FEMINIST SHAKESPEARES: ADAPTING SHAKESPEARE FOR A MODERN AUDIENCE IN THE HOGARTH SHAKESPEARE PROJECT
A thesis submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree
MASTER OF ARTS
in
ENGLISH
by
COLLEEN ETMAN APRIL 2017
at
THE GRADUATE SCHOOL OF THE UNIVERSITY OF CHARLESTON, SOUTH CAROLINA AT THE COLLEGE OF CHARLESTON AND THE CITADEL
Approved by:
Dr. Kate Pilhuj, Thesis Advisor
Dr. Sean Heuston
Dr. William Russell
Dr. Brian McGee, Dean of the Graduate School ABSTRACT FEMINIST SHAKESPEARES: ADAPTING SHAKESPEARE FOR A MODERN AUDIENCE IN THE HOGARTH SHAKESPEARE PROJECT
A thesis submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree
MASTER OF ARTS
in
ENGLISH
by
COLLEEN ETMAN APRIL 2017
at
THE GRADUATE SCHOOL OF THE UNIVERSITY OF CHARLESTON, SOUTH CAROLINA AT THE COLLEGE OF CHARLESTON AND THE CITADEL
The Hogarth Shakespeare Project presents a way to view Shakespeare’s plays through a different lens. These books allow for a feminist reading of Shakespeare, looking at some of Shakespeare’s ill-treated female characters to construct a new idea of female characterization. Three of the plays adapted, The Winter’s Tale, The Tempest, and The Taming of the Shrew, were adapted by female authors. By investigating how these plays are being adapted for a more contemporary audience, with modern conceptions of feminism and gender roles, we can gain insight as to how these concepts have changed since Shakespeare’s time. By looking at these modern adaptations, we can interrogate how modern audiences as a whole conceptualize and, potentially, idealize Shakespeare, as well as understanding the progression of treatment of women in contemporary culture since Shakespeare’s time. The novels addressed in this project are The Gap of Time by Jeannette Winterson, Hag-Seed by Margaret Atwood, and Vinegar Girl by Anne Tyler. The project concludes that, of the three, Vinegar Girl does the most effective job addressing the problematic aspects of its adapted play in a new way, distinguishing it from previous adaptations of The Taming of the Shrew. This project also investigates the role that adaptation theory plays in addressing Shakespeare adaptations, particularly the Hogarth Shakespeare Project.
2 © 2017
Colleen Etman
3 Acknowledgments
I would like to take a moment to thank all those who made this project possible.
I would like to thank the joint Master of Arts in English program at the College of
Charleston and The Citadel. This program, in addition to providing an excellent education, introduced me to a variety of professors and educational styles. I ended up having some of my favorite classes at The Citadel, which would never have been possible if it weren’t for the joint program.
I would like to thank my program directors, Tim Carens and Mike Duvall, who guided me through my degree and provided assistance in beginning this project.
I would like to thank my thesis defense members, Sean Heuston and William Russell, who willingly gave their time to read this behemoth. You gave me excellent feedback and friendly faces in my defense. I would also like to thank you for teaching me some of my favorite classes in my program. I will remember your classes very fondly and consider them when I develop my own teaching style.
I would like to thank my husband, Daniel Nesmith, who has dealt with months of me muttering about Shakespeare and using the word “problematic” probably far too many times. Your patience and care of me helped this project become possible.
And finally, I would like to thank Kate Pilhuj, who is an absolute saint. You have been beyond amazing. Your patience, guidance, and sense of humor have all allowed me to progress this far. You are the best mentor I have ever had. My greatest hope is to one day show a student the same dedication that you have shown me.
4 Table of Contents
Abstract i
Acknowledgments iii
Table of Contents iv
Chapter One: Introduction 1
Adaptation and Shakespeare 3
Adaptation Theory 3
Adapting Shakespeare 9
The Hogarth Shakespeare Project 15
Chapter Two: Winterson’s Tale 20
The Winter’s Tale 20
The Gap of Time 27
Chapter Three: Atwood’s Tempest 43
The Tempest 44
Hag-Seed 55
Chapter Four: Tyler’s Shrew 69
The Taming of the Shrew 70
Vinegar Girl 81
Chapter Five: Conclusions 94
Bibliography 104
5 Chapter One: Introduction
Four hundred years after his death, William Shakespeare is no longer remembered as just a man – a poet, an author, an actor. Now, he is remembered as the backbone of
English literature, an icon of the English Renaissance, a metonymy of sorts for all things classic and British. To many non-scholars, Shakespeare is English literature. This perception is not always a favorable representation. Many representations of
Shakespeare in modern culture – such as the No Fear, Shakespeare annotation series for students and popular culture representations like the parodic film Gnomeo and Juliet – portray the man as something between an enemy to be feared and an idea to be ridiculed.
Clearly, somewhere between his death in 1616 and today, Shakespeare’s growing reputation created a culture of antipathy, despite the scholarly culture of academic
Bardolatry.
There are many reasons that Shakespeare may appear as unappealing to some.
Often, readers may find the work of understanding plays that were never meant to be read as too labor-intensive. Other readers may be put off by themes of racism, sexism, xenophobia, and the like, that do not translate well from Elizabethan England to the 21st century. Still others may think that there is just nothing to which they can relate in plays written four hundred years ago. This gap in appreciation and time is where the Hogarth
Shakespeare Project comes in. Created in commemoration of the four-hundredth
6 anniversary of Shakespeare’s death, the Hogarth Shakespeare Project, in their own words,
“sees Shakespeare’s works retold by acclaimed and bestselling novelists of today” (Tyler
239). In other words, the Hogarth Shakespeare Project is a series of novelizations of
Shakespeare’s plays written by today’s best-selling and critically acclaimed authors.
These novelizations seek to update Shakespeare for a new audience, reaching out to new readers by making his works more accessible to a wider audience.
By using popular authors, the Hogarth Shakespeare banks on name recognition, inviting those who already enjoy, or at least recognize, these authors to take a look at these new novels. However, there is another effect of using popular authors that may have a greater impact on reaching out to a new audience: by utilizing a greater fleet of authors with diverse backgrounds, rather than one sole white male author, the Hogarth
Shakespeare allows for a new generation of voices to retell and rework some of the more unfavorable aspects of Shakespeare’s content. Minority authors are able to present the themes and stories of Shakespeare’s plays without being overwhelmed by the sexism, the racism, the xenophobia, and other off-putting ideas that turn off many readers. Rather, they are able to tackle these issues head on and create a deeper discussion of the lingering place that Shakespeare and his works have in a modern culture.
This strategy may be the greatest road to success for the Hogarth Shakespeare, allowing the spirit of his work to live on and reach new generations of readers by demonstrating that Shakespeare does not have to unequivocally mean confusing plots, arcane wording, and out-moded ideologies. In particular, three of the authors so far published, Jeanette Winterson, Margaret Atwood, and Anne Tyler, are able to examine and address the prevalent sexism found in Shakespeare’s work. Analyzing three of
7 Shakespeare’s “problem plays,” Winterson, Atwood, and Tyler are able to give voice to female and other minority characters in a new way. As such, these women are participating in the creation of a new Shakespeare, a more feminist and female-friendly
Shakespeare.
Adaptation and Shakespeare
In order to understand the tactics and potential success and appeal of the Hogarth
Shakespeare, we have to put these adaptations in context. The Hogarth Shakespeare is by no means the first attempt to revisit Shakespeare’s works. The history of Shakespearean adaptation dates from his own time, with his own contemporaries retelling and reworking his stories. In the centuries since, the field of Shakespearean adaptations has become a large and potentially overbearing body of work. To better understand and discuss
Shakespearean adaptation, it is important to lay the groundwork of explaining what exactly an adaptation is and how it can be discussed.
Adaptation Theory
The field of adaptation studies and adaptation theory is a constantly changing, and at times controversial, body of theory. Because adaptation scholars work with not just a source text, but also the myriad adaptations of said text, the number of texts becomes exponentially larger than the original field of study. Thus, it is important to know where to start. Linda Hutcheon’s A Theory of Adaptation is an essential text for understanding adaptation theory. “Adaptation,” Hutcheon claims, “has run amok” (XI). The field has become clogged with differing ideas of what an adaptation is and what it means, with varying theoretical approaches (Derridean, Foucaultian, etc.) applied, and a general
8 hubbub of voices all trying to talk over each other. Thus, Hutcheon devotes an entire book to simply explaining the who, what, when, where, and whys of adaptation.
The “what,” however, is not so simple. Hutcheon dances around the definition of adaptation, never quite settling on one. The most easy-to-digest answer that Hutcheon gives is derived from Gerard Genette, who claims that adaptation is “a text in the ‘second degree’” (qtd. in Hutcheon 6). The more drawn out answer is that “an adaptation is a derivation that is not derivative – a work that is second without being secondary. It is its own palimpsestic thing” (Hutcheon 9). This is an important distinction, the fact that an adaptation is its own thing. Hutcheon argues that an adaptation is an autonomous work, not a prequel or a sequel. An adaptation is informed by its source text, but not defined by it; Hutcheon uses the word “haunted” to describe the relationship between adapted and adaptation (6).
Delving further, Hutcheon argues that adaptation is both a process and a product; one creates an adaptation by way of adaptation. She likens it to the biological process of adaptation and evolution:
I was struck by the other obvious analogy to adaptation suggested in the film
[Adaptation] by Darwin’s theory of evolution, where genetic adaptation is
presented as the biological process by which something is fitted to a given
environment. To think of narrative adaptation in terms of a story’s fit and its
process of mutation or adjustment, through adaptation, to a particular cultural
environment is something I find suggestive. Stories also evolve by adaptation and
are not immutable over time. (31)
9 This analogy, when applied to Shakespearean adaptation, makes sense. Over the past four hundred years, Shakespeare’s works (and the man himself) have undergone a process of evolution, each adaptation serving as a method to fit the story into “a particular cultural environment” (Hutcheon 31).
The particular cultural environment is important. Hutcheon claims that “[i]n the act of adapting, choices are made based on so many factors… including genre or medium conventions, political engagement, and personal as well as public history” (108). More specifically, an adaptation is made in “an interpretive context that is ideological, social, historical, cultural, personal, and aesthetic” (Hutcheon 108, emphasis mine). Cultural contexts change, and, mirroring the evolutionary connection that Hutcheon references earlier, a text can either adapt and change with the culture, or be left by the wayside, a fossil to be unearthed centuries later.
This idea of change is where adaptation theory gets controversial. For many years, one of the central tenets of adaptation theory was the concept of fidelity, or the
“faithfulness” of the adaptation to its adapted text. An adaptation was only considered worthy of study if it was more faithful to the original text. This concept became an integral part to the study of film adaptations of “classic” pieces of literature. In many cases, the adapted text had become an icon, rather than simply a story. Like Shakespeare, these works – think Dickens or Austen – have been elevated to an extent that the thought of changing them became taboo. Thus, if one were to adapt a Dickens or an Austen or a
Shakespeare, it was imperative to maintain absolute fidelity, or risk being discarded as a cheap rip-off.
10 This obsessive adherence became a problem. In many ways, fidelity is an impossible construct. To take a Dickens novel, for example, and turn it into a film, there are, by necessity, cuts to be made. A literary behemoth like Great Expectations would be impossible to fully reproduce within the limitations of film as a medium and a genre.
Film relies on showing, rather than telling, and a story that relies on a great deal of interiority becomes difficult to translate. Directors and producers make decisions on how they can represent thoughts and conceptions without having a narrator simply read the story over some moving pictures. Even regardless of genre, there is simply no way to distill a huge book like Great Expectations into a two or three-hour movie without having to change parts of it. Putting too strong an emphasis on fidelity limits adaptation studies and suffocates it. In order to move forward, adaptation studies has had to investigate the emphasis on fidelity and understand why it had become the marker of the merit of an adaptation.
According to Hutcheon, fidelity became a marker of the sanctification of literature over other media. Fidelity “tended to privilege or at least give priority (and therefore, implicitly, value) to what is always called the ‘source’ text or the ‘original’” (Hutcheon
XIII). Fidelity marks “a fetishisation of representation,” according to adaptation scholar
Lindwe Dovey. Hutcheon calls fidelity a “morally loaded discourse” (7). Fidelity became an indicator of an adaptor’s degree of respect for the text which was being adapted. And because true, full fidelity is an impossible task, adaptations were often coded negatively, as an affront to great literature. According to Hutcheon, viewed through the lens of fidelity, “an adaptation is likely to be greeted as minor and subsidiary and certainly never as good as the ‘original’” (XII). She quotes from James Naremore,
11 who claims that mainstream perspectives on adaptation describe it as “belated, middlebrow, or culturally inferior” (qtd. in Hutcheon 2). Going further, Hutcheon remarks that “an adaptation is perceived as ‘lowering’ a story” (3).
Hutcheon further argues that, in order for adaptation studies to move forward, it must move past the idea of fidelity as the ultimate marker of an adaptation. She argues that “fidelity is based on the implied assumption that adapters aim simply to reproduce the adapted text,” but that adaptation is “repetition without replication” (7). Fidelity, however, is not the only idea that causes adaptations to be looked on unfavorably. One reason, according to Hutcheon, is that “adaptation commits the heresy of showing that form (expression) can be separated from content (ideas)” (9). Think back to the example of filming Great Expectations; if it can be done, it shows that Dickens’ ideas are not necessarily locked into the format of his novels. This notion would further attack ideas of iconization in literature. This assumption would also up-end ideas about what makes
Shakespeare a lasting icon; if form and content can be separated, Shakespeare’s stories are not great because they are well-written plays, but rather because they tell stories that resonate throughout history and for different people.
Another negative impression of adaptations is that they are simply ripped from already written work, especially those pieces of literature that have amassed an obsessive following, like Shakespeare. Hutcheon argues that, for many, “adaptations have a way of upending sacrosanct elements like priority and originality” (122). Especially in an era of copyrights and estates controlling what an adaptor can do with a source text, it has become the assumption that to adapt from a source text is an act of appropriation, rather than creation. Disregarding an adaptation as an autonomous text, many critics argue that
12 adaptation is simply derivative, and has no creative merit of its own. However, as
Hutcheon rightly points out, “this negative view is actually a late addition to Western culture’s long and happy history of borrowing and stealing or, more accurately, sharing stories” (4). Walter Benjamin claims that “storytelling is always the art of repeated stories,” and Dudley Andrew argues that “all art-making is fundamentally a process of remaking” (qtd. in Hutcheon 2; qtd. in Dovey 163, emphasis mine). Hutcheon also points out that Shakespeare himself was an adaptor, “transferr[ing] his culture’s stories from page to stage” (2).
Moving past fidelity as the only way to discuss adaptation brings us back to
Hutcheon’s attempts to answer the why of adaptation. As she claims, “[t]here are many and varied motives behind adaptation and few involve faithfulness” (XIII). She focuses in on two opposing ideas of why an adaptor would choose to adapt a text: an adaptor is
“just as likely to want to contest the aesthetic or political values of the adapted text as to pay homage” (Hutcheon 20). This idea points to an interesting dichotomy at hand in the
Hogarth Shakespeare Project. The project is obviously intended to honor Shakespeare.
The final page of every novel is a short blurb about the project and what it aims to accomplish. The editors begin this section by quoting from Ben Jonson, that Shakespeare
“was not of an age, but for all time” (qtd. in Tyler 239). However, the Hogarth
Shakespeare Project is also updating the stories for a new audience. Hutcheon argues that adaptations “can obviously be used to engage in a larger social or cultural critique”
(94). The Hogarth Shakespeare Project thus provides an interesting lens through which to study the inherent conflicts in adaptation studies.
13 Adapting Shakespeare
Hutcheon affirms why Shakespeare is an excellent way to view these conflicts.
According to Hutcheon, “[a]daptations of Shakespeare, in particular, may be intended as tributes or as a way to supplant canonical cultural authority. As Marjorie Garber has remarked, Shakespeare is for many adapters ‘a monument to be toppled’” (93).
Shakespeare is ripe for adapting because of his place as an icon of Western literature.
Furthermore, John Ellis claims that canonical literature provides “a generally circulated cultural memory” (qtd. in Hutcheon 122). Thus Shakespeare, as the ultimate canon, provides a large array of material to work with, since Shakespearean literature is familiar to many, even if they have not read the actual works themselves. The average reader may not have actually read Romeo and Juliet, but they are doubtless familiar with the story due to its proliferation in popular culture.
This familiarity creates a large potential audience, but it is through adaptations of
Shakespeare, not his original text, that he is most familiar to many. Margaret Kidnie, in her book Shakespeare and the Problem of Adaptation, echoes Hutcheon’s earlier comparison with evolution and reiterates the necessity for adaptation. According to
Kidnie, Shakespeare’s “work cannot remain exactly what it was four hundred years ago, or even twenty years ago, in part because the audiences who must discursively apprehend it by means of instances have been conditioned to ‘see’ differently” (126). In other words, just as Shakespeare’s audience has evolved, so too must his work; over the past four hundred years, it has done exactly that. The new audience for Shakespeare is different. Rather than playgoers, Shakespeare is now aimed at readers, particularly students. The text is being read, rather than watched, and this context creates its own set
14 of problems; having young people as the primary audience complicates the matter further. This is where adaptations come in. By presenting Shakespeare’s stories in new formats, especially video, the text becomes more accessible.
Shakespearean adaptations abound. Due to both Shakespeare’s place in the cultural canon and his large body of work, there are a great number of adaptations, the
Hogarth Shakespeare Project simply the latest. In order to discuss and understand these adaptations, it is important to place them within the history of Shakespearean adaptation, a process which began immediately. As noted earlier, Shakespeare himself adapted work from earlier authors or cultural stories. Even aside from his histories, most of his works are not original. For example, The Tempest is frequently considered to be Shakespeare’s most original work, but even that is derived from accounts of shipwrecked sailors. And
Shakespeare was not the only writer of his time to do so. Naturally, many of his contemporaries were adapting the same stories, and several adapted and responded to his own works.
Notable among these is The Woman’s Prize, or the Tamer Tamed, a sequel of sorts to The Taming of the Shrew written by John Fletcher that was first performed during
Shakespeare’s own lifetime. Although Fletcher is not rewriting the exact story from
Taming, he is reworking Shakespeare’s characters and continuing the plot to provide a commentary on the patriarchal overtones of Shakespeare’s play. This attempt to “fix” a play is a common thread in early Shakespearean adaptation. Daniel Pollack-Pelzner, in his article on “Shakespeare Burlesque and the Performing Self” argues that “Restoration and eighteenth-century adaptations had remedied Shakespeare’s perceived shortcomings… to furnish new official dramas” (402). Manfed Draudt agrees with this
15 claim in his article “The Real Thing? Adaptations, Transformations and Burlesques of
Shakespeare, Historic and Post-Modern,” wherein he argues that “adaptations were generally regarded by contemporaries as improvements upon Shakespeare” (292).
According to Draudt, the reasoning behind this claim stems from the English
Revolution and the Restoration. “Political change was accompanied by a radical change in tastes, ideals, and conditions” in the Restoration (Draudt 289). The “currents of change” taking place in the mid-seventeenth century “motivated playwrights and managers to ‘improve on’ Shakespeare by rewriting and staging his plays in accordance with the spirit of the new times” (Draudt 289). As political climates and social mores settled into new patterns, however, Shakespeare began to hold a more privileged position in adaptation. The Victorian culture of Bardolatry changed the tone of adaptations – or more accurately, stagings, since the Victorians strove for vehement fidelity. Pollack-
Pelzner argues that “mute reverence appeared to be the normative Victorian attitude toward the national poet” and that “the conventional image of the Victorian
Shakespeare… is heavy-handed idol worship” (401-2).
The key words, here, however, are “normative” and “conventional.” As indicated in the titles of both Pollack-Pelzner and Draudt’s articles, there was something more going on in nineteenth-century portrayals of Shakespeare – the burlesque. The burlesque emerged as the opponent of Victorian Bardolatry. As Draudt argues, “[t]hat the popular stages should have turned to Shakespeare and exploited his popularity is not surprising”
(292). With Bardolatry pushing for more high-brow and exclusive versions of
Shakespeare, burlesques opened up Shakespeare’s work for a more diverse, and particularly lower-class, audience. Pollack-Pelzner further claims that “Victorian
16 burlesques targeted the officiousness and pomposity of the mainstream versions” of
Shakespeare productions (402). Thus burlesque Shakespeares emerged as both a parallel to and attack against mainstream Victorian Shakespeare. This dichotomy created an oppositional back-and-forth attitude, where Shakespeare was used to both represent the beauty and elite stature of British literature and to lampoon the idea of a national identity based on literature. Pollack-Pelzner relates the example of a burlesque version of The
Winter’s Tale entitled Perdita, or the Royal Milkmaid staged in 1856 that “spoofed the grandiose historical pageantry of [Charles] Kean’s production” of Winter. To this,
“Kean’s biographer raged” that the burlesque “ought to be denounced as sacrilege”
(Pollack-Pelzner 402, emphasis mine). The thought of “besmirching” Shakespeare through burlesque caused strong emotional responses, which only contributed to the tension regarding adaptation in this time.
The advent of film added another layer of complexity to Shakespearean adaptation. Early film versions continued the Victorian tradition of fidelious, reverent adaptations. One way this adherence is evident is through what Douglas Lanier calls the
“textual conceptualization of Shakespeare that was the dominant keynote of much of the twentieth-century,” or “the notion that Shakespeare’s essence is to be found in the particularities of his language” (Lanier). Think, for example, of the Olivier
Shakespeares, which attempt to faithfully reproduce Shakespeare’s language even as the tones of the films themselves represent the current cultural and political climate, what
Draudt refers to as “[t]he practice of adapting great authors to fit current requirements”
(289). This practice brings us back to Hutcheon’s claim that “[a]n adaptation, like the work it adapts, is always framed in a context – a time and a place, a society and a culture;
17 it does not exist in a vacuum” (142).
Shakespearean film adaptations took a different tack as time went on. Kenneth
Branagh’s Shakespeare of the late 1980s and early 1990s reflects a growing resentment toward and distrust of many of the imperialist themes in Shakespeare. Even though
Branagh, like Olivier, kept much of the original language of the plays, the films themselves are notably different. Take, for example, the two directors’ respective versions of Henry V. Olivier’s Henry, coming at a time of increased patriotism during the Second World War, is clean, bright, and pageant-like. Branagh’s Henry, produced during the Falklands conflict, presents war as harsh and dirty, and leaders as shrewd and manipulative. Branagh’s work challenged the idea that the word is what defines
Shakespeare; if it were simply a matter of reproducing language, his and Olivier’s Henrys would have been much more similar.
Shakespeare film enjoyed a boom of sorts after this. Lanier argues that
“Shakespeare became definitively post-textual” during the 1990s, and it is no coincidence that at this time Shakespeare became more popular to adapt. Lanier argues that a move from language to a more visual method of representing Shakespeare allowed directors to play around with the stories. He points toward the avant-garde tone of Julie Taymor’s
Titus or the “postmodern hodgepodge of MTV video style and pop visuals” displayed in
Baz Luhrmann’s Romeo + Juliet as examples of how film adaptations in this time “firmly resituate Shakespeare in the regime of the (moving) image, not that of the word” (Lanier).
When one considers that Shakespeare was originally writing for actors and the stage, it makes sense that adaptors would latch onto this idea, that Shakespeare is meant to be seen, not only to be read (or, in this case, heard).
18 In addition to updating conceptions about the importance of Shakespeare’s language, Lanier claims that 1990s Shakespearean films “popularized the practice of resituating Shakespearean narrative in a new setting or time period” (Lanier). This practice is most clearly demonstrated through the proliferation of “teen Shakespeares” that came about in the late 1990s and early 2000s. By marketing the films to teens, directors were able to find new audiences, especially through an educational lens. Lanier argues that the emergence of film as a teaching method for Shakespearean literature in high schools motivated directors to “recontextualize Shakespearean narratives” (Lanier).
Films like O or 10 Things I Hate About You are representative of this push for “teen
Shakespeares” to reach new audiences.
Some critics are more cynical about teen Shakespeares, however. Kim Fedderson and J. Michael Richardson argue that “[m]ore often than not, such films will in effect harness the name and prestige of Shakespeare to some current ideological agenda.”
Fedderson and Richardson argue that 10 Things I Hate About You, rather than simply updating The Taming of the Shrew to reach a new audience, “in essence uses
Shakespearean capital to underwrite a relatively conservative message” about gender politics. Fedderson and Richardson do agree, however, that “[t]he new Shakespeares resonated with current anxieties about gender identity, sexual relations, war and death, revenge, mutilation, and social breakdown, etc.,” mirroring the trend of adapting
Shakespeare to fit cultural context.
Lanier agrees that “[t]een Shakespeare films were symptomatic” of the changing cultural impulses of the times. Lanier further claims:
19 The history of the last twenty years suggests that adaptors are collectively
ingenious and tenacious in finding means for reconceiving and thereby preserving
[Shakespeare’s] authority, even in the face of the enormous challenge of global
mass-media culture. By attending to how our Shakespeare is constituted as a
specific collection of qualities, intensities, and tendencies in flux at any moment
in history… we may be better able to chart the ever-nomadic paths of
Shakespearean cultural capital. (Lanier, emphasis mine)
Lanier’s usage of the phrase “our Shakespeare” reflects the cultural tendency to update
Shakespeare’s works to fit a current culture; it is simply “a matter of changing literary taste (and cultural fashion)” (Draudt 304). Or, as Fedderson and Richardson put it, “[w]e have always reinvented Shakespeare, and we always will.”
The Hogarth Shakespeare Project
“Shakespearean cultural capital,” according to Lanier, “is restless.” Lanier argues that “the cultural prestige attached to Shakespeare, residual now though it may be, has undergone a recuperative transformation.” He describes how “the adaptational energy once associated with Shakespeare on film has migrated elsewhere,” to forms of media such as comic books and online media (Lanier). However, the Hogarth Shakespeare
Project also fits this move away from film. Though Shakespeare has undergone numerous rewrites, restagings, and adaptations over the years, there have not been many attempts to directly novelize the plays. Considering the adage that Shakespeare is meant to be seen, not read, it stands to reason that novelizing his works would not be a high priority. However, by moving beyond drama, the Hogarth Shakespeare Project may be
20 able to reach new audiences with its attempts. If “teen Shakespeares” are meant to reach teenage audiences, and educational Shakespeare materials are intended for teachers and students, then the Hogarth Shakespeare Project may reach new readers, particularly adults who read novels.
One of the ways that Hutcheon defines adaptation is “an extended, deliberate, announced revisitation of a particular work” (170, emphasis mine). Under these guidelines, the Hogarth Shakespeare Project definitely fits the bill. The Hogarth
Shakespeare Project is as much a celebration as it is a series of adaptations. In a press release, the Hogarth Shakespeare claims to be “a dedicated series of stand-alone retellings that will form a covetable library as well as a celebration of Shakespeare for years to come” (qtd. in Morris). Timed to coincide with the anniversary of Shakespeare’s death in 2016, Hogarth “assembled an all-star roster of stylistically diverse writers to translate Shakespeare’s timeless plays into prose,” according to an article in The New
York Times (Alter).
Alexandra Alter’s impression of the project begins by describing “an irresistible offer from a publisher” to update Shakespeare. According to Jeanette Winterson, who wrote The Gap of Time, an adaptation of The Winter’s Tale which was the first novel published in the series, she was told to “[c]hoose any Shakespeare play she wanted, and adapt it into a novel” (Alter). Alter likens this offer to “the literary equivalent of catnip,” dangling the prospect of adapting Shakespeare before the authors. Acknowledging that
“Shakespeare himself was a notorious mooch,” Alter frames the series as another episode in the storied history of Shakespearean adaptation. In an interview with Alter, Winterson states that “Shakespeare never invented a plot, he always went to an existing story or text
21 and said, ‘I’ll have that.’ I think he would approve of what we’re all doing” (qtd. in
Alter). This sense of approval gives authority to the adaptors. By asserting that
Shakespeare would have approved of their project, they limit opportunities for criticism.
The first four plays adapted are interesting choices. Passing over the histories, or the tragedies, or even some of the better known comedies, the first four Hogarth
Shakespeare authors have chosen several of Shakespeare’s “problem plays.” Even more interesting is the dynamic between the authors and the plays chosen. Three of the four authors are women, and have all chosen plays where the treatment of the female characters is even more problematic than is typical for Shakespeare. The fourth novelist is Howard Jacobson, a noted Jewish author, who is tackling The Merchant of Venice,
Shakespeare’s famously anti-Semitic work.
The authors are aware that their choices are a bit unexpected. When Winterson, who had her choice of the lot, selected The Winter’s Tale, her publisher was surprised that she would choose “one of Shakespeare’s most baffling, jarring, and uneven plays”
(Alter). Winterson explained her decision by stating that she had an emotional connection to the play. Like Perdita, the foundling that pushes much of the action in the second half of the play, Winterson was adopted, and has always felt that this fact made up a large part of her character. She was drawn to revisit Perdita from the perspective of a modern foundling. For his choice, Jacobson stated that he was reluctant to tackle such an anti-Semitic work, but felt that he had the opportunity to retell it from Shylock’s point of view, providing a more sympathetic lens to Shakespeare’s much-maligned Jewish merchant. However, Jacobson “made sure to preserve the problematic aspects of the play” (Alter). In an interview with Alter, he claimed that he “would never dream of
22 cleaning up Shakespeare” (qtd. in Alter).
If Jacobson “would never dream of cleaning up Shakespeare,” as he claims, then what is he attempting to do in his novel, Shylock is My Name? What are the female authors, Jeanette Winterson, Margaret Atwood, and Anne Tyler attempting in their adaptations of The Winter’s Tale, The Tempest, and The Taming of the Shrew, respectively? By asking these questions, we can, as Lanier puts it, “be better able to chart the ever-nomadic paths of Shakespearean cultural capital” (Lanier). Shakespeare’s status as literary icon means that Jacobson, even when confronted with virulent anti-Semitism,
“would never dream” of changing things too far (Alter). In fact, he seems to view it as an unthinkable affront to do so. Yet, by providing the perspective of a Jewish man, he is able to give greater depth to a character that was, at best, underserved by Shakespeare.
The same goes for the female characters in the plays adapted by Winterson,
Atwood, and Tyler. By allowing female authors to recast a male author’s works, they are able to give new voices to characters who are typically overlooked, if not outright derided. Winterson is able to give a greater voice to Perdita, who becomes a more autonomous character. She also updates the story so that Hermione and Paulina have their own stories aside from how they interact with Leontes. In Hag-Seed, Margaret
Atwood grapples with a play that has only one active female character by creating new characters and addressing issues of gender inequality directly. Anne Tyler’s Katherina is a vast departure from Shakespeare’s. In Taming of the Shrew, Katherina begins as a harpy and ends voiceless, but in Vinegar Girl, Tyler attempts to show the shrew’s point of view.
23 These three stories attack complacency regarding Shakespeare’s treatment of women. Given the perspective Jacobson has on Shakespeare – “wouldn’t dream of cleaning up” more problematic issues – it would be easy to give in to the canonical pressure of preserving Shakespeare as an icon. However, these three authors show that, in giving voices to minority, female characters, the stories of Shakespeare can be made more palatable to a modern audience with modern sentiments. These novels still have the potential to be problematic, because they still address issues that are contentious to this day. However, as Lanier points out, “adaptors are collectively ingenious and tenacious in finding means for reconceiving and thereby preserving” Shakespeare. In adapting these plays for a more progressive audience, the Hogarth authors show that the stories of
Shakespeare can live on – but they need not be held back by outdated ideas of sexism, homophobia, xenophobia, imperialism, and more attitudes, that were considered acceptable in Elizabethan England. Just as Hutcheon argues that stories must evolve through adaptation, these novels allow the evolutionary process of Shakespeare’s stories to continue. This perspective is what makes the Hogarth Shakespeare Project successful, its willingness to revisit the stories through new lenses and new voices.
24 Chapter Two: Winterson’s Tale
Jeanette Winterson’s novel, The Gap of Time, was the first Hogarth revisitation to be released. In the project, Winterson set out to tackle The Winter’s Tale, one of
Shakespeare’s most complex and confusing plays. While Winterson admits that she had the choice of any Shakespeare text, and could therefore have chosen a more well-known and straightforward play, The Winter’s Tale was a personal option. Having always identified with the character of Perdita, an adopted child like herself, Winterson wanted to use this opportunity to expound on her own feelings regarding the play. In The Gap of
Time, Winterson addresses head-on many of the issues prevalent in the play and gives new voice to the minor characters. While The Gap of Time is not, by any means, a simplification of The Winter’s Tale, it is a new perspective that allows for a deeper understanding of Shakespeare’s work. By developing many of the minor characters from the play into fully-fledged individuals, Winterson approaches the story from a more universal approach, giving insight into how each character is affected by the extraordinary events that take place in this often problematic play.
The Winter’s Tale
The Winter’s Tale is firmly entrenched as one of the “problem plays.” On the one hand, it includes many elements typical of Renaissance comedy: pastoral setting,
25 mistaken identities, carnival-esque celebrations, and a (more or less) happy ending. On the other hand, the first half of the play is full of heartbreak and misfortune. Accusations of infidelity hearken back to the tragedy of Othello. Many characters die, some not even granted the right of an on-stage death. Mamilius, the prince of Sicilia, dies off-stage, much like the children in Macbeth. And in the end, Leontes, king of Sicilia, is left to deal with the consequences of his irrationality and tyranny, which have robbed him of all his family and his closest friend. How can these disparate elements be combined into one play?
One answer is, literally, the Gap of Time. Time appears as a character directly in the play, addressing the audience to inform them that sixteen years has passed since the tragic events of the beginning. This somewhat jarring scene serves to create a strong divide between the tragic and comedic effects. Time has passed, and therefore it is possible, and acceptable, to move on from the heartbreak of the first half of the play.
Time can be viewed as having a healing effect; although the wounds of his actions cannot be undone, Leontes can be seen as, perhaps, having scarred over. He has the memory of what his actions caused, and he is reminded of the damage constantly through the character of Paulina and his own loneliness, but he can move forward.
Time also serves the purpose of bringing the character of Perdita to life. The catalyst for much of the tragedy in the first half, Perdita is no longer an abstract but now a sixteen-year-old girl, in the flush of first love. Perdita has moved on from the tragedy of her beginnings, the accusations of bastardy and the subsequent exposure, to become a full-fledged individual who can partake of the comedic elements of love and happy endings. By allowing Perdita the chance to grow into her own character, Time gives the
26 audience another hope for a happy ending, both through her own chance of love and through the reconciliation she could bring her parents.
Time is, however, a controversial character. Time does create a jarring effect, breaking the flow of the play. This effect is deliberate; by breaking the flow of the play,
Time creates the opportunity for the comedic elements listed above, and the potential for the earlier events to be passed over. However, by breaking the fourth wall, so to speak,
Time also jars the audience out of their absorption in the play. Judith Wolfe claims that
Time creates a “transgression of the boundary between reality and fantasy, as well as of the classical unities of time, space, and action” (96). However, Wolfe argues that Time, rather than breaking the audience’s focus on the play, is necessary “to maintain audience attention ‘in the middle of a play’” (Horace, qtd. in Wolfe 96). “Stage action[s]” such as the appearance of Time and the iconic usage of a bear, “are first of all devices to entertain the audience,” according to Wolfe (96).
Further than simply maintaining audience attention, Wolfe argues that these elements are necessary for the audience “to deal with the unbearable lightness, the seeming insignificance, of the spectacle that has touched [the audience] so deeply,” namely, the tragic effects of Leontes’ rage (95). Having now sat through a sham of a trial, the persecution of an innocent woman, and the death (or supposed death) of two young children, asking the audience to watch a comedy about young love and foolish antics could be seen as overly dismissive of the earlier tragedy. Wolfe argues that this is the necessity of the character of Time, who “solicits the audience’s” approval (95-96).
Wolfe argues that “this potentially improper or unlawful action,” that is, the quick change from tragedy to comedy, “must be licensed or at least condoned by the audience” (95).
27 Conversely, some critics do not agree with Wolfe’s depiction of Time. Lauren
Robertson, in her essay on the usage of dreaming in The Winter’s Tale, argues that too much “fuss” is “made over a gap in time” (303). Robertson points to many instances where time – or, more clearly, a lack of it – creates problems in the play. In particular,
Robertson is concerned with the immediacy of Leontes’ actions, especially the trial scene. Having made up his mind about his wife’s suspected infidelity, Leontes demands an immediate resolution to the issue, not wanting to waste any time. Robertson argues that “Leontes does not allow enough time to pass for him to recognize” the errors of his assumptions (303). If time, in this instance, is merely an issue to be ignored, how does
Time fit into the play? As Robertson puts it, how “might Time’s own assertions cohere with the play’s earlier dramatizations of the desire for instantaneous certainty?” (306).
Robertson asserts that time, or Time, rather, is of less import than the concept of uncertainty. According to Robertson, Time merely clouds the issue and creates more unnecessary complexity in an already complex play.
The most complex question in the play, though, is the fate of Hermione and the uncertainty surrounding her disappearance and subsequent reappearance at the conclusion of the play. Hermione is already a complicated character before this point; at once powerful and helpless, controlled by Leontes, Paulina, and even time itself, Hermione captures the audience’s interest even before her disappearance. Her story only becomes more intriguing when Shakespeare leaves it very unclear what happens between her disappearance in Act 3 and her reemergence in the conclusion of the play. At first, it seems that Hermione has died from the cruel treatment of her husband and her despair over being unfairly accused of infidelity. Following this train of thought, when
28 Hermione emerges at the conclusion, it seems as though she has come back to life. This perspective is emphasized by Paulina’s actions, especially her call to “awake [the] faith” necessary for her supposed magic to work (Winter 5.3.115). Paulina seems to support the idea that it is only through magic that Hermione can reemerge, almost playing with
Leontes’ grasp of reality. When Leontes begins to question what he sees, remarking that
Hermione seems almost alive, Paulina threatens to remove the statue, saying that
Leontes’ “fancy/ May think anon it moves” (Winter 5.1.70-71).
In this moment, is Paulina simply playing with Leontes, or does she worry that, should he have more time to reflect, Leontes will realize that the statue is a fake – that it is actually his wife? Paulina’s powerful reveal, the supposed magic that brings the queen back to life, rests on Leontes not having time to think the situation over. Once again, time and uncertainty play into Leontes’ actions. Robertson argues that “the question” of
Hermione’s reappearance “seems like it should not inspire any doubt at all” (306). In other words, the answer to the question “has [Hermione] remained in hiding during her sixteen-year absence from the world of the play, or has she died and come back to life” should be obvious (306). However, by limiting Leontes’ time for retrospection, the question is not so easily answered. He is forced to revisit his earlier habit of quick judgments, something he is wary of doing. He wants to take his time to come to terms with the incredible life-likeness of this statue of his wife, but Paulina does not give him time to inspect the statue and come to any one conclusion, forcing him to relive the consequences of quick thought.
The question is never fully answered one way or the other. “Hermione,” according to Robertson, “certainly does not clearly answer the question of whether or not
29 she has died or remained alive” (308). Paulina does not give a clear answer either. The audience is only given the perspective of Leontes and Perdita, who themselves question what is before them but do not receive a clear answer. Robert Applebaum addresses the usage of magic as a transitive force in The Winter’s Tale. He argues that “Paulina and
Hermione, or the spirit of Hermione, are doing something to things and persons” (39, emphasis mine). In other words, it is not important whether Hermione is alive and complicit in Paulina’s deception or whether she is brought back to life through some magic spell. What does matter is that the reemergence of Hermione has an almost magical effect on Leontes and the audience. This is the moment of reconciliation, only made possible through Leontes’ willingness to believe in the magic taking place. The magic is in the effect that Hermione’s reappearance has, and this magic is what allows the play to reach its conclusive happy ending.
However, despite the fact that it is her reappearance that allows for the happy ending, Hermione is still a problematic character in Shakespeare’s tale. Her downfall is complete, yet her redemption is short and limited, only comprising a short amount of time. In the beginning of the play, Hermione is queen of Sicilia, the daughter of a king.
She is shown to have influence over Polixenes, and her history with Leontes shows her to have been an equal to him in some respects. However, she loses all this, as well as her marriage and her children, because of Leontes’ irrational rage. This is when she becomes problematic. Shakespeare takes everything that is empowering about Hermione and removes it. Hermione’s influence over Polixenes nearly gets him killed. Leontes no longer values her eloquence, but assumes that she has used it to fool him. In her trial,
Hermione acknowledges that her eloquence will not help her because her words cannot
30 overturn Leontes’ grasp of reality. She loses both of her children. She becomes literally objectified, no longer a queen but a memory and a statue. This progression of events would seem to set her up for a triumphant reemergence, vindicated and in reach of everything that was taken for her. However, her redemption and her feelings about it are a minor moment, compared to how the final scene affects Leontes. The only power she regains is the power to bestow forgiveness on Leontes, furthering his redemption. She has still lost Mamilius, and although she is able to see Perdita grown up, she was not able to raise her, and is soon to lose her to marriage. She is given an opportunity to speak, but it is much less of a voice than she had earlier in the play.
Paulina has served, in some ways, as Hermione’s mouthpiece over the years, reminding Leontes of what he has done and what his actions have caused, but at the end even she is removed from power, with Leontes enforcing a marriage onto her. In the play, Paulina becomes Leontes’ chief counselor and, in some ways, confessor. Much has been said about Paulina being a possible reference to Shakespeare’s debatable religiosity.
Paulina is a reference to Paul, a prominent early Christian teacher. Paul Stegner describes how, despite The Winter’s Tale being in a pre-Christian setting, Paulina’s characterization “corresponds with the more general Protestant understanding of ongoing repentance” (194). By forcing Leontes to remember his actions and to perform penance,
Paulina becomes a confessor figure. According to Stegner, Paulina represents a general uneasiness with the role of women in the early church; by giving her such a large degree of power over Leontes, Stegner suggests, Shakespeare indicates a potential sympathy for women. However, by having Leontes marry Paulina away at the end of the play,
Shakespeare reasserts typical gender dynamics by giving Leontes total control over
31 Paulina’s fate. These characters – Hermione, Paulina, even Perdita, to some extent – are all subject to the inherent misogyny in Shakespeare’s works as a consequence of his moment in time. Winterson has the potential to give them greater power and more voice in her story, and she does so in interesting, if still potentially problematic, ways.
The Gap of Time
Winterson’s tale brings Sicilia and Bohemia into the new millennium, and with it, all the complexities and issues of modern living. Leontes becomes Leo, an unscrupulous
London banker and entrepreneur. Hermione is MiMi, a famous French singer. Polixenes is Xeno, an introspective computer nerd of ambiguous sexuality. Perdita is brought up by
Shep and his son Clo, two black men living in Louisiana, and begins a relationship with
Xeno’s son, Zel. Paulina becomes Leo’s assistant-slash-partner, Pauline, a “ball- busting,” highly educated, outspoken Jewish woman. Antigonus’ “exit, pursued by a bear” becomes Tony the gardener’s death via carjacking and attempted robbery. With modern philosophy and psychoanalytic overtones, Winterson creates a tale that attempts to resonate with contemporary society.
The questions of time and Hermione’s fate are two of the issues that Winterson confronts. Hermione’s fate is the simpler of the two – to put it simply, MiMi is not dead.
She never dies, and therefore never comes back to life. There is no question of magic and reanimation. She simply is alive, throughout the whole novel. However, that is not the entirety of her story. After Leo confronts her about her supposed affair with Xeno,
MiMi separates from him. She goes into labor during an argument, and Perdita is born in
MiMi’s bed with Pauline as unintended midwife, Leo having refused to call a doctor for
32 what he claims is Xeno’s bastard. MiMi and Perdita move in with Pauline, and she refuses to see or speak to Leo. Milo, the Mamilius counterpart, is confused and upset over his parents’ division.
When Pauline confronts Leo, telling him to get a DNA test and get over his irrationality, he instead decides that he, MiMi, and Milo can be a happy family again if
Perdita were not in the picture. He wants to un-make the events that have happened. To do so, he steals Perdita and sends her to America to live with Xeno (which does not work out in the end), and tries to take Milo to Germany for a vacation. Having found out that
Perdita is missing, MiMi and Pauline call the police to inform them that Leo is kidnapping her. While the police interrogate Leo, Milo attempts to find Tony and
Perdita, and ends up getting hit by a truck (unfortunately, there is no happy ending for
Milo in either Shakespeare or Winterson’s version). After these tragic events, MiMi disappears. She divorces Leo, and moves back to France. There are rumors that she is still in Paris. Having been a celebrity, there is considerable interest in her location at first, but then she is forgotten. She remains a recluse until the end of the novel, when
Perdita has returned to London with Zel, and Xeno and Leo have been reunited. MiMi returns in a big way, performing at a charity concert Leo puts on. “A woman is standing like a statue in the light… She doesn’t move. Then she does,” beginning to sing a song for Perdita (Winterson 257). This is MiMi’s reawakening; Shakespeare’s “Music; awake her” is literalized (Winter 5.3.120).
In this regard, Winterson’s version of events seems anticlimactic. While this does answer definitively the question of whether or not Hermione died, it seems less impactful. Knowing that MiMi is alive the whole time lessens her eventual return.
33 While MiMi does not return as a character until the very end, it is known throughout that she is alive. Minor mentions of her occur, most frequently in regard to rumors. “They say it’s her” is a refrain Winterson uses (208). She is described as wearing dark glasses and a hat in a failed attempt to remain incognito.
Winterson does bring in some ideas of Hermione from Shakespeare. Mimi “was held in time as they all were, the statues, friezes, reliefs… she was one of them”
(Winterson 209). Repeating the idea of Hermione as statue-like, the narrator wonders
“what sculptor out of hell had taken a living woman and rendered her flesh and carved her into a monument of herself?” (Winterson 209). This description plays with the idea of the magic statue from Shakespeare’s version. In The Winter’s Tale, Hermione is statue come to life through magic. She is an impeccably carved likeness. In The Gap of Time,
Hermione is a person turned to stone. She has lost her humanity through the tragedy she has suffered, and now is locked into a statue, frozen in time.
Another connection between the two characters is their place as a powerful woman brought down by the actions of their husbands. In The Winter’s Tale, Hermione as a character is diminished through Leontes’ actions. She was a queen, and a powerful figure in her own right, who at best was completely removed from society and at worst was literally objectified by turning into a statue. MiMi is also a powerful figure. She has a career, she is famous, and she is rich. In some ways, this contributes to Leo’s insecurities, having a wife who has her own life. While watching MiMi and Xeno interact through a webcam he installed in her bedroom, he becomes enraged. He shouts
“CAN’T AFFORD TO RENT A BED TO FUCK HER IN – HAVE TO USE MINE,” but the narrator notes that “Leo had forgotten that MiMi earned her own money and owned
34 her own house” (Winterson 46). Leo does not want to think of MiMi as a person with her own life, because he has become obsessively possessive of her.
Objectification may not be as literal in The Gap of Time as it is in The Winter’s
Tale – Hermione does not become a literal object – but it is still a major theme. Leo in particular is concerned with objects; when he is in therapy after a breakdown, his therapist was a man who had written a book entitled “Objectifying the Object,” and frequently talks redundantly about objects. One thing he does say is that Leo struggles with “[o]bjectification of the simultaneously loathed and loved object” (Winterson 17).
When his therapist mentions “Objects of Desire,” Leo’s “stomach tightened” (Winterson
17). At this point, his therapist is focusing on a Freudian issue regarding Leo’s supposed feelings for his mother. However, this can be applied to how he views MiMi; simultaneously loathed and loved. He loves her, but he begins to hate her when he thinks she is sleeping with Xeno. She is an Object of Desire for him, and that makes him uncomfortable. He also objectifies her by thinking of her as a sexual object, rather than a person, at times. At one point, enraged and deranged, he forces himself on her. This sexual assault is a particularly tense moment in the novel. Leo thinks of MiMi as a dog,
“an animal being beaten,” and “floppy like a just-dead person” (Winterson 74). She has ceased to be a human being to him. Eventually, his actions remove all her connections to humanity as she goes into hiding. While she may not become a literal statue, she has become an object, rather than an active participant.
Just as Winterson addresses in her novel the controversy of Hermione’s fate, time, much like in The Winter’s Tale, is a large issue at hand in Winterson’s adaptation. As can be assumed from the title – The Gap of Time – time is what Winterson finds most
35 fascinating and important in her version. Time is a character in Shakespeare’s version.
Time literally comes onto the stage and addresses the audience directly. Winterson’s time is not so straightforward. In fact, nothing about Winterson’s time is simple. It is an extremely complex issue. Time itself becomes more than concept and idea. It is an obsession, of both the narrator and the characters. The word “time” is used over two- hundred times in the novel, both in dialogue and in narration. At the very beginning of the novel, Shep states that after he found Perdita, he “fell into a gap of time, where one time and another became the same time” (Winterson 9). The novel ends with Perdita’s introspection that “history repeats itself and we always fall, [but she is] a carrier of history whose brief excursion into time leaves no mark” (Winterson 262). Between these two instances, time is debated, mourned, sought after, turned over, and pulled apart by everyone from Xeno and Leo to Shep and Autolycus.
The novel is very introspective at times, focusing in on the philosophy of time.
Winterson seems to want to get to the root of time – what is time? Shortly before the final scene, where MiMi rejoins the living, she is found by Pauline in France. “It takes so little time to change a lifetime,” the narrator concludes, “and it takes a lifetime to understand the change” (Winterson 243). This moment is so important to MiMi, but at the same time is merely an instance in the lives of other people. For MiMi, this moment is a representation of how great shifts can occur in a person’s life in a split-second, yet have effects that are felt for years, just as she has dealt with the effects of Leontes’ actions for eighteen years, when they took place so quickly. Yet for the people around her, this moment is simply another moment in a busy day in a long life. Other instances are concerned with the permanence of time and the consequences of actions. On his way
36 to London to reconcile with both Leo and Zel, Xeno thinks that “Time can’t unhappen, but it can be unlost” (Winterson 235). Leo, on the other hand, wishes to turn off time in the same way that he turns off his lights. Thinking of the timer that turns on his lights at night, he wonders “[w]hy can’t you have time on a timer? Switch it on when you want it? Switch it off when you don’t?” (Winterson 209). This idea brings back Robertson’s assertions that Leontes’ actions – and therefore the tragedy of The Winter’s Tale – stem from his inability to take time to think. Now that his rash actions have caused tragedy,
Leo cannot help but think about time.
Winterson’s version of time takes the character from the original play and translates it into a concept. What was a minor character becomes an important plot development, and a continual refrain of wonderment in the novel. The perspectives that different people have on time reveal a lot about their characters – for example, the regretful Xeno views time as something to be “unhappened,” but Shep, whose life restarts with finding Perdita, views time in an almost religious way. But Time is not the only character that Winterson develops further. One of the major strengths of the book is the development of the minority characters. Winterson gives a voice to people of different backgrounds by making several of the characters from minority groups. She is able to address many issues that are a part of modern society in a way that Shakespeare could (or would) not.
One issue that Winterson addresses is systemic racism. The characters Shep and
Clo are black men living in the American south. In some ways, this background does not affect their characterization at all. They are not reduced to racial caricatures. Similarly to their Shakespearean counterparts, Shep and Clo are just two honest men who have
37 been elevated in station through their connection to Perdita. They do have more of a backstory than the Shepherd and the Clown. Shep’s wife is a major factor in his decision to keep Perdita; she had recently died and he was struggling to get over his loss. Worse, he had actually smothered her in her hospital bed, as a way to end both her and his suffering, so he is racked with guilt. Finding Perdita seems like a way to make penance.
This history gives more pathos to his relationship with Perdita. Shep and Clo are presented at the beginning of the novel as living in a lower-class situation; Shep works in piano bars to make money. When they find Perdita, they are able to use the money found with her (along with the insurance money from Shep’s wife) to open their own bar, The
Fleece. This connects back to the Shepherd and the Clown, when they find the “fairy gold” with Perdita, and the Clown remarks that the Shepherd is “a made old man”
(Winter 3.3). In this sense, Shep and Clo are simply the updated characters. However, by bringing a racial connection, Winterson provokes a deeper understanding of how these characters are affected by social circumstances.
When their race does come up, it does so in a way that confronts outmoded ideas of race. One issue is systemic racism in the criminal justice system. Shep and Clo find
Tony near death after he has been robbed and beaten. They want to help him, but are afraid of the consequences if they are found near the scene of a crime. When Clo wants to call the cops, Shep wonders how he managed to “raise a son who trusts the cops”
(Winterson 11). When Clo tells Perdita of how they found her, he remarks that they left
Tony because Shep “doesn’t trust the cops” (Winterson 171). Shep feared that the cops would “frame” them for Tony’s death, because, according to Clo, “We’re black, for
Christ’s sake” (Winterson 171). This comment mirrors current trends of police brutality
38 toward black Americans and the difficulties black people face in the criminal justice system. Shep is right to fear the cops; the current prison population has an overwhelming amount of black men in comparison to their percentage of the population as a whole. The fear that he and Clo would be framed for a crime they did not commit is not unfounded.
In other instances, the racism depicted is less sinister, but not less upsetting. Clo is casual about the racism he faces as a black man in America. He tells Perdita that they were able to raise her, despite her being white, because many people assumed that Clo was “another black guy without a job and with a kid” (Winterson 172). He describes how they were able to manipulate the assumptions of “pious white folks beating the shit out of each other with the curtains closed and looking down on black families”
(Winterson 172). While in this instance, the racist assumptions of their neighbors allowed Shep and Clo to raise Perdita, Clo’s sarcastic depiction of the snobbery he and
Shep faced shows that he was hurt by it. Later on, Shep confronts Leo for assuming that he has taken advantage of Perdita and the money she was left with. According to Shep,
Leo sees him as “a black man [he sees] mostly doing Security or Delivery,” rather than a business owner, productive member of the community, and loving father (Winterson
237). Although he is secure in his own identity and worth, he knows that Leo will make the wrong assumptions because of what he has faced throughout his seventy years.
Shep will later in the book seem to develop a relationship with Pauline. This turn of events is interesting because Pauline is another character who Winterson develops further than her depiction in the play. Winterson’s Pauline is a Jewish woman, and this heritage informs much of her character. She frequently quotes Yiddish proverbs and describes how her family escaped persecution by immigrating to England. While on a
39 date with Tony – also further developed as the son of Mexican immigrants – she ruminates on the effects of her upbringing. She remembers how her grandparents escaped the Holocaust and created “a hard life” in England (Winterson 96). She also remarks that, through their efforts, she was able to get a good education and become an investment banker – “[r]efugees to riches in three generations” (Winterson 96). This education is important – Pauline is one of only three characters to be mentioned as having a higher education. The only other characters with university experience are Zel, whose mother is the descendent of slaves, and Tony, whose parents emigrated from Mexico.
Autolycus, another Jewish character, is not explicitly mentioned as having a higher education, but he frequently mentions things like Hemingway and Oedipus Rex, suggesting he has at the least a self-taught background in literature. These characters are all minorities, but they are the only ones explicitly mentioned as educated, upending stereotypical ideas about what type of people get an education. By making a point of identifying these particular characters as educated, Winterson subverts ideas that minorities do not seek out higher education.
Pauline’s Jewishness is also interesting in the way it informs her interactions with
Leo. While in the play, Leontes is able to reassert patriarchal control over Paulina as her king, in Winterson’s version, Leo does not regain control over Pauline; in fact, he remarks that he never had control over her. Leo’s relationship with Pauline is a constant back-and-forth. Leo feels like he should be dominant, as he is ostensibly her boss. He questions why he cannot control her, asking “[i]s it because she’s a Jew or because she’s a woman?” (Winterson 31). Clearly, to Leo, Pauline’s status as both Jewish and female makes her difficult to deal with. He will consistently throw out anti-Semitic remarks,
40 such as calling her a “Jewish Marxist” when he is angry (Winterson 48). However, Leo also admits that Pauline is “much better educated, much better qualified, [and a] much better person” than himself (Winterson 30). He is able to joke with her about her Jewish heritage in a way that she reciprocates; in these instances, he jokes with her, not about her. Pauline’s pragmatic persona becomes a running joke between them. When Leo asks if she is happy, Pauline responds that “[h]appy is too goyish” (Winterson 245). At another point, Leo jokes “[w]hy hooray when you can oy vey?” (Winterson 204). Leo also playfully mocks her insistence that everyone is part of her family. When she insists that everyone can stay at her house, he remarks that “[a]nybody would think you were
Jewish” (Winterson 239).
By making these characters – Shep and Clo, Pauline – minorities, Winterson is able to give voices to communities that are otherwise overlooked in Shakespeare. In these cases, it works well. Shep and Clo provide positive examples of what it means to be a black man in America without erasing the struggles black men face. Despite societal discrimination, they are honest, hardworking, family men. Pauline risks being a caricature – a Jewish person in banking lends itself to all sorts of moneylender/Shylock style stereotypes. However, by portraying Pauline as the voice of reason and charity,
Winterson overturns such negative stereotyping. A character that could have been portrayed as miserly, focusing more on money than on other people, becomes the opposite. Pauline is Leo’s conscience. Right before the reconciliation, Leo is arguing with Paulina about some charity work. “HOW MUCH good do I have to do in the world?” he asks, infuriated (Winterson 206). Pauline quietly responds with “[i]s that a real question?” (Winterson 206). He eventually gives in, recognizing that Pauline is not
41 being greedy; she is helping him assuage his conscience and pay penance for his actions.
These characters also all have importance outside of their minority status. Shep is
Perdita’s Dad, even after she reconciles with Leo. He is the father figure that she knows and loves. Clo is her brother. Pauline is a friend to Xeno and MiMi in addition to being
Leo’s partner. She has a romance with Tony. Tony himself is an interesting character.
A Latino gardener runs the risk of becoming a stereotype, but Tony has actually gone to university to study botany. He is better educated than Leo, even if he works for Leo.
When Tony dies, it is an emotional scene. He is trying to do his best by Perdita – paralleling Antigonus – but is killed for no reason. Unlike Antigonus’ “pursued by bear,” however, Tony is directly murdered in a violent carjacking. Shep later reveals that
Tony’s last word was “Pauline,” revealing that Tony had been thinking of a new future, which has now been lost. None of these characters are dependent upon stereotypes or a need to fill a “token” minority status.
Winterson further addresses the presence of minority characters by presenting minor characters as being part of a minority group. HollyPollyMolly, Perdita’s friends, are Chinese. The important part of their background, however, is not that they were adopted in China, but that they were abandoned just like Perdita; this connection causes the basis of their bond. Autolycus is identified as an Eastern European man, “[p]art
Budapest, part New Jersey. Chutzpah of Old Europe meets chutzpadick of the New
World” (Winterson 116). He is proudly “[p]art crook, part sage,” but this is not dependent on his heritage, but rather his personality. At the end of the novel, Clo seems to be developing a relationship with Leo’s receptionist, Lorraine. When Shep remarks that Lorraine is “quite a woman,” Pauline casually remarks that Lorraine is trans
42 (Winterson 255). “Trans what?” Shep responds (Winterson 255). While in some ways, these mentions do resemble tokenism, they do not feel as if they are included only in the pursuit of filling a diversity quota. Instead, they feel as if being a minority is just something that happens, and that these characters represent real people. Lorraine serves to acknowledge that there are trans women, and that they can still be “quite a woman.”
HollyPollyMolly acknowledge that the adoption of Chinese babies takes place in
America, but they are not played as stereotypes. If anything, they are more stereotypically teenage girls than they are stereotypically “Asian.” Autolycus is a representation of European immigration, the result of generations of Jewish people fleeing persecution. These people are a part of the American population, and deserve to be represented.
However, in some instances Winterson’s characterizations of traditionally marginalized figures falls short. This is most clearly revealed in the uncertain sexualities of Xeno and Leo. The two have been friends since they were children, and when they were teens were briefly engaged in a sexual affair. This past informs a lot of their characters and the troubled relationship between them. Leo becomes irrationally jealous of Xeno and MiMi’s relationship, thinking they are having an affair. However, Pauline brings up his and Xeno’s past relationship, asking Leo if he is “jealous of him or her,” a question that does not get answered (Winterson 95). Leo also derives sexual pleasure from the thought of his wife and his best friend having an affair. In a particularly graphic scene, Leo imagines what sex would be like between MiMi, Xeno, and even Pauline. He watches a casual interaction through a webcam he has installed in MiMi’s room, and fantasizes about catching them in the act; he realizes he has become aroused from the
43 thought and angrily masturbates. This action feels forced and uncomfortable. Leo is not depicted as having a healthy sexuality, one way or the other. Instead, his sexual urges are fueled by rage; in one particularly disturbing scene, he rapes the heavily pregnant
Hermione. He observes that “[h]e wanted to kiss her. He wanted to cry,” but when she refuses to kiss him he “hit[s] her across the face” (Winterson 73-4). His violence is only stopped when Pauline shows up at their house. This scene, when taken in conjunction with his earlier characterization, creates uncomfortable connections between a non- heterosexual man and sexual deviancy.
Xeno’s sexuality is depicted in less graphic terms, but it is also problematic.
Xeno is described as gay repeatedly. Leo remarks to Pauline that Xeno’s sexuality is emasculating, claiming that because Xeno is gay, “he has to fuck his best friend’s wife to feel like a man” (Winterson 80). Later on, Zel remarks that Xeno is “basically gay” and formed a relationship with a woman solely to produce a child, something that negatively affected Zel’s childhood (Winterson 152). Xeno himself remarks to Perdita that she can dance with him without feeling threatened; “you’re perfectly safe with me, I’m gay,” is what he tells her (Winterson 159). Despite this seemingly certain identification as gay, however, Xeno also remarks that he can and has had feelings for women. He mentions that he liked being intimate with women and that he was in love with MiMi. He admits that, because he was in love with both MiMi and Leo, his relationship with them was especially important. Although he considered marrying MiMi himself, he refrained from doing so because it did not matter as long as they could all be together. This idea of together is explicit – Xeno remarked that he “would have been lovers with them both,” had that been an option (Winterson 188). This is where Xeno becomes problematic.
44 Xeno himself admits to sexual relations and desire for both men and women; this description would lead him to be identified as either bisexual or pansexual. However, by explicitly naming Xeno as gay, Winterson contributes to bi- and pan-erasure. As both of these communities are frequently overlooked in discussions of sexuality and sexual equality, this is a missed opportunity. Winterson has shown herself to be adept at bringing life to minority characters, but in this instance, she dismisses an entire minority group.
There are other issues with Winterson’s depiction of sexuality. She relies heavily on Freudian psychoanalysis, a school of thought that is becoming less and less accepted in psychology. She mentions Freud by name at several points, and when Pauline questions his sexuality, Leo yells at her to quit with the “TV psychoanalysis” (Winterson
95). By having the irrational Leo dismiss psychoanalysis, it seems like Winterson is in favor of this school of thought. This idea is further developed when Autolycus tells Clo the story of Oedipus Rex, claiming that Oedipus, and the idea of the Oedipal complex, drove the development of civilization. Moreover, Winterson explicitly states that The
Winter’s Tale is a Freudian text, saying that it was written by “Shakespeare, anticipating
Freud” (Winterson 261). She also states that “it took another three hundred years” after the debut of the play “before the nascent science of psychoanalysis began to understand” the themes at hand in the play (Winterson 261).
However, in some ways, these Freudian ideas blemish the novel. Leo’s unstable sexuality stems from his poor relationship with his mother, which feels like a cheap or too easy exposition for something that should be deep and personal, and which drives so much of the action of the play. At his core, Leo feels abandoned by his mother, so he has
45 developed a sense of insecurity and jealousy in sexual relationships. This thread of abandonment may be given such importance because it connects to Winterson’s own motives for writing The Gap of Time. Winterson has stated that she feels a connection to
Perdita because she, too, was given up as an infant. In a meta-textual section at the end,
Winterson breaks the fourth wall and directly addresses the reader. She remarks how the play “has been a private text for” her because it echoes her own “sense of living outside of something” (Winterson 157). Abandonment is even given a throwaway Easter egg of sorts – MiMi’s first song is listed as “Une Femme Abandonee,” or An Abandoned
Woman (Winterson 39).
Despite the Freudian overtones, however, Winterson’s adaptation is more hit than miss. Admittedly, there are other elements that distract from the story. In particular, the setting is hard to pin down – the events at the beginning, before Perdita is born, are identifiable as taking place in 2016. However, eighteen years have passed since her birth at the end of the novel. This timeline seems a bit confusing; is the novel supposed to take place in the future? The novel is also very meta-textual, in a way that distracts from the story, rather than adds to it. Shakespeare is mentioned several times; Tony and Pauline even discuss The Winter’s Tale. Winterson even plugs one of her own novels, stating that MiMi’s acting debut was at a stage version of Winterson’s novel The PowerBook, which jars the reader from the world of the novel back into the real world where
Winterson has published these books. However, these issues pale in comparison to the way that Winterson is able to breathe new life into the story and bring new depths to established characters. Through Winterson’s lens, these characters are able to give voice to minority groups in a way that is not dismissive or stereotypical. The Gap of Time
46 opens the Hogarth Shakespeare with a solid performance.
47 Chapter Three: Atwood’s Tempest
The most recent Hogarth offering of these three is Margaret Atwood’s Hag-Seed, an adaptation of Shakespeare’s last play, The Tempest. Perhaps Shakespeare’s most complex play, The Tempest aligns with the term “problem play” just as well as The
Winter’s Tale. The usage of magic, the attempted murder(s) and regicide(s), and the overt racial and colonial overtones make the play more than a simple comedy. Yet, like
The Winter’s Tale, The Tempest is often coded as comedy based on elements like a love story and a (supposedly) happy ending, since the play concludes with reconciliation and the promise of a marriage yet to come. Ferdinand and Miranda represent the next generation of rulers, uniting Naples and Milan in a potentially fertile succession.
However, there are definite problematic aspects, particularly the treatment (or lack) of female characters. Atwood’s update attempts to reconcile some of these issues, but falls short of presenting an example of modern and fulfilling female representation. In many ways, Atwood’s Hag-Seed is a letdown, especially given that Atwood is noted for her outspoken feminism. Atwood’s emphasis on the Prospero character, the almost exclusively male cast, and less than ideal depictions of women make Hag-Seed fall short of giving The Tempest a much needed feminist update.
48 The Tempest
Typical scholarly thought on The Tempest has been anchored through a post- colonial discourse. Although Prospero codes himself as a refugee, forced to flee a political coup in a boat and arriving on the island in search of shelter, he is often seen as the colonizer. A white, aristocratic, male figure, Prospero subjugates the existing residents of the island soon after his arrival. He takes control of the island away from
Caliban, who was born there after his mother, another refugee/colonist figure, arrived following banishment from her own land. Kelsey Ridge argues that Caliban is himself a colonial figure, though he has typically been viewed as the subjugated indigenous person.
As Ridge points out, although Caliban is born on the island, he is not indigenous but the offspring of a colonizer: if one posits that Prospero is colonizer, not refugee, then
Sycorax can be viewed as the same. Sycorax and Prospero can even be viewed similarly in the way they use their magic to subjugate the residents of the island; Sycorax magically imprisons Ariel in a pine tree, and Prospero uses magic to hurt Caliban.
Furthermore, according to Ridge, the true indigenous population of the island is Ariel and his fellow spirits, not Caliban, further complicating the issues of a postcolonial approach.
Although Ridge argues against viewing Caliban as the colonized indigenous, however, that has been the typical theoretical approach applied to The Tempest. Ridge quotes from scholar Ania Loomba, who claims that “intellectuals, novelists, playwrights, performers, and activists [have] contested, appropriated, celebrated, and fought over the play as a parable of colonial relations” (qtd. in Ridge 231). Loomba argues that The
Tempest is “widely and… controversially linked to issues of colonialism and race” by scholars “swept up in the urgencies of decolonization” (qtd. in Ridge 231). As anti-
49 imperialist and anti-colonial thought began to be widely accepted, the overwhelming imperialist tones of The Tempest were questioned and dissected as the uncomfortable aftertaste of Elizabethan imperialism.
However, Sofia Muñoz Valdivieso argues that this obsessive post-colonial approach to the play ignores another troubling aspect of the play, namely, its treatment of the dearth of female characters. In her article “Double Erasure in The Tempest: Miranda in Postmodern Critical Discourse,” Valdivieso argues that a feminist approach to the play
“complements what can be considered a deficiency in the contributions of the
Postmodern critical discourse of cultural materialists and new historicists” (299-300).
Valdivieso agrees that post-colonial discourse has “shaped what could be called a new paradigm in Shakespeare studies” and that such discourse was necessary to move on from the “idealist readings” that existed before (299-300). She calls out scholars of the mid- twentieth century, specifically Frank Kermode and Northrop Frye, who “took the idealizing of the play to its extreme, reading into it an allegory of the spiritual salvation of humankind” (Valdivieso 300). Thus, according to Valdivieso, post-colonial discourse was necessary to move on and accept that the play has many problematic aspects, particularly the “present[ation of] an all powerful white master that subjugates a savage and deformed slave” (301).
However, according to Valdivieso, post-colonial discourse focuses in too narrowly on the imperialist tones of the play as the defining problematic aspect and ignores other issues. In particular, Valdivieso is concerned with the lack of discussion regarding Miranda and her oppression in the play. She takes issue with the single- mindedness of post-colonial thought: “[i]f political criticism sides with the victims of
50 power structure at play in Shakespearean works, Miranda and not only Caliban should receive attention as the victim of oppression” (Valdivieso 301). Valdivieso argues that
Miranda is the victim of “double erasure” in discussions of The Tempest:
We could say that the text of the play erases Miranda as the virtuous and rather
bland daughter whose main role is to obey her father and serve his purposes.
What I am calling the double erasure of Miranda in The Tempest is my sense that
she has also been frequently neglected in recent political readings of the play,
which have centered their analysis of its power scheme on the issue of
colonialism. Thus they have seen Caliban as a symbol of the exploited native but
have often underplayed or ignored the specific repression of Miranda. (299)
Although scholarly thought has neglected Miranda, as Valdivieso claims, she is an important character in the play. Valdivieso argues that Miranda “is crucial for the development of events in the play” because “Prospero offers his daughter as justification for most of his actions in the play” (302). She is also an example of what Ann Thompson has labeled the “enormous power of female chastity and fertility” in the play (qtd. in
Valdivieso 302).
In fact, the happy conclusion of the play rests entirely on the basis of Miranda’s virginity, since the “satisfying” ending lies in the reconciliation of Milan and Naples through the union of their respective heirs. By joining together, they represent the future of a united Milan and Naples, both in their assumed rule and their potential for future succession. Yet, the courtship and marriage of Ferdinand and Miranda begins with the question “if [Miranda] be maid or no?” (Tempest 1.2.494). This emphasis on her chastity
51 is further underscored when Ferdinand promises to marry Miranda “if a virgin/ And your affection not gone forth” (Tempest 1.2.521-2). Only if she answers in the affirmative – that yes, she is a virgin – will he make her “Queen of Naples” (Tempest 1.2.522).
This connection between Miranda’s worth and her virginity is echoed by her father when he commands Ferdinand to not anticipate his wedding vows. Brittney
Blystone argues that “Prospero obsessively protects Miranda’s virginity, making it more important than her future happiness” (79). Contrary to what Blystone argues, Prospero does seem to value Miranda’s happiness; although he is problematically manipulative, he does coordinate events so that she and Ferdinand can come to an understanding with each other. However, Blystone is correct when she argues that “Prospero’s treatment of
Miranda reinforces virginity as the key to a woman’s value and future” (79). Prospero goes so far as to curse the marriage of his own daughter if she and Ferdinand should have sex “before/ All sanctimonious ceremonies may/ With full and holy rite be ministered”
(Tempest 4.1.15-17). Ferdinand responds that temptation “shall never melt/ Mine honour into lust,” but not out of any personal misgivings (Tempest 4.1.28-9). Instead, Ferdinand makes his promise because he “hope[s]/ For quiet days, fair issue, and long life,” indicating that he fears Prospero’s curse (Tempest 4.1.24-5).
This whole discussion takes place without Miranda’s contribution. As Blystone argues, “Miranda’s virginity is not her preference but a commodity that men may control or own” (79). This is underscored by the way that the men discuss her in this scene.
Prospero refers to Miranda as Ferdinand’s “compensation” for his hard labors and ill- treatment at Prospero’s hand (Tempest 4.1.2). He later calls her his “rich gift” to
Ferdinand (Tempest 4.1.8). Going even further, he gives Miranda over to Ferdinand, not
52 as a loving father, but as a businessman: “Then, as my guest, and thine own acquisition/
Worthily purchased, take my daughter” (Tempest 4.1.13-4). Miranda is an “acquisition,” she has been “purchased,” and Ferdinand takes her in marriage as Prospero’s “guest.” It is only after Ferdinand has pledged to uphold Miranda’s honor (or, rather, virginity) that
Miranda becomes a participant in the scene. Even then, she is passively wrought; stage notes indicate that “Ferdinand and Miranda sit and talk” while Prospero consults with
Ariel. This passivity is immediately proceeded by Prospero once again describing
Miranda in mercantile, rather than paternal terms, saying that Miranda “is thine
[Ferdinand’s] own” (Tempest 4.1.34).
Miranda’s chastity also serves as a vehicle for the treatment of Caliban.
According to the play, Caliban was treated as somewhat of a family member, educated by
Prospero and Miranda, until he attempted to force himself on her. John Kunat, in his article on “Rape, Race, and Conquest in The Tempest,” argues that the attempted rape is
“the crucial event in the play’s prehistory” (309). The entirety of Caliban’s subjugation is predicated on this attempt. However, Kunat cautions against a simplified reading of the act. In many ways, Caliban’s attempted rape has played into colonialist ideas about the violence of indigenous, particularly African men against white women. If the play serves as an idealist version of imperialism, then Caliban is justly cast as evildoer by way of his African heritage and uncontrollable urges. This view is resisted by post-colonial readings of the play. By challenging the inherent violence of African men espoused by imperialist Europeans, post-colonial readings remove the outdated ideas that biology and racial inferiority are responsible for Caliban’s attempted rape. This conception also links to the way that supposed “fears” of white women being raped by black men were used to
53 justify persecution – up to and including murder – of black men in the name of protecting white women’s “virtue.” Such a perspective creates a conundrum, where Caliban is viewed as a victim of oppression, but he has also attempted to commit a great crime against another person. On the other hand, this attempted rape may be overblown by
Prospero in an attempt to justify his persecution of Caliban. Kunat argues that this is an aspect of the reading that is not yet fully developed.
Kunat argues that “reading the rape in strictly colonialist terms risks negating violence perpetuated against women” represented in Miranda’s person (311). Miranda, according to Kunat, “has been subjected to the most brutal form of male power by
Caliban” (310). Yet, we see that she is consistently under male power, through the policing of her sexuality by both her father and Ferdinand. Miranda’s character serves as a warning against physical and sexual violence against women, but only so far as to control her sexuality. The curse put on her marriage with Ferdinand by her father is precariously kept in check by her chastity, yet this threat is not seen as violence against her, despite Prospero’s threat to make “the union of [their] bed” so loathsome “that [they] shall hate it both” (Tempest 4.1.21-2). This patriarchal threat is viewed as less onerous than the one presented by Caliban, even though what Prospero threatens can be read as forcing Miranda into marital rape by her husband. In either situation, Miranda is completely at the mercy of men who have shown themselves to have no mercy at all, but view her as a pawn, political, sexual, or otherwise.
Other critics disagree with this characterization, seeing Miranda as an empowering figure. After her attempted rape, she does not cower but explicitly calls out
Caliban, calling him an “abhorred slave” who was “deservedly confined into this rock”
54 for his actions (Tempest 1.2.411, 421). While this has distinct colonial overtones, especially with the use of the term “slave” to describe Caliban, it does show that Miranda is not going to back away from her attacker. Robert Pierce argues that Miranda also takes a direct approach to her courtship and securing her future through marriage. Pierce argues that Miranda and Ferdinand are partners in their relationship, and “are visibly the young couple who have chosen each other with their own willful determination” (51).
This free will can be seen in the way that Miranda subverts her father’s edict to not interact with Ferdinand, approaching him when she thinks that Prospero is “hard at study…safe for these three hours” (Tempest 3.1.21-2).
Although she acknowledges her desire to obey her father, worrying that her
“father’s precepts/ I therein do forget” when she speaks to Ferdinand, Miranda continues conversing with him regardless (Tempest 3.1.68-9). She even boldly addresses
Ferdinand, asking first “Do you love me?” and later “My husband, then?” (Tempest
3.1.79, 104). Once she overcomes her father’s instructions not to speak with Ferdinand, she throws caution to the wind, claiming “Hence, bashful cunning,/ And prompt me, plain and holy innocence” (Tempest 3.1.96-7). Kunat argues that, in this instance,
Miranda’s isolation on the island works in her favor. He claims that “Miranda expresses her feelings with an unmediated frankness born of innocence and lack of artifice” (315).
He goes even further, stating that Miranda’s innocence serves to upset the patriarchal power structure:
Caliban’s political transition from a natural to a civil state is paralleled by
Miranda’s gendered transformation from daughter to prospective wife, but, like
the enslaved creature with whom she once shared a household, Miranda resists the
55 terms of this change. Refusing to be constituted as the beloved who derives
power from subjugating male desire, Miranda takes the initiative with Ferdinand
by proposing marriage… she places herself on equal terms with Ferdinand,
ignoring or ignorant of the power dynamic that structures the relationship
between men and women. (309, emphasis mine)
Because Miranda is ignorant of the ways that romance plays out in the courts, she is able to approach Ferdinand with an openness that frees her from artificial power structures.
Her frankness and open approach even allow her to conduct an impromptu marriage with
Ferdinand.
It seems, then, that Miranda can be viewed as a powerful figure, but only when she herself is taking action. She loses her power when she is reduced to a pawn by her father. Although she is the one to propose marriage to Ferdinand, it is her father who gives her to Ferdinand, securing Prospero’s hold over her as patriarchal authority; even if she has conducted marriage rites with Ferdinand, her father still makes a big show of conducting the transactional interchange. She is also viewed as a pawn by Caliban, who attempted to rape her, and in his own words, “people” the island “with Calibans,” or essentially, to impregnate her and use her as a tool to overthrow her father (Tempest
1.2.409-10). Caliban later uses Miranda as an incentive to convince Stephano and
Trinculo to overthrow Prospero, waving her in front of them like a prize to be won.
During the instances where Miranda is on-stage and speaking, she is powerful and in control. But when she is off-stage, or on-stage but not speaking, she is reduced to a sexual pawn.
56 Several other women are mentioned, but not seen, echoing Miranda’s loss of power when she is not actively taking place in the play: Prospero’s wife, Ferdinand’s sister, and Caliban’s mother. These women are predominantly known by their association with these men. Prospero’s wife is only mentioned as a chaste woman, who proved Prospero’s fatherhood, and therefore control, of Miranda. Ferdinand’s sister is mentioned as a marriage pawn, used by her father to gain a political alliance with Tunis.
But Caliban’s mother, the witch Sycorax, is mentioned most of the three.
Despite never appearing on stage, Sycorax is an interesting character who haunts most of the play. She is described extremely negatively, as a hag and a witch. However, these descriptions come primarily from Prospero, who has a vested interest in casting
Sycorax as a vile creature. This investment is threefold; first, to discount her ownership of the island; second, to subjugate Caliban; and third, to establish control over Ariel.
Firstly, Prospero needs to distinguish himself from Sycorax as an interloper who takes control of the island. By casting her as a witch and a demon, he distances himself from her, despite also being a magician. Using the highly gendered term “witch” underscores that her power is demonic, rather than learned, like Prospero’s. Thus he is also able to control Caliban by denouncing his mother. If Sycorax was a hag and a witch, her son cannot be in power. Prospero even accuses Caliban of being the son of the devil, further connecting Sycorax with Elizabethan conceptions of witchcraft. Caliban is presented as, at best, the illegitimate child of a witch, and at worst as literal devil spawn. Thirdly,
Prospero is able to control Ariel by way of “freeing” Ariel from Sycorax’s prison.
Prospero continually reminds Ariel that he was freed only by Prospero’s magic, and uses this debt to maintain control of the island.
57 However, Blystone argues that Prospero’s denunciations of Sycorax can be used against him. While Blystone acknowledges that Sycorax’s “absence is an extreme example of women lacking agency and representation,” her absence also allows her to become more than herself (74). According to Blystone, the fact that the audience’s only perspective of Sycorax comes through the mouthpiece of Prospero creates doubt about his account. Prospero’s power – over the island, over Caliban and Ariel – is predicated on the assumption that Sycorax was a vile hag. If he is to retain this power, he has to maintain this assumption. But, Blystone argues, by so doing he casts doubt about his power. By showing Sycorax as a threat to his power, Prospero acknowledges that she could have power of her own. Blystone argues that “this opposition [between Sycorax and Prospero] creates tension in the patriarchy and space for potential female power”
(73).
Sycorax and Prospero are cast as two sides of the same coin: magical, powerful, interlopers. Both subjugate the inhabitants of the island through magical means. The difference is that “Prospero is a white, male patriarch,” whereas “Sycorax is a woman, possibly of color” (Blystone 73). Because of their similarity, Prospero has to go to great lengths to assure the audience that he is not like her, and this is achieved through his privilege as a white male. However, that does not mean that Sycorax is easily dismissed.
Addressing the fact that Sycorax does not actually appear in the play, Blystone argues that “the concept of strong female power is problematic if one considers a female character’s presence on stage as the only indicator of her influence” (80, emphasis mine).
It is Prospero’s very attempts to discount Sycorax that give her power in the play; she influences him and his actions. “Absent,” Blystone claims, “Sycorax can exist as an idea,
58 a contradiction that twists the logic of patriarchy against itself” (81).
That being said, Sycorax does not actually appear on stage, and does not actively participate in the play. By existing “as an idea,” Sycorax cannot exist as a character.
While Prospero’s attempts to denounce her weaken his position, as Blystone claims, he is still able to control her narrative. Sycorax is given no redemption, no action, no voice.
The only female with a voice is still Miranda, who, as has already been discussed, is problematic in her own right. The lack of female representation brings to mind the 2010
Julie Taymor film adaptation of The Tempest. Taymor famously recast Prospero as
Prospera, played by Helen Mirren. Theoretically, changing the main character from male to female ought to make the play more palatable to feminist audiences.
However, Courtney Lehmann, in her article about Taymor’s Tempest, argues that this does not work out so smoothly. Lehmann quotes from Taymor herself, who explicitly stated that her film “isn’t a feminist tract” (qtd. in Lehmann 48). Lehmann argues that Taymor “clearly remains uncomfortable with the elephant in the room,” the issue of female representation that is upended in her version. Lehmann does admit, however, that Taymor’s Prospera is not completely an improvement. Prospera is coded as more rash and emotional than Prospero, which plays into stereotypes about women’s emotionality. Prospera is also seen as dominated at the end of the film, where she resumes wearing constricting female clothing to return to her “rightful” place in Milan.
Whereas Prospero’s speech about giving up his magic allows him to resume his place as the Duke, Prospera’s renunciation of her magic removes her source of power.
Hag-Seed
59 Atwood, then, is approaching a play with serious issues of female representation and empowerment. Atwood is a noted feminist author, famous for publishing works like
The Handmaid’s Tale, an attack on cultural oppression of women and their potential for power and equality. It would be easy to assume, then, that Atwood’s version of The
Tempest would be a more modern meditation on the role of women in the play, especially as she is writing about a contemporary society. Surprisingly, however, Atwood’s Hag-
Seed and its gender politics are not as easily categorized. She still faces issues with how to update The Tempest without losing its spirit. Unfortunately, this dilemma means that, in many ways, Atwood falls short of the potential for recasting the problematic aspects of the play. Her treatment of female characters is interesting and complex, but also disappointing for those who might have expected a more explicitly feminist text.
Atwood’s Hag-Seed is the most meta-textual of the Hogarth novels released so far. In her adaptation, Prospero becomes Felix Phillips, a temperamental and creative theater director. He is known for his over-the-top renditions of Shakespeare plays, using wacky techniques and rewrites; one example is his version of The Winter’s Tale, where his Hermione comes back to life as a vampire. Like Prospero, he focuses solely on his artistic vision and leaves the details to his assistant, Tony, who inevitably removes him from power and usurps his role as creative director when Felix plans an outrageously over-the-top version of The Tempest. Felix leaves and goes into self-imposed exile.
Eventually, he begins teaching theater at a local correctional facility, called Fletcher, as a means of rehabilitating the men there. He concocts a scheme of revenge against Tony and the men who deposed them, eventually luring them to see his version of The
Tempest, at which performance he drugs and films the men for blackmail purposes. In
60 the end, he secures the funds to continue his program at the correctional institute and, having gained his revenge, feels like he can move on with his life.
The problems begin when you consider the characterization. Felix is, undoubtedly, the main character of the novel. Unlike Winterson, who presents multiple characters’ points of view, Atwood only provides Felix’s perspective. Felix speculates about what his fellow characters might be thinking, but the audience cannot truly know.
By writing in third-person limited perspective, Atwood is literally limited, and therefore the audience is limited as well. In the play, the audience gets the perspective of many of the characters. While Prospero could be conceived of as the main character, there are scenes from just about everyone’s point of view, from Miranda to Caliban to Antonio and even the drunken Stephano and Trinculo get their moment in the sun. By using the
Prospero-figure as the only lens through which the audience views the story, Atwood loses the potential for all of these characters to present their own stories. This choice is particularly disappointing, from a minority studies perspective, because Atwood is focusing on the white male protagonist and losing the potential for a more thorough minority perspective, either from Miranda, Caliban, or Ariel.
It should be noted that there are distinct similarities between Atwood’s Hag-Seed and Howard Jacobson’s Shylock Is My Name, the first Hogarth novel written by a male author. Jacobson also presents the story almost exclusively through the lens of his protagonist, Simon Strulovitch, “a rich, furious, easily hurt philanthropist with on-again off-again enthusiasms, a distinguished collection of twentieth-century Anglo-Jewish art and old Bibles, a passion for Shakespeare… and a daughter going off the rails” (Jacobson
1-2). Jacobson’s Simon and Atwood’s Felix are both upper-class, privileged, educated,
61 and artistic men. They are both also fairly self-centered characters, and view the actions of the story only so far as they affect themselves. Shylock Is My Name is also incredibly meta-textual; Simon frequently speaks with the supposed spirit of Shylock from The
Merchant of Venice. The difference between the two men, of course, is that Simon is a
Jewish man, whereas Felix does not appear to have any distinct religious or cultural heritage. Simon is a minority figure by way of his heritage, and this element is a very defining factor in his story. In this sense, even though the characters and stories are the same from play to novel, Jacobson is able to give a better look into a minority perspective than Atwood.
The most distinctive connection between Simon and Felix is also one of the more problematic aspects of Hag-Seed. In Shylock Is My Name, Simon is constantly speaking to (and usually commiserating with) the spirit of Shylock. This relationship is pretty much an internal creation; Simon sees similarities between himself and Shylock and looks to Shylock for advice on how to deal with the struggles of his life. He also sees that there is more to Shylock than is presented in The Merchant of Venice, and the
Jacobson story provides a sort of redemption for Shakespeare’s extremely stereotyped
Jewish merchant. This concept connects to Hag-Seed through Felix, who is in constant contact with the spirit of his daughter, naturally named Miranda. There are differences;
Shylock is a fictional character, taken straight from The Merchant of Venice, whereas
Felix’s Miranda is not quite the same as The Tempest’s. Yet, both men’s obsession with these characters allows these minority characters to be a part of the story when they otherwise would not have been.
However, while Jacobson’s Shylock gets redemption and a chance to tell his
62 story, Miranda in Hag-Seed literally has no voice. Shylock speaks to Simon. They have full conversations, and Shylock is a full character, even if he is not actually present.
Miranda, on the other hand, is presented as only a figment of Felix’s imagination, his obsession making him see things that are not there. She cannot actually communicate with him because she is not real. Miranda is not quite the character that she is in the play.
Instead, she is Felix’s daughter who died very young. Felix was already emotionally distraught by the loss of his wife, who died giving birth to Miranda. When Miranda dies from meningitis while Felix is busy at the theater, his guilt and sorrow become an obsession. He becomes fixated on putting on a version of The Tempest as a sort of memorial to Miranda, but also as a way of bringing her back to life. When he is dismissed and his Tempest is cancelled, he becomes slightly unhinged, and Miranda becomes a spirit, haunting him.
Because she is an imaginary spirit, Miranda cannot be a full character; she is more like Sycorax than Shakespeare’s Miranda. She has no voice, and her only
“communication” is with Prospero, and even then the communication is entirely one- sided. She cannot interact with other characters, and therefore has no chance for growth and change. There is obviously no chance of her developing a romance with a stand-in
Ferdinand, because she is dead. Toward the end of the story, as Felix becomes more involved in his revenge scheme and less focused on his loneliness, she begins to fade.
She does follow him to Fletcher, and he thinks that she is able to perform duties for him, making her more of an Ariel character than Miranda. She seemingly begins to shadow the actor playing Ariel, 8Handz.
At times, it seems as if she is really there; at one point, 8Handz mentions that
63 there is feedback on his recording, “like someone was saying the lines at the same time”
(Atwood 195). He discards the voice as probably feedback, but it does make the audience wonder if she actually was saying the lines. However, in other instances, it becomes clear that Miranda is not actually there. She is able to get by the guards at
Fletcher because, according to Felix, “invisible as thou art,” no one will see her (Atwood
193). When she “doesn’t even cause a blip” on the scanners, he laughs and proclaims
“[t]hat’s my tricksy spirit!” (Atwood 193). Naturally, she does not register on the scanners or to the guards, because she does not actually exist. Felix has gotten so caught up in his obsession about reviving Miranda through his production of The Tempest that he believes she is really there; he thinks that “she’s determined to be in the play” (Atwood
192). This moment is another instance where third-person perspective becomes troublesome. Since the audience only knows what Felix knows, they are also limited by his skewed perspective. It is up to the reader to decide what to believe about Miranda, an open-endedness that limits the potential for Miranda to be a fully developed character.
In the end, Miranda becomes something between The Tempest’s Miranda and
Ariel. She is beloved as Felix’s daughter, and she has been, in a sense, his only companion during his self-imposed exile. However, she is also a spirit, and if one believes Felix, one able to interact with the real world, albeit only subtly. He considers her as his daughter, but towards the end of the novel, he also considers her a “tricksy spirit,” more in line with the characterization of Ariel in the play. The novel’s conclusion attempts to clear this confusion up, but still leaves things a little muddled. Once Felix has had his revenge on Tony, he gives up his obsession and prepares to go on a cruise, leaving his self-imposed exile behind. He realizes that he cannot take Miranda with him,
64 because she is dead and her spirit needs to be set free, an action which also frees Felix from his obsessive need to keep Miranda’s memory alive. He realizes that he has been
“keeping her tethered to him all this time,” more in line with how Prospero keeps
Miranda isolated on the island (Atwood 291-2). However, he also regrets “[f]orcing her to do his bidding,” much more in line with Prospero’s relationship with Ariel (Atwood
292). He thinks of her as “his dear one, his only child,” but in the end she is Ariel, not
Miranda (Atwood 292). Knowing that “he owes her” release from his obsession, he tells her, “To the elements be free,” the very thing that Prospero tells Ariel (Atwood 292).
This version of Miranda is not the only female character in the novel. Miranda’s mother is named – Nadia – which is more than is given in the play. However, as has already been mentioned, she dies in childbirth. This depiction is a problematic action; not only does it remove her from being an active character in the novel, it is an inherently gendered death. Death in childbirth has become almost cliché, a stand-in tragedy to further the plot and give pathos to the men left behind.
A more positive female character is given in Estelle, the woman in charge of
Fletcher’s rehabilitation programs. She is personally invested in the theater program, and very excited when Felix agrees to help, having recognized him from the Makeshewig
Festival. At first, Estelle seems as if she is just a vehicle for Felix’s revenge. She is the one to tell him that Tony will be coming to Fletcher to view Felix’s Tempest, allowing him to plot his revenge. But Estelle does not allow herself to become a side character.
When there are proposed budget cuts, she argues against them, saying that the Fletcher
Players are her “baby,” so she “take[s] a personal interest” (Atwood 70). When Felix begins plotting, she makes a choice to allow him to continue, because she knows that his
65 revenge will get her the funding she needs to continue her programs. Felix acknowledges that she has been important to his work; he says that Estelle had “done him quite a few favors over the years, acting discreetly in the background” (Atwood 69). When he needs to get an actress clearance for the prison, he remarks that “Estelle ha[d] arranged that for him… Estelle knows which strings to pull and which egos to massage” (Atwood 114).
Estelle shows that she has the power to arrange things that work to both her and Felix’s benefit, demonstrating her authority.
Estelle is somewhat problematic, though. She is frequently cast as having a crush on Felix, and this romantic element diminishes her character. In addition to making her character appear silly at times, the crush also gives Felix the ability to exert control over her. When she asks him to meet over dinner, he chooses to meet over lunch instead, because “dinner might become prolonged, and involve alcoholic drinks, and then get intense, either on Estelle’s part or his” (Atwood 67-8). Although Estelle has indicated that she is interested in him, and although she is a grown woman who can make her own decisions, Felix polices her romantic potential in much the same way that Prospero controls Miranda’s. At the same time, Felix is not above encouraging Estelle if it gets him what he wants. He remarks that Estelle “wanted to please him, that was obvious.
And he’d shown his pleasure; though, he hopes, not too much” (Atwood 69). He also remarks that he needs to be careful not to lead her on, but is not above innuendo; when she excitedly tells him she has accomplished something important, he asks what she has done, but “his tone implied… [w]hat clever, naughty thing,” while “stroking his whiskers, activating his eyebrows” (Atwood 69). The whole situation becomes uncomfortable, as this man is both encouraging and policing this woman’s sexuality in
66 order to get what he wants.
Felix is not only disturbing in his treatment of women; he seems to fixate on racial characteristics to the detriment of actual character value. Felix makes a cast listing to share with another actor which displays remarkable condescension. Each actor is fully described, but Felix focuses in on the racial and cultural backgrounds of his actors.
8Handz is described as having an “East Indian family background;” Leggs, who plays
Caliban, is “mixed” (Atwood 137). An actor with a “Chinese family background on one side” is described as “[r]ound-faced, pale” (Atwood 139). Perhaps the most discomfiting is his description of the man known as PPod. PPod is “African Canadian,” and Felix remarks that he “[w]ould have been a fine Caliban but is needed in other capacities”
(Atwood 140). This characterization plays into the colonialist ideas of The Tempest, where Caliban is an African man. Also, Felix remarks that PPod has “[m]usical talent,” and that he “know[s] about the clichés” (Atwood 140). However, he does not expand on what these clichés are, creating an assumption that the audience should already have preconceived notions about black men and clichés. Felix is contributing to stereotyping of black men in the character of PPod, and because the audience only sees through
Felix’s perspective, these racial undertones are not easily dismissed.
The racial connotations continue; Felix later describes one of the guards solely by his Indian descent and wearing of a turban. At another moment, Felix is observing his new students. He recounts that “[t]hey are many hues, from white to black through yellow, red, and brown” (Atwood 83). This characterization is uncomfortable and unnecessary. These men are already typecast as criminals, and adding a racial component plays into uncomfortable stereotypes in modern society about racial crime.
67 Given that there is a large disparity between the prison population of non-white men and the actual population of non-white men, focusing in on the racial disparities of these men seems especially problematic, tethering the identities of these men to Felix’s obsessions about race. This is especially problematic in comparison to Winterson, who is able to address the racial inequalities in the justice system without making Shep or Clo seem like a racial caricature.
At other times, the inmates are treated as if their criminal status makes them inferior to the other characters. Felix makes a cast listing, as noted earlier, to share with
Anne-Marie, the actress who will be playing Miranda in his staging, and he lists each inmate’s crimes on it. Anne-Marie calls him out, remarking “reproachfully” that Felix
“used to say we should come to [the production] naked. No preconceptions about each other” (Atwood 143). Clearly, Felix has no qualms about treating the inmates as though their crimes define them, despite his insistence on calling them actors.
But, Anne-Marie is one of the best parts of Atwood’s revision. She is the most present female character in the story. She was the actress Felix originally chose to portray Miranda in his version of The Tempest at Maskeshewig, before he was removed from his position as Artistic Director. Twelve years later, when he produces The
Tempest at Fletcher, none of the male prisoners will agree to portray a female character, as it will put them in a precarious position – all the inmates at Fletcher are male, and being seen as feminine is acknowledged as a path to sexual abuse. Felix searches out
Anne-Marie, and invites her to be a part of his performance. This is a risky move; bringing a woman into the facility has the potential to be a disaster. However, he assures
Anne-Marie that she will be safe. When he informs his actors that he will be bringing in
68 a woman, he tells them to “[c]onsider her participation a privilege. Any trouble… and she’s gone, and so are you” (Atwood 89). By threatening to remove men from his production, he is able to ensure Anne-Marie’s safety.
However, when we meet the now-adult Anne-Marie, it becomes clear that she is not the fragile and innocent Miranda that Felix considers her to be. Unlike Miranda in the play, Anne-Marie has been granted the privilege of aging. She is not an isolated innocent. After Felix’s Tempest was cancelled, Anne-Marie lost her chance at being a star, and has become bitter about it. She works as a waitress in Makeshewig, “[h]oping to pick up something at the Festival” (Atwood 96). At lunch, where Felix is hoping to entice her to return to acting, she drinks beer and swears; she has a tattoo. She speaks
“with a hard edge to her voice,” and mockingly refers to the inmates as “lily-white no- touchy Ferdinands” when Felix assures her they will not touch her (Atwood 98). But in some ways, she is still the young Miranda of the play. She remarks that she “still remember[s] the lines” and that she “was working so hard on that” (Atwood 98). She has enthusiasm, and Felix remarks that she has “a freshness” about her (Atwood 99).
In other ways, she has definitely changed. When she accepts Felix’s offer, shaking his hand, he remarks that “[s]he had a grip like a jar-opener,” and that “[c]hastity won’t be the only reason his Prospero will be warning the Ferdinand lad to keep away from this girl: Ferdinand wouldn’t want to be a pre-mangled bridegroom” (100). What was a disturbingly patriarchal move in the play, Prospero obsessively managing
Miranda’s virginity, completely changes in the novel to become an example of female power. Anne-Marie is her own person, and she will not be so easily managed. When
Felix announces her casting to his inmates, he shows them a video of her choreography
69 work, a very physical routine wherein she proves herself entirely capable of defending herself. Felix thinks of the video as “Anne-Marie making lasagna out of her two male dancing partners” (Atwood 114).
Watching the video, the men are in awe, remarking that “[s]he could tear a whoreson strip off you”1 and that, if “she kicks you in the nuts, they shoot right out your mouth” (Atwood 102-3). WonderBoy, the actor who will be portraying Ferdinand, remarks sadly that he “bet[s] she can kill with her scurvy thumbs” (Atwood 103). He had been looking forward to romancing a young actress, and now realizes that he will be working with a very self-empowered woman. Felix warns Anne-Marie that WonderBoy
“could talk the pants off a statue of Queen Victoria,” but she tells him to back off the
“overprotective dad” aspect of Prospero and Miranda’s relationship (145). He acknowledges that she is “a hard-shelled little nut” (Atwood 145). But this is not the entirety of Anne-Marie’s character. She has more depth than Miranda; she is neither wide-eyed innocent nor tough, completely jaded cynic. She comprises both in one; when
Felix tells her not to go “overboard… on the innocence and purity,” she laughs and orders a beer with her salad (Atwood 142). She also teaches the men choreography, and becomes friends with them through their acting. In her spare time, she knits. She is a more multi-dimensional character, and somewhat makes up for the disappointing way that Atwood treats Felix’s Miranda.
Anne-Marie’s – and, in a sense, Miranda’s – shining moment comes at the conclusion of the novel. After the completion of the play, Felix has the actors write up an
1 One of Felix’s rules at Fletcher is that the men are not allowed to use conventional swear words; they must only use curses from the text of the play itself. This is to make the men read the play fully, and becomes an enjoyable part of the program for the men.
70 epilogue based on their individual characters. Miranda was not originally going to have this option, because Anne-Marie is not technically a student in the program – once again removing her voice. Even worse, the men in the program assume that, after the conclusion of the play, Antonio and Sebastian will continue with their plot to commit regicide, and that Miranda will be an unfortunate victim. They assume that she will be raped and killed.
However, Anne-Marie is not going to sit on the sidelines and let the men assume that she or Miranda would be a passive victim. She interjects that she has her own idea of the epilogue, and begins by saying that the men are “talking as if Miranda is just a rag doll. As if she’s just lying around with her legs open, draping herself over the furniture like wet spaghetti with a sign on her saying, Rape Me” (Atwood 260). According to
Anne-Marie, however, “it wouldn’t be like that” (Atwood 260). Anne-Marie argues that
Miranda is strong and clever, and that she would fight back. In the end, according to
Anne-Marie, Miranda would stop the regicide attempt and save the men, in a reversal of the typical story. Anne-Marie’s Miranda is an example of a powerful woman, standing up for herself and even saving others, rather than being a passive plaything for the men.
Interestingly, Anne-Marie supports her story by saying that Miranda would undoubtedly have studied magic, both under Prospero’s tutelage and on her own.
Miranda, according to Anne-Marie, is able to stop the regicide by using powers not unlike Prospero’s, calling on Ariel and the goddesses from Prospero’s masque for support. This imagining is a connection back to Sycorax, the female witch who was reviled for her powers. As noted earlier, Blystone describes how Prospero slanders
Sycorax in order to assert his patriarchal and colonial authority. He makes out that
71 female magic is different from his magic, and therefore he is allowed to be a magician whereas Sycorax was not. By making Miranda a powerful magician like her father,
Anne-Marie (and therefore Atwood) upends this idea about female witchcraft. It is a way for Miranda to be connected to the only other female figure with power in the play, without falling victim to the inherently gendered negativity that Prospero espouses.
Atwood came into the Hogarth project with one of Shakespeare’s most complex and controversial plays. She had a difficult task ahead of her, to make The Tempest palatable to a modern audience with established ideas about racial and sexual equality.
The play has distinct imperialist and colonialist tones, and is overwhelmingly male.
There is only one female character, and she is often relegated to the role of sexual and political pawn. Being a noted feminist author, one would not be faulted for assuming that
Atwood would update the play to include more equality and better female characters.
Unfortunately, she does not meet that expectation.
There are several good elements about Atwood’s adaptation. Anne-Marie is one of them. She is tough, enthusiastic, physically intense. She knits and does martial arts.
She is well-rounded and thoroughly developed, and she shows a distinct interest in furthering the character of Miranda. However, Anne-Marie does not make up for the unsettling characterization of the (very few) other female characters. Estelle has much potential as a professional woman with established romantic interests. She could have been a powerful character, and at times she brushes this power. Her ability to manipulate the government officials and secure her budget is admirable. Yet, because the audience views the story through Felix, she is treated in very condescending tones. Felix views her as beneath him, and though he is interested in her romantically, he polices her sexuality
72 and inhibits her ability to make her own choices. The Miranda character is also disturbing; a figment of Felix’s imagination that seems to come to life, Miranda is locked into his perspective of a perfect, unsullied, innocent daughter. She has no potential of her own, because she is not real.
Ultimately, the downfall of Hag-Seed is that Atwood uses third-person narrative focused on the character of Felix. Felix is a very privileged individual, as an educated, upper-class, white male. He considers himself better than other characters, be they female, like Estelle, or ethnic, like the guards, or criminals, like the inmates. He casts himself as Prospero, the all-knowing, wise, fatherly figure, and this is how he views himself in comparison to the other characters. Because Atwood uses this privileged male figure as her protagonist, her story is limited to only his perspective, and his perspective is very narrow. While Hag-Seed had the potential to become a powerful reinterpretation of The Tempest, it is ultimately a very limited revival, and it falls short of any assumptions that Atwood would provide the updates the play sorely needed.
73 Chapter Four: Tyler’s Shrew
Anne Tyler faced an even more difficult task than Atwood when she adapted The
Taming of the Shrew into her novel, Vinegar Girl. The Taming of the Shrew is interesting in that it has received a lot of attention, both in scholarly circles and in popular culture, capturing the attention of adaptors as well as academics. The play has a long history of adaptations, from eighteenth-century farce to twenty-first century teen drama. Something about Taming captivates audiences, and keeps them coming back for more. However, a close read of the text reveals disturbing themes of domestic violence, misogyny, and outright torture. If Taming is posited as a great love story, as many adaptations conceive of it, then the play requires the audience to ignore serious issues in the text.
As a Hogarth adaptor, Tyler’s task was to update The Taming of the Shrew without losing the spirit. She updates the play by removing many of the disturbing aspects, but in the process loses much of what drives the plot. Perhaps this loss is an indication that the story rests upon the disturbing themes. When forced to choose between outright and violent misogyny or a somewhat passive book, Tyler chose to move away from the sexist and disturbing themes, even if such a choice came at the expense of much of the plot. However, Tyler’s novel is not a completely passive retelling. Instead, she rests the motivations for the story on Kate’s internal psychology, providing a much
74 clearer image of the shrew that allows Kate to become a sympathetic, and even admirable, character.
The Taming of the Shrew
The Taming of the Shrew has been a subject of much scholarly discussion. Robert
B. Heilman states that “[f]or some three hundred years, [the play] was generally accepted as being about the taming of a shrew” (45). This may seem exceedingly obvious, but what Heilman is saying is that, for much of its history, Taming has been accepted at face value. According to Heilman, audiences accepted that “Kate was a shrew, Petruchio was a tamer, and he tamed Kate” (45). Shrew-taming was a legitimate genre of literature at the time, and therefore Shakespeare’s shrew was part of a larger body of work.
In some ways, Taming has been viewed as a step forward from its contemporaries in shrew-taming. Natasha Korda reports that “[c]ommentary on [the play] has frequently noted that the play’s novel taming strategy marks a departure from traditional shrew- taming tales. Unlike his predecessors, Petruchio does not use force to tame Kate” (277).
Margaret Loftus Ranald agrees, arguing that what is “most important” in a discussion of
Taming is that “an examination of the text reveals that at no time does Petruchio raise his hand against Kate” (318). Accepting that Petruchio does not physically beat Kate as a standard of decency, however, is very troubling. Much of the discussion of the play uses phrasing that contributes to a disturbing view of domestic violence. Even the usage of the word “taming” is problematic. It asserts that Kate is “a wild creature who must be controlled” (Maguire 247).
Kate is not treated as a human being by Petruchio and, disturbingly, not by
75 scholarly discussions as well. Laurie E. Maguire discusses the connotations of taming in the sense of taming a wild animal, particularly a hunting animal like a falcon or a high- spirited horse. “Taming,” according to Maguire, “can take many forms” (236).
Connecting Petruchio’s behavior to hunting, she argues that “[a]s a sport, hunting demonstrates power, predominantly masculine power, over wild nature” (Maguire 247).
Hunting also “has analogies in the wooing in The Taming of the Shrew” (Maguire 247).
Maguire brings up instances in the play where Kate is dehumanized, stating that “[i]n act
5 Katherine is characterized as a deer… [but] as the betting language in the scene makes clear, Katherine also functions as a retriever” (249). Katherine is both hunted prey and hunting tool, in this sense. In neither description is she granted the status of a human being.
But some scholars see Taming as a tale about romance. Even Maguire describes
Petruchio’s treatment of Kate as “wooing” even as she likens it to hunting. David Daniell argues that “[n]owadays, The Taming of the Shrew… is becoming understood as a fast- moving play about various kinds of romance and fulfillment in marriage” (71). These scholars see Kate as meeting her match in Petruchio, and making an empowered choice to engage in a relationship with him. Angelina Avedano argues that Kate and Petruchio are “co-heroes in an alliance for agency” (112). According to Avedano, Kate and
Petruchio are both outsiders who resist typical societal expectations, and they come together in a mutual form of support and resistance. Avedano argues that Kate is “able to
‘submit’ herself to Petruchio because she trusts him not to dominate her” (112). Trust is a large part of Avedano’s argument. She also quotes from John C. Bean, whose “feminist argument maintains that ‘Kate is humanized by her husband and discovers love through
76 the discovery of her own identity’” (qtd. in Avedano 112). But this argument reinforces the concept of Kate as non- or sub-human, who only becomes human after domination –
“taming” – by her husband.
Other scholars agree with Avedano’s assertion that Kate and Petruchio are partners. Ranald claims that Kate sees Petruchio as her only escape from the world that her father wants her to be a part of. Choosing Petruchio over any other suitors, Ranald argues, is a “risky gamble” that “succeeds thanks to Petruchio, who in effect becomes her true champion and saves her from a matrimonial fate that would for her indeed be worse than death” (323). Heilman claims that Petruchio’s treatment of Kate is a sort of education. He argues that Petruchio “develops real warmth of feeling for Kate as an individual – a warmth that makes him strive to bring out the best in her” (Heilman 53).
Heilman’s claim is a step up from the supposed humanization that other scholars see, but it still sees Kate as lesser. Arbaayah Ali Termizi argues that Kate’s “taming” is “a blessing not only for Petruccio and Katherine, but also for Katherine’s father” (199, sic).
According to Termizi, Baptista is satisfied at the conclusion of the play not only because he has succeeded in marrying his daughters off, but because of the way that Kate has changed: Baptista ends the play “feeling particularly happy for Katherine’s change of character from a headstrong girl to a mild-mannered woman” (Termizi 199). This view reflects a trend of viewing Kate as a wild, uncontrollable (and therefore undesirable) woman who in the end becomes valuable because she has pleased the men around her by giving up her independence.
Some scholars push back against this trend, however. Heilman argues that positive viewings of Petruchio “are consistent with a certain modern revisionism in the
77 interpretation of the play” (45). As noted above, many scholars are quick to categorize
Petruchio’s treatment of Kate as less violent because he does not physically touch her.
However, other scholars are less hesitant to put a blunt spin on things: Ann C.
Christensen charges that “[w]hen Shakespeare’s Petruchio brings his wife home after their wedding in Act 4 of The Taming of the Shrew, he proceeds with a taming strategy based on physical deprivation and psychological torment” (333). Although Christensen continues to use the problematic term “taming,” she is not hesitant to assert that
Petruchio’s treatment of Kate is torture. Termizi disturbingly refers to Petruchio’s actions as a “cunningly planned taming game” (197). According to Termizi, “Petruccio succeeds in taming Katherine into an obedient wife by cunningly depriving her of basic human needs which are sleep and food. He carefully engineers his plan of simultaneous deprivation and verbal praises” (193). Though this statement may be disturbingly praiseful of Petruchio’s tactics, it does admit outright that what Petruchio is doing is
“depriving [Kate] of basic human needs.” Termizi may seem to admire Petruchio, but she does admit that the story is ultimately about “debasement” and “degradation” (196,
191). Avedano’s article echoes this idea, claiming that feminist scholars view “Kate’s ultimate ‘wiving’ [as] synonymous with the degradation of women” (112). While
Avedano herself does not seem to agree, she does admit that this is a valid perspective on the play. Ranald also remarks upon the feminist response to the play, saying that
“[t]oday the basic problem of the play is the submission scene, which has become rather distasteful to many feminists” (325).
In the end, Ranald sums up the controversy in the academic world surrounding the play:
78 In the post-feminist era, the jury is still out on The Taming of the Shrew. Male
chauvinists will delight in its psychic (and even physical) pain, while feminists…
remain uncomfortable at that spectacle. Historical recreation of a period may be
an answer, but then the performance of this comedy can be lost. For myself, I
believe that Katharina’s liberated spirit remains unbroken, but that she has learned
the value of realpolitik, not only in marriage but also in the even wider world…
(328)
In other words, to Ranald, the spirit of the play is more important than a thorough discussion and refutation of the disturbing aspects of the play. She admits that the play is designed to appeal to chauvinists, but argues that “performance” is more important than displaying an explicit respect for women. Avedano espouses a similar view; she claims that “critics are often tempted to cast back onto history today’s values and standards,” a practice which, according to Avedano, taints discussion of the play (112).
However, any discussion that willfully ignores the incredibly disturbing aspects of
Taming ignores the effects that the play can have on society. If scholars continue to put their heads in the sand regarding Petruchio’s “taming,” they are contributing toward a societal trend of dismissing domestic violence and belittling survivors. The film adaptations of Taming also contribute to this. Film adaptations tend to ignore the disturbing aspects in favor of a romantic-comedy, battle-of-the-sexes type of representation. In order to do so, they have to change aspects of the play, despite
Ranald’s claim that “performance” needs to be preserved.
Christopher Bertucci observes that many adaptations will use “strategies – such as
79 abbreviating the final speech, delivering it ironically (sometimes with a wink), or minimizing Petruchio’s abuse” which “attempt (and often fail) to deflect some of the misogyny of the final speech and of the play in general” (414). The “with a wink” comment is a nod to the Zeffirelli version (1967), which is particularly famous for the off-screen romance of its stars, Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton. Taylor and
Burton’s often tempestuous relationship off-screen contributed to the romantic tension, and Taylor’s Katherine reveals herself to be less tamed than it appears when she winks at the end of the play, coding Katherine’s subjugating speech as sarcasm. The teen romance
10 Things I Hate About You also contributes to a societal conception of Taming as a love story. 10 Things casts Kate and Petruchio as high school students, and their relationship is less abusive “taming” and more general socialization. As noted earlier, Kim Fedderson and JJ Michael Richardson argue that 10 Things “in essence uses Shakespearean capital to underwrite a relatively conservative message.” The message that comes across in the film is that, once Kat(e) has found romance, she is more fit to socialize with the other characters in the story, and she becomes a more conventional romantic-comedy female character.
Based on these adaptations, it would be easy to assume that Taming really is nothing more than a love story, similar to the battle of wits carried out by Beatrice and
Benedick in Much Ado About Nothing. But a close reading of the text reveals a very dark truth: Petruchio is torturing Kate in order to mold her into what he wants her to be.
Many of his actions reflect a severe pattern of domestic violence. Petruchio is not only violent to Kate, he is also violent to his servants. He seems to be a very violent man, in general. Although he may not physically strike Kate, as he does his servants, his
80 treatment of her is actually more sinister.
First is the fact that Petruchio does not actually give Kate a chance to consent to the marriage. He informs her father that she will be marrying him, and in an uncustomary move, Kate does not argue. At first she protests that she will “see [him] hanged on Sunday first,” rather than wed him (Taming 2.1.300). However, when he claims that she declared her love for him privately, she does not argue. She has no further lines in this scene; the action is now taken up by Petruchio, who says that he will go to prepare for their wedding, and Baptista, who gives them his blessing. Kate’s silence is an indication that she is already starting to cow under the pressure of
Petruchio’s actions.
Petruchio’s disrespect of their wedding ceremony is also a tactic to undermine
Kate’s happiness and position in society. Kate seems to be happy to finally be getting married – or at least her family is happy she will finally get married – but Petruchio embarrasses and degrades her by treating the wedding ceremony in a very vulgar manner.
This scene starts Kate’s married life by having her husband disrespect her and undermine her position in society as a wife. His refusal to attend their wedding banquet is a first challenge of her authority in public. When Kate wishes to stay, he refuses. She initially argues, stating that she “see[s] a woman may be made a fool,/ If she had not a spirit to resist” (Taming 3.2.210-1). She seems to still have spirit at this point, but it is not to last.
Petruchio proclaims that he “will be master of what is [his] own” and declares that Kate is “[his] goods, [his] chattels… [his] horse, [his] ox, [his] ass, [his] everything” (Taming
3.2.219, 222). Petruchio lowers Kate to both possession and animal, removing any humanity or authority she may have had.
81 This declaration pales in comparison, however, to his treatment of her once they reach his estate. But before they even get to his estate, Kate endures rough treatment.
Grumio relates how Kate’s “horse fell and she under the horse… she was bemoiled,
[Petruchio] left her with the horse upon her… how [Kate] waded through the dirt” and
“prayed that never prayed before” (Taming 3.3). Things do not look up after they arrive at the house. Petruchio begins a planned attack on Kate, starting with psychological torture. As one of the servants observes, Petruchio “kills [Kate] in her own humour”
(Taming 3.3.144). Petruchio begins to deprive Kate of necessities on the basis that they are not good enough for her. He throws away meat, claiming it was burnt and that she should not be subjected to subpar meals. This, of course, means that she does not eat at all. Later, he keeps her awake all night, and proclaims that “if she chance to nod I’ll rail and brawl/ And with the clamour keep her still awake” (Taming 3.3.169-70). In a proud soliloquy, Petruchio remarks that “’tis my hope to end successfully… This is a way to kill a wife with kindness/ And thus I’ll cure her mad and headstrong humour” (Taming
3.3.151, 170-1).
Kate slowly withers under Petruchio’s treatment. She complains to Grumio about her treatment, begging for some food as she is “starved for meat, giddy for lack of sleep”
(Taming 4.1.9). Even worse than the deprivation, however, is the basis of her treatment:
“that which spites [Kate] more than all these wants/ He does it under name of perfect love” (Taming 4.1.11-2). By killing his wife with kindness, Petruchio removes Kate’s opportunities to resist. She is constantly told that Petruchio is doing this for her own good, and she begins to believe it. This method is a classic tactic of abusers. Kate still has the spirit to stand up for herself at this point, as seen by her attempts to undermine
82 Petruchio’s authority by getting Grumio to feed her. When Petruchio exclaims that the clothing he purchased is not good enough for her, Kate rebels. “Why, sir, I trust I may have leave to speak,/ And speak I will. I am no child, no babe” (Taming 4.1.76-7). She reveals that Petruchio’s efforts are having some effect on her, saying that her “tongue will tell the anger of [her] heart,/ Or else [her] heart concealing it will break” (Taming 4.1.80-
1). She admits that her heart will break if she cannot speak her mind, but she also proclaims that she “will be free/ Even to the uttermost, as [she] please[s], in words”
(Taming 4.1.82-3).
Seeing that Kate still has some spirit, Petruchio continues to abuse her, but does so in a more sinister, psychological way. Petruchio begins to gaslight Kate. Gaslighting is a term used in domestic violence studies to represent a method of psychological manipulation. Gaslighting is named after a film in the 1940s in which a man psychologically tortures his wife to convince her that she is going insane. To do so, he subtly changes the amount of gas in their lamps, causing changes in the lighting, but refuses to acknowledge it. He convinces his wife that she is hallucinating the effects, and this assertion undermines her own confidence in her sanity. Florence Rush wrote that
“even today [gaslighting] is used to describe an attempt to destroy another’s perception of reality” (81).
Petruchio begins this course of abuse by refusing to go to Kate’s father’s house until she agrees with him, even when he is patently lying. This tactic combines gaslighting with another abuse tactic, isolation of the victim. By keeping Kate from her family, Petruchio isolates her from those who might support her. On their journey to visit
Baptista, Petruchio constantly makes Kate agree with him on ridiculous lies. If she
83 disagrees with him, he threatens to turn back. Petruchio proclaims that the sun in the sky is not the sun, but the moon. When Kate rightfully points out that it is the sun, Petruchio exclaims, “It shall be moon, or star, or what I list,/ Or ere I journey to your father’s house” (Taming 4.3.7-8). Hortensio says to Kate that she must “[s]ay as he says, or
[they] shall never go” (Taming 4.3.11). Against the two men, Kate has no choice but to agree, saying “be it moon, or sun, or what you please… Henceforth I vow it shall be for me” (Taming 4.3.13-5). Not content with this, Petruchio taunts her, saying that she
“lie[s]. It is the blessed sun” (Taming 4.3.18). Wearying under this assault, Kate says that “what [he] will have it named, even that it is,/ And so it shall be so for Katherine”
(Taming 4.3.22-3). Hortensio congratulates Petruchio, claiming that “the field is won”
(Taming 4.3.24). Petruchio further pushes her, telling her to greet an old man as a maid, and she agrees without hesitation. When Petruchio taunts her, saying that she is clearly wrong, Kate apologizes to the man for her mistake. Suddenly, it is her mistake, not
Petruchio’s tormenting lies.
In the end, Kate has been completely cowed by Petruchio’s torment. This submission is signified in two ways, when she must kiss him in the street and when she comes when summoned at the conclusion. In regards to the kiss, Kate still tries to resist.
She responds that she is “ashamed to kiss… in the midst of the street” (Taming 4.4.112-
4). He begins to taunt her, saying “why, then, let’s home again,” once more threatening to remove her from her family if she does not comply with his wishes (Taming 4.4.115).
Heilman argues that this is a sign of love on Petruchio’s part. He argues that “by asking a kiss at a time she thinks unsuitable, [he] shows that he really wants it” (Heilman 53).
Contrary to what Heilman thinks, this demand is not a show of devotion. It is another
84 tactic to debase Kate, who does not want to be seen engaging in improper behavior on the street. By forcing her to kiss him in order to see her family, Petruchio removes another layer of self-respect and spirit.
In the final scene, where Petruchio demonstrates his authority over Kate in front of her family, he shows that his control of her is firmly entrenched. When Petruchio
“commands” Kate to come to him, the other men think that she will refuse, and with great anger at being so addressed (Taming 5.1. 106). Instead, she comes meekly and does his bidding, shocking the other men. When one of the men remarks that her behavior is “a wonder,” Petruchio boasts that her behavior bodes “peace… and love and quiet life,/ And awful rule and right supremacy” (Taming 5.1.118-21, emphasis mine). Having firmly established control over Kate, he shows off to the other men. He feels that he has achieved “right supremacy” over her; not only is he in control, but he firmly believes
(and has convinced Kate as well) that his rule over her is proper. These political terms also underscore that he has absolute control over her, as if he was an absolute monarch given divine control over his subjects.
Petruchio’s treatment of Kate is a very disturbing aspect of the play that is frequently overlooked in both popular adaptations and scholarly discourse. Many scholars focus on the fact that Kate is a shrew, violent and virulent, and see her peaceful demeanor at the conclusion of the play as an improvement. However, Heilman argues that regardless of whether or not “she is truly a shrew does not mean that she cannot have hurt feelings” (53). This is putting things lightly. Kate does not just have “hurt feelings;” she has undergone a course of extreme domestic abuse that has broken her spirit. Her behavior in no way excuses such treatment, because there is never an excuse to treat
85 anyone in that manner. The scholarly silence on this front is equally disturbing, because it demonstrates at best a discomfort in discussing harsh realities and at worst a silent complicity in domestic violence.
Vinegar Girl
This is the atmosphere into which Tyler ventures with Vinegar Girl. Whereas
Winterson and Atwood had to update stories that were extremely dismissive of female characters, Tyler has to update one that is overtly violent toward women. With such a large undertaking in front of her, Tyler was forced to make some difficult choices. If she removed the violence, much of the tension from the play is removed as well and it would be harder to portray the relationship between the main characters as a much-needed
“taming.” However, if she left the violence in, she would not be mindful of her audience and the contemporary circumstances into which she is releasing her novel. In the end,
Tyler chooses the former option. Her novel shies away from the abusive aspects of the play, and instead chooses to examine more personal issues. By focusing on issues like self-worth, mental illness, and family dynamics, Tyler is able to produce a story that is less about taming the shrew than it is about understanding this particular shrew.
Tyler’s story takes place in modern-day Baltimore. It focuses on Kate Battista, a twenty-nine year old preschool teacher. Kate’s father is Dr. Louis Battista, an intensely focused scientist whose work on autoimmune disorders takes up all his energy, leaving little for interacting with his daughters. Kate’s sister is Bunny, a fifteen-year-old airhead who, as Kate notices, is “not nearly as sweet as other people thought she was” (Tyler 42).
The Petruchio figure is Pyotr Shcherbakov, Dr. Battista’s Russian lab assistant. Lucentio
86 becomes Edward Mintz, Bunny’s Spanish tutor-slash-covert boyfriend. The marriage between Kate and Pyotr is predicated not on Petruchio’s manipulations for a dowry, but rather Pyotr’s need for a green-card marriage to stay in America and continue working with Dr. Battista. Although at first Kate finds the idea of a green-card marriage both distasteful and insulting, in the end she goes along with it. As she finds her life changing before her eyes, Kate develops as a character, and even develops an affection for Pyotr.
The epilogue shows that, eleven years after getting married, the two are still happy together, and have a young son named Louie.
What makes Tyler’s approach to Taming interesting is that, like Atwood, Tyler uses third person limited perspective. Unlike Atwood, however, Tyler does not take the perspective of a male character, even though the main characters in Taming could be construed to be either Petruchio or Lucentio. Tyler makes Kate the perspective of her novel, giving an insight into the mind of the shrew. This perspective makes Kate an imminently sympathetic character. The audience gets to see what makes Kate tick, what her thoughts and feelings are, and to develop along with her as she grows as a character.
This is not to say that Kate lacks the qualities of a fully-fledged character at the start of the novel. Kate is not depicted as a one-note character, defined solely by her shrewishness as she is in the play. She is a person with interests and issues just like any other. One of Kate’s most prominent characterizations is her love of gardening. Kate is constantly shown either working in her garden or thinking about it. She notices plants on the sidewalk, thinks about what mistakes she may or may not be making, and even notes that she had, at one time, considered becoming a botanist. She is in tune with nature, and is even interested in the social relationships of the birds in her garden. One of her draws
87 for marrying Pyotr is that, once she moves in with him, she will have a large and sunny plot of land to turn into a garden. The novel begins in spring, which serves as a sort of metaphor for Kate’s character arc. As the chill fades from the air, the weather gets warmer, and life begins growing again, Kate warms up to Pyotr and allows herself to grow as well. This timeline is a clever and subtle method that Tyler uses to demonstrate
Kate’s character development.
Another interesting glimpse into Kate’s character comes through her work at a preschool. Battista uses this career as a plot to attract Pyotr, exclaiming that Kate is
“wonderful with small children,” to which Kate angrily replies that she “hate[s] small children” because “they’re not very bright” (Tyler 17). However, this retort appears to be an example of Kate being contrary, because her actions at work undermine this assertion.
She seems to interact with the children in a way that is unique from the other adults, and which has a positive effect on the children. When Kate looks like she might be getting fired, the children respond that they like her. When it comes time to put the children down for a nap, Kate becomes gentler. Dealing with one boy who is difficult to put down, Kate still “tuck[s] his blanket underneath him on all sides the way he liked – a white flannel blanket with two yellow stripes that he still called his ‘blankie’ if the other boys weren’t near enough to hear him” (Tyler 29). Not only does Kate display remarkable gentleness with the boy, she also understands the social dynamics at hand and does not mock the boy for feeling insecure.
Dealing with another child, Kate runs “her fingers through Jilly’s hair to loosen it
– soft brown hair with a silky feel to it, smelling of baby shampoo and crayons” (Tyler
30). When she fears that she might lose her job, she thinks that it is “[f]unny how you
88 have to picture losing a thing before you think you might value it after all,” remembering
“a jolt of pure pleasure” she had gotten from interacting with the children (Tyler 51).
Thinking back to her claim that she hated children, Kate muses that “[i]t wasn’t true that she hated children. At least, a few she liked okay. It was just that she didn’t like all children, as if they were uniform members of some microphylum or something” (Tyler
30). This is an interesting character development for Kate. Although she appears prickly, she is able to be both gentle and understanding. She understands that all children are unique and therefore special (and that it is okay to not like all of them). This plot also reveals that Kate is also able to grow, as she realizes that she does in fact care for these children when she fears that she will lose them.
Kate needs this character development, not because she is not already a full- fledged character, but because she is stagnant in her life and needs to grow in order to reach some sense of fulfillment. Kate had originally been a college student, studying science, but she was expelled after disrespecting her teacher. She returns home to her father’s house, and begins to take care of him and Bunny. While at first she notes that
“she had felt the most overwhelming sense of relief” at being welcomed home, she eventually gets stuck there and has no idea on how to move forward (Tyler 111). She is haunted by words that had been spoken about her in college: ”She has. No. Plan” (Tyler
25, emphasis original). While this is said about her chaotic approach to a chess game, she realizes that this statement has come to represent her life. She tells Bunny that, as things stand, she is “just part of the furniture, somebody going nowhere, and twenty years from now [she will] be the old-maid daughter still keeping house for her father” (Tyler
171).
89 Therefore, the marriage plot in Vinegar Girl more closely resembles the escape plan that some scholars see in Taming. However, whereas to consider Taming in such a way requires a willful ignorance of the more disturbing aspects of the play, Vinegar Girl does actually present the story in this manner. What is really important in Tyler’s adaptation is that Kate is the one in control. She is the one who ultimately makes the decision to marry Pyotr. He does not manipulate her into agreeing. At one point, she directly states that she will not marry Pyotr for her father’s sake, and Pyotr accepts her decision, even knowing that he will be deported. Whereas Petruchio wanted to marry
Kate for her large dowry, Pyotr actually has a pressing, life-affecting need to marry, and yet he is still willing to accept when Kate does not agree.
Tyler’s Pyotr is also a much more sympathetic character than Petruchio.
Petruchio is presented as a domineering, greedy, violent man. He tortures his wife to break her spirit and brags about his success. Pyotr, on the other hand, is an awkward, bumbling sort of man. Like Dr. Battista, he is so caught up in his science that he sometimes forgets about the rest of the world. Unlike Dr. Battista, however, Pyotr is still interested in the things around him, especially Kate. Pyotr is also sympathetic because of his background, as he was abandoned and raised in an orphanage. Kate at first is annoyed with Pyotr, for his halting grasp of English, for his awkward attempts at getting to know her, and for his complicity in her father’s plot. However, after she begins to get to know him, she considers him much more kindly:
It wasn’t entirely his fault, she supposed, that he found himself in this peculiar
position. And for a moment she tried to imagine how she herself would feel if she
were alone in a foreign country, her visa about to expire, no clear notion of where
90 she would go once it did expire or how she would support herself. Plus the
language problem! She had been a middling-good language student, once upon a
time, but she would have felt desolate if she’d had to actually live in another
language. Yet here Pyotr stood, blithely engaged in a discussion of pork cuts and
displaying his usual elfin good spirits. (Tyler 129, emphasis original)
In an earlier moment, Kate realizes that Pyotr’s foreignness does not mean he is less human than she is:
It occurred to her suddenly that he was thinking – that only his exterior self was
flubbing his th sounds and not taking long enough between consonants, while
inwardly he was formulating thoughts every bit as complicated and layered as her
own.
Well, okay, a glaringly obvious fact. But still, somehow, a surprise. She felt a
kind of rearrangement taking place in her mind – a little adjustment of vision.
(Tyler 99, emphasis original)
These moments are noteworthy because, after each point, Kate recognizes that Pyotr is in a difficult situation, and not just an accomplice of her father’s. This realization is the turning point in their relationship; after spending some time talking with Pyotr, she is able to think of him more positively. Later that day, when her father excitedly thanks her for considering Pyotr, she is angry at his presumption. However, after a heartfelt conversation with her father, Kate begins to sympathize with him as well, and agrees to the marriage, as long as it is on paper only.
91 This is another aspect of the story where Tyler expands on what is in the text to humanize the characters. In the play, there is not much said about the relationship between Baptista and Kate. He does mention to Petruchio that he desires Kate to be happy in marriage; however, he shows no hesitation in giving Kate to Petruchio, and he does not seem troubled by the obvious abuse Petruchio heaps upon her. Battista’s relationship with his daughter is more complex. They have a very formal relationship, with Battista being a bit removed from human companionship. However, when Battista gets mildly drunk, he begins to confide in her, and she sees another side of him entirely.
At first, Kate pities him, thinking that he “was so inept-looking, so completely ill- equipped for the world around him” that she “felt an unexpected jolt of pity for him, over and above her exasperation” (Tyler 104). When he tells her that his work has been a
“long, weary, discouraging haul,” she begins to sympathize with him (Tyler 107, emphasis original).
Kate and her father have a complicated relationship based on unspoken feelings.
When Kate is angry at her father, Bunny proclaims that Kate is “just exactly like him: two peas in a pod,” which enrages Kate (Tyler 90). At this point, Kate feels as though her father is cold, calculating, and uncaring, choosing only to focus on his work with no thoughts of how the marriage would affect her. When he speaks to her after getting tipsy, however, she sees a different side of him. Battista agrees that Kate is similar to him; he claims that Kate is “more sensible, more practical” than her mother had been, more like him (Tyler 107). He admits that he “depend[s] on [Kate] too much,” but that he has come to rely on her “backbone” and “fiber” (Tyler 110). More inclined to think of him positively, she remembers that, when her father welcomed her home after she was kicked
92 out of school, “it might have been the happiest moment in her life” (Tyler 111).
In the end, she agrees to marry Pyotr for her father’s sake, and he expresses his feelings more effusively than usual. He cries that she “care[s] enough about [him] to do this,” something that seems to have made him incredibly happy (Tyler 112). Later, on
Kate’s wedding day, they have a moment of shared emotionality that is unusual for them.
At first, Kate is puzzled when her father remarks that she is “looking very grown up,” thinking that she had just seen him minutes before (Tyler 174). However, when he haltingly remembers what she was like as a baby, and compliments her, she thinks that
“she knew what he was trying to say,” and that “she was pleased, in spite of herself”
(Tyler 174). Kate no longer needs her father to explicitly state his feelings, but can understand what he says based on signals that would be overlooked by others. She is more accepting of the similarities between them at this point, and is able to appreciate her father for who he is, not who she wishes he might be.
Kate also has far more complex relationships with her other family members than is indicated in the play. Her relationship with her mother is particularly fraught. Thea
Battista had been away at rehabilitation and recovery centers for most of Kate’s childhood, and died less than a year after Bunny was born, when Kate was fifteen. Kate remarks at one point that “[s]he wished she had had a mother” (Tyler 36). When Battista begins to reminisce about Thea, Kate is astonished to learn that, at one point, she and
Thea had been very close. Battista mentions that Thea had spent a lot of time with Kate, to which Kate replied “[s]he was interested in me? She liked me?” (Tyler 109). The fact that her mother was genuinely interested in Kate confuses her, and she has a hard time
“trying to wrap her mind around this” fact (Tyler 109). She is confused by the fact that
93 she appeared to have “mislaid the memory of experiences she thought she would have treasured all her life” (Tyler 109). Having her view of her mother upended in this way complicates Kate’s worldview, and her attempts to reconcile what she thought she knew with the truth allow her to move past a lot of her negativity.
This conversation is also important for Kate because it gives her insight into the person her mother was and develops a character in the original play that is not mentioned but must have existed. Kate had always had a sore spot about her mother. She felt that
Thea had “developed some kind of depression right after [Kate] was born,” remarking that Thea “[t]ook one look at [Kate] and fell into despair” (Tyler 65). While this is meant as a joke, Kate continually carries around the burden of thinking that her mother had not loved her. When she mentions to Battista that “[a] lot of women, when they have babies they feel happy and fulfilled… They don’t all of a sudden decide that life is not worth living” (Tyler 108). Battista is astonished that Kate feels this way, remarking that Thea
“was feeling low long before [Kate] was born” and admits that “it might have been [his] fault” (Tyler 108). Kate now sees both herself and her mother in a different light, and is able to appreciate what she had with her mother rather than simply focusing on what she did not have.
Given that Kate’s mother is not even present in Taming, Tyler has the opportunity to use this character to expand on the psychology behind Kate’s characterization. More than that, however, Kate’s mother is an example of a character dealing with mental illness in a way that stands out in a novel about introspection and personal growth; she represents that not all characters are able to grow. Thea Battista at first seems like a wasted character, solely a representation of Kate’s insecurities. Kate takes Thea’s
94 disinterest personally, and it influences her character development. However, when
Battista reveals that Thea had actually suffered from severe mental illness, Kate is forced to realize that Thea’s depression had nothing to do with her. Although Battista worries that he may have made Thea feel worse, he is enough of a scientist to admit that Thea’s illness was an actual illness, not an affectation or a character defect. He also reveals that he truly loved Thea, but that that was not enough to help her. He describes his helplessness, remarking that he “felt [he] was standing on the edge of a swamp watching her go under” (Tyler 108).
Battista also reveals that Thea had tried various types of therapy and medication, but that nothing had worked to cure her. This is a representation of the situation for many people who suffer from mental illness. Not only does Thea’s story represent that mental illness is a serious problem, but the novel admits that there may not be a cure. People suffering from mental illness may try many different avenues, with little success. Thea’s progression also shows that mental illness is an issue that affects more than just the patient; it can have a lasting impact on the family as well. In the end, Thea dies because she took experimental medication that weakened her heart. Battista feels guilty, because he had procured the medicine from a colleague in Europe. He encouraged her to take experimental medication, and rejoiced to have his “old Thea back, the woman she’d been when [he] met her” (Tyler 108). He also reveals that they had conceived Bunny at this time, because Thea had wanted more children. The pregnancy caused her heart defect to emerge, and she died.
Kate’s fraught relationship with Thea spills over into her relationship with Bunny as well. Bunny is constantly compared to their mother as a soft, caring, beautiful woman.
95 Kate, on the other hand, looks nothing like their mother, and somewhat bitterly remarks that no one ever compares her to Thea. Kate’s relationship with Bunny was shaped by the fact that Thea died when Bunny was still an infant. At that point, Kate remarks, she
“more or less thought [Bunny] was [her] own” (Tyler 96). She and Bunny had been incredibly close for some time; Kate remarks that she “was the only one who could comfort [Bunny] when she was crying” and that Bunny “tried to act like [Kate] and talk like [Kate]” (Tyler 96). However, once Bunny became a teenager, Kate explains, she
“changed into this whole other person, this social person” (Tyler 96, emphasis original).
More tellingly, Kate remarks that Bunny “left [her] behind” (Tyler 96).
After this point, Kate’s relationship with Bunny was less of a close sisterly bond and more of a disapproving chaperone. Kate bemoans that Bunny “turned [Kate] into this viperish, disapproving old maid” (Tyler 97). She later remarks that she would not be able to leave her father’s house because someone would need to look after Bunny, and
“experienced a pang of loss” at the thought of remaining stagnant in her father’s house
(Tyler 157). Kate and Bunny often argue, especially over Bunny’s relationship with boys, something that is not allowed. Kate also thinks of Bunny as an airhead, and does not think of her as someone who she can relate to anymore.
However, Bunny is more complex than that. When Kate is being pestered by her father, Bunny supports her, to which Kate remarks she “had not seen that one coming”
(Tyler 84, emphasis original). When Kate gives in and agrees to marry Pyotr, Bunny is aghast, remarking that Kate is not “chattel,” echoing Petruchio’s speech in Taming where he proclaims Kate belongs to him as his goods and chattel (Tyler 123). This makes
Bunny different from Bianca. Whereas Bianca placidly allows Kate to be abused, even
96 seeing Kate’s marriage to Petruchio as a good thing, since it allows her own marriage plans to progress, Bunny argues that Kate does not owe it to their father to get involved, saying that ‘[t]he man forgets for months at a stretch [they] even exist, but at the same time he thinks he has the right to tell [them] who [they] can ride in cars with and who
[they] should marry” (Tyler 123). Christopher Bertucci, who examines the role of Bianca in prior movie adaptations, states that the Bianca character is essential for a more feminist approach to Taming. According to Bertucci, the “sisterly bond between Kate and
Bianca… even if strained at times, helps create a space for feminist resistance” (414).
In Vinegar Girl, Bunny demonstrates this resistance in unexpected ways. On the morning of Kate’s wedding, Bunny makes a last-minute attempt to change Kate’s mind.
Bunny is concerned about Pyotr’s actions, and states that she cannot stand the thought of her “only sister getting totally tamed and tamped down and changed into some whole nother person” (Tyler 169, emphasis mine). Bunny is the voice of doubt in the novel, allowing Tyler to directly confront the disturbing marriage in her source text. Bunny’s speech reminds the audience that, even if Kate has chosen to marry Pyotr, the plot of the novel can still resemble the control exerted over Kate in the play. However, Tyler allows
Kate to argue against Bunny, contradicting the direct allusion to Kate being tamed. This exchange allows Tyler to highlight the differences between her novel and the play.
Tyler’s novel is not perfect. At times, the plot seems slow and stagnant. The relationship between Pyotr and Kate seems strange and unsupported. This perspective is especially clear in Kate’s final speech, wherein she argues that men are under a lot of pressure and that she will support Pyotr against anyone’s attacks because he is important to her. This speech at first does seem to come out of nowhere. However, Tyler uses
97 small moments, in addition to those noted above, to show the developing relationship between Kate and Pyotr, rather than large, sweeping gestures. When Pyotr is late to their wedding because of issues in the lab, and leaves right after the ceremony to return to work, Kate is injured. She reveals that she had been thinking “that underneath, he … well, liked her, a little” (Tyler 202). But when she notices little gestures, like the fact that he bought her new towels and had ironed his shirt in preparation for the wedding, she is reassured.
It is in small moments like these that Tyler does a truly admirable job tackling such a difficult task like updating Taming. She is able to present a story that resembles the plot of Taming without the more disturbing aspects. She gives Kate all the power in the novel by writing in third-person limited, since Kate’s perspective is all that the audience sees. They grow and develop as Kate grows and develops. Through Kate’s eyes, we are able to see not only her inner character, but also the ways that her relationships with others have shaped her and continue to shape her life as a supposed shrew. Tyler is even able to address issues of mental illness in a way that thoroughly examines mental illness without feeling cheap, forced, or discriminatory. Tyler may have been adapting The Taming of the Shrew, but in her novel, the audience gets to know the shrew, understand the shrew, and appreciate the shrew.
98 Chapter Five: Conclusions
The first four Hogarth authors are unique in the plays that they chose. Given first pick, they chose neither comedy nor tragedy, but went for a mix of the two in several of
Shakespeare’s “problem plays.” If the Hogarth project is seeking to update Shakespeare for our current cultural moment, what does it say that these authors chose these plays?
On one level, it says that we are living in a complex cultural moment that can only be understood through complex plays. Fedderson and Richardson, writing about the teen
Shakespeares of the late 1990s and early 2000s, claimed that the films “resonated with current anxieties about gender identity, sexual relations, war and death, revenge, mutilation, and social breakdown.” This is no less true today, as the Hogarth
Shakespeare Project comes into being in a time of great cultural, political, economic, and social upheaval. These authors chose plays that deal with cultural and racial discrimination, gender inequality, sexual violence, and the like, and turned them into a commentary on many of the social issues prevalent today, retaining the best of
Shakespeare’s stories while unflinchingly confronting those issues where Shakespeare falls short of today’s expectations.
Understanding how the Hogarth novels are successful (or not successful) in this regard requires a revisitation of adaptation theory. Hutcheon’s analogy between literary
99 adaptation and genetic evolution provides a starting point from which to evaluate the
Hogarth novels’ successes as Shakespearean adaptation. Hutcheon argues that “[s]tories also evolve by adaptation and are not immutable over time” (31). According to
Hutcheon, evolution is the “process by which something is fitted to a given environment”
(31). Hutcheon claims that this approach is a good way to think of adaptation, because adaptation can be thought of as a matter of “a story’s fit and its process of mutation or adjustment… to a particular cultural environment” (31).
Shakespeare’s works have been through a lot of this “process of mutation or adjustment” over the last four centuries (Hutcheon 31). Beginning with Restoration plays meant to “fix” Shakespeare and coming to the current versions of Shakespeare, there have been innumerable ways to view his works and the place they have in society.
Shakespeare has always been a lens through which to view the “particular cultural environment” that Hutcheon refers to (31). Lanier argues that it is important to focus on the ways that Shakespeare has mutated over time because it allows to focus on the “ever- nomadic paths of Shakespearean cultural capital” (Lanier). According to Lanier, “our
Shakespeare is constituted as a specific collection of qualities, intensities, and tendencies” that are unique to our moment in history (Lanier).
Therefore, to understand the Hogarth novels as Shakespearean adaptation requires a look at both their place in the long tradition of adapting Shakespeare and the ways they reflect our current “moment in history” (Lanier). As adaptations, the Hogarth novels are entering into a fierce history of adapting Shakespeare that vacillates between idolization and scorn and all the possibilities in-between. As Hogarth intends for the novels to be a celebration of Shakespeare, they fall far closer to the idolization side of things. Yet, the
100 Hogarth Shakespeare Project is not simply another project focused in fidelity and iconization like the Victorian Shakespeare. Instead, Hogarth distinctly announces that they are retelling these stories. These novels are not simple updates with the same characters and stories moved to a modern setting. They are works that attempt to understand the root of Shakespeare’s ideas, and translate them into new stories. While these authors are seeking to retain the spirit of Shakespeare and celebrate his works, they are not afraid to play around, adding in new characters or new dimensions to the story in order to reflect more precisely the concerns of our era. More importantly, they are not afraid to remove those themes that are not acceptable in today’s society that would have been so in Renaissance England. These novels present a way to look at Shakespeare in our time; they are our Shakespeare.
Vinegar Girl, more than the other novels, succeeds in this upending of
Shakespeare. Adapting a play that at first seems light-hearted and fun, but on closer examination reveals themes of torture and domestic abuse, Tyler had a rough task ahead of her in adapting The Taming of the Shrew in a way that would be palatable to today’s audiences. But Tyler goes even further than that, confronting assumptions about Taming in both popular culture and in academic work. The Gap of Time, and to a lesser extent,
Hag-Seed, also serve to upend notions about what is necessary in an adaptation of a
Shakespeare story. These three novels could have bowed to pressure to preserve the canon, but all, in their own ways, subvert these negative themes to present a new
Shakespeare. This strategy goes back to Hutcheon’s theory of adaptation as a reflection of evolution. Each generation has had their mark on Shakespearean adaptation, each adding a new layer to the conversation. The Hogarth novels are the latest in this great
101 tradition, but their new layer is important as a reflection of both how our culture perceives Shakespeare and what our culture values. Regarding Shakespeare, these adaptations show that Shakespeare, though held in high esteem as a pillar of Western literary canon, is not immune to this process of evolution. Shakespeare – or rather the idea of Shakespeare – is able to mutate, grow, adapt, and change to fit the current cultural moment.
However, these novels are more than just adaptations of Shakespeare, and deserve to be considered for their own merit. As Hutcheon argues, adaptations are their own works, even as they are a reflection of their source text. These three novels are unique and individual. Each has an important story to tell, and their commentaries on today’s society are worth more discussion than just as a mutation from Shakespeare’s time.
These novels do not just update problematic themes from Shakespeare’s plays, but also address issues that are still problematic in today’s society. By openly addressing issues like inequality – be it racial, sexual, or gender-based – these novels use Shakespeare’s stories to open a discussion about how these issues are problematic and how they can be addressed. And it is important to note that these unique, discrete novels address these issues in differing ways.
For example, Winterson and Atwood both address systemic racism, especially in the policing system, in their novels. However, whereas Winterson addresses racism through the lens of two black men living in America, Atwood limits her perspective to that of a white man. While this gives an insight into how a white man, who has the power and privilege of this status, views race in society, it does not give any insight into how the racial minority characters view this issue. This is especially problematic given
102 that these racial minority characters are inmates in a prison, subject to the systemic inequality that results in more people of color imprisoned for minor crimes. Winterson, on the other hand, gives these racial minority characters a voice through the characters of
Shep and Clo. Taking two characters who serve little purpose other than furthering
Perdita’s story – the Shepherd and the Clown – Winterson gives them new life as full- fledged, multi-dimensional characters with real lives, motivations, problems, and stories.
While Shep and Clo should not be assumed to represent all black men living in America, they do provide an insider’s look, so to speak, into many of the issues black men face.
This is particularly evident in Shep and Clo’s distrust of the policing system, assuming that the fact of their innocence will mean little to a system that disproportionately incarcerates black men for minor offenses. By presenting this issue that is unique to our present moment – racial injustice in the policing system – through two different lenses,
Winterson and Atwood showcase the ways that these authors, although they are part of a larger series, are still unique and individual.
Where these novels are strongest, however, is in addressing the rampant gender inequality in our cultural moment. These novels, written by female authors, are adapting some of Shakespeare’s most misogynistic works. The three plays being adapted range from literal objectification of female characters, to almost no female characters at all, to outright torture and domestic abuse. By confronting these issues, these women showcase not only how our society views these issues, but how these issues are still complex even today. Again, these novels are unique and individual. They all address these issues of gender inequality differently. Winterson seeks to understand the female characters in a play where the main female character is so objectified she literally becomes a statue. She
103 does so by, again, giving a voice to the minor characters. By playing up the characters of
Pauline and Perdita, Winterson has the opportunity to address gender inequality in ways that are not possible in the play. And by making these characters unique – Pauline as a middle-aged Anglo-Jewish woman and Perdita as a white orphan raised by black men in the American south – Winterson has the opportunities to showcase that these characters have depth further than just being female characters.
Atwood, on the other hand, takes a play with only one female character and somehow manages to make this character even lesser than she is in the play. Dealing with the one female character, Miranda, Atwood literally takes away Miranda’s voice by having her die as a child and take part in the novel solely as an imaginary spirit subject to
Felix’s whimsy. While Atwood does add in more female characters, some of them are still ill-treated, silenced like Nadia or belittled like Estelle. Conversely, Anne-Marie is an excellent example of a strong female character who does not fall prey to the tropes of such a character. Given further development, like a love for knitting and a tattoo based on The Tempest, Anne-Marie is not a one-note character. However, she is still subject to the fact that Hag-Seed is written from the perspective of an educated white man. She is an example of a good female character, but she is still only presented through how Felix views her. Given his penchant for condescending and paternally restrictive views, it is possible that Anne-Marie would stand out even further if she were given her own voice, like Miranda in the play.
Tyler does the best at presenting a new perspective on female characters in dealing with an extremely problematic work. Taking a story where the main female character is derided, abused, and debased, Tyler presents an adaptation where Kate is her
104 own character, not a plaything or pawn of her husband and father. By presenting the story from Kate’s own perspective, Tyler gives the reader insight into all the little things that make the character tick. Tyler gives background into why Kate is shrewish, stemming from personal insecurities and the harsh judgments of people around her.
Tyler’s Kate is not even all that shrewish; instead, she is caustic and guarded against a world that has hurt her in the past. Tyler’s other female characters are also excellent updates on the play. Tyler’s Bunny is not the placid Bianca of Shakespeare. She has unique characterizations – her attempts at vegetarianism, for example – that go further than simply a background character. Her relationship with Kate is tense and complicated.
Although their relationship never returns to the close connection they had when they were younger, Kate is able to understand and appreciate her sister better by the end of the novel. Tyler even gives a voice of sorts to Kate’s mother, albeit through the lens of her father. Tyler takes a character who is absent in the play as a blank slate, a character to experiment with and create a new idea of who Kate is based on who her mother was.
Tyler even uses this example as an opportunity to present a deep and subtle examination of mental illness. Given a play where the female characters are horribly ill-treated, Tyler presents a novel with multiple rich, complex female characters.
That is the real opportunity presented in the Hogarth Shakespeare Project. While some authors, like Jacobson, “wouldn’t dream of cleaning up Shakespeare,” these three authors have seen the opportunity to update and address the issues inherent in much of
Shakespeare’s work (Alter). Jacobson’s perspective provides a moralistic judgment – that Shakespeare is an ideal to be respected, and that an adaptation should be faithful.
Jacobson provides the perfect understanding of the fidelity argument – that Shakespeare
105 should not be “cleaned up.” However, these three novels argue against a fidelity argument. They present a Shakespeare that cleans up and addresses the issues at the same time. That does not mean these novels are perfect. Each still has its own issues.
Winterson acknowledges that, while MiMi may not literally be turned into an object, she is still very much objectified by Leo. Leo is able to control and subdue her, removing her from society and the action of the novel much as Leontes removes Hermione in the play.
Atwood provides more female characters, giving the opportunity for more voices than the play’s sole female voice in Miranda. However, Hag-Seed still silences or belittles many of the female characters, like Miranda, Nadia, and Estelle.
Tyler’s novel comes closest to providing an uncomplicated view of women’s lives in our current moment – but that is itself an oversimplification of real women’s lives and the varieties thereof. Tyler’s novel also brings up the question of how to discuss domestic violence in our time. By removing the domestic abuse aspect of Taming, Tyler provides a novel that is perhaps more palatable – and therefore more commercially safe.
However, this does raise the question of how Tyler could have presented a difficult topic in an articulate and well-thought out manner. She shows a sensitivity and awareness of mental illness in her novel; she may have been able to bring these characteristics to a discussion of domestic violence that would broaden a public perspective of the issue.
These novels reflect that, while progress has been made since Shakespeare’s time, there are still myriad issues facing a woman in today’s society. Each novel addresses in its own ways the varied elements still addressing women in this cultural moment, even as they each attempt to update Shakespeare’s women. And they are updates – mutated
Shakespeares – on Hutcheon’s path of literary evolution. Yet they still provide the
106 opportunity for further mutation down the road. It is impossible to see how future generations will regard Shakespeare, but the Hogarth Shakespeare Project will provide an interesting glimpse into how our culture regarded him.
This is, after all, what the Hogarth Shakespeare Project is about. Naturally, as a publisher, Hogarth wants these novels to be commercial successes. They are banking on name recognition – both of their chosen authors and of Shakespeare himself. These updated novels provide an opportunity for commercial success in reaching a new audience, one who might be less familiar or less open to reading Shakespeare. However, the Hogarth Shakespeare Project seems to go beyond mere commercialism. While
Hogarth assert that they are seeking to celebrate Shakespeare, they are doing so in a way that necessitates commentary on Shakespeare’s works. By “retelling” the plays in a modern setting, the authors of the Hogarth Shakespeare Project are by necessity going to have to address issues that come up in their respective plays. An adaptation is a reflection of “a time and a place, a society and a culture,” according to Hutcheon (142).
Therefore, the Hogarth Shakespeares may be an attempt at homage, but they are also reflections of society today – its progressions and problems, what it chooses to focus on and address, and its infinite variety. These three women, and their three novels, are all different. They utilize differing narrative strategies and techniques, different characterizations, even different locations. They are by no means all a similar interrogation of Shakespeare by way of being written by female authors. They are, however, all attempts to provide a female interpretation of Shakespeare. Thus, even though they are different, they are all feminist Shakespeares.
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