Baptista & Chasen: The Taming of a Child

Baptista & Chasen: The Taming of a Child

The Taming of the Shrew, Harold & Maude

“The Taming of the Shrew” presents a vision of romance in 16th century aristocracy, complete with the copious parental power afforded in these situations. Baptista is the widowed father of two daughters, the oldest of which is unruly or “shrewd” and the play’s plot centers around his plan to marry her off. “Harold & Maude” is a movie from almost four hundred years later, 1971. In it Harold’s widowed mother Mrs. Chasen tries to marry him off to a young cast of suitors she has selected, who are all in one way or another scared off by his eccentric behaviour.

While Baptista’s issue is his curst daughter Katherine, Mrs. Chasen’s issue is a quiet emotionally disturbed son. Baptista’s problem with Katherine is that she will be difficult to marry off given her personality. He hopes to find someone to marry her before she is too old, her personality could ruin her and his family's reputation with it. Mrs. Chasen seeks to use a marriage to fix Harold’s behavioural issues, which include staging elaborate fake suicides in an attempt to elicit a reaction from his mother. She sees this as a way to have Harold grow up. Both parents seek to find their child a partner who will solve what they see as issues with them. While these two texts present situations 400 years apart, with swapped gender roles, and different issues for the respective parents they both show that parents are given a role in society to find the “best match” for their children. Society dictates to parents that this “best match” is the one that gives them control over their children, and solves “behavioural issues”.

Early into Harold & Maude Mrs. Chasen instructs Harold that he must grow up. That he has lived an idyllic, soft childhood and it is time he became an adult. Mrs. Chasen’s solution to Harold’s behaviour is simple, she tells him that it is high time that he get married in order for him to mature, to straighten him out. In The Taming of the Shrew Baptista never expressly states that he wants to fix her personality with marriage, but this is an expression of the times in a way. Baptista’s primary and only concern with his daughter is getting her married, but once he has married her off to Petruchio and she comes back to him obedient he is overjoyed. It was his hope that marriage would make Katherine obedient, and we see this in his happiness at having this hope fulfilled. This quote comes from Act 5, Scene 2, Lines 124-128, right after has Petruchio won a wager involving who has the most obedient wife.

“The wager thou hast won, and I will add

Unto their losses twenty thousand crowns,

Another dowry to another daughter,

For she is changed as she had never been.”

Baptista is thrilled over this newfound submissiveness in his previously disagreeable daughter. Petruchio has successfully turned Katherine around, and made her into the daughter Baptista wanted to have. Just as Mrs. Chasen hoped to do with Harold, take his bad behaviour and fix it with a good marriage. Both of these parental figures used marriage as a sort of boot camp or training to mold their children into the people they wanted them to be, that would be easier to deal with. In fact, when Mrs. Chasen is struggling to find someone who will take Harold and his numerous eccentricities she orders him to join the military instead. Literally a boot camp meant to teach obedience, stamp out strange eccentricities, and make someone into a “man”. This is an equivalence of two things that should be very different, a union between two people and training for war. In both situations though the parents hope to use these institutions to “straighten out” their children.

After Mrs. Chasen orders Harold to begin searching for a marriage, she decides to take matters into her own hands. She brings Harold a survey that will create his profile for a primitive version of an online dating website. Through the whole scene Harold doesn’t say one word, but his mother still successfully fills out the survey. Filling in her own opinion or life situation for many questions, often judgmentally.

This is nothing compared to the amount of power Baptista has, where he can actually choose both his daughters’ future husbands. This means that he treats the entire marriage process as if he was a merchant, his primary concern not being someone to make his daughters “grow up” but whoever can offer the most amount of wealth. Illustrated here in Act 2, Scene 1, Lines 362-364

“Tis deeds must win the prize, and he of both

That can assure my daughter greatest dower

Shall have my Bianca’s love”

Mrs. Chasen and Baptista both hold power over their children, as most all parents do. They both use this power in attempts to control their child’s potential future spouse, Baptista being far more successful in his attempt. This attempt at control drives to the heart of what parental interference in relationships is trying to attempt. They seek obedience from their children as they had always had it before, and both look for what they want from their children’s suitors. They don’t look for what they think their children will like, but what they have decided they find desirable in a suitor. Baptista looks for money and Mrs. Chasen fills out the survey to her own liking, nowhere do their children’s desires enter into this equation. They see marriage as a path to compliance from their children, but for it to have the desired effect they must be certain the medicine is right. They set about searching for a suitor the same way one would locate the right boarding school for their unruly child.

These two pieces have completely different underlying themes and morals, but behind their main plots lies a commonality in the role of the parent in young love. Mrs. Chasen and Baptista are both in a situation where they have less control over their children as they grow up. So they both gravitate to find their child the “best match”, in a last bid to keep control and solve worrying issues of disobedience or perceived immaturity in their children. Over time though parents have lost power in choosing the next stage in their child’s life, as evidenced by Harold & Maude. No longer can they pick the suitor they most like regardless of their child’s wishes, the most they can do is attempt to influence their child’s choice. Demand their child get married, so they can find possible options that match their hopes for their child’s future. Mrs. Chasen’s failure shows that parents have lost so much of the power they used to hold, but that doesn’t stop them from still trying to control the future in a journey to find “the best match” and someone who will “straighten” their child out.