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Mastering Bianca In The Taming Of The Shrew By Castiglione

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Mastering Bianca In The Taming Of The Shrew By Castiglione
“We dare not oppose the opinion of the Countess of Champagne who rules that love can exert no power between husband and wife” (Kelly-Gadol 178-9). This allowed women more freedom over their bodies and freedom in love because it had nothing to do with marriage. Castiglione established in The Courtier that there is a fateful bond between love and marriage. One index of a heightened patriarchal outlook among the Renaissance nobility is that love in the usual emotional and sexual sense must lead to marriage and be confined to it – for women, that is, Castiglione at least debated the issue of the double standard (Kelly-Gadol 191-192). This shift in the concept of love and marriage is one of the themes that run through Kelly-Gadol’s essay. It sheds more light on what caused the whole shift in power between men and women after the end of the medieval period.
In the article “Construing Gender: Mastering Bianca in The Taming of the Shrew”, author Patricia …show more content…
The relation of the sexes here assumed its modern form (Kelly-Gadol 188-9). This idea explains why Bianca is given suitors to choose from and why she is considered to be charming even though she actually isn’t. Joan Kelly-Gadol references Baldassare Castiglione’s The Book of the Courtier which defines the role women should play in court. Baldassare Castiglione’s writes in his handbook for the nobility that the description of a lady of the court makes the difference in sex roles quite clear. On one hand, the Renaissance lady is supposed to appear as the equivalent of the courtier. Her virtues and education are on the same level as his. “She learns everything- well, almost everything” (Kelly-Gadol, 186). The Renaissance lady’s role in Castiglione’s idealized Court or Urbino of 1508, was of aesthetic means but he clearly removed her as an equal, taking away that social discourse that medieval courtly literature had before granted to her
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