SOURCE: Schleiner, Winfried. “Deromanticizing the Shrew: Notes on Teaching Shakespeare in a ‘Women in Literature’ Course.” In Teaching Shakespeare, edited by Walter Edens, Christopher Durer, Walter Eggers, Duncan Harris, Keith Hull, pp. 79-92. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1977.

In the following essay, Schleiner examines the characterization of Katherina from a feminist perspective.

The new discipline of women's studies brings home more clearly than many others that history is part of what we are. While Renaissance literature is apparently becoming more and more remote to undergraduates—a recent poetry anthology entitled Ancients and Moderns¹ begins with John Donne—the relevance of Shakespeare in a “women in literature” course will go undisputed. More importantly, consideration of his plays from this perspective is, as one might expect, an undertaking that provides both intellectual and existential stimulation.

Attention to Shakespeare's female characters is of course not new. Looking through Robert C...