Love Blinds All


    "Taming of the Shrew", a movie about love that has been around for a long time. "How to Lose a Guy In 10 Days", a recent movie about breaking up with a guy in a limited time. Both of these pieces have their characters go through trial and error when it comes to love and show us different yet similar sides of love.

    In both "Taming of The Shrew" and "How to Lose a Guy In 10 Days", deception is key point for the relationships of main characters. In "The Shrew", Lucentio, a guy who has fallen in love with a girl named Bianca, who dresses up as an education instructor in order to gain her love. While a man named Petruchio, who is trying to gain Katherine’s love breaks a promise he made to her father of having Katherine fall in love before having her marry him.

    In "10 Days", Andie, a woman currently working for a magazine was given a task that needed to be completed in 10 days, which was to lose a guy that has grown attached to her. She chose Benjamin as the guy she would "lose". These two texts are different because in “The Shrew” , Petruchio’s trying to gain Katherine’s in order to gain the riches he will, but in “10 days” the main character is trying to drive a guy away in a limited amount of time. However, they are more similar than different because by the end of both these pieces someone eventually falls in love because love eventually blooms, even through the deception, because in the end they have truth to make up for it.


“Lucentio: I told you before… I am Lucentio… son unto Vincentio of Pisa, and that “Lucentio” comes a-wooing… is my man Tranio… bearing my port… that we might beguile the old pantaloon.

Bianca: I know you not… I trust you not… take heed he hear us not… presume not… despair not”

(Act 3, Scene 1, Lines 33-47, Lucentio and Bianca’s Dialogue)



In “The Shrew” a lot of deception occurs and in this scene, Lucentio reveals who he actually is. Bianca is not fond of the idea that he did hide who he was, but was willing to let him know that he still had a chance to be with her. Unlike Bianca, both Andie and Benjamin were not fond of deceiving one another. It is clear in this scene that Bianca is ok with the way Lucentio and the others deceived her. She was willing to give him a chance because she was in such a rush to fall in love and get married.


Compared to Bianca and Lucentio, Andie and Ben are not in a place where they want to fall in love, but due to a bet and an article, they eventually do causing a huge break down in their relationship.




    At this point if “10 days”, Andie finds out about the bet Benjamin made and Benjamin finds out about the article that Andie was going to write. Both parties get angry at one another for the setup, but walk away with raw emotions. Compared to “The Shrew”, Andie walked away during this fight, unlike Katherine who

sticks by Petruchio’s side even though he always treated her like trash. Katherine stuck around even though she was given a chance to run away. Andie on the other hand did not accept being toyed around the way she was, but neither did Benjamin.



“Thy husband is thy lord, thy life, thy keeper,

Thy head, thy sovereign, one that cares for thee,

And for thy maintenance; commits his body

To painful labor, both by sea and land”

(Act 5, Scene 2, Lines 17-20 Katherine’s Dialogue)



    When the final scene in the book came around, Katherine was the first wife to follow her husband’s orders and come to him first while dragging the other wives with her. She then goes into a speech on how a woman should treat her husband and how those women who refused to go to their husbands should be ashamed of themselves. In “The Shrew” Katherine confessed her “love” to Petruchio, but he did not do the same. The reason for that is that he does not love her because all he wanted in the first place was the land and money he would get by marrying her. The difference in these two scenes is that in “10 days” both Benjamin and Andie love each other, but difference in “The Shrew” Katherine only “loves” Petruchio and he does not “love” her back.


Unlike in “The Shrew”, in “10 days” both of the main characters show a strong love for one another by the end of the movie.




By the end of the movie, Andie has published her article on “How To Lose A Guy In 10 Days”.  When a friend of Benjamin’s reads the article, he hands it to Ben to read. As he scans the article he sees that Andie talks about being in love with Ben and he decides to go after her. They soon confront each other about their love and get together.  Even through what they have done to one another, they looked back on what had happened within the 10 days they had been together, making them forget about the bad and embrace their love. Although in both pieces, the characters confess their love, the one person who did not do so was Petruchio, he was the only one who had yet to say I love you in some sort of way to Katherine and mean it.

  


    In the end, these two movies have managed to show love blossoming through the worst of situations. Even through the rough times a person can still find the emotions to appreciate another and accept the love they have truly fought to find. Both “Taming of The Shrew” and “How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days” have shown two stories unfold in crazy ways. The base of the relationships might not have been stable, but the result was a good by the the end because it was love that made them forget all about those bad things and only focus on their love.


Comments (4)

Chloë Epstein (Student 2017)
Chloë Epstein

I like how this essay focuses on Bianca and Lucentio as well as Katherine and Petruchio. It's interesting to see you compare these relationships as well as the Relationship in the movie.

Tianna McNair (Student 2017)
Tianna McNair

I really enjoyed how you decided to use a movie that was about trying to break up a in comparison to the play where they are trying to get together. I feel like it makes for a very interesting analysis.