when she is describing both him and their sexual relationship. She states “What you want to do is find yourself a Beast. The sex / is better”. This bluntness is perhaps surprising and Duffy’s use of stichomythia compounds this - “is better” is not what the reader may imagine her (a woman) to describe the sex as, rather, the reader may be expecting a decorative explanation in the style of Carter’s narrator. Again, Duffy’s signature contrasting sentence lengths are utilized here to produce assertive comments uncharacteristic of both Katherina in ‘The Taming of the Shrew’ and the narrator in ‘The Bloody Chamber’. This culminates in action outside of the bedroom where, with Mrs. Beast surrounded by her friends (‘The Frau’, ‘Bride of the Bearded Lesbian’, ‘The Minotaur`s Wife’), the Beast enters as the ‘sheepish Beast’ with ‘a tray of schnapps’. This antithesis between the imagery of a ‘beast’ and that of a sheep emphasises how he is subdued by the women around him into playing the same role men may assume of a woman at a men’s poker game. An example of this is noted in ‘The Tiger’s Bride’ where the narrator is referred to as simply ‘the girl’. She has no input on the outcome of the game.
Ultimately, Shakespeare, Carter and Duffy find more similarities than differences in the ways they portray women as being victims of society`s double standards. Economic concerns factor heavily in the treatment of women for Shakespeare Baptista becomes a broker in the same way that the Marquis becomes a consumer. Duffy too understands the necessity that money plays in a relationship and therefore portrays men as ostracising women in their pursuit of financial wealth, to the detriment of their relationship. In all three cases, women are victims of societal pressures and the double standards expected between the role of men and that of women. ‘Traditional’ patriarchy and ownership of women also comes into play, with Shakespeare expecting women to be opressed. His role model at the very start of the play, Bianca, makes this clear. Carter too shows how men can hide their Freudian ‘ego’ while women are expected to present their honest selves with the Marquis’ face being “like a mask”, something that doesn’t shatter until during sex. Duffy subverts this notion by using physical size to present women as the dominant sex. Her poem ‘Mrs. Kong’ is overt in treating men like ‘chocolates’ and the sheer ignorance shown by Mrs. Kong seeks to emphasise the double standards presented by men. Finally, the concepts of sex that each writer portrays is likely to also show the duplicity of character that society expects of each gender role. Katherina berating Petruchio about “woo[ing] a thousand” and ‘The Bloody Chamber’s’ double standards about both prized virginity and expectant sex both pale in comparison to the hypocrisy that Duffy portrays. With Mrs. Beast, she constructs a character that utterly subverts the norms of her gender through vulgarity of language and treatment of the ‘Beast’. Resultingly, it goes a long way to encourage discussion of equality and further propagate legislation such Employment Equality Regulations of 2003 (four years after the collection was published), culminating in the 2010 Equality Act. Word count: 3546‘Quote’ word count: 547Word count (without quotes): 2999BibliographyCatholic.org, (2015). St. Cecilia - Saints & Angels - Catholic Online. [online] Available at: http://www.catholic.org/saints/saint.php?saint_id=34 [Accessed 23 Dec. 2015].
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