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| Image from here |
Mary Wollstonecraft was in the First Wave of feminism that started way back in the Romantic Era. She wasn't a radical, burn-your-bra kind of woman. She was a woman that wanted equality with men in relationships. I will be using her brand of criticism from her essay A Vindication of the Rights of Woman.
Society has set forth a constructed set of rules that dictates this is masculine, that is feminine, and then people act according to those dictates. In the world of The Taming of the Shrew (Taming), a good woman was to be meek, quiet, soft, and beautiful. They were not to be opinionated, strong-willed, or vocal. That was the man's realm. Bianca pretends to be the perfect woman, and in doing so, gains the admiration of society. Kate does not conform to the feminine, and is othered, and labeled as a Shrew.
