Taming of the Shrew

When I read this play in high school I really didn't like it.  I thought that it was terrible to think that a wife should be so subservient to her husband and that the only way to win over a girl is to pretend to be something you're not.

After reading it again a few years later, I question what Shakespeare was doing.  It is entirely possible that he meant  for the play to be taken at face value and nothing more; but I think it is even more probable that he meant for us to look deeper and question gender roles in society.

The men in The Taming of the Shrew all have a picture of the 'ideal wife' in Bianca.  They expect her to act submissive and kind, and when they see her sister Katherine, the men see everything they do not want.  The men then go about trying to find ways to deceive Bianca into marriage, without really getting to know who she is.  Once they find Petrucio to marry Katherine everyone can focus on wooing Bianca.  The "taming" of Katherine is the most difficult and questionable part of the play to me.  Was Shakespeare taking marriage roles as they were?  Or was he criticizing  everything that Elizabethan England knew?  At the end of the play when all pretenses are dropped (and Bianca is easily won over even though she was lied to) and the sisters a re married off, the true test of 'obedience' is played out.  The men send for their wives, and whichever responds first, her husband shall win.  Hortensio and Lucientio both have no doubt that their wives would listen, especially Bianca because she has been so willing the whole play.  They are both surprised though when their wives do not come, and even more surprised when Kate comes to Petrucio.  Then to drive home the obedient wife ideal, Kate critisizes Bianca and the widow (married to Hortensio) for not doing as their husbands say.

In the end Kate is 'tamed' but we are left questioning if this is all a joke, or satire.  Should women really be subservient to men?  Or should a man and wife be equals?  Was Kate 'tamed' or did she let herself be tamed?  I almost think that Kate and Petrucio did end up equals because her stubbornness balanced his.  This idea is most obvious to me at the end of the play when Kate and Petrucio happily walk off together, but the other couples that are unequal (where the man has power and the wife is meant to be obedient) are unhappy because their ideals have not been met.