Miss Conduct Tames the Shrew:  An Interview with Robin Abrahams

Robin Abrahams is the popular “Miss Conduct,” social advice columnist for the Boston Globe Sunday magazine. Her first book, Miss Conduct's Mind Over Manners: Master the Slippery Rules of Modern Ethics and Etiquette, is on sale now.  On Thursday, October 15th, Robin will host an ASP Community Night, "Miss Conduct Tames the Shrew," at which she will read from her new book and lead a discussion about sex, communication, and Petruchio and Kate.  Attendees of the event may see the 7:30pm performance of ASP’s The Taming of the Shrew at a discounted price of $25.

Tell us a little bit about what you have planned for the ASP community night you are hosting, and your interest in Shrew.  

I'll be doing a brief reading from the "She Said, He Said: Relationships" chapter of my new book, Miss Conduct's Mind over Manners, and taking questions about modern gender etiquette, relationships, and The Taming of the Shrew.

I have always loved the play, probably because 1) it is the first Shakespeare play I ever read on my own, and 2) I do rather identify with Katharine!

What do you find are play's most provocative insights into etiquette and relationships? 

This is a tricky one to answer! As you know, there are as many interpretations of any Shakespeare play as there are readers. I don't know what ASP has in mind for Shrew. Certainly, it would be possible, and entirely logical within the text, to do some kind of meditation on Abu Ghraib atrocities, the problem of post-traumatic stress disorder among returning veterans (as Petruchio is), and the psychological nature of brainwashing, all in the context of a patriarchal, warlike society.

It's also possible to see the story not as a woman being bullied into submission, but as being liberated, which is how I prefer to read it. Kate's speech becomes much more lucid, focused, and her speeches are longer after she has been "tamed." She doesn't so much learn anger management as transcend it and go straight into Anger Enjoyment!

A major point that I make in my book is that both men and women are constantly bombarded with media images of what they ought to be, and what they ought to desire in the opposite sex. It's even worse when cheap second-hand evolutionary psychology is used to give a scientific veneer to the whole thing--men are hardwired to want the nubiles, ladies, so buy more products! Ugh. (As a psychologist, let me offer some advice: if you are ever reading an article in which human behavior or desires are referred to as "hardwired"--stop reading. It's a good clue that the writer doesn't know shrew from shinola.)

Consumerism, mass media, and bad pop science weren't around in Kate and Petruchio's time, but social expectations certainly were. I think that Kate is angry because she knows that she doesn't fit into her society's ideal of what a woman ought to be, and so she actively rebels against it, making her even more angry and setting up a vicious cycle. She can't play a musical instrument on the first try--a ladylike skill--so she bashes it over her teacher's head, instead! If she can't succeed at the game of being a lady, she'll torch the playing field entirely.

Petruchio, for his part, is a cynic who doesn't even believe in love. He is warned that Kate is unlovable, and responds, more or less, that this is fine, he hadn't planned to love her anyway. All he wants is money and a hot babe--a view certainly endorsed by many of today's men's magazines.

Who needs the guidance of your book more, Kate or Petruchio? 

They both do! Kate needs to learn that submitting to social norms occasionally doesn't mean sacrificing your integrity or sense of self. Coriolanus needed to learn that, too--I was struck, when watching last season's production, by how similar those two characters are: martial, ego-obsessed, unyielding. Petruchio needs to learn the value of love. He treats life too much like a game; Kate doesn't treat life enough like a game.

Some productions portray Petruchio as a kind of martial Zen clown enlightened figure, which I think is wrong. The play is more interesting when both characters grow. Kate and Petruchio underestimate themselves, and see themselves and unloving, and unlovable, characters. By the end of the play, that has changed. His defenses come down in a subtler fashion than hers do, but they definitely come down.

Would Petruchio's approach to "taming" a contemporary Kate work nowadays?  

Not in its particulars, no! We rather disapprove of starving and sleep-depriving one's spouse nowadays, thank God. I think those elements reflect the more brutal nature of Shakespeare's time. Sleep deprivation is a good tactic for getting compliance, but it does not result in a flexible, playful person, which is what Kate eventually becomes--it makes people even more rigid, irritable, and prone to black-and-white thinking.

But let's look at what else Petruchio does: he gets Kate away from her family. If you want to "tame" a difficult person, getting them away from the people who made them difficult in the first place is an awfully good start. He tells her she is beautiful, that nothing in the world is good enough for her. He isn't afraid of her anger. When she rages at him, he neither cowers, nor tries to shame her by making her feel unwomanly for being angry: he yells back, and channels her rage into wit. He sets boundaries--he makes it clear from the start that she can yell all she wants, but she is not allowed to hit him. And then he teaches her to play with social norms. "Hey, Kate--go treat that old dude like he's your sorority sister! Kate, what are you doing, that's an old man, are you crazy?" He teaches her that she can succeed as "a lady" when she wants to, and that she doesn't have to if she doesn't want to, because either way, she is everything to him.

Would that work to tame a modern shrew? I'm afraid you'll have to ask my husband.

Anything of special interest to you in the subplot that revolves around Kate's sister Bianca? 

Oh, yes. Kate can't play by the social rules; Bianca plays them all too well. Is there really any doubt which one of them is more determined to have her own way? Bianca is a classic Mean Girl. Those sugarcoated women will get you by the short hairs every time. Women know that, but there are always men who will fall for the act ... which is part of what makes the Kates of the world so angry!

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