Habitus in Shakespeare's Taming of the Shrew

Scholars have written a good deal about Shakespeare’s play, The Taming of the Shrew. They have presented many different interpretations of the relationship between the two main characters, Petruchio and Katherine. One interpretation states that Kate and Petruchio willingly take up accepted social roles in public to keep the peace in their culture, but have a different arrangement in the privacy of their marriage. But another intriguing idea applies anthropological and sociological ideas to this play and claims that this first interpretation is realistically impossible. While there is contextual evidence to support both ideas, a sociological reading of this play leaves Petruchio and Kate with only two options: they must either act consistently in both public and private life, or, if the first interpretation is correct, eventually their “marriage of equals” will become obvious to their cultural peers, and change the world they live in.

Pet. Did ever Dian so become a grove
As Kate this chamber with her princely gait?
O, be thou Dian, and let her be Kate,
And then let Kate be chaste, and Dian sportful!
Kath. Where did you study all this goodly speech?
Pet. It is extempore, from my mother-wit.
Kath. A witty mother! Witless else her son.
Pet. Am I not wise?
Kath. Yes, keep you warm.
Pet. Marry, so I mean, sweet Katherine, in thy bed. (154).

Here Petruchio expresses a firm intention of marrying Kate, but wants to keep his “wisdom” and “wit” warm and alive in Kate’s bed (a symbol of their marriage relationship). While this reading of the play makes contextual sense, some scholars feel that it is too ideal—in the real world that Shakespeare put Petruchio and Katherine in, they would not be able to keep up this farce. They would not be able to act one way in private, and another in public. This idea is known as the theory of habitus.

Pierre Bourdieu was a French philosopher, anthropologist, and sociologist of the last century who pioneered the idea of habitus. According to Bourdieu’s theory, habitus is a way of understanding the dynamics of power relationships in social life. In human culture Bourdieu states that the private and public spheres have always informed one another and are inextricably linked together in the process of determining societal norms of behavior:

The reason why submission to the collective rhythms is so rigorously demanded is that the temporal forms or the spatial structures structure not only the group’s representation of the world but the group itself, which orders itself in accordance with this representation. (158).

The Taming of the Shrew fits very well into this theory of human societal life. A common understanding of this play is that Petruchio has no desire to quell Katherine’s spirit, but merely goes through the “taming” process to render Kate as a socially acceptable wife. To do this he must publically bow to his society’s ideas of what a normal relationship between a husband and wife should be. Petruchio’s submission to this societal norm is necessary to keep society together and at peace within itself. Were he to step outside of this norm, habitus implies that Petruchio would risk severely injuring his society. The culture of Shakespeare’s day, and the culture he places Petruchio in, would be incapable of understanding or appreciating a marriage of like-minds such as Petruchio desires. As Bourdieu predicts, though, Petruchio cannot keep his public and private lives separate; through the process of Kate’s “taming” he inevitably ends up treating Kate as an inferior in their home as well as in public. Whether or not this is an acceptable arrangement for Kate is not the point—the couple must bow to their culture’s idea of what is appropriate. For Bourdieu, Petruchio’s “duty as a man means conforming to the social order, and this is fundamentally a question of respecting rhythms, keeping pace, not falling out of line” (157).

Kate’s duty as a woman is, by extension, the same as Petruchio’s duty as a man. Kate does need to learn the lesson in how to keep peace, for the sake of society, and Petruchio understands some of the stakes involved and decides it is his duty to tame and teach Kate this invaluable lesson.

Thou must be married to no man but me;
For I am born to tame you, Kate,
And bring you from a wild Kate to a Kate
Conformable as other household Kates. (Shakespeare 154).

Despite the current interpretation that Petruchio is playing a game, and does not want to break Kate’s spirit, in many scenes in this play, Petruchio is overbearing, patriarchal, and even sometimes seemingly brutal in his “taming” of Kate—both in the public and private sphere. He shames Kate in front of her family and townsfolk, and in private refuses to let her eat, sleep, or much of anything else. After the newly married couple arrives at his home, Petruchio has fits about the food his servants have prepared, and refuses to let Kate touch it. He sums up his plan of action in this soliloquy:

Thus have I politicly begun my reign,
And ‘tis my hope to end successfully.
My falcon now is sharp and passing empty,
And till she stoop, she must not be full-gorg’d,
. . .
She eat no meat to-day, nor none shall eat;
Last night she slept not, nor to-night she shall not;
As with the meat, some undeserved fault
I’ll find about the making of the bed,
And here I’ll fling the pillow, there the bolster,
This way the coverlet, another way the sheets.
. . .
This is a way to kill a wife with kindness,
And thus I’ll curb her mad and headstrong humor.
(162).

Despite all this, though, Coppélia Kahn argues alongside the current understanding of this play, writing,

"The degree to which Petruchio’s characterization is molded by a social, rather than a literary, stereotype has gone unnoticed. He is animated like a puppet by the idée fixe that a man must command absolute obedience from his wife"  (88).

Kahn goes on to say that she believes, unlike Bourdieu, that Kate and Petruchio can successfully play the roles society demands of them in public, and their own, independent roles in private.

Kahn, though, seems to be alone in this thinking that public and private life do not have to interfere with one another in reality. In his essay “The Public, the Private, and the Shaming of the Shrew,” Gary Schneider expresses a differing opinion on the matter—one more closely aligned with Bourdieu’s idea of the directly related relationship between public and private life. Tackling Kahn and another writer, Maguire, discussing the same topic, Schneider has this to say about the possibility of Kate and Petruchio living one life in public, and a different one in private:

Since private behavior is defined and engineered by social criteria, it is unlikely that Kate would be able to claim the type of independence Maguire asserts. . . . the very distinction between private and public behavior was a function of the internalization of "social norms"; "the 'private' is a product of the modern state." Such a "private" mutuality, in the sense that Maguire has it, is not possible between Petruccio and Kate. (239).