Animals Symbol Analysis

The title of the play already contains an animal metaphor, implicitly comparing Katherine to an unruly shrew. Similar imagery pervades the play. Katherine is often called a shrew and Gremio calls her a “wildcat,” (i.2.198). Petruchio builds on this pun with “cat” and “Kate” when he tells her he will “bring you from a wild Kate to a Kate / Conformable as other household Kates,” (ii.1.292-293). This notion of Katherine as a wild animal that must be tamed continues over the course of the play, as when Petruchio compares his method of taming her to that of a falconer taming a falcon. These insulting comparisons symbolize Katherine’s wild temperament, but also the misogyny with which the play’s male characters regard her. Simply because she doesn’t adhere to a strict definition of a noblewoman, she is denigrated as animal-like.

It is not just Katherine who is compared to animals. The lord in the Induction calls Christopher Sly a “monstrous beast,” and “a swine,” (Induction 1.35), further exemplifying animal imagery as insulting. Throughout the play, animal imagery is used to degrade various characters who are seen as of a lesser status, often because of gender or social class. But no one is the object of these animal insults more than Katherine, as the imagery of a wild animal and a tamer has particular symbolic significance for the play’s sexist portrayal of male-female unions and traditional gender roles.