FEMINIST SHAKESPEARES: ADAPTINGSHAKESPEARE 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 ETMANAPRIL 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

ABSTRACTFEMINIST SHAKESPEARES: ADAPTING

SHAKESPEARE FOR A MODERN AUDIENCE IN THEHOGARTH SHAKESPEARE PROJECT

A thesis submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree

MASTER OF ARTS

in

ENGLISH

by

COLLEEN ETMANAPRIL 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.

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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)

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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.

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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,

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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

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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.

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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

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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

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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

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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;

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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).

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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:

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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

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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.

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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.

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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,

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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

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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).

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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.

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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(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

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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.

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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-

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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”

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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

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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.

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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.

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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,

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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

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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

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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,

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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

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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

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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,

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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

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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

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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.

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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

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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

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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.

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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

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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

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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.

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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:

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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

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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

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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.

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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).

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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

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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.

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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

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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

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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

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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.

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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

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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

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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.

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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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